Like many other people who reported STARSCAPES to the Ripoff Report, I did order the "Amazing Star Portal" from Jeff Petrashnek's company for the shipping fee of around $17. I was lucky I had my money refunded. He refunded my money when I said there were no instructions included and looked like the contents were missing.
Joe actually sends you a text over the phone for first contact, telling you he's driving, or whatever he's doing at the moment. I took awhile to size up what the Amazing portal was supposed to look like and do, and I appreciated the DVD's sent in the mail to me with informative information on how to build a business. When I told him his home page was too full of "hype" for me to find the "order" button, he responded courteously and asked if I had painted the portal yet.
The "portal" is still a bunch of junk, the way the other reports go here. You get a folding cardboard demo board, a craft paintbrush (instead of the toothpick from years gone by) and a big white sheet of paper with large to tiny circles on it to fill in with the paint. It's not even glued to the demo board, and mine had a small tear in it. The first thing I thought was "why didn't they enclose blue or black paint to complete the job?" Here's what Joe replied by text:
"It's going to turn black like the night sky only because the lights will be out and the room will be dark, dark equals black, that's one of the greatest things about STARSCAPES. When you walk into a roomto paint it, half the job is already done.All we are doing is the stars."
I asked him then why the Milky Way treatment instructions were's included. "you actually haven't learned anything yet" he texted me. "You were just able to seehow amazing starscapes will look. You will learn that technique in the star biz."
This was the most pathetic response I have ever encountered from a so called "business owner" teaching people how to do these kinds of murals on walls. Here I am, an art school graduate, looking at a sheet of paper that's not going to even REMOTELY look like the night sky unless you lock yourself in a closet with a prospective "client" where it is pitch black and you only have this poster board above you! No mural or art lover is going to believe this garbage if you show it to them this incomplete.......and that is the whole trick Joe uses to get you into the program: You haven't learned anything yet, so buy more.
Not me, buddy. And Joe -- I've saved the text record of our conversation on my phone, just so there's no doubt about what I just wrote. You really had me going there, with you DVD about people going to one of NASA"s satellite offices and painting a whole room full of stars for visitors, people painting casinos, hotels........YES I would do all that as a professionally trained artist looking for a business plan to follow, and a discount on materials, but not under YOUR watch!