Steve
Horrendous experience
This company did a speed optimisation on our Shopify site. To be fair, the initial results were pretty good. But we had a conflict arise in our theme some time later - this bug resulted in a critical part of website front end not functioning. (This alone is not entirely unexpected, as when things change on a speed optimised site, there is a chance for bugs to arise. But of course they won't tell you in their sales pitch about the potential for conflicts arising.) After a great deal of investigation we isolated an optimisation script as the cause of the bug. We could see from our change log and from inspecting Shopify theme code history that the script was added to the theme that Speed Boostr worked on for their optimisations - literally to the day they were working on it. Upon contacting the company they were absolutely horrendous to deal with and denied any responsibility, even though it was clear as day that the script was their work. They said "their developers" didn't create the script in question, but we know for a fact that there is no other explanation for it as we didn't have anyone else with access to that theme at that time. (We don't just give random access to our site for magic developer fairies to come an add random scripts to our site.) We were even prepared to pay for the fix, of course, but they refused to help, so we we forced to engage another developer to assist us. The fix was actually pretty simple in the end. However the attitude of both Tom and Frances was very disappointing. They either don't know what their dev team is doing, or they know what happened and lied about it. Either way it's such a bad look. So be warned people, this company will take your money and cut and run. The "speed optimization" that this company offers is NOT a long term solution. Be prepared to redo the optimisations every 3 or 6 months if you have a site that you are making changes to (adding new apps, customizing your theme etc.) Bugs will arise at some point and when they do and you need help, that help may not be forthcoming! It's a shame we had to learn this the hard way, hopefully this review will save some unsuspecting consumers in the future.
Response from Speed BoostrApr 19, 2024
Dear Steve, Thank you for sharing your feedback on our speed optimization service. We truly value all feedback, positive or negative, as it helps us improve our services. Our team upholds high standards of service and integrity, so we were dismayed by the unfounded claims made against us. We understand that misunderstandings can occur, and we're here to address any legitimate concerns you may have. However, we cannot let false statements go unchallenged, as they can harm our reputation and credibility. We completed your speed optimization on May 9, 2023, and emphasized testing and reviewing the new theme post-publishing to ensure everything is working as expected as a few things can break due to the changes made so to say that we did not tell you about “the potential for conflicts arising” is completely untrue. Despite offering complimentary 7-day support, we didn't hear back from you and your team until January 29, 2024, regarding a code that was added to your theme. The developers who worked on your project confirmed that they did not add it and we communicated this to you transparently. To say that they denied responsibility is simply inaccurate, as there was no responsibility for them to deny in the first place, given that they were not responsible for adding the code. Our lead developer explained to you that we have only edited the layout/theme.liquid and added our proprietary async loader for PSI optimization as part of our SOP. He also confirmed that our dev team does not modify the social meta tags file or add obfuscated code labeled to be from other platforms. While it’s unfortunate that the code existed in the theme that our team worked on, it’s unfair to blame it on us as we have no control over what other people or apps do to your theme eight months after our work is done. Even so, our lead developer investigated the code free of charge and proposed to remove the code and refactor it for you and even included a 20% discount on additional services so your statements that we were “horrendous to deal with” and that we “refused to help” are 100% not true. For your second project in February 2024, concerns arose about deleted SKUs. We clarified that we were not involved and provided resources to help investigate. This incident raised concerns about site changes happening without your team's knowledge, prompting us to cancel the project and issue a full refund as a gesture of goodwill. We prioritize maintaining professional relationships and promptly processed your refund. Regarding your claims against Tom and Frances - insinuating that they were either unaware of our team's actions or intentionally lied about it is completely off-base. We've reviewed all your email exchanges, and there's no indication of any dishonesty or negligence on their part. Instead, both Tom and Frances diligently asserted that our team did not add the code in question, provided detailed explanations to support it, and even went the extra mile to help you resolve the issue despite the circumstances. We also appreciate your concerns about the longevity of our optimization services. We aim to provide lasting benefits and ensure the best return on investment for our clients through our optimization services. While many of our changes are designed to be future-proof, it's important to recognize that speed optimization isn't permanent, especially with significant site changes. Similar to a car tune-up, performance can improve temporarily, but subsequent modifications may require further attention. This applies universally to all speed optimization services. In conclusion, we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience or frustration this situation may have caused you. We've always aimed to be transparent, professional, and committed to resolving any issues, and it's disheartening to see our efforts misrepresented in this way. - The SpeedBoostr Team