How Not to Grow on Instagram
This is not my usual content, but I feel this review is important. After receiving yet another email from EngagementBoost.com offering to “fix” my Instagram, I decided to do some research. My findings were alarming and I want to warn others not to fall for their trap. In this article, I will provide a detailed account of my experience with engagementboost.com. I’m willing to make another post going over my research if people would like to see it as this post is already long. If you’re considering using their services, I highly advise you to read on and be informed before making any decisions. Also pay close attention to the negative reviews on Trustpilot.
According to them, EngagementBoost is the only effective Instagram growth service that provides 1-10k real and targeted followers automatically, without fake accounts or bots. At least that’s what they claim. I admit, my curiosity got the best of me and I signed up for EngagementBoost.com’s free trial. However, after using their services, I can say they should not be trusted. This is based on my personal experience and research I’ve done and is not a reflection of any business or marketing expertise.
The engagementboost.com Spam Emails
I don’t get many emails from them but I’ve seen some reviewers state they get hit hard by these emails, according to them. I managed to find the original spam email from 2021 – the most recent one is from 2022. Both of the emails I have received from them match word for word. Even the “colleague” mentioned in both emails is the same. The only difference was the sender and the email address used to send them. EngagementBoost has responded to several Trustpilot reviews accusing them of spam. They allegedly use affiliate marketers and can’t control how they go about their marketing. Based on my research findings, it’s best to take what they say with a grain of salt.
The thing that got me to try it was how they addressed it to my Instagram account like someone actually looked at my account. It also sounded like they would actively work WITH you to achieve your goals. Things that should have been red flags: urgency (limited spaces available), exclusivity and impressive promises as these are common with scammers. Not sure how they got my email and linked it to my Instagram account. They may have used a reverse lookup tool of some kind.
My Experience
Thankfully, I have a lot of the emails still for an accurate timeline. I made my account with their free trial which was for seven days starting on November 10, 2021. You do need to give them a payment method right away and your Instagram login info which I did not like but they need it to provide the “service”. So you go into your account targeting settings and choose accounts similar to yours and keywords so the “system” will know which accounts are most likely to follow and engage with you.
The “service” started to do it’s thing and I started to get some new followers. BUT I also noticed the amount of accounts I was following was going up as well. It seemed kind of odd to me at the time but later I realized it was follow/unfollow tactics. It’s a way of growing by following people to try to get them to follow you and than unfollowing them. I’ve seen opinions for and against this method but personally it doesn’t seem genuine. Almost like a version of sub4sub on YouTube. But that’s just my opinion of it.
It Went Downhill Fast...
By the next day November 11, 2021, I started seeing posts from accounts they followed on my behalf. A good number of them were accounts and posts I had zero interest in whatsoever. Which also means they didn’t match the targeting settings I set in the beginning. I can’t accurately discuss the results as it’s unrealistic to expect results after only a day but something just wasn’t feeling right. I saw less and less of the people I cared about and more of the stuff I didn’t want to see. It came to the point I was seeing only a handful of posts in general than the feed stopped loading posts altogether. This is the day I started trying to cancel the trial which took a while. In the meantime, things continued to spiral downhill.
While my account seemingly began to fall apart, I started getting messages from two of these new followers that honestly started out sounding like the beginnings of romance scams. These were both sent on November 13th, 2021. Two messages from questionable accounts in one day! One ended up talking about the meaning of his name and asking the meaning of mine. It was feeling weird so I stopped talking to him. The second one I didn’t bother with. I found the messages in the message history of my account. Both of the profiles behind these messages have since been deleted.
What was I getting myself into? I went into my Instagram active logins settings to start disengaging with EngagementBoost. There were logins associated with me (those were fine) and there was a Samsung phone which was not mine. The details said it was located in Serbia. EngagementBoost is allegedly US and Australia based. Why would a cellphone in Serbia be linked to my account? I live in Canada and have never travelled to Serbia. There’s no reason such a login should be on my account. Unfortunately, I didn’t think to screenshot before removing it.
Enough Already!
I removed the Serbia login from my account immediately, changed my password and continued to try to get support to cancel my trial. Thankfully I didn’t lose any money on this or have my Instagram account permanently destroyed as a result of all this. Once I removed the Serbia cellphone login, started cleaning up my account and reported I got hacked (as a precaution), everything started working properly again.
On November 14th, 2021, an EngagementBoost onboarding specialist as she called herself messaged me on Instagram. The message said I gave them the wrong password and I needed to log into my account in their app again to connect back up to their “system.” That shows beyond any doubt in my opinion that the Samsung phone I found linked to my account was likely them. Why would an allegedly US and Australia based “service” be seemingly conducting business from a cellphone in Serbia? More red flags. I was already in the drawn out process of cancelling so there’s evidently no communication between team members. It seemed to me she wasn’t aware I was working on the cancellation. I’m really not sure how much involvement she has with them.
The engagementboost.com cancellation request
Cancellation of my EngagementBoost account took days. Looking at the list of email communication, the cancellation request convo took from November 11th to 15th, 2021. I’m just going to call support guy Joe. My last message was “Hi Joe, I’ve had enough. I would like to cancel.” Looking back on it now, had I not been absolutely firm, my attempts to cancel might have stretched past the seven day trial period.
Joe seemed a little too sales driven. His first response when I emailed saying I wanted to cancel was to say they were “just discussing my account around the office.” Were they having a major board meeting about my account or a casual chat around the water cooler? There was definitely attempts of flattery around my account while trying to “make it right.” I wasn’t happy with the whole situation and I just wanted out of the trial but he wasn’t getting that. He also seemed rather dismissive about the romance scammers when I mentioned them. Saying something along the lines of “thank you for letting us know” and telling me I can always filter out the romance scammers by setting a filter to target only female accounts. This is not the approach a reputable company would take towards this sort of thing.
There was a number of emails going back and forth with offers to have their “account growth expert” help figure out why I wasn’t getting results. He claimed there was something wrong with my targeting. I said no and again asked to cancel to which he offered an extended free trial and a discounted monthly rate. I was getting annoyed at the overly zealous “customer service” at this point. No means no, Joe! Of course they want to keep their clients but is it necessary to butter people up and seem pushy about it? In my honest opinion, I feel like he was attempting to draw this out long enough for the charges to start.
Not Worth the Risk
Bottom line, in my opinion you should NOT try engagementboost.com. This warning is from my own experience as well as my research. It’s not worth risking your money or your Instagram account over. If you have an account with engagementboost.com, remove their access to your Instagram account by clearing any active logins you know are not yours and change your password. Trying to get them to cancel the subscription will either take a ridiculous amount of time or won’t happen at all. You’ll most likely have to get the charges removed through your credit card company or your bank. If you used PayPal, you can cancel through your account under reoccurring payments.
If there are any affiliate marketers who have been promoting engagementboost.com, it’s best to stop having anything to do with them. Also, please consider removing any content you’ve made for them. This “service” is likely a scam but at the very least they are extremely shady and you wouldn’t want to be helping spread this around.
Sorry for the loooooooooooong post. It gets even more concerning considering my research and I’m willing to make another post if there’s interest in seeing it. Feel free to contact me if you have any concerns or questions.
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