Complaint Review: Will Duquette

I see someone else here gotted ripped off in New Jersey.  Mr. Duquette was a presenter at a seminar I attended in NJ that was being held by another company.  He did a great job selling his "The Shift" seminar, also to be held in New Jersey, around six months later.  We were told the exact date was to be announced, but it would be in New Jersey, in the stated month.  I signed up, paid $1997 with a credit card, and waited.

Time passes, time passes and I hear nothing from this company.  A few weeks before the month the seminar was to occur, I started calling their office.  After several unreturned phone calls, I got an email explaining that there was not going to be a seminar in NJ - not that month, and not in the foreseeable future.   I said, oh, sorry to hear that.  I'd like a refund, then.  From there, it became surreal.

I got the whole story - including from Mr. Duquette himself, who struck me as a fast-talking, entirely unscrupulous person because what he was saying made NO SENSE - about how I could only cancel the transaction within 3 days of making it, and that time was long past.  But I could use my "credit" on any other seminar.  No one said I was buying a credit toward unspecified, random future seminars when I put that 2 grand on the table, mind you.  The other available seminars were all a plane ride, time off from work, and a hotel room (an extra $100 in travel expenses out of my pocket, in other words) away.  They could not grasp that concept that THEY were the ones who did not deliver.  NEVER got my money back.  I tried calling the people who ran the seminar where he was a guest speaker.  They confided that they had become disgusted with Duquette long before they ever heard from me, and would no longer work with him.   Even if I HAD agreed to go to Florida or wherever they decided to hold a seminar, I STILL couldn't count on it because he had recently scheduled a seminar, had people in a room waiting for him, then cancelled the whole thing.  Guess those poor suckers got a "credit" - but no refund - too.

Later, Duquette put a seminar-tuition-is-nonrefundable-even-if-we-don't-have-'em type notice on their website.  Absurd.

I heard he was doing a free webinar the other day and listened, just hoping to get some insight into him.  As he was hawking some other expensive thing (a $7,000 speaker training), he mentioned that he had lost almost all his money recently.  I imagine this is why he'd gotten so slimy.  Look, everyone messes up in life, but if he's going to build back up, he's got to go back and clean things up with the people he scammed and lied to.  Until that happens - do not - DO NOT - give this man your money.

Will, there's a way back, and it's not through more overpriced services and deals.  It's called Honesty.  Take it and get your reputation back.