GoTucsonOnline leaves clients in limbo - Company fails to deliver promised online services, marketing packages

GoTucsonOnline may be a legitimate business struggling through hard times -- or it may be an outright scam.

Either way, Angela Pratt and several other local business owners have been victimized by the Chandler-based company, which offers online services and marketing packages that it has failed to deliver.

In June, the company known as Digital Impressions, doing business as GoTucsonOnline, offered Pratt and the auto repair business she co-owns with her husband, Daniel Pratt, a $2,000 package that promised to build a Web site, run radio ads and print business cards, Angela Pratt said.

The Pratts ponied up $300 and handed over the domain name they'd already secured for Dan's Toy Shop, 555 E. Fort Lowell Road, which repairs Toyota, Scion and Lexus automobiles.

When radio ads the company promised to run in July didn't air, Angela Pratt began trying to contact the company by phone, e-mail and any other mode of communication that might get to them.

She has yet to get a response.

Neither has the Arizona Daily Star, as GoTucsonOnline and Digital Impressions did not respond to repeated phone messages and e-mails seeking comment.

"Basically, they just disappeared," Pratt said, "so what I decided to do was start using the listing on their Web site of other businesses to contact them, and I started finding other people who were having similar problems."

Pratt and several other local business owners have filed complaints with the Arizona Attorney General's Office and are in the process of reporting their complaints to the Better Business Bureau of Southern Arizona, she said.

"At this stage, we're not expecting to get our money back," Pratt said. "But we do want to keep other businesses from signing up with them and going through what we went through."

Mark Spear actually got the business cards he paid for from GoTucsonOnline, but is still waiting for the free laptop computer the company's representative offered as part of a promotion, said Spear, owner of Pryde Business Systems, 4865 E. Speedway.

"They charged an exorbitant amount for the business cards, but I just kind of accepted that as part of the deal to cover the laptop," he said.

Spear said he signed on to the promotion in March, got the business cards about a month later, and began trying to contact the company about the whereabouts of his free computer. He hasn't heard anything back from GoTucsonOnline since May, he said.

Spear said he's taking the matter to small claims court.

Like Angela Pratt, Bill Bracco is still waiting to hear radio ads for his window cleaning business.

Bracco paid the first monthly installment of $179.97, which was supposed to include business cards, Web-site production and the radio ads featuring a giveaway for a free television.

"The Web site did go up, but I never got the business cards, and as far as I can tell, they never did any advertising."

Pratt and Bracco said they also were promised to be included in direct mailings that would increase hits on their Web sites.

"I'd love to get something back for at least the stuff I never received," said Bracco, owner of Fish Window Cleaning, 2020 E. 13th Street, Suite 19.

No complaints have been filed against the company with the Better Business Bureau in the last 36 months, said Kim States spokeswoman for the local BBB.

"That's neither an approval or disapproval by the bureau; it just means there have been no complaints filed," she said.

States said the Internet is a double-edged sword for promoting businesses.

"Computers make it easier for businesses to do business, but computers also make it easier for con artists to do business," she said.