I am an ex employee of National Home Trainers for about a year. This company is owned by the most dishonest people you have ever met in your entire life. Besides the fact that they owe me and about five other ex employees money but they steal their customers money.
We were continually instructed to take money from clients that they knew we could not service. Then when the customer grew tired of waiting for service and demanded a refund, the owners refused to give it citing a rediculous contract that was supposedly signed by email. (this is not a binding contract)
Other customers were repeatedly misbilled (always overbilled of course) and then the funds would never be returned or the customer was given the run around for weeks and then was finally refunded. The excuse given was that the automatic funds transfer system that we claimed to be on would take 30 days to refund their money when in fact all credit cards were charged on the owners laptop computer there in the office or at home or wherever she had a chance. Often we were instructed to send peoples credit card info, billing address and other sensitive info in emails to them because like all good bosses they were never in the office.
When people wanted to speak with the billing dept. About any billing issues they may have had, they were always given some excuse as to why that couldn't happen. Such as their in a meeting, or that dept. Doesn't receive outside phone calls, or my favorite "I have to take a msg. And have them call you back" which, you guessed it, never happened.
Customers often called in to cancel their contract with National Home Trainers, as you might have guessed also. When this happened nothing was ever NHT's fault, it was always the customers and in my time there I never saw a customer get a refund. If they finally gave up and decided to pay the cancellation fee to cancel their contract (which was an extremely high 20% of the total price of the contract not sessions used) not only did they have to pay the 20% but they had to pay an inflated rate for the sessions they used instead of the negotiated rate which was not in the contract. The excuse they used was the rate given was based on buying a package of sessions and completing that package but they always failed to tell that to the customer. The difference in price of the sessions was sometimes upwards of $50-$60 a session which adds up very fast.
Not only did they mistreat their customers but also their employees. Salesman were forced to work as independent contractors and 1099 employees (untaxed employees) when we should have been considered as W-2 and as an employee. According to Texas state law independent contractors can work when and how they want and at their own pace as long as the job is done according to pre-specified orders. Also ICs don't have pre-determined hours, dress code or location at which they must work. The reason we were forced to work this way was so that the company did not have to pay taxes on us and thus saving them thousands of dollars.
Since I still correspond with some of the people that still work at National Home Trainers I came to find out that in the middle of the day the two owners showed up and said it was everybody's last day and thay they would receive their checks in the mail within a week. The owners said they were shutting down the business they had been victims of check fraud and were going to file for bankruptcy. Of course they are still open and selling personal training sessions and none of those employees have recieved their checks, some totaling over $5000.
Finally, when I quit I never received my last paycheck of $1000 which according to state law is to be paid no later than the next scheduled paydate. That date was July15 and it is now October 23.
The bottom line is NEVER, NEVER, NEVER do business with this company. I can tell you first hand that you will regret it. You won't get anything you pay for. Stay away from national home trainers and the motivators network llc, alan prior and christy lee ullman.
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