In August 2008, Pro-PhotoShots hired Heritage Web Solutions to build and host the website that is now being hosted by Fibernet. Eight months later, www.Pro-PhotoShots.com actually went online, and as of May 2010 Heritage Web Solutions has taken $3408.00 of our money for overcharged poor quality upgrades that would have been less than half the cost at virtually any other web design company.
On March 8, 2011, Co-Owner of Heritage Internet Solutions Mark E. Strong announced that he was no longer going to do business and decided to shut down. This is his story to save face actually. Pro-PhotoShots has learned that it wasn’t Mark Strong’s decision at all. In fact, Heritage Internet Technologies (aka Hit Web Design, aka Heritage Web Design, aka Heritage Web Solutions; the list of DBA names goes on and on) decided back in 2006 not to pay any federal taxes! Shame on those idiots for being so stupid, everyone knows that the government will catch up to you eventually. The truth of the matter is that the Federal Government shut down Heritage Internet Technologies on March 8, 2011 under a federal tax lien. Pro-PhotoShots has obtained a copy of this federal tax lien from an undisclosed source, and linked below for download for all to see. So, Mark Strong, read it and come back and tell us the truth. Why did you screw so many people? Heritage Internet Technologies currently is $8,077,387.52 behind in their federal taxes. Here is the Federal Tax Lien.
In May 2010, Pro-PhotoShots paid Hit Web Design $480 for a 2-year hosting plan that included 6 months free. Not only did I lose my hosting, design time, and everything else that I had wrapped up in my online business presence, I got totally screwed just like all of Hit Internet Technologies customers.
Unbeknownst to the customers of this lame tax evading company, half of Hit Web Design customers that paid for hosting, were actually hosted secretly by Fibernet, as Hit Web Design was a reseller of Fibernet hosting. When Hit Web Design was shut down, the majority of customers they were actually hosting themselves were all left with nothing but their domain names with no websites. I happened to be one of the “lucky” ones that was secretly being hosted by Fibernet, so I haven’t lost my website yet. When I was tipped off about Hit Web Design, I made a call to Fibernet to find out how long they would honor the hosting plan that I had paid Hit Web Design for, but they didn’t have any information that I didn’t already have. Fibernet was working in overdrive to keep up with the 1000+ websites that were dumped into their laps the day before! Hit Web Design hasn’t contacted any of their customers before or after they were shut down to let them know anything! So much for the great customer service that was promised to everyone when the contracts were signed!
As I researched a little more, I found some interesting facts. The Utah Better Business Bureau had the following complaints:
The BBB processed 972 complaints in the past 36 months. Of the total of 972 complaints closed in the past 36 months, 584 were just in the past 12 months alone. The breakdown is as follows:
839 were Resolved, 23 were Unresolved, 11 were Administratively Closed, 91 could not be pursued, 8 were given no response at all from HIT; totally ignored.
Hit Internet Technologies Address is: 1460 Moon River Drive, Provo, UT 84604
Other names that this company went by (DBA) are Heritage Web Design, The Heritage Group, LLC, Zipper Web, Heritage Web Solutions, Yellow Page Partners, Chamber Partners, and Hit Web Design.
Heritage Web Solutions changed their name to Hit Web Design to try to get away from all the negative complaints online and from the BBB. An effort to change their horrible image by creating new names when the truth pours out never helped hide their record of ripping people off.
Take a look at the federal tax lien, and you will agree that the owners of this company all need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and thrown in prison.
Take a look at the Federal Tax Lien HERE in PDF format.
UPDATE: March 12, 2011
It seems Hit Web Design is starting a new scam! They have already changed their name to ISO Webworks. The company ISO Webworks is registered to Kevin Morrill, the former CTO of Hit Web Design. If any of the former employees of Hit Web Design that happened to be one of the many that didn’t receive their paychecks for the past month read this, contact ISO Webworks and jump on their butts! Please fee free to call them, their Phone number is (866) 598-4347, but they will deny that they are just a clone of HIT, and the same people that ran HIT now runs ISO Webworks. Just look at their website ISO Webworks it looks exactly the same as the Hit Web Design website all the way down to the portfolio.
Need more evidence? Here it is: A former designer for Hit Web Design calls ISO Webworks posing as a potential customer. After a brief discussion about a future website and mentioning the price quoted, he is transferred to Tanner Wolsey, who is a former VP of Hit Web Design! BUSTED!!! So, you have two former VPs of HIT working together (Kevin Morrill and Tanner Wolsey) running the same scam. Watch this video HERE and see for yourself. These sneaky bast^rds are at it again, and need to be locked up for scamming thousands of people. I hope they get their own “screw” when they get to prison.
Please feel free to share your story with us, so we can help to spread the truth about Hit Web Design, Heritage Internet Technologies, and ISO Webworks. Sharing your experience in dealing with HIT will also let readers who’ve been ripped off that they’re not alone, and don’t hold back. At this point, voicing the truth is the best that most of us can do.
Be WARNED, Hit Web Design, Heritage Web Solutions, Heritage Internet Technologies, The Heritage Group, LLC, Zipper Web, Heritage Web Design, Yellow Page Partners, Chamber Partners are now ISO Webworks. They are all the same company, but hide under different names so as to keep the scam going.
NOTE: If you were a Hit Web Design customer, and recently paid them for any product or service and did not get what you paid for, I would recommend that you call your credit card company and file a “chargeback.” It would be perfectly legal and expected, and that is one of the reasons for chargebacks. You would get your money back from the credit card company promptly and without question or ramification.
UPDATE: March 27, 2011
The creator of the YouTube video mentioned above with Tanner Wolsey taking a call placed to ISO Webworks has made a new video showing that ISO Webworks is now screening their calls. It is pretty compelling and you should check it out HERE is the link.
Dundalk Renaissance Corporation
Pro-PhotoShots
Bill's Piece of the Web 
I too was/am a HIT Web Design customer since July 2010. After 8 months and $2,269.00 later I still do not have a working website. In Feburary, after no response from HIT I contacted Marketecture/Blue Host and spent an additional $400.00 to have them revamp my current website. Phil Farmer and the people at Marketecture are wonderful and have been very understanding throughout this entire process and my HIT Web Design paranoia. The Utah County Attorney office are currently taking complaints against HIT. Their number is 801-851-8069, I must warn you they are so overwelmed that the call will go into voicemail. Leave your information and they will e-mail you the correct forms. FYI- it is rumored that ISO Webworks is the new HIT Web Design with all of the main player intact. However, Kevin Morrill states on http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/iso-webworks-hit-web-design-c429646.html that HIT Web Design is not associated to ISO in any way. Read the 3 pages of complaints and judge for yourself.
Thanks for the comment! It also took the geniuses at Hit Web Design eight months to get my site done, and at that point, there were glitches and all. By just looking at my site, you can never tell that I paid so much for mine either. They are good at what they do. . . .Ripping People Off!!!
Many of the former designers caught the blame for the length of time it took to get a website up an running, however, 99% of the time, the designer had absolutely NO control over this. The account was transferred between design, development, flash and other areas, resulting in large gaps in time spent working on the site.
Being a former designer, I wanted to help the clients I worked with, however the legal ramifications were too large to ignore. We had to sign contracts that stated we could not work for HIT web design clients, or speak/post negatively about HIT or we would be sued.
The one time I did help a former HIT client, the outcome wasn’t a good one, and my business has definitely been affected. “No good deed goes unpunished” seems to fit well.
No matter what side of the HIT fence you are on, client or designer, we all got screwed in one way or another..
I agree. There are many HIT employees that got the big glass-studded dildo as well as all of their clients. Customers also had to electronically sign the TOS that forbid them from speaking negatively about HIT, but I believe in the light of the owners of HIT lying to everyone by saying that they were just shutting down, everyone should speak up and put the truth out there for all to see. Hopefully, the right person will read the right statement by someone and act on it. Somehow, the people responsible for this (the owners, managers, etc.) will be prosecuted for fraud and be sent to prison where they will also get screwed. Thanks for the comment, and for speaking up.
If you go to my current website this is not the revamped version that Marketecture is working on, I do not want to give them a bad name. The new site should be up sometime next week live and working.
They hadn’t been paying employees either. Employees paychecks were bouncing, started paying back with cash. Most still haven’t been paid, and are owed thousands of dollars from December. Unfortunately.
Good Post!!
Thanks for the compliment and your comment. That doens’t surprise me that Hit Web Design hasn’t paid their employees either! I hope that it comes back to bite them on the ass one day. If its true that “what comes around goes around,” then they’ll get what’s coming to them.
There were a lot of good people working for HIT and I have no ill will towards any of them. They were following company policy. This HIT mess falls directly with the owners of the company. The employees should feel no guilt, they did the best they could under the circumstances. I wish all of them only the best of luck. We lost money which was not harmful but so did they. Many of the employees are losing their home and cars because they did the job they were hired to do.
While doing business with HIT I spoke to many people and most were polite, but there were the few that just didn’t care. My Account Manager for one, never seemed to care about any of the errors that I had, and are having still to this day. My account manager, and two of the people on the “design team” didn’t return calls, emails, or didn’t even complete the updates I wanted six months ago. I haven’t received a reply email from my account manager Kaden Jensen since March 5, 2010. That speaks volumes about customer service and customer care. For more than a year, I’ve had trouble adding or changing the photos on my main page due to an XML Response error, and they couldn’t or wouldn’t fix the error. Thanks for the comment.
I didn’t say they were all good. I dealt with Kaden Jensen, not as an Account Manager but as an Sr. IT person. Had the same problem. My Account Manager disappeared in Nov. and service went downhill from there. That’s why in Feb. I called and switched to Markecture/ Blue Host. Phil Farmer and the others at Martecture have been wonderful in dealing with my HIT paranoia. They worked with me on pricing to fix my site and always answer or return phone calls and e-mails. I understand that Fibernet is doing the same thing but I have a hard time dealing with anyone that did business with HIT. Know this is not fair to them but once biten twice shy. Thank you .
I too was victim to Hit. Still have no site, that we started in October 2010. I am now out thousands and my business will suffer greatly because of this (we may have to go out of business). I have contacted my local media and they are doing a news piece on Hit and what they have done. Anyone that would like to contribute, email me at ItsOverHit@gmail.com
I’m really sorry to hear that you may have to go out of business because of the actions of HIT, and you are definately not alone. The research that I’ve done and the people that I’ve spoken to about HIT clearly shows that HIT knew of their pending doom, and yet still kept taking new orders for websites. Clearly there is enough evidence just in that aspect alone for charging HIT owners/managers with willfully defrauding you and the hundreds of new clients that they took on after they realized that they would be closing their doors before the projects came to completion. HIT advertised that the average time it took them to complete a website is two weeks. This is not even close to the truth. The truth is that it took HIT around eight months to complete nearly half of the websites they created (free of bugs, glitches, photo gallery issues, and mislinked items.) My photo gallery was never fixed, and the scroll bars surrounding my photo gallery really look my gallery look unprofessional. Out of the 20,000 clients that HIT had at one time, I’m guessing only about 15 were completely satisfied, and out of that 15, none had any previous knowledge of how a website should look! Thank you for sharing your story, and I hope to hear back from you with an update soon!
Hi William,
Just wanted to drop in and say thank you again for the news you left on my blog. So happy to see this company out of business. Not happy to hear that customers are left in the dark when dealing with this issue. I’m going to contact all the web hosts I use when I designed and see if they are offering any discounts, deals, etc. to help with the mess. Have a great day.
PS; If I come up with some great deals, I’ll let you know.
Thanks for the comment! That would be great, and I’m looking forward to hearing what you come up with. Keep me posted!
Is there a class action lawsuit on this company?? They owe me $2000 for a website I never got and the return of my original website they removed to start hosting. Now I lost all my money plus my original website and now my whole compnay because of this company!!
I’m not sure if there is any current plans for a class action lawsuit at this time, but God knows there should be. I really feel for you in this situation, and trust me, you are definately not alone. Unfortunately, as every attorney that I’ve consulted with regarding Hit Web Design, even if there were to be a monetary award ordered by any court, the federal government will get their money (back taxes) first. This means simply that the amount owed in back taxes would be greater than any amount of money that, under the name “Hit Web Design,” could possibly pay out even if they liquidated all their assets that haven’t been transferred to their other company, and there wouldn’t be anything left for the payments to any individual that has sued them.
Since you cannot get bankruptcy protection from back taxes owed to the government, I’m not sure how any of this is going to play out for sure. The commerce laws in the state of Utah are different from that here in the state of Maryland, so this is yet another topic in need of more research.
Thank you for your comment, and I hope this has helped a bit. Feel free to explore the legal option though, because you are still protected by the laws of your own state. There may be something that your state offers that my home state doesn’t. Best of luck to you in any case!
I feel for you. We too have since closed our doors, and HIT was one of the main reasons. Had I actually gotten my website that I paid for, I would not have had to pay out thousands more dollars and since have closed our doors due to lack of funds. The owners of this company will get theirs someday, and I cannot fn wait for that day.
how do I get my money back, or can I get my money back? underthewings@myfairpoint.net
Unfortunately, there is nothing that can be done. None of us can legally get any compensation due to their bankruptcy protection, which is just a dirty scheme of reorganizing under the new business ISO Webworks. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but none of us that were left out in the cold can be reimbursed for our losses. Some people had losses so heavy that it caused their businesses to close, and those companies were internet based businesses that relied on their income from their websites that were lost due to Heritage Web Solutions aka Hit Web Design.