Complaint Review: Rick Valentine - San Marcos California

None of Mr. Valentine’s statements change the facts.

1. I contracted with Rick Valentine in March 2021 for his “marketing accelerator” course, scheduled to start the first week of April 2021. The course promised to “look over his shoulder” for a do-it-yourself version of the program that has been successful in a full-service format for a few others. In a mid-March Zoom call, Valentine assured me that the marketing program, with the promised combination of his coaching & guidance, and the course materials as reference, would suit my goals of an early summer launch of an online course I had already fully developed. I paid $7,500.
2. No sooner had my payment cleared when Valentine unilaterally announced that his involvement in the program would not start until May 18. His “coaching” was purported to be integral to applying the materials in the packaged course, and was promised to be integral to client success. Yet, he deliberately delayed his own participation as a coach, when said “coaching” was promised as essential to client success. This announcement also contradicted his March promises for a swift progression through the marketing program to meet my goals for an early summer marketing launch.
3. Because Valentine failed to show up for his own coaching sessions as originally contracted, it was impossible for me, the client, to assess the validity of the entire program. He did not even start to appear for the contracted services until the period for reversing the credit card payment had long expired.
4. I did not communicate with Valentine directly until May 18 – six weeks after the contracted start of the program, because he declared himself unavailable to the clients who had just paid for his services. Again, this was his condition unilaterally applied in direct violation of the program as contracted. Attempting to apply the material in the packaged course to my marketing challenge, with some technical help from the Valentine staff, I revised the format of my course; wrote and produced an entire 5,000 word ebook; revised website copy; and reviewed the marketing “course” and attempted to understand the course content regarding advertising copy, despite its incomplete and incoherent presentation. The hundreds of hours I devoted to restructuring my existing course to try to conform to the Valentine “program” is copiously documented in small group calls and emails with requests for technical guidance.
5. The entire point of the marketing program was to launch the course using Valentine’s purportedly successful marketing approach. This did not commence until May 18 because Valentine did not participate in his own program until then. At that point, I started the process of writing marketing copy to sell the now-restructured course, only to find myself in an infinity loop of contradictory feedback from both Valentine and his staff. This also is documented in emails, Zoom calls and screenshots of google documents.
6. By mid June it was obvious that neither Valentine nor his staff was capable or willing to actually deliver coherent, purposeful, useable marketing services at all, and especially not within the time frame of the course. I requested an extension of the course timeline so I could try to extract some element of usable marketing copy from the process. Valentine’s response was to offer to charge me $1,000 more for yet more services of dubious value.
7. In July I requested a refund of half of the $7,500 I paid. Valentine refused.
8. Now, it is clear from this exchange, that Valentine takes no responsibility for failing to deliver the services I contracted for, and paid for in full, in March 2021. He has failed to even show up for his own coaching program; failed to recognize and work with the substantial investment I have made in attempting to apply his purported marketing strategy to my existing course; has failed to deliver a coherent, usable course and reference materials; and has failed to articulate and apply his purported marketing strategy. I request a full, immediate refund of the $7,500 I paid in March 2021 to a marketing “coach” whose deliberate delays and incompetence invalidate the contract.

Joanne was referred to my program by a former student who has build an enormously profitable business using the sytem we teach.  Joanne is one of more than 40 people who have gone through my program, many of whom have lauched successful funnels to generate high quality, paid leads for their businesses.  The system I teach is the same system my agency uses for our full-service clients, for whom we have acquired more than 1,000,000 customers in the past 4 years.  The system works...but only if you actually do the work and follow the directions.  

Joanne did neither, and as a result never even launched her funnel.  And her complaint isn't that the system doesn't work, it's that the support wasn't there to help her launch her funnel.  Yet she received the same support 40+ other people received, most of whom launched their first funnel within the 10 week program.

I did make the decision to delay the start of the group because of some travel that came up.  BUT...my team met with Joanne weekly during that delayed period to make sure her questions were answered and she got whatever support and direction she needed.  She was also given full access to all the online training which provides step by step directions.  This means she was given support for 16 weeks, instead of 10, and still wasn't able to get even close to launching.

Prior to filing this, she attempted to file a chargeback with her credit card company, but that was denied because they weren't buying her story either.  Never once in the first 14 weeks we were working together did she have a complaint.  Only as the program was ending and she realized she was going to be on her own, did she begin to complain about every element of the program.  

Every other participant in her group made comments about how difficult and unreasonable she was as she attemped to hijack the weekly calls with complaint after complaint. I attemted to hear her out and accommodate her where I could, but nothing was ever good enough.

I offered to extend her support for an additional 6 weeks for $1,000 (after she paid $7500 for 10 weeks) and she wanted me to give it to her for free...based mainly on the ridiculous accusations made in this complaint.  Issues raised only by her over 9 months running the coaching program and nearly 4 dozen participants.

Nobody will ever be successful if they aren't willing to do the work and instead choose to blame everybody else.

I'm not going to waste any more time dealing with Joanne after this response...though undoubtedly she will attempt to respond and reiterate all the bogus claims she's making.  Good riddance.