I signed up for the Short-Sale Magic mentoring program with the Vision Investing Group in AMerican Fork, Utah over a year ago. The opportunity sounded good when it was pitched to me. I paid more than $14,000 to be coached one-on-one to learn how to invest in short-sale real estate properties. They offered me a full money back guarantee if I did not succeed at the program.
However, as part of their "guarantee, " they require that you make 24 short-sale offers to a bank to qualify for the refund within the first six months after your coaching is completed. They slipped that information to me right at the last minute of their sales pitch, after getting me all excited and pumped up to make lots of money.
What they don't tell you, of course, is that the chances of you being able to make 24 short-sale offers to a bank within six months as a new, inexperienced investor is probably close to zero, so the chances of you ever getting your money back is also pretty close to zero.
They also charged me an extra $8,000 or so to get hooked up with a company called 4realtools.com to help make marketing calls for me. They didn't bother to tell me that it costs another $60 per month to have this service. Well, this marketing company is also pretty worthless as they never helped me find even one real estate deal. I could have just paid $6000 for the coaching and done the calls myself.instead I have an extra $8000 in debt for no reason.
Now, a year later, and after thousands of more dollars spent on marketing, I still have not made any money doing short-sales. The coach I had was nice enough, but that's about my only positive experience with this company. They refused to refund my money upon my request because I haven't made 24 offers to banks, even though I was never able to even meet with a prospective client using the marketing methods I was taught by my coach. How convenient for them!
I also went to a "Boot Camp" seminar last September and of the 30 or so people that were in attendance, only a couple had actually succeeded in completing a short sale. Many people had been trying the program for six months to a year. Also, all of the people at the seminar who had used 4realtools.com (and got charged more than twice the up-front costs) had not had any success using that marketing "tool."
In addition, I have never received one follow-up phone call from Vision Investing Group or my coach to see how I have been doing or if I need any additional help. They got my money so they could basically care less about my success or failure. They have no customer service what-so-ever.
The bottom line of what this company is doing is selling you a product that is close to impossible to succeed with, taking advantage of your ignorance by providing an iron clad stipulation in their success guarantee so they never have to follow through with it, and not giving a rats behind about whether or not you succeed.
So, if this is the kind of experience you want to have, go ahead and shell out the $14,000-$21,000 to them, make the gamble and see what happens. Maybe you'll be the one out of every 50 people that succeeds. Good luck.
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