Robert V.

Well, it is left up to your interpretation whether Indeed's business practices are a scam or just an elaborate scheme to make money from unsuspecting or uninformed users of their services. According to the Babylon's online dictionary, definition of scam: "A scam would involve a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services. It is a plan or course of action intended to deceive others, and to obtain, by false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, money or property from persons so deceived." I do no not think that Indeed is doing anything illegal, but they are certainly using some very questionable practices.

Their business concept is rather simple. Indeed generates and reposts job ads mostly from your local government employment offices. So when you post your ad on a free- of-charge government website, you will also start receiving a substantial number of applications from Indeed. Then you start thinking: Why don't I create an account on Indeed and post my job ads directly on their website? It looks simple and its free. You may post one ad and maybe another. Everything is going well and the process looks simple and cost effective to you. However, this is where their scheme kicks in. First you may receive a call from your local Indeeds sales representative, wanting to make sure that things are going well and that you are getting the applicants you require. He/she will at this point do a soft sell, trying to convince you to start using their fee based services by sponsoring your ads in order for your ads to appear on top of their lists. At this point, most employers think that they have a choice of sponsoring or not sponsoring their ads and that they can just continue posting ads for free. Think again. It will not happen. If you refuse to sponsor your ads, chances are, they will not allow you to post any future free ads on their website. Indeed will also take it a step further, they will black-list you and stop reposting your ads from your local employment office as well as any other websites. It is a classic "bait and switch" scenario, although they configured it so that it does meet legal requirements of most countries.

This is their sales pitch:

Post for free*
Post jobs for free and appear in general search results.

Pay to sponsor
Sponsor your jobs for as little as $10/day to attract candidates faster.

However, their legal terms of use state the following:

Indeed or Partners may reject or remove any Job Ad, and Indeed may disable any Employers account, for any or no reason without notice.

They also state in the legal terms of use how they will not post your job or cancel your posting for "this" or "that" reason. My impression is that, as long you pay them, they will post an ad even if you require someone to come to your house every Thursday and scratch your cat's belly.

Don't kid yourself. Indeed is not a charity. They are in this to make money. Either you will pay or you will not be allowed a free ride for a very long time.

So how do we stand up for our consumer rights? It's simple. Beat them at their own game. Deny them the income. Do not create an Indeed employer account. Do not post any job opening on their website unless you are willing to pay their fees. Post your job ad at your local no-fee government sponsored employment website. Indeed will repost the same ad at their website. Free of charge. Indeed will continue reposting your job ads from those websites. For most business' there are no real advantages of posting on Indeed's website directly.

I learned all this the hard way. My company recently spent around $500 in a very short ad campaign with Indeed looking for 50 new employees across the continental USA. We had thousands of so called "views", hundreds of useless applications and ended up with only 4 semi-qualified employees. It was a complete waste of time and money.

After Indeed received our payment, and we stopped "sponsoring" the ad, our account was blocked and black-listed.

Also, please read the reviews on this website. You will notice that most of the so called positive reviews were very short one or two sentence reviews posted in clusters on the same day. I suspect that they were written by the same person or persons in order to offset the negative reviews. I am sure that people in charge of Indeed do not like what they are seeing on here.

From our side, we will spread our message as well as share our experience with Indeed with as many people as we can, by any means possible, including creating a dedicated website dedicated to the matter. This is by no means a personal vendetta against Indeed. They do what they do in order to increase their profits. It is how they do it that's bothersome.

These days, there are way too many companies out there with similar questionable business practices and the only effective way to stop them is to stop using their services.