Complaint Review: Grant Services - Internet

We received a call from a Patty at Business Grants Central a couple of weeks back. She had an offer that sounded too good to be true, and turns out...it was.

Patty described a service they offer where we provide them with information about what we have to offer, and they in turn compile the information into a grant proposal that we can use to secure grants from both Federal and State Governments, not to mention private investors. The service was $195, however she mentioned their money back guarantee, where if we are NOT funded via the grant to any one of a minumum of 3 channels, we can receive a full refund. It seemed like a no-brainer.

We thought about it and researched the service a little more in the next few days. Patty kept calling us to try and close. Finally, we decided to move ahead by providing them with our credit card number and signed agreement. One thing that was odd is that each time we spoke with them they recorded our call. And the agreement was filled with all sorts of provisions to limit their liability for refund, which made me suspicious...but hey, what's $195 to try...after all, they did have the refund policy in place.

After the credit card had processed, we received an email with login credentials to www.bgcinfo.com where we logged in and started working on our 9-question application form. At the end of each step, there was a 'Save and Continue' button at the bottom, which was clicked after entering each page of information. I spent 3 hours getting to step 4, then had to log off. 

The next day, I logged in to complete more steps, and noticed that I started off at step 1 again, and only the information in step 1 was showing up. Steps 2-4 were nowhere to be found. So we contacted the company and they said they would fix it and we should see all 4 steps now. I logged back in and I started out on step 5 which was correct, however I tried to look back at the previous steps 1-4 and the only info visible was the info in step 1...same as before the call. Only the launching step had changed.

So I contacted them again and he said the data disappears for security reasons after each step, and is safe in their IT department. I asked him what if I wanted to make some changes, and he told me I could simply go back to steps 2-4 and enter in my new information. But that took quite a bit of time to produce, as I mentioned to him, and he said he would have to ask the IT department if they can get the information to me, then tried to get off the phone quickly. I asked again about the security, and how it didn't make sense that not all of the info was hidden that I saved...only steps 2-4, and step 1 was intact. He seemed puzzled, and then asked me if I had entered in an apostrophie anywhere in the form. I said probably inside the text fields when I described the story. He then said 'AHA...that's the problem', then went on to explain that by entering in an apostrophie, it screws up the form, and that it was clearly written as a disclaimer on the form (which I never saw because it wasn't there). After becoming frustrated with this man, I asked to speak to our original salesperson, Patti. He would give her the message because 'she is assisting another customer at the moment.'

As you might expect, Patti never called. So I called the next day and he said the same thing...would have to give her a message. He became aggrivated when I told him that she never called me. I told him that I needed to resolve this issue, which has not been resolved in 3 days, and that I would give Patty 30 minutes to call me back or else I would call back to cancel the program and get a refund. 

Patty never called. No one ever called. I tried them back no fewer than 10 times over the next 2 days. They must have blocked our phone numbers from the caller ID. On the third day, I obtained a caller ID masking program that blocks our ID from coming through accurately, and tried them once more...bingo! This time, I recorded the call, and let him initially know this. He said to obtain a refund, the accounting department must first email us a document to sign that states we request a refund.

The next day, still no document as promised. So we tried him again with another number and he answered. The call was recorded on our end, and he was initially made aware of this. He said the document would be emailed right away, and after 10 minutes, we did receive it finally.

The document is essentially a re-up on the initial terms and conditions, and further buttresses their loopholes in NOT providing us with a full refund. It went on to threaten us in legal action if we were to dispute the credit card charges, which we did of course. The document will not be signed by us.

Stay FAR AWAY from anything that resembles a company wishing to sell you a service to gain you grants. As some other posters have stated, government grants are free to apply for. These guys look like they just work out of their basement or something with a bogus auto form that is broken and live off of gullable people like myself.