Complaint Review: The Internet Marketing Center

I signed up for their Advanced Mentoring Program in May 2006 to find and develop an Internet niche market. The cost was $8000.00 US (it came to over $8800.00 CND after the currency conversion), $7000.00 for the program itself and an extra $1000.00 for building a professional website. I had to postpone the program until June 2007 due to my lack of Internet Service at my office, at which time I resumed the program.

The package covered coaching sessions over the telephone and by Email, domain name registration and building a professional website. After I chose my niche market, I told them what kind of business I had in mind and they had no objections.

It went well for the most part, but the real problem was in building the website. Their webmaster, Bron Fieldwalker of Syndicate Digital did not build it to my exact specifications, wanted to charge me extra money for things that should have been included in the package, and finally posted my site online without my permission and refused to correct the many problems with it. I had other web designers examine the work Bron had done and they concurred that it was basically a Mickey Mouse job done with cheap templates and no layering. Totally inadequate for the business I had in mind. They checked the sites of the other listed entrepreneurs who completed their program, and they found the same thing.

The people at IMC waited till later in the program to object to the things I wanted done and they seemed surprisingly ignorant of basic web design.

For example, I told my mentor from the beginning that I wanted to build an online store. I understood that certain things like a site manager and a database would not be covered, but the basic site would be. Later on, they told me that shopping carts were not included in the package. I thought they were going to reneg on their promises, but my colleagues told me that PayPal offers free shopping carts. I was relieved, but also perplexed. These people who work for a company that claims to have pioneered Internet marketing since 1996, didn't tell me this fact from the beginning and caused me to worry unnecessarily. Outrageous. On top of that, I had to hire another webmaster to do the work that should have been done properly the first time.

In addition, I suspect Bron of trying to sabotage my website. I had some words with him, and told him I flatly refused to pay additional money to him and basically ordered him to give the the files used to create the site, which after some arguing he did. When my new webmaster has working on the site, he couldn't login to the hosting account. The company used by IMC at the time, Hostica, doesn't keep track of who logs in and when, so I can't prove it, but the rules of evidence, namely motive and opportunity, point squarely at Bron.

I signed up for their Advanced Mentoring Program in May 2006 to find and develop an Internet niche market. The cost was $8000.00 US (it came to over $8800.00 CND after the currency conversion), $7000.00 for the program itself and an extra $1000.00 for building a professional website. I had to postpone the program until June 2007 due to my lack of Internet Service at my office, at which time I resumed the program.

The package covered coaching sessions over the telephone and by Email, domain name registration and building a professional website. After I chose my niche market, I told them what kind of business I had in mind and they had no objections.

It went well for the most part, but the real problem was in building the website. Their webmaster, Bron Fieldwalker of Syndicate Digital did not build it to my exact specifications, wanted to charge me extra money for things that should have been included in the package, and finally posted my site online without my permission and refused to correct the many problems with it. I had other web designers examine the work Bron had done and they concurred that it was basically a Mickey Mouse job done with cheap templates and no layering. Totally inadequate for the business I had in mind. They checked the sites of the other listed entrepreneurs who completed their program, and they found the same thing.

The people at IMC waited till later in the program to object to the things I wanted done and they seemed surprisingly ignorant of basic web design.

For example, I told my mentor from the beginning that I wanted to build an online store. I understood that certain things like a site manager and a database would not be covered, but the basic site would be. Later on, they told me that shopping carts were not included in the package. I thought they were going to reneg on their promises, but my colleagues told me that PayPal offers free shopping carts. I was relieved, but also perplexed. These people who work for a company that claims to have pioneered Internet marketing since 1996, didn't tell me this fact from the beginning and caused me to worry unnecessarily. Outrageous. On top of that, I had to hire another webmaster to do the work that should have been done properly the first time.

In addition, I suspect Bron of trying to sabotage my website. I had some words with him, and told him I flatly refused to pay additional money to him and basically ordered him to give the the files used to create the site, which after some arguing he did. When my new webmaster has working on the site, he couldn't login to the hosting account. The company used by IMC at the time, Hostica, doesn't keep track of who logs in and when, so I can't prove it, but the rules of evidence, namely motive and opportunity, point squarely at Bron.