2019 Update: Wedding Wire has recently merged with TheKnot.com – however, both of these sites have given similar experiences to many of my peers.
Is Weddingwire.com sending out fake leads?
Being a vendor with Wedding Wire may leave your pockets empty with the taste of dissatisfaction as well.
I’d like to share my personal experience with being a paying vendor on Weddingwire.com for the Hampton Roads, Virginia Area.
I did a 6-month try with Wedding Wire and ended up canceling because I was particularly skeptical about the leads I was receiving. My end result: a whopping 0 number of responses from any of these so-called “inquiries.” None of these leads responded to my emails or calls – and I make sure to always respond within 2 hours MAX. I follow up regularly until I deem the lead a dead end. Every. Single. Time. Defeated and frustrated, I reached out to my service rep and asking what I might be doing wrong.
“I know that you had mentioned you are not seeing results and no leads. I took a look over your account and noticed that you have only received 2 reviews since upgrading this past October. Reviews will be the biggest driver of traffic to your listing — how have you been reaching out to past clients to collect reviews? Keep in mind that anyone you’ve done business with can write you a review.”
– Xxxxx Xxxxxxx, Wedding Wire Representative
This didn’t really sit well with me. I mean okay, I understand that the vendors with the most reviews will have more hits, more leads, more clients. However, had I known that success in generating leads that lead to bookings is pretty much solely dependent on how many reviews I have… it works the other way too, does it not? No leads = no bookings = no reviews.
Suddenly — after recently complaining that I will be canceling my service at my 6 month “opt-out” mark — I received a particularly interesting Wedding Wire lead. A few hours later I also received a lead directly from my website’s contact form from this same individual. SAME email and phone number as well — I’m thinking “Now we’re talking!” This could be a real lead… Finally!
I responded with my friendly initial request for a consultation because the “bride” specified they would like to talk in person for a wedding photography package with a considerably large budget in my local area. I even looked up the lead by email address & phone number which both gave me a Facebook profile match. Viola! Or so I thought…
Here’s where it gets weird — after getting no response from email, I followed up with a phone call to try to schedule a consultation, and the woman that answered told me I had the wrong number. Hmmmm… that’s odd. This is the number that takes me directly to your Facebook profile? And just several hours ago you were requesting that I call you to set up a consultation? And not only that, this is the second time a Wedding Wire lead has been generated to me and the person I call says I have the wrong number.
So, I did some snooping on the lead’s Facebook page — unbelieving that I am actually stooping to this level. The profile has next to no organic posts besides updated profile pictures and posts from “Farm Hero Saga New High Score!” The profile pictures have all recently been updated, no photo comments, and only 80 Facebook friends. Not only that, but I started digging into my Wedding Wire analytics and seeing really big inconsistencies with what my website analytics show and what my Wedding Wire storefront’s analytics show. This was a HUGE red flag to me!
Apparently, I am not the only one having these issues. Reaching out to my peers, I found that there are actually a good amount of other wedding vendors dealing with the same sketchy, unresponsive “leads” generated by Wedding Wire.
My take from all of this?
My unfortunate conclusion is that most WeddingWire leads are fake and/or bots. For my local area — Virginia Beach at the time — it is very heavily congested with photographers and so these in-house generated leads were just a means to keep me paying the marketing fees and happily distracting the fact that maybe Wedding Wire just wasn’t the right fit for me at that time in my career.
The problem is: not getting leads is one thing….faking leads to keep people paying you hundreds of dollars a month for a service that isn’t working for them is just outright ridiculous. Paying for fake leads means I am missing out on real potential business that I could be putting my marketing budget towards; and that’s really what leaves a negative impression on me when I review my time spent with the company.
I completely agree! It’s insane how I will not receive an inquiry for a few weeks, and then as soon as I phone my rep to cancel, suddenly an inquiry appears. I have booked a total of 1 real wedding from Wedding Wire, and the rest of the leads did not respond to my response. I’ve even gone as far as to look up my “leads” on Facebook, and I can’t find ONE of them. Not ONE of them has facebook? I call BS.
You said it Erin! How frustrating for us trying to make the most out of our businesses to be taken advantage like that. I hope they make some serious changes to their business structure – and QUICK!
I am 7 months into my ” contract” and all bogus leads.
I am calling my cc company to dispute these charges.
Did disputing the charges work for you? I know this is over a year ago, but it never occurred to me that these leads could be fake until I realized they were ll following the same pattern…..
I am in my fifth month into weddingwire and it has always always always been fake inquiries. Will deffinitely cancel at the end of six months. I wonder if its the same with theKnot.
Good luck to u all for 2017
http://www.damminseneratphotography.com
Just cancelled my account with them. The rep was saying ” why? You had 84 leads in 1 year” With 0 booking or even single reply. They also very creative with those weird bride names 😉 Total scam.
I stumbled upon this article after having a talk with a WW rep yesterday, followed by doing a little online reading on the subject. She called to ask why I wasn’t replying to any of my leads any longer. I explained that I haven’t received a SINGLE return email/call from any of the replies that I have sent to “potential clients” over the past 2 years. “Well, perhaps your approach to replying to them needs to change?” Uh, no…I receive emails from B&Gs all the time through my website and (since I’m a data-geek that tracks everything) currently sit at an 88% reply rate. I can’t see it being that different from WW replies!
I’ve been with them for several years and have NEVER booked a single event through them. Yes, WW, using Google Analytics can show you where the click to your site came from – they must think that this is a closely guarded secret known only to certain key-people in the world! I wish they wouldn’t waste my time replying to their staff-written “inquiries” into your services.
I’ve also found a few more-than-disturbing tidbits of information: PAID vendors can have bad reviews removed…they can also “forward” reviews made by their “clients” and have them added to their listing. The rep I spoke to hinted at this which warranted me doing some digging into that piece of information. Further, the “awards” “Couples Choice Awards” etc can be “purchased” (in a round-about way).
A LOT of the smaller independent wedding vendors do not have a lot of advertising money to spend each year…my piece of advice…spend it elsewhere. I have found I get a LOT better Return On Investment from Google Adwords or Facebook ads. Stick with those.
I’m currently experiencing the same thing. Joined in March of this year (DJ/MC) and all the inquiries have been either 0-1 responses leading to no actual bookings. I actually have 21 reviews because I already get a decent amount of work, so they wont be able to use that one on me. I would really like to know how many other people are experiencing this issue. I see a cancellation in my future.
Hi Jackie! I wish I had read this post before I got pressured into signing up with them last month! I’ve received about 4 “inquiries” in the first month of my account upgrade and none of them have responded to my messages. I’ve also received weird information on these “inquiries” (like wedding dates on random Wednesdays and requests for engagement photos on dates past the date they identified as their “wedding date”). So I searched online and stumbled across this blog post. I’m really upset because I feel like I’m being taken advantage of.
Ana,
I am so sorry for your experience! I do know plenty of people who have good experiences with WW in areas that have low competition, but if you’re in a high competition area like me, apparently this is pretty common? I still don’t understand how they can call you “under contract” when you receive NOTHING in writing, whatsoever. How is that even legal??
After 8 months in Wedding Wire and almost none response from my “leads”, this same thought crossed my mind. I’ve already request my cancellation, just waiting. It’s been a total waste of time and money.
I am sorry to hear that Julia! I’ve still had no resolve with my experience with them.
I had exactly the same situation happened to me. I wanted to cancel my subscription after a few months because I wasn’t receiving any leads. The next day I started receiving leads that mysteriously led to phone numbers that were not valid and email addresses that were not valid. They only spoke to me or contacted me through the wedding wire messaging area and none of them for some odd reason could ever get on a phone call. They were either out of the country or they were indisposed… The names also sounded completely fake like Angela Paris. Like really you can’t think of a better name than Angela Paris. The other name was also very Rockstar ish so the names were really weird. I got a bunch more leads that were all fake and then I just stopped paying them. Of course that upset them and I haven’t been able to log in to even view any of my clients information. Some of my clients use WeddingWire and have WeddingWire reviews that they post. It is such a scam and such a ripoff. I’m sure that it works well for people that are well-established with their WeddingWire account. But I have been in business for over 23 years and I have over 30 Yelp reviews and I’m well established all over the Internet for something like this to happen to me . but there are so many other ways to Market your business you don’t need to go this route especially with a company that is dishonest and scammy. For my area to be a spotlight photographer was costing me $600 a month. For that kind of money they should have had somebody genuinely trying to help me get more leads not just sending fake leads. Just the dishonesty leaves me such a bad taste in my mouth. They will deny this until the ends of the Earth but I’m telling you I’ve spoken to too many photographers at this has happened to for this not to be real.
Same here paying 416 per month and one one legit bride i reported then to consumer affairs canceled credit card and sent letter of cancelation. still have 8 months but with fake leads ant afford it anymore. I have my attorney on standby if they give me a hard time. He said to cancel first and we will take it from there.
They are scam artists! They refuse to let me cancel despite me saying I’m losing my day job and cannot afford it any more. They insist that they will keep trying to have the charge taken out of my account for the next ten months. I received real leads before upgrading, and since then, I experience the same thing – random weekday weddings, weird names that change when you respond, and enormous amounts of ghosting. SO mad they can get away with this and have us keep paying for it.
I cancelled my paid account years ago and about once a year I get a fake lead. This year’s fake was hilariously bad. Not only did it use language that no inquiring bride would ever use “we’d like to learn more about your business” but they listed a date and venue for which I am booked for someone else’s REAL wedding.
I wish someone would do a youtube takedown of WW for this practice. Maybe get video testimonials from a handful of experiences like this.
Exactly the same thing happened to us. Even the users we’ve talked with were reported as scammers. It’s suspicious and we decided not to advertise our brand on WeddingWire and the knot too (because they are under the same company)
So sorry you had to go through that!
I received a lead and like most of you, I respond to my leads very quickly. But before I do, I try to research the bride before I reply. I googled the bride and found out that she already had a save the date page, venue, engagement photos from that venue, and all of her vendors were already hired. This type of BS happened with Wedding Wire and The Knot. As a result, I don’t answer any leads that I receive from them… waste of my time. I have never paid a dime to Wedding Wire (they added me as a complimentary service) but I signed a 1 year contract with The Knot and did not get a single booking from a ton of leads, which I finally realized that they were fake. I have no use for these wedding sites, should be against the law. They are designed to help us, but clearly cause more harm than good.
Thanks for your input Gerald! I agree. I wish there was something that could be done to protect us vendors from this fraud.
I could not agree more. I have had 18 “leads” in the past two months (once I bought their upgraded marketing subscription). They all have the SAME exact wording, all of them “prefer to have contacts through wedding wire” (and not over the phone or email checked), and not one of them replied to my responses. Not one bride.
So frustrating! I literally thought I was losing my mind when it was happening to me.
Howdy! This post couldn’t be written any better! Reading this
post reminds me of my good old room mate! He always kept chatting about this.
I will forward this write-up to him. Fairly certain he will have a good read.
Thanks for sharing!
This may be 3 years old but it’s still happening.
So sorry to hear that, Rob!
This is still happening today. I have been using the Knot and the Wire for 3 days and have been suspicious of fake leads with no replies. Has anyone had any success with canceling with the knot?
I mean if all these leads are fake and we can prove it, can’t we do something? Class action lawsuit? More and more people keep getting scammed!!
Has anybody been able to successfully cancel? I tried cancelling the same day they sent me a bogus contract that I didn’t get to review. It’s been days now and they’ve been ignoring my requests. Haven’t even used this service, just got charged and am seeing horrible things. I did not agree to the terms on this contract.
Yup, same thing happen to me thus reason why I left. Such a same since I payed over $1000 to them with no leads. And that much money is alot when your just starting out trying to go on your own.
So sorry to hear that!! It really is a shame!
Yes, I’m a musician (or was) and have a profile w them, no leads have materialized yet they’re insisting I pay them thru next year. I changed my CC at the bank, and told the bank to watch for future charges. I’m very stressed about them trying to come after and ruin me. I had no idea they slapped a contract onto my plan. At the end of the day they are not the irs and cannot scoop they’re dirty claws into your bank and steal your $