Documented factual inconsistency in credit return investigation — evidence ignored for weeks

I run a corporate catering business in Johannesburg and have used Bark.com to purchase leads for over a year. I'm leaving this review reluctantly, after an extended and unresolved dispute over several credit return requests.

The most serious issue involves a lead purchased on 30 August 2026 at 14:28–14:30 (confirmed by Bark's own automated notification emails). We contacted the customer immediately and followed up repeatedly by email and WhatsApp over the following weeks, with no response at any point.

When we disputed this lead, Bark's support team stated in writing that they had personally spoken to the customer by phone on 28 August 2026 — two days before the lead even existed on their own platform — and that the customer had confirmed she'd already hired someone else. When we pointed out this was impossible using Bark's own timestamps, we received an apology for an "incorrect date," followed by a revised date that happened to be identical to the date given for a separate, unrelated dispute on our account, submitted the same day. No documentation, call record, or transcript has ever been provided for either version.

We've also had other tickets closed on the basis of unverifiable verbal claims with no supporting evidence, despite Bark's own policy requiring documented evidence from professionals before a claim is even reviewed.

I want to be fair: Bark has previously returned credits on a goodwill basis for some leads, and their platform can be genuinely useful when leads are good. But the credit return process, when contested, relies on internal claims that in at least one documented case were provably incorrect, and the standard of evidence expected of professionals isn't app**** in reverse. If you're a professional relying on this platform, I'd suggest keeping thorough documentation of everything, because you may need it.