Paid $2,500 for ads I would be embarrassed to run, and could have created myself in 20 min with chatgpt or gemini. Met with unhelpful defensiveness when I provided feedback.
I hired Alchemy (scalewithalchemy.com) in late June 2026 for a "two sprint ad package" for my dog products company.
I paid $2,500 up front.
The quality was terrible.
In my opinion, anyone could make better ads in 10 to 20 minutes with ChatGPT and Gemini.
He promised high quality ads, well researched, based on my compeitor's ad insights, my brand voice, etc..... he delivered low quality generic slop.
Specific problems:
1. The French Bulldogs in the videos had tails. Frenchies do not have tails. Any Frenchie owner would spot it instantly. Importantly, I specifically mentioned this to him ahead of time and said to avoid that.
2. Their research summary listed my customer as age 25 to 44. I have far more customers in their 50s than in their 20s.
3. It claimed no competitors make Frenchie specific supplements, days after I had emailed them three.... (an obvious sign that they didn't do actual research, just filled out a generic template to make it look like they did)
4. None of it was in my brand's voice. We had agreed on a playful tone and a specific tagline. Neither appeared anywhere.
5. The text on the image ads was too small to read on a phone.
6. One video simply read the ingredient list aloud. Another set never mentioned a single problem the product solves....
When I raised these issues, the response was argumentative and defensive. Direct quotes from the owner's emails:
"What is not productive is having to defend our expertise."
"You told me yourself you do not have much experience in direct response ads."
"You are entitled to a revision, not a complete do-over."
To be fair: they did fix the tails in a revision...but didn't do any other meaningful improvements.
I did, admitidly, take about a month to answer one of his emails because I was so disappointed with the work and the defensive & argumentative tone he used in response to my feedback. I had little faith he cared or would do any better.
He has since used that delay as the reason to put my project on the back burner. After I sent a complete revision list and asked for a delivery date in line with what he origionally told me to expect (revisions within a week of feedback), he wrote: "We are no longer on your timeline and will finish the project when our schedule allows."
I offered several times to accept a 50% refund and part ways (even though still paying $1,250 for the slop he sent me would be ridiculous on it's own). He refused every time.
As of today, more than three months after paying in full, I have no usable ads, the revisions have not been delivered, and the second sprint I paid for has not been started.
Very unprofessional company with embarrassingly bad results. Stay far away.