YourOwnStore.co.uk (Bright Light Media Ltd.)
Complaint 175921 Details

I bought a store from YourOwnStore in June this year. I did some research before buying the store thinking I was being careful before spending just under £4k. This was a large investment for me and I thought I was being careful, I didn't expect wonders, I knew I had to work hard and I thought as my expectations were so far under the amount that YOS said I could earn through my store I was hopefully making a sound investment.
Firstly what YOS do not tell you is that all they provide you with is a skeleton site. They say on their site that your job is to get traffic to the store but what they don't tell you is that you need to optimise the store first and this is a massive job. However, I followed the training, chose my keywords carefully and made sure I provided quality content. I was excited to start promoting the store and worked hard and much longer hours that YOS told me was necessary to make sure that my site was 100% optimised as soon as possible. It has now been fully optimised for a while.
I started noticing quite early on that many customers were making negative comments on a YOS forum but I tried to remain positive and thought that perhaps these people hadn't followed the training that I was so carefully following. This forum has now been removed.
I am now still yet to make one penny through my store despite it being 100% optimised and despite the fact they YOS have done 6 weeks of SEO work in combination with my efforts, I still have no sign of gaining anything but a couple of visitors to my store a day and not one keyword has ranked at all.
The worst thing was however when I found a forum on Facebook for unhappy customers. It became apparent that these were not people who hadn't followed the training but were just further down the road than I was. They had been trying for up to two years with no results and provided evidence that YOS had not only failed to provide any evidence to support the fact that they claim to be a proven business (not even one happy customer has been provided to evidence this) but have also been shown to pretend to be customers by setting up email address in their site names and then state how happy they are with their site.
I have contacted Jason West and clearly stated my position. I wanted this opportunity to work and I was happy to work very hard, I would continue to work very hard despite the lack of results if he could show me one or two customers who had any success with this model. Mr West did not provide this and refused to entertain the prospect of a refund. Mr West ignored any points that were raised about the possibility he had scammed myself and many others.
I like many other customers are gutted. I was duped into buying a store by a fake reviewer on a forum and I cannot afford to lose so much money.
I am now seeking resolution through other platforms. Mr West has made it clear that he will not even entertain refunds so I have made a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority. I will continue now to report the company to Trading Standards.
Thanks to sites like these and social networking sites it is possible to assemble as a team to try and combat scams like this and together I stand with a number of disappointing persons who have been victim of this company.
I have never been rude or insulting to Mr West or anyone of his company, all i want is my money back, I do not even ask for compensation for all the work I have done. I want to put this behind me but it is important that others are warned before they too lose money they cannot afford.