Complaint Review: Moneywayz Michael Hilliard - Taxwayz - Healthwayz - Shopwayz - Travelwayz - Mortgagewayz - Phoenix Arizona

This is not an endorsement of any type of Turnkey Business or MoneyWayz - it's just serves as an example of how muddy things can get. I run a home business newsletter and was recently asked about this company. At first glance I was skeptical of their site, but on further research I noticed that many of the complaints against it may or may not be accurate. First of all, complaints at the BBB and RipoffReport are only isolated factors. You DO have to take into account volume of transactions the business does. I've pointed that out to many people, but I've failed to put that on my site. Determining the volume of transactions a company does can be hard to do. You can check Alexa for site rankings, but even that's not a surefire bet because Alexa rankings don't reflect what kind of traffic is driving the rankings and you don't know what the conversion rates are. In fact, there are scripts that will autogenerate traffic to make the rankings look higher. Interestingly enough, I was able to find this article at Investor's Business Daily (one of the top investment newspapers/sites in the world) about MoneyWayz. However, the article at Investor's Business Daily actually gets several critical points WRONG as follows: 1. For example, the author's comments about the Mortgage Leads industry don't factor several important things into account. He complains because you only get paid $500 if the application is approved. Well, that's not necessarily bad because the normal payout for a straight pay-per-lead mortgage program is $20 to $30 and that doesn't include "declines" (leads that are rejected). So let's say you get 10% of every 100 people to fill out the mortgage leads form (reasonable based on decent quality traffic). At a $30 per lead payout that would be $300. However, let's say you only get 1% of every 100 people to go through with an approved application (I don't know that piece well, but it seems like a reasonable figure to work with). In that case you would get $500 according to the MortgageWayz system which would be more than the traditional $300. 2. His comments about the advertising not likely to drive visitors are questionable. That's an impossible comment to make without knowing what the match between the traffic source and the ad copy is. Different types of ads work within different contexts. He would have to be highly trained in traffic generation techniques AND advertising copywriting to make a call like that. 3. The article states: "It is clear in talking to officials at the Better Business Bureau that many customers who took a flyer were greeted with a big upsell to get them to buy the next product." Well, upsells are a normal part of doing business. There's nothing inherently wrong with an "upsell" system unless there's an actual problem with the company. There are however some regulations within the The Telephone Consumer Protection Act regarding upsells that companies are required to follow even if they're receiving inbound calls. You can read more about those here: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/tsrcomp.htm Again, rules like that can get muddy (some major loopholes in the Do Not Call regulations are only recently being closed). I did notice that MoneyWayz addresses the "Do Not Call" list in their Privacy Policy. Since I'm not an attorney I can't comment on whether they address it in a way that would meet legal requirements. 4. The article states: Moneywayz has an "unsatisfactory" with the BBB "due to a failure to substantiate its advertised claims and due to a pattern of complaints. Again, I always question the BBB when I see them claim a company has a "pattern of complaints". There's no way to know if the "pattern of complaints" has statistical signifance unless you know the volume of transactions they do, which I'm sure the BBB doesn't know. 5. One thing the article fails to point out is that the company seems to resolve their complaints. This is significant because they AREN'T a member of the BBB. One complaint about the BBB is that they tend to favor members in complaint resolution, so when a non-member has a record where they resolve complaints that's actually a favorable sign for the company. 6. Also, many times there's an inherent conflict between the BBB asking for earnings proof from a company's list of customers and privacy laws, so that part of the BBB report may or may not be relevant. Here's another point I noticed that's actually in favor of the company: I took a look at their TaxWayz program and was noticed that Sandy Botkin possibly involved. He's certainly legitimate and pretty well respected and his products are very good. The only question would be if he's directly involved or if they're just an affiliate for his site. In either case that particular product is actually of high quality. If he's DIRECTLY involved that would be a good sign. If they're just an affiliate for his site it doesn't really mean anything either way, since in the past he allowed anyone to sign up to be an affiliate. The big question is HOW they drive the traffic. The quality of the traffic is 40% or more of the determining factor of how a site converts. That's where the big downfall usually is in Turnkey Website programs. And you need to know a lot about traffic to know if the information you're getting is correct. For ANY turnkey web business that sells traffic, I'd want to know what their traffic sources are, how they're targeting them, what the conversion rate is for each site vs each traffic source. If they're driving any pay per click traffic I'd want to know what they top converting keywords are. If they drive any organic traffic (free search engine traffic), I'd want to know how their getting the sites indexed in Google, Yahoo, MSN. I'd want to know if they're using Google Sitemaps. I'd want to know if they're doing any link exchanges or have a method for getting one-way inbound links. I'd also want to know what % of participants revenue comes from product sales vs sales of products from the sites. And finally, if the company offers coaching, it would be important to know what their background is or the backgrounds of the people who trained them to determine the level of expertise you're getting. Paul - Show quoted text -

My Brother was called by a "Business Coach" in the fall of 2003. I warned him about the whole online business hoopla; he chose not to listen. I believe his initial investment was $695. (Down the drain, i warned him.) Sure enough 4 months later he'd charged a little under $5,000 to his credit cards for "advertising" I think it was in the 5th month he got a commission check for a measly $389. (I laughed at him, I did "tell him so!") When he got his next check i bugged him for 3 hours to open it in front of, he refused to humor me. I told him he should call a lawyer. Ten minutes after i lefy his house that day he called me, it was a $1400 commission check. Time passed he got really into it. He made a little over $23,000 of his "scam-site", i called it, in 2004. @005 was different, he started well, but life began to happen, and he stopped working it, quit investing his time into the business. He did however, hap-hazardly invest his money in more advertising. He shut down down his site this past February, i think he spent 3 or 4 grand on "advertising" the last 2 months he was still online. I'm pretty sure that he spent more on advertising than he made those last 3 months. He says, "I just have too much going on now. Maybe I'll start again next year." I'm sorry for those of you that didn't make money, to be honest i think i'd be in the same boat if i were to try it. However, i don't understand why some of you are glad you were "saved". This guy lost money, and the company paid it back. Is that a rip-off? I just look at it like everything else inlife, some can, some can't. My brother PROFITED $29,600 with his busines over a 30 month period, and there were times he'd go months without paying more for advertising, or doing anything with the business. Some can, Some can't . . . I just don't think anyone should let someone else's inability, scare them out of making a good decision. . . I'm sorry you lost money, but my brother would have lost his were it not for starting his "scam-site" . . . Respecfuly,

Hi I just wanted to let you all know that if you used your Credit Card and feel you were Ripped Off then you have 6 Months to do a Charge Back against that Company.... This should help those who are being Ripped Off... Call The card company and tell them to do a charge back..

I too was on the web when the agent for this intenet marketing company called on the phone. I took the time to search for "Michael Hilliard" and "moneyways, moneywayz" until I saw your post listed. I did the agent the favor of telling him that I had seen this report and the complaints listed, and that I would never invest with a company listed as having such problems. I told him to first clear up all the matters listed and to call me back when done. He said that the company had large offices in Arizona and had been in business since 1999; I told him I had been around longer than that and would be a fool to pay for their offices with my hard earned cash. I hope all the people who lost money are rapidly repaid, and I thank ripoffreport.com for listing these complaints and saving me from loss.

I too was on the phone with a sales coach listening to the pitch, and while listening to the tape, I came upon this rip-off report. I am too thankful that I came upon this before I invested $500. Not that I would have, anyone asking for your money should not be considred as a legit opportunity in the first place. I digress... I found this report helpful, and I also promptly hung up the phone, again thank you.

I too was on the phone with a sales coach listening to the pitch, and while listening to the tape, I came upon this rip-off report. I am too thankful that I came upon this before I invested $500. Not that I would have, anyone asking for your money should not be considred as a legit opportunity in the first place. I digress... I found this report helpful, and I also promptly hung up the phone, again thank you.

I too was on the phone with a sales coach listening to the pitch, and while listening to the tape, I came upon this rip-off report. I am too thankful that I came upon this before I invested $500. Not that I would have, anyone asking for your money should not be considred as a legit opportunity in the first place. I digress... I found this report helpful, and I also promptly hung up the phone, again thank you.

I too was on the phone with a sales coach listening to the pitch, and while listening to the tape, I came upon this rip-off report. I am too thankful that I came upon this before I invested $500. Not that I would have, anyone asking for your money should not be considred as a legit opportunity in the first place. I digress... I found this report helpful, and I also promptly hung up the phone, again thank you.

I want to say thank you to all the people who went through this unfortunate experience. I was actually on the phone with sales rep and on the computer at the same time on this site checking them out. Needless to say, I hung up. I am so sorry that every person who went through this was taken. But posting your responses helps others out and I want to say thank you. Remember that God does not put upon us more than we can handle and it will be okay. God Bless.

After writing the Ripoff Report about Michael Hilliard's Moneywayz program, I wrote a detailed letter to the company about my experience with them, and how I saw the program working for them (but not for me), with their expensive advertising. After receiving my letter, they called me promptly and courteously, promising a full refund, including the advertising and my postage paid on mailings. The check for $2655 came in a reasonably timely way but did not include the $185 postage as promised. I am not sure why they sent a check instead of crediting the Visa card, but I am happy to have at least this much of my investment back. I keep getting those expensive brochures in the mail from other people who have bought into this, and wish there were some way they could have been warned!