This is my personal feeling and experience with a talent scout named Dawn Martin at John Robert Powers of Southfield.
I met Dawn when I got the call back for my 10 year old daughter. When I arrived at her office, her desk was full of headshots of talents she claimed was working. I felt so good that because I thought she was the one that got jobs for the people on her desk, but it was all a set up "SCAM".
I was undecided about signing up my daughter for the $1,400 or the $5900 five year program. She told me that she thought my daughter had so much potential and that she was an industry expert she recommended signing my daughter up for the 5 years at $5900 and told me that I would be able to off set this cost when she gets my daughter a paying job.
She said that one work assignment would pretty much pay for the class fees and that many of her client were able to off set it this way. She also emhasized the fact that her niece has been working for a couple of years and has signed with a well known agency who has been able to book her for many jobs. She said that her niece pretty much is saving up for her College education and helping her family.
All this out of Dawn's mouth is what got me to sign the contract which she failed to explain to me and never mentioned anything about the refund policy at JRP. She also mentioned that JRP only hires great teachers and showed me a photo and resume of Annette Sincaire who she claimed was currently teaching at JRP.
I have yet to see or hear about this teacher. Dawn was always in a hurry and didn't answer any of my questions and also failed to give me a copy of the contract. Dawn is very disorganized, lazy, and lack knowledge in the entertainment area.
I never heard from Dawn until I gave her a call, she never call me to tell me how the breakdown of the classes were. She doesn't know anything about the teachers teaching the pre-teen classes and she didn't have any computer knowledge at all.
I don't even think she has a computer or even knows how to operate one, I never received a email back from her on the pages of questions I had for her. She claimed that she worked for JRP for over 10 years but what is shocking is her lack of information and knowledge. I haven't been in this industry at all but the research I did in the short time my daughter was enrolled at JRP, gave me more information than Dawn could ever give. I directly asked Dawn what the placement rate at JRP was and what the success rate her company was having getting JRP graduate paying jobs, she didn't have an answer but gave me a lot of BS excuses.
While my daughter was taking her lousy classes from unexperienced teachers who knew nothing, I started doing detailed research on JRP and the entertainment industry. I was sharing all the information I learned from the internet and other sources with other JRP parents, apparently Dawn heard about this and called me at my home at dinner time and told me to stop talking and sharing my thoughts with other parents or else she was going to sue me in court. I told her to go ahead and wrote an email about what she said to me and her outrageous behavior toward a paying client.
My suspicions are that JRP is scared at being EXPOSED for the SCAM that they are running and Judi March the owner probably told Dawn to call me and intimidate me into shuting me up. I think employees at JRP forget that they live in America where there is "Freedom of Speech" and we are free to share our opinion and thoughts with anyone we want.
The biggest facts I've learned by enrolling my daughter at JRP in Southfield is that every talent scout is there to do a job, to sell classes and more classes with whatever means they can, this is their bottom line, nothing more nothing less.
We as parents with big dreams for our kids need to enpower ourselves and not feel afraid or ashamed about expressing our feeling and how we got taken or ripped off by a company set up to do so. If you are a parent of a child who is enrolled at JRP in Southfield Michigan, please feel free to call me (ROR removed because of security reasons) if you have any comments questions or experiences your want to share with us.
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