Advantage Education talked me into singing up for a service where by they would build out a complete website for retail sales over the web as an online trading platform. They took a hefty $12,885 for this service with promises that the model is guaranteed to be successful. They also confirmed that no additional expenditures are required. There was a promise of guarantee that I would start making money in less than roughly 9 days or so. The guarantee was that everything would be built out by Advantage Education along with appropriate training for me to reach my sales goal. The promise also included zero failure chance along with a highly professional and effective website that is customized to my needs and my business.
However, a week after I was charged the money and the cancellation period was over, the next company - Foundation Business Services which is either an affiliate of Advantage Education or a partner in crime with Advantage Education calls me and tells me that help me with all aspects of opening the administrative side of setting up the business which included, LLC registration with the state, develop & deliver company logo, registering company with the 3 credit bureaus, report company info to the credit bureaus monthly, establish corporate credit and attain corporate credit cards, handle any compliance issues, develop a business plan to say the least. For an astounding charge of $7995.00 all they provided was a simple standard booklet that they probably provide to every company where only the company name is replaced – a totally useless document. They also gave me a filled out form that I can use to register with the state for the LLC. I could’ve gotten this done for $250. by an accountant or easily by me personally.
The next in line to contact me was the company Marketing Solutions. Apparently all information regarding myself as well as the LLC that I created was shared with them by Advantage Education as well. Their promise was that even though Advantage Education would build out the web site for my business, it is not going to work without Marketing Solution’s help. For a cost of $5100.00, their promise was for a 7 year SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to be provided for my website so that searches on products I would sell would appear in the first page of Google search. There was also other promises such as advertising on social media as well. But this company did absolutely nothing other than steal my money. When asked for proof that they did anything, I was told that it is not something I can see. But I could see the end results which was nothing.
The final one to come was the GoGo Dropship. They convinced me that I should purchase from Companies that provide DropShip service in order for my business to be successful. They also claimed that there was absolutely no way for me to find information about these DropShip companies on my own. They charged me a whopping $4500.00 for their service. It should be noted here that all the marketing done by Advantage Education was to use DropShip companies to maximize my profits. This was setting up the groundwork to make me use GoGo Dropship company.
In all, between these 4 companies, they cheated me of $30,480.00. After I found out that this was not yielding any results, I filed a complaint with BBB In response to my complaint, a person named Taylor Jones from Advantage Education contacted me and promised to reimburse me 50% of the money that all these companies combined cheated me off. Taylor went on to request me to actually file a dispute with the credit card companies that I used for charging these and promised me that the disputes will not be challenged by these companies; thereby the credit card companies would initiate the refunds. He was lying there too. He knew perfectly well that after 120 days, there was no provision for a credit card dispute per federal law.
Also in return for my cooperation, Taylor would provide free hosting of my website, help me run an advertisement campaign on social media and would pay for it and guarantee that I attain the final results that Advantage Education initially guaranteed me. He contacted me a couple of times in the beginning and then completely dropped off. On my threatening to file complaints, he send me a $200 gift card to run my ad campaign. I was able to run the campaign for a couple of days; however, Google told me that payments from gift card for the ad campaign was rejected. This indicates that this was a bogus card just like the business these companies are running.
The end result was that I lost $30,480 plus a lot of other additional expenses such as state registration and such on top of the numerous hours spend on this effort not knowing that these companies were ripping me off. I ended up with a cheap website that lacked any professionalism and most importantly did not yield any results. Many features of the website did not work either. What they provided was far short of a customized website. In fact, they simply provided a cookie-cutter style website that they provide to everyone else like me that they were able to cheat. Even with such a easy and cheesy setup, instead of the 9 days they promised, it took them well over 3 months to even deliver the non-working and ineffective website. Aside from this, all they provided was a bunch of nonsense documents. There was absolutely no cooperation from anyone contrary to their initial promise that they will hand-hold me & my business all the way through to success.
As a final note, I was communicated that all my conversations with all these companies are recorded.
As stated earlier, these 4 companies are either affiliates or partners-in-crime. All 4 of these companies supported and praised each other and commented on the great service that the other companies are providing.
I was cheated of a total of $30,480 by these 4 companies combined. These are the types of companies that needs to be investigated for cheating the public.
I would appreciate your assistance in resolving my complaint. I would like to receive a full refund from Advantage Education - $ 12,885.00, Foundation Business Services LLC - $7,995.00 , Marketing Solutions - $5,00.00 and GoGo DropShip - $4,500.00 for a total of $30,480.
Advantage Education started this whole scam. In order for me to file complaints against Foundation Business Services LLC & Marketing Solutions, I an not able to get any contact info or address info. I reached out to Advantage Education and they are not providing that information either. Hence Advantage Education should be held responsible in this case and pay me back entire $30,480.