Our company was contacted by HCT in mid February by Sandra Delphin (one of their sales reps.) Ms. Delphin described their directory services which sounded like a very good idea for online marketing within the industry that we operate, (Mortgage.) After discussing this with my business partner and our internal information technology professional, we decided to set up a conference call with the three of us and Sandra. Sandra ended up getting her "boss", Roger Wildernradt on the phone conference as well to answer any questions.
During the phone conference, we grilled Sandra and Roger about many basic items like how long they had been in business, type of prior work they had completed, and many other technological questions about how this directory service would work as their claim of 240,000 "guaranteed" visitors to the directory seemed a bit spectacular. We were told that the company (HCT) had been in business for over 18 months, but that they just recently started setting up directories in the mortgage industry, and were selling out states quickly.
Not wanting to miss out on this seemingly good online marketing opportunity, we decided to move ahead with the directory based on the information that was presented to us. The total fee for this service was $10,000.00 per state - we signed up for one state initially, but reserved several other states with a "right of first refusal" to purchase at a later date if the first state worked out. An initial payment of $2,500.00 was collected, (in three online payments via Paypal as they claimed that they did not accept credit cards any other way, and we were paying via corporate credit card.) We made payment, and were told that the traffic would start hitting the directory within three to four weeks. Roughly two weeks later, a rather bland directory page was created - we were told that the major search engines would take roughly two to three more weeks from this point to index the page before we would get the traffic that we were looking for.
In the interim, I was contacted on two separate occasions by Sandra Delphin and asked to give a personal testimonials to potential buyers of this product in two different states, (which we were not licensed in,) so I didn't seem any harm in giving my (limited) advice of why I was getting involved with HCT. I gave high marks to Sandra for her tenacious sales ability, and told both potential clients that I thought that the company might be a good opportunity, somewhat different from what most online mortgage companies were using for their marketing techniques.
Here comes the BAD NEWS...
The second person that I gave a testimonial to happened to be a very nice young lady in a southern state - we hit it up right away and began to exchange other marketing ideas. We spoke for nearly 1/2 hour on that first call, and I remember telling my business partner that I thought it was great that I "met" someone like her via such a unique situation. Fortunately for me, this woman turned out to be the person that initially clued me and my company in to problems that she uncovered on HCT and the other prior companies listed in the first usacomplaints.com complaint on this company while she was researching them. My compliance department then jumped all over this situation and started doing our own in-house research, and we further verified what is listed in the prior report about HCT - that they have a partner that has a criminal background, and that they had started several other companies in the very recent future all of which are out of business, or at the very least, not operating as specified to clients up front.
Armed with this knowledge, I contacted our sales rep - Sandra, who seemed very surprised by my call - she believed everything was going fine with our campaign, and to her credit I'm not sure how involved or not she really is in this company's bad history - she may well be just an innocent "good egg" working for other bad guys.in any event, Sandra promptly got me in touch with company owner Roger. When confronted with the massive amount of information that I went through, Roger told me he would be back in touch with me the next day, and indeed he had his assistant "Traci" call me to say that we, "would be getting a complete refund within 10 to 14 days on our credit card". Honestly I was happy to hear this as I was sure that I was about to be scammed like some prior clients had been.
Fast forward to day 14...
No refund yet - called the company to find out (SHOCK) that prior company owner ROGER was not there, and was not going to be involved in the company any further, and that if we wanted to, HCT would be "willing" to let us have the entire $10,000.00 directory service for the $2,500.00 that we had already paid!!! Needless to say I was beside myself - I told this new sales rep that he needed to look into the specifics of what he was telling me since our compliance team had already prepared for this possibility, and that short of a complete, immediate refund that we would be forced to proceed with all means necessary to go after this company and our money. He told me he would call me back. Ten minutes later I got a call from the same sales rep saying that he just spoke to the "software creator", and he told me that if I wanted a refund that I must go back through Paypal to request it! I told him that this was preposterous, and that I wanted someone of authority within the company to call me back by the day's end, which never happened.
Later that night I went home, logged onto Paypal to find out that the reason that I was likely delayed the 10 - 14 days from Roger initially was that Paypal has a policy stating that if you do not dispute a payment within 30 days then you can't recover it - PERIOD! And guess when the largest of my three payments ($1,500.00) was made - yep 32 days ago!!! I immediately put in complaints about the other two payments, (which were made to High Conversion Traffic via [email protected]. I then tried to call HCT back since they were on the west coast and it was only 5:20PM local time for them, and guess what else - all phone numbers that I had for them now stated "the number you had dialed is no longer in service!!!" For all I know, they were packing their trucks and high - tailing it out of this scam as quickly as they apparently got into it, (along with my money mind you!)
Now I will end with this statement - I am a believer that MOST people aren't out to scam or hurt others, and I still hold out hope that tomorrow I can rebut this initial report with GOOD NEWS that I got the resolution that I was promised, but I doubt that this will be the outcome. If this does not happen, then we will do all we can to track these people down and stop them once and for all - as we are a LARGE national lender with very deep pockets, (and an attorney on staff who lives for this kind of stuff!) Either way I will update this sad tale as soon as there is any further news.
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