I attended a seminar on Sept 6, at which I signed a contract that indicated that in exchange for $3,755, I would received certain goods and services.
The Coaching Institute (CI) promised to provide me with a coach that was a "master" in my line of business, a letter marketing program, and a website.
To date, I have received none of those things.
1. The coach they provided me with is NOT an active real estate agent.in fact, he told me that worked as an agent for ONLY 1 year prior to becoming a coach. This was not the coaching that I was promised. The CI website boasts that their coaches have an average of "20 years experience". Clearly, that was a misrepresentation of the truth.
2. The letter marketing program was never delivered to me. (When I filed a complaint with the BBB of Utah, Coaching Institute responded that the letter marketing system comes preinstalled in Top Producer — a software which I do not have, and as such, they cannot provide the letter marketing system to me.) The problem with that is that at no point in their sales pitch did any CI rep tell me that I had to have Top Producer in order to run the letter marketing system. So basically, I paid for software I would never be able to run and apparently will never receive unless I fork out extra bucks for another software program.
3. The website which was also included in the package, and referenced in the contract, was not delivered to me.in fact, I was told I would be contacted by Promoter Online (the company that hosts and sets up the website). That company contacted me to obtain my credit card information, and indicated they would call me back, but never did.
4. My personal contact information was provided to a third party without my permission. A representative of Real Estate Promoter (not to be confused with "Promoter Online" which was the company I was supposed to get the webite from originally) called me a few days after I signed my contact with CI. The rep indicated to me that he was referred to me by CI and wished to help me set up my website. I was confused by the call because it was not the company I had expected to receive a call from. The contract referenced "Promoter Online" as the website company, not "Real Estate Promoter" (hmm, similar names. Pretty easy to confuse the two. I'm sure it's just a convenient coincidence).
When I asked for clarification from the representative, he admitted they were not the same company. I asked why CI would attempt to sell me Promoter Online's product and then refer me to another company. The representative then responded that CI was obligated to sell Promoter Online's product because they were acting under an agreement with Promoter Online, but that CI had come to the conclusion that the Promoter Online product was inferior and that as soon as their contract was up with that company, they would be selling Real Estate Promoter's product. As he said this to me, he explained that he "shouldn't be telling me this." I have an email from this rep corroborating that CI referred them to me.
CI's reponse to this? Oh yes, that I signed a contract that states my money is non-refundable and that they have no connection with this other company (Promoter Online) which contacted me and told me that CI had referred them. Funny thing though is that if you visit the Promoter Online website, CI is listed as one of their partners and the rep who called me knew exactlly what type of seminar CI invited me to, and what they had offered me.
Bottom line, CI offers a worthless guarantee which amounts to the fact that they will keep working with you until you reach your goals. This so-called guarantee is pretty worthless once you realize that your coach has less experience than you (mine had 1 year in real estate sales, while I have 3). Why would a consumer continue to work with a company for which they have lost all confidence and trust?
Check out the BBB of Utah. They have about 70 complaints filed against them.
0 comments