In February of this year I was contacted by John Young, with a company called National Opportunities. As a home-based, commission driven web site, the sales pitch was that I would receive a commission each time someone bought health care, a home loan or discount shopping through my web site. The cost of the site was $300.00.
The next day I was contacted by Sean Kelly, with a company called World Wide Marketing and Associates, LLC. It was explained that they were the advertising arm of National Opportunities (I now know that they are one and the same company) and was given a sales pitch on advertising, a very high pressure sales pitch. I actually agreed to one of their plans, a contract was faxed to me and after about 10 phone calls from them (have you signed it yet???) I faxed it back. The contract was for $9975.00.
The next day I called the company to cancel and was told that I couldn't, they had been hired to do a job, the advertising was already paid for, the TV commercial already in production and on and on and on. I sent a certified letter the next day, stating my intention to cancel and began a dispute with American Express over the charges.
I was denied my request by American Express. I started asking questions of the customer service department, when I could get a hold of anyone. I started tracking the hits on my web site, which sometimes numbered over 200 per day, but there were never any sales. I asked about installing some tracking software on the site so I didn't have to track the hits manually, and was told that it wasn't possible, as the site wouldn't support it. I now know this is false, after checking with a computer technician in my area.
I started taking the hits from my hits page, transfering them to a spread sheet and sorting them numerically, rather than in chronological order as they appeared on the hits page. What I found wasn't really a surprise, but the blatant obviousness of it was. I found that many numbers were repeated, sometimes more than once a day, but each and every day. Over and over again. As the main "hook" for the advertising was the promise of a refund if they didn't hit the targeted amount of 64,000, it was pretty clear that they were padding the hits themselves. I had asked for, and finally received a report from their customer service on my traffic, and it very clearly states how many hits I had received to date, and how many I still needed to reach that goal. It also listed the number of days left on the campaign, which if I divide by the number of hits still needed, I get exactly the number of hits that are generated on my site each day.
I have filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau in Denver/Boulder Co, which gives this company and "F" rating. I found this web site by just typing World Wide Marketing and Associates, LLC into Google. Nothing comes up for their company except fraud reports.
I have spoken to the District Attorney's office for Arapahoe County and they are looking for some assistance from other nationwide agencies to help in the investigation. They did mention to me that so far, none of the complaints they have received have been from people in Colorado, which they could definitely move on.
I'm on my third round of disputes with American Express, the contract I signed seems to be the sticking point. I urge any of you to keep fighting these charges on your credit card, contact the district attorneys office, (their number is at the end of one of the other reports against this company,) start tracking your own web sites for proof of this fraudulent behavior.
I have even spoken to the server where most of the repeat hits come from each day. They have an abuse department, so I sent them an email. I did attach two of my reports, generated from the hits
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