Calameo Reviews 3

I recently discovered that my media files hosted on Calamero have been “sandboxed” to prevent them from being embedded on my websites. What's more, Google itself tells me that a document I know exists in my Calameo account doesn't exist at all, but I can see it myself—I just can't log in to download it. I have two or three Calameo accounts and I want to retrieve my files in order to host them elsewhere and repair the unusable integrations that they have destroyed.

So I used the contact details provided by Calameo to ask for help accessing my two or three accounts and recovering my files. I have just been rudely blown off twice by a smart aleck named Jonathan Combe, who sent me an email pretending to respond to me, but in reality did not respond, and instead told me to contact the individual owners of the documents, which is not the case. The same email stated that the problem was “resolved” and “closed,” leaving me with my files hacked by Calameo. The only account I can access no longer offers download options in my dashboard, and I am locked out of the other two accounts.

I wrote back and said; "I wrote to you because MY documents are on calameo and I want them back.
Who can arrange for me to download my property?"

Combe hit the repeat button and sent me the same email as the first time, telling me to contact individual document owners, and deeming the issue closed.

It's piracy. Calameo made a name for itself by inviting people to upload and host their files, which we then had access to download. Once we filled up their space to make them visible to the whole world, they set a price and started selling their service. So our files are actually their marketing technique; and now they're stealing my files. And when I contact them to get my files back, their response is thuggish.

Only professional until things went wrong and then they changed.

We purchased their premium Platinum subscription and set up a test doc. The package included White labelling, which was very important to us, it clearly stated “the removal of any reference to Calameo,” but when we tested the document on mobiles it reverted to Calameo.com instead of our brand.
This is when we discovered the dark side of Calameo.
Here is a quick synopsis of events & issues:
- They keep their head office details secret you can only contact them through our rep who had very poor tech knowledge and was very reticent about seeking help.
- The rep guessed at solutions instead of checking and this continued several times, costing us money with our outsourced tech team, he should have sought advice. We then insisted that they should provide proper tech advice to resolve this.
- Their tech team consists of a single person who was extremely unhelpful and lazy, there seemed to be some issue between him and our agent and we were made to suffer, we were even told by our agent that the tech person hardly ever responds to tech requests, appalling.
- It should not be for the customer to try to resolve their tech issues at the customers expense. Someone needed to take ownership and help us, but no one did, it was extremely frustrating and costly.
- After being sent code to try that did not work multiple times, we requested a refund, I was told they do not give refunds! I told them that it was false advertising if they claim White labelling and do not provide it, then they agreed a refund.
- The final straw was the refund was less then they took from our account, they said it was due to the currency rate, I checked with our legal advisor who said they are obliged to refund the amount taken despite the currency change, but they ignored this.
You may not require white labelling but what you should take away from this is how they behaved once they had our money and when there was an issue, you can always judge how good a company is by how they perform when there is an issue, especially when the issue is at their end. They lost all credibility and our trust. We do not recommend this company to businesses.