So I bought a product for around $17 on how to make money becoming a Kindle publisher. They guarantee specific results and I believed them.
In a private Facebook chat they upsold me their big ticket coaching program. I took the bait. $1,000. They guarantee that selling a series (set) of 4 books will bring money in on auto-pilot and there would be no additional expense. I paid the coaching fee and dove into the program and their direction. I ended up producing 24 books (meaning I followed the program 7 times with 7 different sets of books) and I got NOWHERE the results they promised. That is issue #1. They guaranteed that following their exact steps, you would get a specific result. I did not get the results and I did follow their exact steps - 7 times!
Issue # 2 is that they say you only have to invest an additional $150-200 to make it work. Following their exact instructions, I had to invest an additional $600+ for their teachings to work, but then I learned that...
Issue #3 is that what they want you to do is against Amazon and Kindle terms and conditions and can get your account banned. This is like teaching someone to be a millionaire by selling drugs! Okay so MAYBE if you decide you want to go that shady way, then you can make the money - but it is not legal. What they teach you to do can get your book selling and publishing account closed and banned for life. Therefore this is a scam program for people who have ethics and want to go the legitimate route.
This is what is called black hat in the internet world. It is not right. Issue #4, when I asked for a refund, I was referred to their terms and conditions page to the "refunds" area. What they guarantee in the course (a set fo 4 books) does not match what is in the refund policy (you must have 10 books) so issure #5 they have created a slimy loophole to scam people intentionally with the wording of this.
Finally, issue #6 is that they say you have to send your request for refund to support and they give a link to a page that gets a 404 error, in other words, a page that does not exist.
But now the greatest issue - So I went to PayPal and I am HIGHLY DISAPPOINTED that all PayPal gave me the opprotunity to do was write 2000 characters and provided nowhere to upload evidence (screenshots of what they told me, the real guarantee, the problem with their refund page) and within 24 hours "RESOLVED" the case on their behalf.
The seller stated that they have a terms and conditions policy, showed a link to it and said that I agreed to it when I registered. My thought is that NO ONE AT PAYPAL looked at the course, read the guarantee or the terms and conditions - and they surely did not click the link that was sent or they would have seen that the link goes to a page that does not exist. Instead, they based their decision on one paragraph and it cost me $1000!
Meanwhile, I created a 26 page document that showed step by step where they scam me (and hundreds of others from what I have been reading in their private coaching group on Facebook) and they continue to be able to do this.
PAYPAL made a decision WITHOUT hearing both sides of the story and sided with a seller who is breaking the law by fraudulently creating web pages that do not exist and having two policies that do not match... and even writing to their executive emails have not helped.
This is very wrong.
These scam artists rely on their own loopholes to take thousands from naive consumers and PayPal should be much more vigilant in hearing the customers side!!!!!
