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Times are tough, but what happens when a Web site charged with helping people find work isn't doing its job?

That's the charge of some customers of Sologig.com, a three-year-old vocational Web site.

Test of Experience

Marianne Salcedo, a freelance consultant and grant writer in Allentown, Pennsylvania, signed up with Sologig earlier this summer to seek work. She wasn't impressed.

"I found some jobs that met my qualifications. In four days I made 78 contacts," Salcedo says. "Every one...bounced back at me as an error message. I looked up the companies on their own Web sites, and none of them had the jobs listed."

Salcedo isn't alone in her complaints about Sologig, a subsidiary of CareerBuilder (a recruiting Website shared by media giants Gannett, Knight Ridder, and the Tribune Company). The Sologig site, which launched in 2000, just updated its front-end and database, largely to better satisfy its customers.

Complaints Page

But customer dissatisfaction has placed Sologig in ConsumerAffairs.com's Rogue's Gallery. ConsumerAffairs, a site that tracks and sometimes posts consumer complaints, lists about 350 companies in its Gallery of disgruntled users.

"We don't put [companies] in the Rogue's Gallery until it becomes apparent that a lot of people have had the same problem," says James Hood, the site's editor-in-chief.

ComsumerAffairs.com contains a page of complaints about Sologig. Many of them echo, or sound worse than, Salcedo's problems.

"I have cancelled the subscription twice now, contacted them through their Web site, and e-mailed the billing department; they continue to bill my credit card," complains one former customer. "I hate to think that I have been scammed, but I don't know what else to think."

ComsumerAffairs does not post the complainants' full names or contact information, but Hood supplied this information to PCWorld.com.

Site's Rebuttal

A Sologig.com representative says the site is not a scam.

"We take customer complaints very seriously," says Jenny Sullivan, director of corporate communications for parent company CareerBuilder. She contends many of the problems result from people's failure to search the site properly.

"There was one customer who we worked with to show him how to [search for jobs that met his qualifications]. He was contacted by three employers the next day," she says.

Still, such complaints are one reason Sologig upgraded its site this week. In addition to a new look, it boasts updated back-end technology to improve data searching and navigation.

Sullivan says the company has longtime, satisfied customers, but was unable to supply one for an interview.

Stuffing Envelopes

One common complaint is the quality of the jobs listed.

Anthony Saffer, an independent software developer in Miami, Oklahoma, recalls, "I'd do a search for 'Visual Basic' and get five pages of listings, most stuffing envelopes, fact-checking, and get-rich-quick schemes." These sorts of ads, more often associated with spam than a legitimate job site, will more likely bilk you of your money than help you earn some.

They're also explicitly forbidden by Sologig's posted policy.

If customer service team members "come across any projects that are in violation of our posting rules, that posting will be removed immediately," Sullivan says. But the volume of postings makes it impossible to keep all of these out, she acknowledges.

"We encourage users who feel they have come across an inappropriate posting or inappropriate conduct by an employer, to contact us immediately," Sullivan adds.

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