In early April of my husband and I received a call from a man named Rodney in response to an inquiry I had made online about an ad for starting an at home business. We spoke at length with Rodney about our goals and our level of commitment we put into our own business. (I still have my notes from every conversation with anyone with this company.) This is what Rodney had us write down:
Commitments
1. Work Time - at least 10 hours per week
2. Knowledge
3.investment: Low Range $5-10K
4. Decision Maker
5.100% commitment
Supposedly, these were the things we needed to make $4000/month at six months in and $6000/month at 12 months in.
After discussing all of this and checking their website as well as the BBB website for their area, we decided to make the investment.
Our initial investment was $8234.00 which included 18 "coaching sessions" to help us start our own business selling items on eBay. We also paid $29.95/month for some of the software tools. Coaching sessions were one hour long, once a week. We had to charge these amounts to credit cards but they explained to us that we could "play the balance transfer game until the money from the auctions started coming in."
My first coaching session was on 4/18/07. During this session, my coach (Heidi) had me download the eBay power seller to read before the next session. She also had me sign up for a free trial on GoToMyPC so that she could dial into my computer and see what I saw during our sessions. Heidi also referred me to Strategic Business Solutions (aka The Success Team) for help with taxes and a business license. Note that I did not inquire about these things, they were suggested by Omni Business Solutions automatically.
I called Strategic Business Solutions to inquire about their services. They told me that there was a one time consultation fee of $1995.00 (100% tax deductible) and a monthly fee of $39.95 (also deductible). The monthly fee was to cover any phone calls we made to them with questions and quarterly and yearly taxes. The consultation fee included sending us the necessary papers and instruction on incorporating our business. This seemed a reasonable business expense, so I agreed to the fees.
Coaching sessions 2 and 3 taught me about using Auctiva.com (free with my initial investment) to set up my auctions on eBay and using software they provided to track "hot items" in eBay. The session 3 date is 5/2/07 and we still have made no money.
During the initial call (when we spoke with Rodney), the business was presented as selling items online at auction sites. The success in this was supposedly finding 5-8 items that were good sellers and re-listing the same listings over and over. Then, when sales start to slow down, finding fresh items to list repeatedly and dropping the old items completely.
Sounds simple, right? Wrong. They gave us a few tools and then left us to figure out everything else. They gave us a few names of drop shippers, stating that Doba was the only one affiliated with eBay) but did not help any further with the auctions.
So, naturally, I went to Doba.com for a free trial to check out their products. The website structure and amount of products offered was fairly impressive. Therefore, I signed up for them, also. The price was $469.00 for a couple of years. I think it was 2 years. Anyway, more money out of pocket. But I kept reminding myself that sometimes it takes money to make money. (I will never say that again to myself or anyone else.)
About the same time as the Doba signup, GoToMyPC atarted charging $19.95/month. My free trial was over.
Then came session 4. No more coaching for online auctions. Now it is time for building a website. I was very preterbed, finished the session and called the corporate office to complain. I was then deceived into believing that this website building would benefit my business and told that I had received the extent of the auction training they offered.
The sessions continued. The website was another $9.95/month to pay for the url (domain name). Oddly, this amount was billed to us under the same name as the tax services, The Success Team.
I completed all sessions through number 12. They were informative, but still not what I felt I had paid for. Even so, I did all the work and research Heidi asked of me and still have all my notes to prove it.
We put up a few auctions, but I couldn't find any items that would sell. Of the few auctions we put up, some broke even and some lost us money. That probably was because Doba's prices were higher than some other places, but we were out of money and credit to extend to further our business.
The Success Team/Stategic Business Solutions helped us set up and name our corporation and that was all. Their fees were set up to automatically charge our credit card monthly. The charges just stopped one day and we don't know why. We did not cancel with our credit card or SBS. So, since we didn't pay them shat we were supposed to, they would not file our business taxes. So we did not file them either since none of our transactions were made in the business name and we did not make profit. So those 100% deductible fees we paid... More money gone.
The most suspicious thing is that these are separate companies, but they are all in Utah and somehow the billing of their services became intertwined.
Once they hook someone in, that person's cost becomes greater and greater down the road.
It has been a long time since this all happened, but I figured there was nothing we could do anyway. Then I found this site and saw a few other reports on these companies, so I decided to tell about our experiences with them.
We never made a dime from this business. All it did was put us into an irreversible debt cycle.
All in all we were eloquently screwed out of over $10,000 not including any finance charges incurred.
If ANYONE knows any way to help us, whether legally (must be free of cost) or just moral support, PLEASE PLEASE do so. Thank You.
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