Complaint Review: Big Hitters Inc. - San Diego California

This utterly frustrating, tiresome affair began in late July 2008, when I had the extreme misfortune of seeing Big Hitters full-page ad on page 48 of the September 2008 Barely Legal magazine. The ad reads, "Start making incredible money from home with your very own turnkey adult web site."

I just so happened to be looking for an opportunity through which I could earn a steady source of income that would be at least sufficient to support myself. Self-employment was my goal. (It still is, actually.) I had read accounts of individuals being able to earn that type of money through owning adult Web sites. I believed that the demand for products and services from the adult entertainment industry was comparatively inelastic. I believed that their demand was like that of alcohol, lottery tickets and other such vices: People would partake of them no matter how downtrodden the economy became. After all, I had firsthand knowledge of men who would spend their entire week of unemployment benefits in strip clubs.

So, with that particular mindset, I sent Big Hitters (BH) an email on July 28, 2008 to respond to their print ad. Vice President Mike Templeton emailed me the same day, which bolstered my early impression of their company. His email included a link to their Web site, which I visited.

I telephoned Mike on July 29, 2008. As an extra incentive for my patronage, he agreed to throw in a total of 200 prepaid adult Internet access cards. This gesture led me to believe, "Man, these people must really want my business and are willing to work hard to see that I succeed," which again encouraged my willingness to deal with BH.

Unfortunately for me, Mike did not take that ideal opportunity to tell me that many of these sites evidently were not generating any income whatsoever due to the sagging economy or whatever reason. Thus, having not been so informed, I assumed that, if I additionally purchased the banner advertising that he was pushing, I would start earning at least some income from my Web site when it did go online.

Consequently, without having been given that crucial bit of information, I authorized the purchase of their Silver Package for $4,995.00 and three months of banner advertising for $420.00. I emailed an authorization for BH to charge my credit card a whopping $5,415.00 that same day. My credit card was duly charged. (Ouch!)

Then something strange happened that I should have regarded as a red flag. Mike called me back on August 5, 2008, before my Web site went online, and told me about a special rate that they offered for a 1" x 1" block ad on backpage.com for six months at $1,399.00. He told me that their customers were getting some "big numbers" from this advertising, so he strongly recommended that I purchase it.

Again, my mindset at the time was that these people were the experts. They knew how folk could earn big money on the Internet with those extremely costly Web sites that they were selling. After investing the kind of money in this venture that I had, I wanted to do whatever I had to do to make sure that I succeeded. I did not want to be one of those people that, as the Better Business Bureau and BH Web sites reported, did not make any money from this very costly venture. The best way to avoid that fate, I believed, was to follow the advice of the apparently knowledgeable staff at Big Hitters.

Thus, taking what I believed was Mike's reputable advice, I accepted his offer of backpage.com advertising, even though my Web site still had not gone online. I authorized yet another hefty charge on my credit card of $1,399.00 on August 5, 2008, which BH processed the same day. (Double ouch!)

Looking back, I now realize that Mike simply wanted to sell me that very costly advertising before I discovered that a huge number of these expensive Web sites were not generating any income at all, and that the very costly advertising that he was selling was totally ineffective in generating any sales. Shame on Mike for betraying my trust in such a conniving manner.

On August 13, 2008, I received an email from Mike to the effect that my Web site would go online that afternoon. I was in fact able to view it that day. I assumed that all the costly advertising had started that day also.

Spending a whopping total of $6,814.00 on my costly investment with BH in less than a week, I expected to start seeing some returns as soon as my Web site went online. I realized that, even in a booming economy, not every visitor to my Web site would become a buyer. However, I reasonably expected that at least some visitors to my site would become buyers.

Thus, believing that all the costly advertising had begun on the same day that my Web site became operational, I began to worry when the tracking data had not recorded any income-producing transactions after about one week. Consequently, On August 20, 2008, I purchased two weeks of advertising in a local alternative newspaper. The total cost for that additional advertising was $700.00, thus raising my total investment in this costly venture to a whopping $7,514.00 in less than four weeks.

Then, during a telephone conversation on August 22, 2008, BH Customer Service Manager Kim Smith informed me that my backpage.com advertising would actually start that day, approximately nine days later than I believed it had begun. Thus, the resulting flow of traffic from that additional advertising was yet to come.

Unfortunately, a very disturbing trend became apparent. The tracking data showed that my site had over a thousand visits, almost nine hundred of which were unique, during its first month online. However, incredibly, not one of those visits resulted in so much as a single income-producing transaction. I raised this concern for the first time in an email that I sent to CEO Leon Segal on September 15, 2008. He finally emailed a response two days later. He seemed to assess all the blame for the Web sites failure to produce income on the poor economy.

Regardless of how bad the economy is, I cannot seriously imagine any owner being satisfied with a business that receives a thousand potential customers in a month and fails to generate at least one single sale from all those visits. Any sane person would conclude that something was seriously wrong with that business. I do not see how Leon could honestly expect me to believe otherwise.

By December 2008, four months after it went online, my Web site still had not generated so much as one income-producing transaction. Totally frustrated and perplexed, I visited my site as a potential consumer, not a desperate investor, to try to determine why none of the many visitors had chosen to purchase any of the many products and services offered on my site. I noticed that each vendor would require the visitor to become its approved customer by providing, among other personal information, his or her credit card or bank account number before he or she would be able to enter the site to shop.

I personally would never agree to provide my credit card or bank account number unless I had actually decided to purchase a product or service from that particular merchant. Otherwise, that business has absolutely no reason whatsoever to have this very sensitive information.

Thus, if I objected this strongly to this requirement of providing my credit card or bank account number before I had agreed to make a purchase, I imagined that the other visitors to my site must have been reacting the same way. Consequently, they would visit my site, discover that they must provide their sensitive financial information before they could be allowed to shop from any of the associated businesses, choose not to comply with such an invasive request, then just leave the site before they even had a chance to shop and subsequently execute a purchase.

So I raised this concern in an email that I sent to Leon Segal for a third time on December 16, 2008. When Leon finally responded to this third email later that day, he attempted to confuse the issue by suggesting that I was proposing that vendors just "give away" their products and services by not requiring a credit card or bank account number at the point of sale. Of course, I clearly never expressed such an outrageous proposal in my email. He distorted my position simply to avoid a serious consideration of the issue that I had raised, which might very well be the reason that the many visitors to my site had chosen not to conduct so much as one income-producing transaction.

Another three months passed without my earning so much as one cent from this very expensive investment. I sent BH a lengthy email on March 11, 2009, to raise this concern. I received no response whatsoever. So I sent another lengthy email on March 16, 2009. I again raised my concerns over the failure of this very costly Web site to generate so much as one cent of income over a seven-month period. I reiterated my belief that one could not reasonably attribute such atrocious results to the sagging economy alone. Indeed, while the recession would certainly result in a reduction of income-producing transactions, the complete lack of any such transactions at all clearly indicated that the costly Web site was seriously flawed in some way.

Having become increasingly cynical through this deeply troubling experience with BH, I raised an additional issue of my having to rely upon Leon Segal for advice concerning my Web site when, by his own admission, he personally owns and runs one or more competing sites. That would appear to create a conflict of interest. Indeed, a reasonable person would wonder whether that conflict might help explain why he never took any effective steps to resolve the complete lack of income-producing transactions on my site over those seven months.

Therefore, I respectfully requested that BH finally take at least one of the following three steps: 1. If some problem or "glitch" was preventing any income from being reported from my site, resolve it and remit an immediate payment for any lost income I was due. 2. Have a competent expert who did not personally own or run a competing Web site advise me as to what exactly I must do to start generating at least some income from my Web site without any further delay. 3. Offer me some type of monetary adjustment on this completely worthless investment of $7,514.00 (including the money I was forced to waste on alternative-newspaper advertising). I ended the email with a statement to the effect that this would be the last time that I would seek effective resolution of this long-standing predicament before I would finally refer it to an appropriate agency for further assistance.

Leon Segal responded to my email that same day. He did not address the issue of a possible conflict of interest. He reported that their tests had confirmed that the tracking programs were in fact recording all the pertinent data correctly. He again strictly blamed the struggling economy for the outrageous failure of my Web site to produce any income whatsoever during seven months. He offered to reprogram my Web site with a recently updated version of the Silver Package. And he also offered to provide free banner advertising of my site on one of the adult Web sites that he owns. However, Leon made it clear that he was under no obligation to do so, as if he would be doing me some huge favor. (Never mind the whopping $6,814.00 of my money that BH had pocketed for doing absolutely nothing that had benefited me.)

I carefully pondered his response. Since I had absolutely no proof to the contrary, I accepted his assertion that the data from my site had been properly reported. I also decided to allow him to update my site.

However, I decided to pass on the free banner advertising. After all, the costly banner advertising that I had purchased previously proved to be completely ineffective. I didnt want to give Leon the satisfaction of being able to say that he was extending some form of charity to me by running "free" advertising on his site that probably would prove to be worthless anyway. After seven months, Id come to realize that, contrary to the way Leon and Mike had presented this opportunity to me, I obviously couldnt rely on BH alone to achieve its success. While their apparent experience and expertise would certainly extend some credence to their suggestions and recommendations, I had to start relying on my sound judgment, not theirs, to make the final decisions pertaining to this very costly yet worthless endeavor.

Thus, having adopted a revamped strategy and a renewed determination to make this a successful venture, I sent Leon Segal an email on March 23, 2009, to authorize his revising my Web site to the updated version of the Silver Package. He emailed me the next day to let me know this had been completed.

The revised Web site did offer a fresh appearance and some additional features. However, I did notice that each featured site still required the visitor to provide his or her credit card or bank account number before he or she could shop that site. BH had evidently decided that this troubling procedure would remain a required feature of these Web sites. Thus, I realized that my mission would have to be to find some way to drive to my site consistently those carefree individuals who would not object to providing their financial information in advance of being admitted to the site.

Having placed more emphasis on conducting my own research to find ways to promote my worthless Web site, I took special interest in an email that I received from Site Pro News on April 22, 2009. This informative newsletter provides five problems that a turnkey Web site might face and discusses ways to resolve them. Two discussed issues, "You Have Worthless Content" and "Youre Getting Traffic But No Sales," seemed especially pertinent to my predicament.

Unfortunately, I have to rely on BH to make any changes to the design and content of my Web site. Thus, I forwarded this informative newsletter to Leon Segal the same day I received it. I also forwarded a copy to his staff member Erin Yancey as a backup, since Leon had on many previous occasions claimed not to have received my emails. My simple introductory message to the forwarded newsletter reads, "Leo, might any of the following suggestions pose any possible areas of improvement for my Web site? Thanks." (He had at that time given me the understanding that his first name was Leo, not Leon.)

Thus, I sent that information to Leon Segal in a constructive, not derogatory, manner. I wanted him to read over it, see if he thought any of the pointers might work for my Web site, and let me know why or why not. I was trying to work with him to try to resolve what had become an even bigger problem, as my Web site still had not generated so much as one income-producing transaction after having been up for more than eight months.

Incredibly, neither Leon Segal nor anyone else at BH ever responded to this email.

That was the last straw for me. Segal's arrogance and indifference had become completely unacceptable. Consequently, I filed an online complaint against BH with the Better Business Bureau of San Diego (CA) on May 11, 2009. Through my complaint, I proposed to resolve this lingering conflict through Leon's following at least one of two paths, which I had previously proposed to him in my email of March 16, 2009: 1. Advise me as to what exactly I must do to start generating at least some income from my Web site without any further delay. 2. Offer me some type of monetary adjustment on this completely worthless investment of $7,514.00.

Not surprisingly, Leon Segal refused to follow either of my recommendations to resolve this conflict, choosing instead to remain defensive and offer flimsy excuses. I informed the BBB that I would not accept his response, which essentially offered me no remedy whatsoever. Powerless to take any further action, the BBB closed their case but did offer me some options as to where I might refer this matter for further investigation.

Although Leon's failure to take any effective steps to resolve this conflict has forced me to seek assistance from third-party agencies, I have continued to attempt to promote my Web site through several inexpensive means that I have created on my own. However, all this makeshift advertising has proven to be as completely ineffective as the initial costly advertising was.

I have, however, successfully sold adult products--DVDs, videocassettes, magazines and prepaid adult Internet access cards on eBay since November 2008. The fact that I have been able to sell these adult products throughout this recession irrefutably proves that this sagging economy is not the reason that none of the many visits to the costly Web site that BH sold me has resulted in not so much as one income-producing transaction. Indeed, consumers continue to spend billions of dollars on adult products and services during this extremely difficult recession.

By the way, the prepaid adult Internet access cards that Big Hitters sent me have also failed to become the hot sellers that they advertised them to be. My local print advertising has failed to generate any interest whatsoever. I must offer them online at only a fraction of their face value to generate any interest. Most occasions, the card fails to sell, even with a huge discount.

Quite interestingly, no one from Big Hitters has attempted to sell me any additional advertising since Mike Templeton offered me the six-month block ad on backpage.com way back on August 5, 2008. Although Kim Smith reported that she would increase the duration to ten months, that advertising expired long ago. I am puzzled as to why no one at BH views this expiration as an opportunity to try to sell me some additional advertising.

Likewise, I am puzzled as to why, since his email of March 24, 2009, almost a year ago, neither Leon Segal nor anyone else at Big Hitters has taken the initiative to contact me and advise me as to what I should be doing with this very costly but worthless Web site. On several occasions I have notified Leon that I have not earned so much as one cent of income from his product. That ought to bother him. That ought to make him want to give this huge problem his attention until it is resolved to my satisfaction. However, Leon appears to have no such concerns whatsoever.

I do note with interest that Big Hitters' ad in Barely Legal ceased to run after the September 2008 edition. That happened to be the first issue that I received of a thirteen-issue subscription. I did not see their ad in any of the twelve successive issues that I received. A reasonable person would wonder why BH ceased to run that glowing ad if theirs was truly the remarkable moneymaking opportunity that they advertised it to be.

Perhaps these turnkey sites that BH established earlier have already saturated the market for these particular products and services and are in fact earning those big bucks that the company claims. Thus, there are now little or no such customers for newer sites like mine to claim. However, if that is the case, no one from Big Hitters alerted me to that major development before I threw away $7,514.00 on a worthless investment.

At any rate, after having been up for almost nineteen months as of this writing, my very costly, sufficiently advertised turnkey Web site has still failed to produce at least one income-producing transaction. No reasonable person would ever conclude that an utterly atrocious result like that qualifies as "making incredible money from home." Consequently, I have referred the very questionable advertising practices of Big Hitters, Inc. to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) (Reference Number 25066044).

Purchasing this very costly but completely worthless turnkey Web site from Big Hitters has been one of the biggest, most disturbing regrets of my life. Rather than providing a steady source of income, this piece of crap has provided me a constant source of frustration, disappointment, conflict and worry over the past nineteen months. It is yet another time-consuming, money-draining hassle that I absolutely did not need to incur during these already very troubled times.

This report is exceptionally long because I have painstakingly provided it with facts and details to bolster its accuracy. I challenge anyone to try to question the veracity of this report.