Cybersunshine My Negative Experience
I recently had my website re-designed and we changed our IDX real estate website provider A lot of friends have been contacting to let me know how much they like the new site and what a huge improvement the new site is. They also have been asking why I changed companies and some of them are even people I had referred to Cybersunshine.
Here are top 5 reasons why:
1. Cybersunshine was not completely honest with us on several occasions.
2. Their customer service was horrible - Response time to problems was very slow and Cybersunshine very often would tell us there was not a problem when there was.
3. They deleted our property data with no back up and the site had no property search or properties to view for a week.
4. I requested 3 times by email and left several messages on the owner’s voice mail that I needed my user data from my data base and they didn’t get back to me for 10 days.
5. Paid for VIP search they never integrated on change Request #10173 plus paid extra for rushes they never delivered on.
Here is the main reason and the final straw:
Back at the beginning of 2006 Cybersunshine convinced me that I needed to upgrade to the VOW / Hi-Central MLS RETS solution because it would make my site more stable and reliable because they were having problems with the IDX files (other vendors were not). They also said it has more data than the IDX data which the Honolulu Board of Realtors confirmed. So I agreed, paid $1398 and signed change request form #10173. By doing this I also incurred a cost of 75 a month by the Honolulu Board of Realtors for this feed.
The second week of August the search on my site stopped working and there were no property results for the Honolulu Board of Realtors. I contacted Cybersunshine to let them know. They informed me that the board’s server was not responding. I contacted the board and they informed me that their server was having problems and they were going to have to change servers. It was up and working later that day. I informed Cybersunshine that it was working and they said it was still not responding. This went on for a week with no data on my site because Cybersunshine did not have a back up of the data and deleted it. I was basically out of business for a week because Cybersunshine deleted the property data and had no back ups. This is not a good thing when you have over 10,000 users on the site trying to search for properties. I wonder how many went over to a competitor’s site?
The Honolulu Board of Realtors informed me that Cybersunshine was requesting the IDX passwords because they were not using the RETS server.
Cybersunshine quickly responded that they were using both to cover themselves. They stated that the IDX had information that the RETS did not which is just the opposite and the board confirmed that.
I also got a message from a friend and a good source confirming that Cybersunshine never implemented RETS and the owner knew for almost 3 years 
Note: I do have emails, correspondences and documentation to support all of what is posted here. Feel free to contact me about anything in this post at 808-792-7040. I also want to let you know that my 1st year with them was not that bad, but their services declined quickly after that.
I would love to hear how you would handle this and what actions you would pursue if any.
This was my experience with Cybersunshine and others may have had a great experience. So it is very important to ask for references if you are considering any company that is going to have control of your businesses website.
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7 Responses to “Cybersunshine My Negative Experience”
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What a horrible experience. When are companies in the real estate industry going to wake and realize that we won’t accept this kind of treatment anymore? There are just too many other options out there.
How much has this cost you?
@Bob in San Diego - 90% of our gross income is generated from the site. Over the past 3 years the site was not working correctly or down collectively 4 weeks (conservative estimate). So, 4 weeks of 90% of gross income for the team is a lot of money. It not only hurts my family, it ialso hurts the agents on my team that depend on the site for their income to support their families.
I can verify that the RETS feed never happened as I was a primary coder working on this project when it was sold to you. I’d also like to point out that the MLS feed was unstable and had very little/no documentation at all at the time. It was at best a “beta” environment and NEVER should have been recommended to you without first successfully testing/implementing it. If I remember right, there were also limits as to how many times the database could be queried during certain time intervals. I had explained all of this to Chad, who seemed to be more concerned with wakeboarding and other non business related pursuits. This was not a realistic solution when it was presented to you.
@Ex Employee - Thanks for the input. If this is Ryan who used to work there. You were always great to work with. If so, hit me up. I would love to talk to you and see what you’re up to.
Unreal what some companies get away with!
Glad you got out and ran away quickly, now you can look forward to a much smoother platform for your visitors and hopefully more closings at the end of the day.
You would think that they would have bent over backwards to keep such a high profile client like yourself happy. You can’t put a price tag on the revenue you lost during that time….
@Cybersunshine….It must be nice to be so successful a company that you can afford to treat your longterm clients like dirt. At minimum any hosting fees and the other costs you incurred for the “upgrade” need to be refunded.
Charles you would think so.