Complaint Review: MOBE - Austin Texas

Where to even start: Although I want to just start off this report and start writing in all caps screaming to run far far far away from this compnay, I am going to try to give you a comprehesive report of my experience with MOBE so you can decide if you want to participate in this company. Here goes...

I want to be upfront and say that I am a type of person who is willing to try out new things and take risks. I work from home and have a few streams of income. I don't make a lot of money - about $3k/month right now, but I'm working on starting my own businses to make some more.

I saw a facebook ad that advertised a free workshop for small business and people who were looking to make some extra income from the comfort of their home. It advetised a retired teacher who had little to no experience using online marketing was able to make additional funds that added to her pension. I thought, great! I'll check it out as I'm wiling to try new things and I already love working from home. 

Fast forward to the free workshop: I get there and the guy who lead the class was very upfront. At the very beginning of the class he basically said, look, I'm in the marketing business and I'm going to try to sell you something. This didn't bother me or surpsie me as I'm not daft to the fact tht everyone is trying to sell something or at least create value in the world. 

The man leading the class was named Karl. Karl went onto say that he and his wife place facebook ads online and are able to generate a good stream of income every month. To make a long story short, he said, if you sign up for our three day seminar, we will teach you how to do what we do so that you can also start generating money from home. I considered $497 to be a no brainer for a 3-day training course on how to place ads online. (BTW I've paid for other educational seminars for a similar price and those seminars have been well worth the price becasue they delivered on what they said they were going to offer).  Not only was I paying for a 3 day inperson training, but I was also, supposedly, paying for a coach who would be assigned to me to help get me started after the training so I could be provided with additional support. I thought this was a really great deal. 

The coach even called me and talked to me for 30 minutes. She was like, "You're going to be so glad you invested this money, etc. etc." She told me I needed to start the first 5 steps of the 21 step program. I logged in and started the steps and it introduced Matt Lloyd, the founder of the training program, who seem more or less like a genuine guy. After the 5th step it didn't get into much more and I didn't have access to any steps after step 5 until after the 3-day seminar. I figured this was just because it wouldn't make sense until after I completed the seminar. 

Fast forward to a month later when the 3-day seminar was being held - it was officially called the Home Business Summit. I arrive with laptop in hand. I'm ready to learn how to place ads online. 

The leader of the class, David, a successfull business man from Mississippi who started his carpet cleaning business when he was 15 years old, lead the class. He started out at 9am by saying something like, "If anyone here doesn't think this will be for you, you're welcome to get a refund, just do it by noon." I thought, ok, that's kind of strange, but I'm glad they are willing to give people their money back. 

Then for the next 3 hours until noon, David proceeds to talk about his life story and about how his frist carpet cleaning customer was his mom when he was 15 years old. He goes on to say how he sold the business later when he had over 300 employees. I started to grow a little impatient at this long winded story and didn't have anything to do with learning/training. I gave David the benefit of the doubt and thought, ok he's just a guy who likes to talk and tell jokes, I get that, but c'mon let's move onto some practical application. 

Then 5 other people who are also part of leading the seminar get up to the microphone and tell about how they are so glad they started with MOBE because it really gave them the financial freedom to spend more time with their families. I think, that's awesome for all these people! I would like to KNOW exactly HOW they did what they did to get where they are. I start thinking...when are we ever going to move onto the real application of this whole process??? 

The rest of the class on day 1 was about more videos of success stories. Even though I was growing more and more impatient, I was still giving everyone there the benefit of the doubt. David ended the class and said he would be teaching what exactly he does on day 2. I thought, great! I'm finally ready to start learning what exactly it is I need to do to do some marketing online. 

On day 2, David LITERALLY draws on a piece of paper what his facebook ads look like. When he first did this, I thought oh great he is just illustrating, then we'll see actual material to what we get access to in order to assist us doing the same for ourselves. 

NOPE. 

David proceeds to go into a sales pitch about how we can have access to mentors and masterclasses to learn everything from the pros all for an upfront investment $63,000. 

If people didn't have that kind of cash, they could pay $2500 and really not get much but an online training course about how to get in the mental mindset to start placing ads online. But really in order to get a good ROI you'd have to pay $63,000. Oh, you don't have the money for that? Don't worry, if you have a credit score of over 650, we can get you a business loan at 0% interest for 18 months in the amont of $100,000. That way you can use the remaining $40k on money for placing ads. This all will get you to the "Diamond" status - this is really where you want to be in order to make the big bucks. 

Fast forward to more videos on flashy "success stories" and people riding around in fancy cars and swimming with dolphins. No joke. 

I'm sure if you're reading this, and you knew me, you'd be like, you're college educated, how did you not see this coming? Trust me, I'm so embarrased and feel so incredibly foolish. I used to only think that stupid people could get scammed. God was I wrong. Unfortunately, I wasn't the only smart person in the room, there were plenty of them, plenty of successful people, too, who were actually willing to give their money. I spoke to a successful real estate agent there who was all gung-h*o about this offer. This company very strategically and cunningly presented the offer in a way that made you stick around - really because it was all so vague. It's like you were waiting around to understand how this all worked. 

I would even go to David in between breaks and ask him questions - like, so, I'm curious, what's the percentage of people who are affilates actually see this type of success that you're showing in the video and that you've had? He would NEVER answer me directly (btw after some googling I dug up their financial reports, it's less than 1% and I'll explain why later). In fact, David was a really weird guy himself. The whole time I couldn't help but think, there's something incredibly inauthentic about this person. And everytime I ask him something it's like he acts as if I shouldn't be asking him the questions I'm asking. 

In fact, David himself told us that he didn't brand himself because "he had other companies he was a part of." This statement is EXTREMELEY weird - like, ok so you don't let your other investments know that you're a part of MOBE because what woud they do if they found out??? I just thought this was incredibly fishy, but he phrased in a way that left you hanging with no real info to chew on. 

I could seriously write on for days about how this whole seminar was TOTALLY vague, 50% of it was David talking about how cool his life was, and the other 50% was about showing videos of other people driving fancy cars and having a life of luxury. It was very strategically crafted to keep you wondering.

There were also a lot of mental manipulation techniques used: For example, David told us, we don't tolerate negativity here, because that doesn't get you far in business. So, if you show us you're negative, we won't have a problem asking you to leave. Most of us could agree with the statement that negativity breeds negativity and is unnecessary for the most part. But really this manipulation technique is used because they don't want you to have a healthy level of SKEPTICISM. I would ask questions and confide in them that I was a bit skeptical of the process and wanted to understand what people had to do in order to be successful so that I could be confident in what MOBE had to offer. I was usually met with either annoyance, or they would say things like, "It doesn't take any GUTS to be a skeptic." David ended day two with telling us to "google 20/20's interview on the BBB." This technically was another way of saying, "We are rated an F on BBB and I could see on your iphone that you were looking that up but that's only because we don't pay to be a member of the BBB." There's technically some truth about this in regards to the BBB...but that doesn't disqualify you from being a shady company.

I went home that night just thinking, ok, I'm going to do a LOT of research on this company to see what's really going on here. Turns out the internet saves the day!

I dug up more and more stories of mine. In the end, here's what I think about MOBE: 

I think it is actually possible to make money at MOBE if you can check off ALL of the following boxes: 1) You joined MOBE when it started back around 2011 or soon thereafter AND 2) you were already a millionare/could invest $60k without any financial risk to you in the event you lost it AND 3) you already had about 10 years of internet marketing experience AND 4) out of that 10 years you already had some level of moderate to high-level success in internet marketing. But even then, success for you would ALSO mean that you were only successful because hard-working people lost their money to you. 

Not only that, if you are truly a part of this MOBE, it's not about providing anything of real, actual value. It's about getting other people to sign up and give over their money. It's a true pyramid/ponzi/get-rich scheme.

Here's the other thing, the company doesn't operate in America. It originally operated in Australia, then realized it had to avoid the laws there, moved it's address to the UK, then had to avoid laws there, and I believe it now operates out of Malaysia. MOBE has successfully navigated the appropriate legal loopholes in order to not be classified as an illegal company. For this I am impressed. 

BTW, no one is paying me to write this story. I am doing this in the hopes that others can read my story and save their hard-earned money. I'm so embarrased that I fell for the 3-day home business summit that I can't even tell my husband. I'm so ashamed. I will from now on be investigating companies before I hand over money. I'm also disputing the $497 with my credit card company in the hopes they will refund me. 

Even though I can confidently say that you CAN be the 1% of people who make big $$ with MOBE if and only if you are already a successful online marketer before joining the company, I don't know how you could morally pride yourself every night when you go to sleep knowing that you made big bucks from MOBE because hard-working people lost their money to you. 

NO one is paying me to write this story. I'm telling it because I don't want hard-working people to lose their money. My heart goes out to all the people (approx 50-70% of people there) who actually paid MOBE anywhere between $2500-$63000 yesterday. I feel it's my moral obligation to tell my story.