Complaint Review: Casting Hub - Chicago Illinois

This is a scam of the highest level, playing on the emotions of children. Do not go to their auditions or do business with them. I am fraud victim of CASTINGHUB. I was cheated out of $5,900! The victims of Casting hub need to unite and file a class action suit against them!

 Casting Hub advertises itself on local radio stations as being a casting agency for Disney and children's television shows and movies. I took my 2 daughters to the audition, and they told us if they were chosen to move on to the next level, they would call back that night. They ended up calling, and setting up a second audition for the next day. There was no second audition. What this company does is get parents to take their children to the "auditions", then they hit them up to become a "Verified" member at anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000, depending on how long you choose to be in their database. They basically tell you that if you become a "Verified" member, they will market your children to casting agencies across the country, setting up auditions. The "Talent Agent" that we spoke with made the hard pitch, told us that he needed an answer that day, and there were no payment options.

In September 2013, I paid $5,900 (for 9 month) up front so my two daughters (scam victims) could both be represented by CASTINGHUB and placed on there website so advertising agencies and other model search business could see them.  I was told that it was a discounted price and because of that 72 hour refund policy was null and void. They claim that all their listings are verified and legitimate. No, they are not! All the listing that they have there are mostly for adults, not children. Also, most are expired and the ones that are not are from manta.com and craigslist (mostly sick people looking for more than models to take pictures of). Shortly after I signed my girls up, I lost my job. I called the Casting Hub and asked for a refund. They absolutely refused and said that they will work with me. Once the membership expired, 9 month later, I got a 3 months extension. Even with the extension, my kids didn’t get not one audition, nor did they get any help from Casting hub during the whole membership. During the whole time my kids were under contract, I called and called Casting hub and complained. I also sent emails. They told me that I should take my kids to other states to audition. I explained that I had NO money to do that because I didn’t have a job. They stopped answering phones after about 6 months, but sent emails stating that “CASTINGHUB is a commercial networking service designed to assist those seeking opportunities in modeling, acting, or other careers within the entertainment industry to get Internet exposure, networking resources and tools to match such talent with available listings of auditions and casting calls.  Our advertising is 100% in line with the services we offer and have substantial proof of it as well.  At NO time do we guarantee any work to anyone.” 

 After the membership ended, I tried again to reason with Casting hub. When I saw that we were not getting anywhere, I threatened to expose them for Fake Advertising and Defrauding people. They responded in an email stating, “You are making false accusations by belittling our company. We will not tolerate the use of defamatory words or threats against our company and are committed to protect our reputation and the safety of our staff. This is not an effective or professional way to communicate.” That was the last email I received in late October. Since then I have not contacted them.

As of now, I’m still out of work and have a hard time paying my bills. The $5,900 that I paid Casting Hub was a waste of money and I wish I never got involved with them. 

We are one one of the victums of Casting Hub. We heard their commercial on the radio saying if you want to be on shows like "Jessie" "Shake it up" and be famous. Which were things to hook innocent people in coming. We were hooked and came to the convention. It was nothing like they described it. This was our first time "auditioning" for them. My daughter had to act a raisin bran comercial. They said they would call us directly or text us if we got a call back. So we get a call back and we were really excited. They said that their would be a second audition to confirm my daughter to be a verified member of Casting Hub and they would discuss business. Their was never a second audition and the so called agent or whatever he was talked about money and he wanted us to pay him upfront. He got my daughter all excited saying she was going to be very famous and a star to make her get very excited. We were involved at that time with acting classes that took us to L.A. so my daughter could act in front of a bunch of agents and to get a call back but that was unsuccessful letting us continue classes for them for the next trip to L.A. We told the guy about that and that we were committed to them and that we didnt want to get involved in another thing at the same time.  The guy told us all this negative stuff about the acting classes we were involved in and told us it wouldnt work out and that your better off learning acting by watching tv or movies. He kept convincing us that the other company wasnt worth it and that Casting Hub you can get jobs anywhere, it doesnt have to be L.A. He said you can start working immediatly and get money and become famous fast. He said all the stuff that I know now are too good to be true. Well we gave in handing him the $2,900 which was the biggest mistake of my life. We ended up waiting until they called us saying we have a big audition to go to and to get ready for it. We were very excited, "our first job". When we got their we found out it was a different company who wanted $5,000 to go to New York to perform at a convention. They wanted my daughter to come. I immediately became devasted at what I was all excited about which turned out to be another little pay up front thing.  We never heard anything from casting Hub after that and we searched for auditions that should be payed $2,900 for. A lot of them were auditions that you can find online and for free. And the others were ones held by regular people in search for volunteers. They were pity auditons. We payed for headshots and trying to make them perfect was hard and all the stress i had in trying to make them. They have never called us after we payed. They just wanted money. Every single time I go to pay those credit card payments for the $2,900 I cry that money could be used for something benificial and this is something stolen/ fraud which is very painful. But heres the good news. I talked with the sate attorney in chicago, illinois and they said they can help me get the money back if I get a minimum of three complaints from three different people were also victums of casting hub. Including me we would only need a minimum of 2 or more. I just wanted to share my experience with casting and how we can resolve this problem and get our money back.