A couple months ago I mentioned that the president of a young VA firm called BPOvia – out of China – contacted me, offering a free trial of their services. Being that there are more VA firms than there are Starbucks these days it didn’t strike me as a particularly appealing offer at first. But when I had a QuickBooks data entry task to outsource, I decided they were probably fine for the job. They accepted the task, and asked that I send instructions. I did, and they started the work. Communication from BPOvia was initially poor, but my contact seemed to react to my request for clearer, more regular updates. The job was eventually completed satisfactorily, albeit slowly and a bit clumsily. I chalked the bumpy start up to the fact that this was a free trial. I was still wary, but I ended up giving them a one-page web design assignment. I should have gone with my gut and given the work to someone else.
The 10-hour QuickBooks task involved copying several hundred bank transactions and the associated record detail into a QuckBooks check register. It could have taken someone 2 days, but they committed to 5 days (1 work week). I wasn’t in a hurry, really, so I agreed. After the task started, a few days went by with no feedback from BPOvia. So, I asked for an update. They told me they didn’t have the right version of QuickBooks software yet.
Note to BPOvia: If you commit to a 5-day turnaround, and you eat up 3 of those days getting the right software for the job, you might want to let the client know…especially if it means you might have to push the target completion date.
All-in-all, the project actually pushed on for nearly 2 1/2 weeks. Fortunately for me it wasn’t a time-sensitive task. I only asked them to set a (fair) target completion date so that I could evaluate them on it. They failed miserably on timeliness, and initial communications were very weak. But after I complained that they had passed the deadline with no explanation, I requested that they send updates at least every other day until the task was complete. They obliged with no problem. Where BPOvia gets a gold star for this task is on price (free). But I was evaluating this firm on responsiveness, quality of work, communications, and a number of other factors – with an eye on whether I would send them more work in the future. The quality of the finished product was satisfactory, but there were a number of unnecessary hurdles and red flags along the way.
I shouldn’t have assumed they’d give me any better service as a paying customer, but a single 10-hour task isn’t really enough for a fair evaluation. So, I gave BPOvia a chance to redeem themselves.
UPDATE (2/25/2009): The follow-up task – this time I paid – was worse than the first. A true waste of my time. Before we get too far into this, let me just remind whoever might be curious that I’ve been working with offshore talent since 1999. Outsourcing and managing remote contractors is not a new concept to me. There are good service providers and there are bad ones. BPOvia falls at the bottom of the “bad” list.
This new task I assigned to them was to design a very simple web page (a single page design), and to provide the design to me in HTML format so that I could just upload it to a web server. So simple was the project, in fact, that I just asked them to copy an existing design I had and change a few of the design elements. They didn’t even have to design from scratch.
You want to know how bad the experience was? We’re not just talking about slow work – we’re talking about one poorly executed design draft after another. Each time I sent detailed feedback (including screenshots and arrows pointing to what needed to be changed). Each time I received another revision of the design with only some of the changes done. We repeated this cycle about 10 times…no exaggeration.
So poor was the design work, communication, management, and ability to follow instructions, I ended up scratching the idea of having them provide HTML files. I finally just asked for BPOvia to provide a PhotoShop design file (.PSD) so I could finish the work myself. Honestly, I’m no wiz in PhotoShop, but I finished the project in a couple hours. I wish I would have done it myself from the start. There were no fancy graphics, no special functionality, just a one-page copy of another design. Yet somehow it turned into a two-week project.
All of my revision requests could have been completed within 2 or 3 revisions if the designer would have followed the instructions I sent. Simple bulleted lists of instructions and a benchmark design to go off of. But invariably he missed the mark, and ignored nearly half of the “tweak” requests, which meant revisions went on…and on…and on…wasting a couple days betwen each revision. The classic bit was when the manager told me that, for the quote they gave me, I was “asking for too many revisions,” and I was being too picky. I told him that (1) we had an original design to compare to, so the designer knew what we were shooting for but somehow still couldn’t deliver, and (2) many of the revision requests he was referring to were actually original requests that still hadn’t been resolved. Wow.
Let’s just say in the end I was left frustrated, with half of what I originally asked for (an incomplete .PSD file – no HTML), wishing I could have those two weeks of my time back. If there’s a good thing here, it’s that they didn’t charge much. You might say this is a case of “you get what you pay for,” and maybe you’re right – but I pay about the same to other outsourcing firms and get much more than this. I’m just glad it’s over with BPOvia.
I agree, I had a SEO job done which went very bad, false promises and a poorly delivery job. paid for 1 full time VA, got results back that could be done withing 8 hours a week. Peter Zhang was my contact person for this. Would not recommend BPOVIA to anyone.
Thanks for posting this. I was looking at their website and considering it. Thanks for this assessment of their work. You've done the world a service by posting this.
DO NOT SIGN UP FOR SERVICE WITH BPOVIA! AT FIRST THEY WILL TREAT YOU VERY GOOD AND MAKE YOU GET COMFORTABLE WITH THEIR SERVICE BUT THEY WILL TURN THEIR BACK ON YOU WHEN YOU HAVE A QUESTION OR NEED SUPPORT
ALSO THEY ARE GOING TO AUTOMATICALLY BILL YOU EACH MONTH IF YOU SIGN UP FOR A PLAN SO MAKE SURE TO CANCEL YOUR ACCOUNT BEFORE BEING BILLED AGAINST YOUR WILL.
THERE ARE NO REFUNDS AND THEY HAVE STOPPED ANSWERING MY BILLING INQUIRIES
Hi Jeremy, You are right 100%, I am sending a letter to Consumer Complaints,they try to make their company look credible with testimonies and awards. I have been dealing with outsourcing companies the same length of time as you have been and this is the first real bad experience. We provide outsourced Quickbooks service, if you have not found anyone as yet. I had given them $400.00 for a web service that they could not perform and had to use VA services instead and was advised after a month and half that my remaining $270.00 was expired and could not rollover anymore. What kind of business practice is this?
I am quite surprised to hear of these bad experiences. I have been using BPOVIA's PA and SEO/SMO services (working directly with Peter Zhang) for the past 6 months or more and I must say that they have consistently provided excellent service and follow-up. Consistently.
My Bpovia VPA (Elaine) is always quick to respond, conscientious, able to understand and do pretty complex business tasks like advanced excel worksheeting, report preparing and many more. Sometimes it takes a bit longer than what I expected but that's frequently because the tasks were complex. There were many times also that she took lesser time than I budgeted and that was what I was billed. I was also very pleasantly surprised by the strong command of English given that they are not native speakers.
Peter Zhang is the most passionate, hard working website SEO/SMO expert I have worked with. He is also very business minded and is more concerned about the ROI for my investments on SEO/SMO than I am. His depth and breadth of SEO/SMO work well exceeded my expectations. He and his team must have put in 2 times the hours vs the low budget I spent with them.
Just wanted to share my good experiences with Bpovia to balance things up a little.
@happybpoviacustomer thanks for the comment. Maybe you wouldn’t mind providing your website or name or other identifying information to lend a little more credibility to your glowing testimonial? Surely if you’re that happy with BPOvia you wouldn’t mind other prospective customers knowing who you are?
Jeremy is absolutely right. They give a way ID and PW of client's DB server as well as admin. I was very surprised. Also they give a way PSD files of other clients to show me!! I didn't know it was that!!
DO NOT WORK WITH THIS FRAUD!!!!
This is a serious warning..! I lost my money for new website but as they never answer, response, neither reply… I consider I lost it.. It is painful but better than give away my precious DB access.. imagine this happen…
DO NOT WORK WITH THEM…!!!!!!
I want to remove my previous comment.
ALL of the problems I had with bpovia have been cleared up. There was a problem with billing and such as I stated but they have made their best efforts to fix the situation. I would like to remove my previous comment and fully recommend bpovia for future service.
@jay thanks for the follow-up and clarification.
Hi Jeremy,
My experience is real and actual is all I want to say.
I am not related to Bpovia in any way except as a happy customer and do derive or seek any benefits from Bpovia for my comments. Just wanted to provide a real account of my experience with them.
I'm more than happy to email 1:1 with anyone (including yourself) who will like to find out more about my experience with Bpovia.
typo above. I meant do NOT seek any benefits..
I am more than happy to 1:1 email with anyone who wants to hear about my experience with bpovia. I must admit that my original comment was written with some anger because I was not receiving any replies from my billing issue and the problem was not being resolved. However, that does not mean that the things I said were untrue, everything I said is true.
When you sign up for bpovia service you will be continually billed each month as a subscription.
Overall I would rate my experience a 6.5 out of 10. ALL OF THE TASKS I HAVE ASSIGNED TO BPOVIA HAVE BEEN COMPLETED SUCCESSFULLY – some require more back and forth, arguing to get credited hours for work that was done wrong, or other situations like that. – They ARE NOT trying to rip you off and actually will work with you to resolve any of the issues that you have.
When I posted my previous comments the reason that Bpovia had not gotten back to me was because it was the end of the year and their staff was busy with larger clients. I can forgive this because all issues have been resolved, but its sad that I needed to go as far as to write bad reviews about the company before they would respond to my inquiries.
I have done virtual assistant (data entry/web research) work through Charles – I WOULD RECOMMEND HIM FOR ANYONE LOOKING TO DO THIS TYPE OF WORK – He is very professional, speaks great English, understands the scope of projects and not just perform on a task to task basis.
Overall I would recommend Bpovia for future Virtual Assistant work however working with this service will require micromanaging and potentially some phone calls/skype messages to customer service.
@Jeremy – I am about to finish a website project with Bpovia now, I will provide further feedback once the project has been completed.
@Jay this sounds like a well balanced and honest appraisal of your experience with BPOvia. So, thanks for contributing your story…I think it will be useful to others seeking offshore VA services from BPOvia and other VA firms.
I used BPOVIA – my VA was Cathy. I was very disappointed. Repeat emails with poor results. I even ran out of time to use my hours becuase I started a project and then had to have others finish it due to the poor quality of work from BPOVIA. I would not recommend them or ever use them again.
I'm gonna try it out. Despite all the bad press, I'll give it a shot. Maybe. Maybe not. 100 bucks is still a lot of money. Hmmm… I'll give an update whether or not I go ahead with it, I'm still kinda if-fy
10 minutes and trying their live chat service I've decided: I'm NOT gonna try this out. Couple of questions later with their sales staff and I get the idea. They're so urgent to get you to sign on, that they get impatient if you don't. For those poor sobs who have fallen for this, you have my sympathy. These guys are just out for cash and don't even give a flying f about their reputation. I even pointed out some complaints quoted from this blog, and the guy throws indifference at me, telling me to email them. Right. If I wanted to email you I would have emailed you. I even offered to point them towards this site and he didn't even care. My reading: these guys are here to rip. Snatch your hard earned cash and run. I mean if there were at ALL considering about their future reputation, this kind of attitude would not exist. Anyways. This is probably the first time somebody has annoyed me so much with their air of indifference. I can't imagine how pissed off I'd be if I started paying them and the attitude gets worse. Again, my sympathies to all those poor souls.
There are others that just wants to close a client not thinking of there poor service, well but not all VAs are like that. It is suggested you signup with caution…always review their policy, and if possible let them provide enough info for your basis.
So far i got mine provider going smoothly…
[link removed]
you are lucky one.. but watch out your information in your server. It may not secure. trust me.
Well, I should say I have had really pleasant experience working with my virtual assistant from BPOVIA, their quick response brings high efficiency and saves me a lot of time. In addition to following my instructions, they do good job in brainstorming and sometimes provide excellent strategy to my business team. BPOVIA collects talented minds and I really enjoy working with couple of teams there. I have many tasks and projects, some proved complicated and difficult within my reach, however they have been readily solved at the hand of BPOVIA guys, so I don't think it makes any sense to count the emails and calculate the rate, my virtual assistant perform well and is never stingy in talking with me for a long time via phone or Skype, not to mention the frequent email exchange. I really appreciate their hard work and decide to build long-term relationship with BPOVIA.
Lol, this, and several other comments, definitely sound a bit fishy. As an English language teacher for non-western students, I can feel it when it’s a non-native speaker’s writing. Article confusion, lack of cohesive register (this means going from formal to informal in a way a native speaker wouldn’t), not conjugating verbs properly for tense and meaning, mismatching quantifiers with countable and uncountable nouns, etc…
Don’t get me wrong, native speakers, myself included, make mistakes all the time, but you can tell the difference easily. “their quick response brings high efficiency”, “the do (did) (a) good job in brain storming”, “some proved difficult within my reach”.
I guess the biggest give-away of all that this is a spriuk is when all praise is given without qualification. It’s like the kid who cheats on a test but is silly enough to get every answer right (100%) when he’s recently only got 60s and 70s. BTW, I think several posts on here are from BPOVIA. I can’t prove any of this, but you know when you know. They definitely sound like dodgy sharks just trying to scam a few quick bucks.
I signed up with this company in April this year and specifically insisted (i have a copy of my emails) – that i only have one month trial with a specific project( which they agreed on). A very easy and simple project, to send out a simple email to a small list of 200 people. I wrote the email and also gave them a list. Eric Wang who was assigned to my job took the full first 20 hours to get me 90 new yoga contacts!! he agreed that this was ridiculous, how couldnt you, I had already given him the yoga sites!!He then insisted that i let him redo the email I had written at no extra charge and that he would then give me priorty and get the job done. Since then, I have been billed again WITHOUT my permission, I have had absolutley no results or feedback on anything, the service is appalling.
When i complained Eric Wang begged me to give him another chance and not to complain about it to the company – I decided that Ok anyone can make a mistake – what a fool I was !!
I email Eric Wang at least once a week and his responses are rude, incomplete and he never gives me a report or clear answer.
I would not recommend anyone using this company under any circumstances
I run a healing clinic in UK and always give people the beneifit of the doubt understanding that it can be hard for anyone.
But this has been a nightmare to say the least – they have taken my money and I have had one of the most difficult encounters in business i have experienced.
I have been in business for 30 years and dealt with many customers and suppliers and none have behaved so shoddily or with lack of custimer service as these have.
As the previous person above has said, I will be glad to be rid of them as i am still trying to get 'something' worthy for my $400 dollars
I will be more than happy to speak to anyone about the details of this unfortunate experience.
I have done work with Elance with different providers and all of them have been professional and completed what was asked of them.Without any problems arguments, concerns.
I tried their SEO service for a week, after I paid $500, the one called Eric, I can’t never find him again. And even more, they auto charged my credit card without any notification! That’s not the way do business.
Bpovia?
Bpovia service?
Bpovia SEO?
Just see bpovia reviews!!
rubbish,my credit card been charged without notification!
in this case, Call paypal, they will work for you for refund.
Bpovia is terrible.
They are not competent.. eventually it is expensive with time delay.
So bad
As the world's leading virtual assistant service provider, BPOVIA suffered some ridiculous libels from malicious competitors. We have proofs that some guys are paid by other firms to attempt defame on us. We will of course fight back. However, we always remember our first priority – provide high-quality service to our customers, we have thousands of clients from over the world, we will keep trying our best to provide high quality service to our clients.
The better we do, the more haters:( Competitors, we suggest you better spending your valuable time serving customers. We value fair competition.
BPOVIA Team
BPOVIA Team, It's great that you're making an effort to manage your reputation online by replying to blog posts like this one. Clearly not all the bad reviews are from 'haters', though – some of them are from real former clients like myself. To see that you're trying to blame all your bad press on malicious competitors is disappointing, but not surprising.
This airltce keeps it real, no doubt.
I am a former employee of BPOVIA. They can take good care of your design and data entry services. Most of the virtual assistants are very reliable. I see many contradiction topics here, some good, some bad. But everyone live in the world with their own views. You have to tested it then you gotta to know. A company stand for this long must have some reasons. It need yourself to uncover it.
When their employees are obviously using babel fish to translate into English, be afraid, be very afraid! As an English language teacher, I can spot it a mile away: "It need yourself to uncover it". Using the same subject and object pronoun ("It" at the beginning and end of the same sentence) is a dead give-away that the person is using an online translator.
We use the subject and object pronoun when we already know what the subject is, so we save time by just using "It". For example, we don't write: "The tree is red, the tree is very big, the tree has many leaves". We write: "The tree is red, it's very big, it's got many leaves". But, onine translators aren't people, so they don't know what the subject is, because you need intelligence for that.
So instead, babel fish just uses: "It". Hence, this guy is definitely using an online translator. Which is fine, as long as you're not staking the quality of the work your company produces on someone with insufficient language skills who has advertised and misrepresented the extent of their abilities. That's what's known as "unethical business practices", something BPOvia are actually becoming branded for.
Classy reply above Jeremy.
I was looking for a VA to help grow my business and I will admit when I came across the website I was very impressed by their list of services and their pricing.
I have been trying to reach them for 3 days now via the U.S. number (312- 488-3488)that is currently listed on the site during normal business hours. Not one answer. I also reach out via email, and left a one or two voice mails.
Does not seem to be as responsive as a major company with over 10,000 clients as they advertise. I may be wrong but I am very skeptical and will probably find another service to use.
I worked in BPOVIA for several months and finally left this company. I come across the blog post today and want to let you know that most of the above mentioned comments are true. It is not a major company as it states on the website with over 10,000 clients. There are no more than 20 staff in total including the interns. I worked there for a period of time without any payment until I meet some financial problems. Life is hard and I need money to pay my bills and rental. So I left the company since BPOVIA still wants to keep me work as an intern without any subsidies. They also want us to work as long as possible after office time. At BPOVIA, intern do most of the work while the real staff take care of the communication with the clients. If BPOVIA still do not want to pay for the work of interns, I’m really worried about the quality of the work. An intern with no subsidies will not be willing to work hard as BPOVIA promised to its clients.
@Nanci, that's really interesting. 20 employees/interns with the interns doing most of the work. I have to say that's definitely what it "felt" like when I was working with BPOVIA. Thank you for the insight.
Tried to contact Bpovia by email and phone – no answer, no response. Appears they are not what they seem online.
Anyone found a good service provider for VA?
Hello Jeremy,
Have you ever tried lifenzyme.com? I am fed up with trying 5 VA services? Just thought of checking with you and see if you have heard about them?