Complaint Review: The Smith & Merritt Institute/College Partnership

In Aprl 2006, my husband and I received a phone call from a representative from "The Smith & Merritt Instutute". With our current financial situation at the time and what SMI was offering we felt that it was an excellent opportunity to get on track and we were badly in need of financial counselling. We were so excited to hear that someone could be guide us out of the hole we had dug for ourselves.

We charge the fee of $9,995 to our credit card with the promise that we would be instructed on how to avoid high interest rates on our charges. The only assistance that we received was in getting the initial amount approved and transferred into a private account; which we found out shortly after the fact. This representative from SMI was so good that she actually said things during a three way conversation with our credit card company that made us get upset with the cc company when they tried to get us to stop this transaction as they knew it was going to a private account and something wasn't right. Boy were we snowed!!!!!! We were just to blind to see it at the time.

Long story short. We did not recieve the counselling that we were promised. What we DID receive was a box of tapes, books and cd's, alot of hot air and a credit card bill for $9,995 + interest.

When we attempted to contact SMI to request a refund we could never get through to a Human on the other end, never got messages returned, e-mails were unanswered and then phone numbers were disconnected.

Liz
Rockingham, North Carolina
U.S.A.