Complaint Review: Tigrent Learning

My wife and I started our education with WIA ( now Tigrent ) 4 years ago. We picked up very early on that this was not going to be easy, just like starting any other business. The 60,000 dollars we spent was worth every penny! By the way, the Tigrent company is not paying us a single penny for this, so don't get any stupid conspiracy ideas!

The real estate business takes lots of hard work and lots of time and lots of risk! We started out only owning our home (which was not paid off) and with-in 2 months we had purchased our first property. We now own 7 properties and are purchasing our 8th in the next month. We will have 220 rentable units after the 8th purchase. To get this done in 4 years took 60 to 80 hours a week, sacrifice, learning, finding the right partners, some failure, more learning, and our mentor Diane from Tigrent. To do what we did can not be done half heartedly. It is still not a guarantee for success! No program can ever guarantee successs, it can only offer you the tools and then it is up to you to make YOUR business work!

My joy is seeing my father "retire" to help run our business. I can now give him as much retirement security as anyone in the world could offer these days. My three boys are growing into financial intelligence that I could have never given them without the education and mentorship that Tigrent has given me! I would have made expensive and possibly business ending mistakes if it had not been for the education and mentorship I received through Tigrent. Life and especially business is a risk! Tigrent gave me the tools to enable me to take the risks on with a better chance of success, but they never guaranteed that I would not fail.

As John Maxwell has stated, " there is always the 5% and the 95% in all major endevors". It takes risk and hard work and good "on the ground" up-to-date info. coming from people who are out there actually doing what they are teaching and that is what we found. If you want a successful person to take time out there schedule to closely teach and mentor you then you had better be ready to pay for it! There is no way my time would ever cost you less than $200 per hour and I am still a little peon in this business! If you were to hire Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, or Donald Trump to mentor you in their line of expertise they would cost a whole lot more than I would. I happen to know what level of deals some of the mentors and instructors are involved in and they realy know their stuff! Maybe some of them do not have the best people skills and maybe they do, but you will need to learn to deal with ALL kinds of people in this business and you will definately need to learn to have a thick skin and you will realy need to learn quickly and figure many things out with only partial information. Welcome to being a real business owner in a fast changing world.

Tigrent is not perfect any more than I am perfect. You need to learn to ask the right questions and read in between the lines. Look for partners that can join with you and help you partner in your first deals. The employees and instructors and mentors of Tigernt are barred from doing any deals with students in their contracts. Since Robert Kiyosacki (SP?) took back over Tigrent in the last couple years, he has definately improved the company but they will still not be perfect nor will they ever be able to do the real estate business for you.

Not all my goals and dreams have yet been met or attained even with great success in this business, but I now have tools to enable me to chase after and have a better chance at attaining those goals and dreams. Best wishes to all former and current students of Tigrent.

I am happy to report that I quit my job last week.  In 2011 I decided to try out a 'Rich Dad' seminar and then signed up for the advanced training classes.  I knew NOTHING about real estate before these classes.  See the thing is, I actually used the information they taught, and the went out and made a lot of money.  Now the secret is to actually put in the required hours and effort.  Most of you that complain spend a week of mediocre work, don't see the results, and then go on these sites and complain.

I only found this by accident while looking up something on google.  I found it funny.  I guess people think someone will hold their hand throughout life.

Here's the deal.  If you are lazy and/or you can not/will not put in the required time and effort, you will fail.  Same with every other business.  You need to take chances.  Most of you are not willing to make that sacrifice and think that if you throw money at the problem, it'll go away.  I also find it funny that the original author seemed to put more effort into writing this article then he did their entire 'investing' career.

I love the education I've received.  I've met several of my business partners at their events/classes and we do extremely well. Use your brain.

This will never be displayed, so why should I bother to comment?

I'm not going to write an essay here.  I'd just like to share that myself and thousands of other satisfied Tigrent students are quite insulted by this report!

TIGRENT'S RESPONSE ABOVE IS COMPLETE FLUFF.

There is no substantive acknowledgment of the problems or commitment to resolution. Every issue is spun to give an impression of integrity, but can't point to a single tangible thing they're doing that insures any integrity whatsoever.  Let's take a look:

1)    "We've made customer service and quality assurance Job 1"  ---- what the heck does that mean?  Does that mean that any dissatisfied customer gets their money back, or some other specific steps to satisfaction?  Is customer service held accountable to customer satisfaction, or are they being given a script for shaking off unhappy customers?

"We've assessed and refreshed our product lines..."   ---- this is mostly meaningless, UNLESS you specify the criteria by which they were assessed.   And.. hopefully you've assessed them according to things like real-world customer results, and not just lack of complaints that made it to the BBB or Litigation.   How effective are these methods, what percentage of students do they work for?


2)    "A review of any service-driven company will turn up a quotient of unhappy customers"   ---- ok, and what's your quotient compared with say, Verizon?   What is this saying about how happy or unhappy your customers are?  Nothing.  More importantly, what does this say about how SUCCESSFUL your customers are?  Nothing.

"...This is especially true when a dedicated level of commitment from customers is essential to their ultimate success"  ---- so how much dedication and commitment is required to succeed?   This is never really stated, except that if you're not successful, you didn't put in enough effort.  So, Tigrent/Rich Dad/Whitney always have an excuse for not producing results for customers.


3)  "The quality of our course offerings is demonstrated and validated by our advanced trainers"  ---- this is silly.  You can't have instructors validate their own work.  My boss doesn't ask me if I did a good job, he CHECKS.   Ultimately, a study needs to be done with actual customers/students to see how a variety of them actually succeeded (and IF).


4)  "We take every complaint seriously"  ---- well, if you took every complaint seriously enough to resolve them  you wouldn't have regulators constantly after you to hold you accountable for your business practices;  you wouldn't have an F rating in the better business bureau;  you wouldn't have sites like these flooded with angry complaints.  Etc.

"...we will work with that customer until we have done everything possible to restore their confidence in Tigrent..."  --- Unfortunately, the tools at your disposal are SPIN, SPIN and SPIN, such as your statement here.  Is anything more possible?   What about being honest, about addressing concerns, about making actual hard changes and holding people accountable so that your customers can SEE you taking effective action?


5)  "...are priced to provide a product that we believe exceeds that of our competition in terms of quality and value."   ---- Well, it's great that YOU believe that, but you're not telling anyone how you actually measure the quality and value.   Again, this comes back to not being able to demonstrate how the course has provided value for its customers.   We need hard numbers to compare the competition.   Without that, it's a meaningless comparison.


6)  "You may not be able to please all the people all the time..."   ---- **** Ironically, the actual quote from Abraham Lincoln is the following:

"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time."

That's right... read that one again.

Tigrent has an F rating with the BBB!

 A company with an F rating represents BIG PROBLEMS in terms of customer satisfaction, PERIOD!  How can any company claim customer satisfaction is their #1 priority with an F BBB rating?

Their #1 priority is getting their greedy hands on your money! Once their objective is met, they could not care less about YOU! They are masters at the art of responding to complaints with a glib self-righteous rebuttal!  

Tigrent's rebuttal is an attempt to make them look good.  They've changed their name to get away from all the bad reports they got when they were named "Whitney Information Network", but they never changed their practice of scamming people.  So, theyre going to have just as many complaints under their new name.

Check out Robert Kiyosoki's perspective on them.  He's not happy with them either.

http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/2010/road_to_rich_dad/main.html

I should mention that Kiyosoki is a sort of marketing partner with them right now.  It gets "fresh meat" in the door.

www.tigrent.com/richdad.html

We at Tigrent take very seriously the promise of quality, relevance and practicality that we make to our customers. Customer satisfaction is job 1 at Tigrent! Thats why we are dismayed to see the comments of anyone claiming to have had a negative experience with one of our courses. 

We are committed to correcting any shortcoming that a customer may experience.  The other side of that coin is an obligation to our employees and to thousands of satisfied customers to set the record straight when Tigrents performance and business is mischaracterized.

There are several issues that merit rebuttal.

1.  Tigrent is a materially transformed company.  We are excited to have launched the Tigrent brand that reflects who we are and how we can best assist our customers.  The actions of Tigrent management speak resoundingly to the companys devotion to ensuring a successful, satisfying experience for Tigrent customers.  For example:

-          Weve made customer service and quality assurance Job 1

-          Weve assessed and refreshed our product lines and instructional methodology and thoroughly enhanced our training standards and practices

2.  Occasionally, a customer will not be entirely satisfied.  A review of any service-driven company will turn up a quotient of unhappy customers.  This is especially true when a dedicated level of commitment from customers is essential to their ultimate success.  This is resoundingly the case in the field of personal development and avocational training.  We are dedicated to what Tigrent offers the marketplace -- a valuable, high-quality product designed for those who wish to achieve financial independence.

3.  Tigrent delivers high-value offerings in a practical, accessible, actionable way.  The terms of how we work are explicitly detailed in the agreements customers sign. The quality of our course offerings is demonstrated and validated by our advanced trainers many of whom started out as customers!  Our advanced trainers are doing what they teach.

4.  We take every complaint seriously.  Tigrent regards each and every customer as a potential ambassador of Tigrent.  If someone is dissatisfied with a course experience, we will work with that customer until we have done everything possible to restore their confidence in Tigrent or at least feel that the situation has been resolved as much to their satisfaction as possible.  All we require of such customers is a genuine, factual approach to the issue and its resolution.

5.  Tigrent courses are priced to provide a product that we believe exceeds that of our competition in terms of quality and value.  Our course offerings run from $495 for a three-day basic training session to between $3,000 and $60,000 for our advanced training course packages, depending on the number and combination of courses selected from our 40 available options, as well as coaching and mentoring programs.

You may not be able to please all the people all the time, as one great American president once said.  But, at Tigrent, we do our darndest to try.