Complaint Review: StoresOnline & Duvera Billing

You will have to attack StoreOnline and the partners too, especially the finance company! Do this by filing BBB reports in their states and sending letters to the consumer affair office or attorney general in their state. I attacked another bank that they used and sent good documentation and the loan was cancelled and sent back to StoresOnline. It took almost a year and I had to work hard but I recouped alot. They came back to town about this time and I got my paper to write an article on them that day and made flyers and took them to the seminar. I gave out quite a few before I was thrown out. But, you know what those victims just shook their heads and looked at me like I was crazy and kept going in. People hear what they want to hear.

I have a fair amount of business and IT experience, and am sad to say that I paid StoresOnline $5,000 for the six websites earlier this year. Since then I have come to realize that I could have spent far less money for much better quality elsewhere. I agree with most of the other comments in this thread, so here's a few additional observations and tips:

* If you consider yourself at all computer-savvy, you will find the Storesonline Web design/building software to be a joke. What you end up with is a very cookie-cutter type of website. Also the development and administration interface is very clumsy. You will spend far less money and get better quality by signing for an eCommerce package with someone like Yahoo! or Godaddy. Better yet, if you are a more advanced user, go with a visual HTML editor like Dreamweaver, Golive, or FrontPage; and add a 3rd party shopping cart program - there are plenty out there, just type in "shopping cart software" in Google. This will give you complete control over the look and feel of your Website, and perhaps position you to make additional income building stores for others. (This is the route I've decided to take by the way.)

* If you are not computer-savvy but have a product to sell or are looking to take your traditional retail business online, consider hiring someone to do your Website design and development. Then over time you can learn the technology part of it. There are plenty of reputable companies out there that will get your store up and running in no time at all, probably for $2,000 or less - just do a search for "Website Design" on Google. Of course you will still need to pay ongoing costs for hosting, marketing, etc. (Which you would have to pay even if you went with the Storesonline package, by the way).

* If you are not computer-savvy, don't have a product or existing retail business, but would like to make money on the Internet, my best suggestion is to take some computer classes at your local community college to build your skills before trying to launch an e-Business.

* Don't be taken in by all of the extra items StoresOnline will talk about in the seminars, like the "Reverse Search Engine" (which is available for free at Overture.com - look for the "Bid Terms Suggestion" tool), "cutting edge" marketing strategies (there are plenty of good books on Amazon that will give you the same information), etc.

I could go on, but will stop there. Good luck!

My wife and I attended the all day workshop yesterday at a cost of $30. It's definitely a selling machine, but I would not say high pressure. I do have experience on the Internet and with marketing after working for the likes of Cisco Systems and Microsoft for many years.

Entering the venue, they want you each to fill out a questionnaire of basics including income, what resources you have to pay for the service and your credit rating. They wanted to know if you owned your house. Presumptuous at best! Gave bogus data!

Once the event started they brought around a more detailed financial questionnaire including a signature that allows them to run a credit report. Bad news so I did not do it! When this is turned in they offer a free consultation which is nothing more than a selling session.

They used astronomically bloated pricing and then lowered it to only highly bloated prices to simulate a good deal!! These prices were good for the day only. Bad omen for sure!

The main (paid) speaker was knowledgeable and entertaining. He did share some basic internet marketing strategies and some personal experiences. I did learn a few things that I did not know since I've not done retail. Always he used the disclaimer that his results and the other examples were not typical. He often referred to the question of whether anyone would be happier with $1000 a month in additional spendable income. This is more of a typical expectation in my opinion, IF all goes well.

Their strategy is to sell you 6 web sites not just 1. This is explained using many points of THEIR reasoning. You get six times at bat to hit the home run, not one. You need more that one site to sell the same products. You could sell some to others and more that I don't recall.

Many of the income examples were reported in monthly sales figures with no mention of the actual profit. Selling $5,000 per month at 15% margin is not very appealing to most people.

Right before lunch they offered the first sign up session during lunch with the enticement that people could avoid the rush at the end of the day. I was greatly surprised by the number of takers at this juncture. Mostly people with no idea what they were doing, just $ in their eyes.

The audience was comprised of the following make-up, ranked by attendance. Low income people with little to no internet or computer experience. Seniors looking for extra income. People with small businesses looking to get their products on the internet, but still no internet experience. Average Joe, the curiosity seeker. Very few people with any experience.

During the presentation/class I jotted down a few questions to ask.

Q - Why were their web site parameters so inferior to current industry standards? i.e. they offer 50M per site versus an average of 500M or better.

A - The average web site they host is only
15-30M and you could roll unused space from your other 5 sites to accommodate the bigger one.

Q - Was the code portable and or platform independent?

A - Clueless was the real answer. She said repeatedly said that the code would be mine and I could take it anywhere, but nothing about my question.

Q - What happens if I want to completely redo a site that is not performing?

A - No additional charges.

Q - What about the bandwidth available at their hosting site and what if any were the charges for usage above the data transfer amounts and what were those allowed amounts.

A - Clueless was the answer, she just kept putting her cute little hands on me in various places while she tap danced.

Q - What SLAs are in effect?

A - No idea what SLAs were. When I asked about down time she mentioned that her personal experience was no more that 6-8 hours a month.

All during the day they offered other SPECIAL one day offers for all types of ancillary services. These were once again inflated and then deflated to simulate a great deal.

At the end they went into high CONSULTATION mode and signed allot more people than I thought they would once again, even the older couple next to us that had more questions than answers. Too bad for them!

Overall I offer the following synopsis. Sales, sales and more sales. Overpriced beyond belief. I could tell the support would be poor by the way they answered questions or avoided them altogether. STAY AWAY!!!

Come on man where do you get your info from, there not competitive at all. You say running a business takes time and money your right, so do your own re-search, spend money on things that are going to work!!!

They have a service to sell, are they the best....hardly. They spend all day telling you how great it is, if it's that great
it should sell itself, why do you have to make a descision that day, why do they not let you think it over. Do you buy a car at the first
dealership you go to? Do you do resaerch, why do the big companies not adopt this sales technique? BECAUSE they don't have to!!!

You say get off your duff, your right go out there and get the same info for alot less!!!!
Don't be Had by these guys/gals.

My wife and I recently attended the 2 hour introductory meeting put on by StoresOline, Inc.
While I'm always interested in making money, my major interest was the Internet marketing information.

I have my own, very successful, Internet Sports News site that I've been in complete control of for the past 9 years (March 1995). I have done every bit of the site design, development, and programming for this site. We are within the first page of results with several search engines, but need some help moving up the ladder with other search engines. I had intened to use the marketing information to help move our site up these search engine rankings.

Once we realized that their intention was to sell complete web sites for outrageous prices, the evening became very humorous for us.

The fact of the matter is that a complete e-commerce web site (including development, design, hosting, support, and credit card account) can be set up for much less that the $5000-$6000 that StoresOnline, Inc. is claiming.

With our current site, we are paying for a virtual server account at $79.99 /month, that could potentially host 50 e-commerce stores. And, that includes free support with the account.
Obviously, There is going to be a fee to complete the initial set up (design and programming) of the site and a monthly fee for the cretit card account. Even with that, the total cost of creating an e-commerce site will be much less than the StoresOnline, Inc. figure.

With all of that said, I will have to admit that it was a d**n fine free meal.

Give us a break...... You are either one of the extreme few, an insider, or shill. Guess it is riciculous that they are being investigated in 3 states. Guess it is also ridiculous that the BBB warns about them...
What is ridiculous is that StoresOnline relys on milking the people who can least afford to be milked.
Never buy into any company coming to your hometown and then leaving. If they were indeed legit, they would have brick and mortar offices in at least the major markets. I was told at the recent seminar I attended (during the "free consoltation" which turned out to be no more than a hard sale pitch) that they signed up around 500 people a month. Like they have the staff to set up 500(x6) custom websites a month. Like they have the staff to set up even canned websites. Their definition of custom is that the website is setup using THEIR software, which many people say is shoddy. Their definition of "we program it" is YOU PROGRAM IT using their custom software...LOL
BUYER BEWARE......

I do not understand how all of the people here can think that this is such a rip-off, when clearly running any type of business takes a lot of time, effort, and believe it or not, more than the $6 - $15,000 that you have invested. The products and services that they offer are very competative. Where can you get one-stop shopping, in terms of a shopping cart, marketing information (yeah, it works, if you TRY IT and be patient.)

Quit whining, get up off your duff and do some work. This is ridiculous.