Complaint Review: StoresOnline Inc. PMI Coaching Links4Trade EMS Traffic - Orem Utah

My husband and I are just two more decent, honest hardworking people who were taken in by these corrupt liars. Following the events of 9/11/01 and the recession in FL we were both out of work and simply looking for a way to make a living. We had both thought in terms of doing something on the Internet so when we received the invitation to "lunch" at a local hotel we eagerly attended. We were impressed by the brief presentation and gladly signed up for the full day seminar the following week. (We didn't stay for lunch.) The daylong seminar, held at a very fine hotel in Orlando with quite nice breakfast and lunch offerings, was fascinating, exciting, exhausting and tantalizing. At day's end we left happily, having committed to 3 storefronts that, of course,we paid for with a Credit Card. We genuinely believed we had made a wise decision for our future. We expected to work hard at our new venture, but we certainly didn't expect to become millionaires. My husband had operated a very successful business for some years, was extremely computer savvy and with my sales and marketing background, we felt we certainly were ready to join the Internet. We did expect to realize a profit and with all the "help" and "guidance" StoresOnline promised to give us we felt reasonably confident. We fully expected to be contacted post Seminar with "additional" offers. So when we were called in regard to "Coaching" we listened carefully. After giving the matter great thought, we felt it was wise for us pay additional monies to get "professional" teaching as even with all our business experience, we were Internet novices. And, of course, like idiots, we immediately gave them our Credit Card numbers (because there was a limited number of coaches and only a limited number of spots for "Success" stories the deal had to be consumated that evening). But, oh how happy we were. We so looked forward to getting started and still believed we had made a sound decision. We're reasonably intelligent, aren't afraid of hard work, and StoresOnline, PMI Coaching, Links4Trade, and EMS Traffic would be behind us every step of the way. WE COULD NOT HAVE BEEN MORE WRONG! We contracted for our storefronts in September, 2002. Here it is 9 months later, June 29, 2003, and only one of our sites is up and running, no thanks whatsoever to SOL and their cheating cronies. My husband, who had no prior HTML experience, programmed the site himself as SOL was incapable of doing it. Even though we were published in April (we didn't give the OK for publishing, it was simply done) we have had a grand total of 2 sales. What else could we expect? We now know that SOL's templates (we hate those templates) aren't optimized for Search Engine placement. We own our own domain name, but save for the Home page URL, every other page is StoresOnline. Which means we can't get listed on the Search Engines! A brief rundown of heartaches encountered: From our first Coaching session we had to select five main product categories we wanted to sell, and for the next session had to list all our keywords for those products and write up promos for each product category, heavily weighted with keywords. We were forced into making a hasty decision on products we didn't even know if we could get so that our "homework assignment" for the next week could be done. We had asked for assistance on product selection and dropshipping but never received it. Being locked into these product categories created major heartaches as we discovered after the fact that we were unable to find dropshippers for some of them. PMI coaching does absolutely nothing for its subscribers. All they give you is a raft of web addresses that you must visit and read. You absolutely drown in the printed word and end up drained and more confused than ever. Our Coach, Brent Larson, was very pleasant but provided no guidance. Our sessions, marketed at being 30 minutes each, more frequently were 20 minutes and after a bit of chit chat, consisted of Brent giving us our homework for the next week: More reading. Nothing else. When we inquired about certain things, like META tags, Brent brushed it off with: "You don't need to do that, SOL does that." Ha, not so. The META tags SOL put in weren't right and my husband ended up doing them over. As part of our "coaching" Brent even tried to sell us 2 products: A security program for our own computers and a tax package! We declined. Brent wasn't happy and the last time I spoke with him made one last ditch effort to get us to buy. He didn't succeed. After our last session Brent assured us we could call on him at any time, he was still our coach. He lied. We did try to reach him after our sessions ended, but he ignored us as if he'd never even heard of us. As for SOL, Customer Service is an oxymoron. There is NO service whatsoever. It is virtually impossible to reach anyone. If you do manage to get a representative they are incompetent, don't bother to resond to your questions, and simply tell you to read such and such a tutorial. Phone calls are never returned, promised e-mails never arrive. Their programmers, too, are incompetent. Our package was assigned to David Labbe, who didn't know how to do anything so he just let our package sit on his desk for weeks. SOL is supposed to program 25 products. When we sent our material in my husband had already programmed close to 40 products. SOL didn't do any product programming. We did have to use their boilerplate for the Order Page. Regrettably, there is also no Quality Control at SOL and they just couldn't understand why we wanted incorrectly spelled "asterix" changed to the proper "asterisk". We were told asterisk isn't an English word and there are many different acceptable spellings. Huh? Their server was very touchy and frequently not operational. Makes it real hard to get into their Storebuilder tool to work on your site. They really didn't care when they were down. Naturally, they don't care about their customers. Anything we wanted done programming wise, like moving a line from the top of the page to the bottom was met with "that can't be done". How many times we heard that phrase I don't recall. But everything they said couldn't be done, was done to our satisfaction by my husband who gave himself a crash course in HTML. They did tell us, they could "try" to do it, but we'd have to pay for the programming at $50.00/Hr. We declined their offer. Just two weeks ago when my husband tried to get into our site through the Storebuilder tool to add new products, we were denied access! It took three days to get to someone at SOL who informed us we hadn't paid for hosting and until we did our access would continue to be denied. We HAD paid for everything at the Seminar and the receipts to prove it. SOL insisted we hadn't and if we didn't cough up the money we would be shut off. After arguing we did pay the amount they claimed they were due so we couldn't be shut off! Links4Trade is a joke, too. As Platinum Subscribers we were told we would have a representative assigned specifically to us who would work one on one with us. That's another lie. We do not have a representative and won't be getting one. All we have access to is Links4Trade's software program and database. We get to plow through the database and request trades with sites we like. The database is never updated. Half of the sites are no longer in business. Many of the site descriptions are wrong. You think the URL you click on will bring you to a home and garden site, for example, and you end up at a site that makes business cards. This is Platinum Service? No, it's just one more falsehood. EMS traffic who supposedly supplies your 4,000 unique visitors is a joke. It's impossible to reach anyone at EMS. All communication is done via E-mail, several back and forth e-mails, with EMS promising they are sending you an answer. They never do. Trying to confirm they are sending unique visitors to your site can't be done. Maybe EMS is sending traffic to another site; they certainly aren't sending them to ours. These people have got to be put out of business. Believe me I haven't written about a lot of their shenanigans. All of us who've been hoodwinked must get the word out so that more good people aren't harmed. I can be reached at [email protected]. File every single report you can with your local agencies, file reports in Utah and Nationwide. This a a fraudulent scam perpetrated by lying scum. Read through all the Rip-off reports -there's lots of help and advice on who and how to contact. LET'S PUT THEM WHERE THEY BELONG: STORES OFFLINE! P.S. How anyone without a computer or at least some basic rudimentary knowledge is supposed to build Online Websites is beyond me. It's not even possible to complete the tutorials as you reach a point where you are told you must know HTML and if you don't know HTML there's no point in reading further! Pamela Sanford, Florida

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