Yes, I too was sucked in with the down market on real estate these days. About February I did order the CD's from John Beck Free & Clear. Shortley thereafter got a phone call from one of their Reps. Telling me I'd be a great candidate for their Mentoring and could even write off their training sessions on my taxes as "school" type expenses. And how we could be chosen to be on their infomercials, etc.
I could look-up all the names involved, but believe me... There were way too many to even list here.
Another fella calls me/us later to check out whether or not we had a credit card with zero balance available... Then was feeling us out as to how much money was available on it. All the while making us feel as though we were lucky to be chosen/considered for this rare opportunity as they only choose certain people who are serious about this endeavour.
We bit for this offer, hoping it would be a supplement to our income. We are close to our 60's and have 4 special needs children to raise... Ages 6,9, 10 and 11... All adopted. Since hubby only will get Social Security upon retirement we thought this could be the answer to assist us in putting money away for the children and aid us to provide for them when we are facing retirement.
We opted for the 1/2 hour mentoring sessions weekly by a Coach. Our cost thus far now was around 10,800.00 or so put on our credit card.
The John Beck Coach calls us for our weekly session, mainly spending time on asking us questions, killing about 20 minutes of our training. The last 10 or so minutes were spent telling us what homework we have... What to investigate and have done by our next phone training session.
It is now May and we have paid extra on our monthly credit card of $400.00 each month and still are looking at a balance of nearly 10,000.00. Our APR is not high either. Of course we're also paying Strategic Financial on same credit card of 2 different monthly charges for their tax services to maintain our LLC status. They are connected with John Beck.
Frustration builds with each week's phone training sessions, as our homework seems a whole heck of a lot more than the 5-10 hours weekly we were told was needed in the beginning.
We find ourselves spending hours upon more hours doing our "due diligence" as told during investigating properties we may want to purchase.in the early stages I had to have spent 30 hours a week on researching potential properties.
Just as we felt we had a rapor going with Coach #1, we are assigned yet a new Coach #2. This Coach had us spending our first session via phone explaining where we are in the property business at this time, then giving a brief history of what homework we've one. This killed session #1 and part of session #2 with Coach #2.
The above happened to us more than several times. At one point one of our Coaches even got us 5 more training phone sessions "free" to help us out. Believe me... It was no where near what we'd have needed to be successful (if ever) at this so-called business.
I'd venture to bet we had at least 5, maybe more Coaches due to one lame reason or another.
End result... By the time they tapped us our financially with our credit card, we only had a few hundred available left and had to be careful with what we purchased, as our funds were now limited.
We purchase our first 2 vacant lots in June 09, and are just now in the process of getting the deeds. Better yet we just got 8-9 months worth of "more" Grass Lein Bills from the City where these 2 properties are... And are still awaiting the actual Deeds. Now making these 2 properties cost more than we'd ever get if we try to sell them at auction.
We've never had any follow-up phone calls from John Beck's organization to see how we're doing... Nothing!
Although not long ago we did receive a phone call from another organization implying they were somehow related to John Beck's organization and how we could buy up their properties (they buy in bulk) and property they have investigated and found to have zero leins. They would sell these properties cheap.
We finally got smart and declined that offer.
To wrap it up... We are not happy!
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