Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Good News and Bad News


Costs keep rising and at least my wages at my regular job have gone way down over the past few years. I make considerably less per year now then I did in 2008. In the past several years I have really been searching for a way to supplement my wages. I helped start a bike shop in Moultrie. The bike shop has done OK and is not losing money, but is not profitable enough to even put back a 10th of what I have lost in wages and in increases in cost over the same time period.

What is one to do? Well if you are me you look for other sources of income to replace the ones you have lost. I have tried several online businesses in the past and on occasion I have found one that works like it says. You have to expect a little hype from those selling their programs but many times you find ones that just come right out and lie to you without even blinking an eye.  That is why it is so refreshing to find a program that does exactly what they say it does.

First allow me to tell you about at least one company that in my humble opinion you should avoid at all cost. The company is Web.com. This company has a marketing campaign and sales force that is deceptive to say the least. Here is what happened to me, and while some of it is my own fault, the fact is they literally stole money from me and probably from others.

In July of 2012 a salesperson from Web.com called and told me they had heard I was interested is setting up a website for my business. This would have been the bicycle business. I told then I was indeed interested but was not financially able to do anything right then. “Not a problem at all says the sales person we have a “special promotion” we will build your site and a facebook page for your business and you don’t have to pay until 30 days (the salesperson originally said 60 days) after the site is complete and if you are not happy with the site, you won’t owe us one cent.”  

They ask me numerous questions about the business including bank info which when they did I again asked about the FREE TRIAL. I was assured that no money would be taken out of my account until the Trial Period was up. Originally they had said 60 days, but before the person finished talking that had dwindled to 30 days.  Again though I asked specifically about when the money would be drafted form my account since there was very little in the account and that the amount they mentioned would cause an overdraft. I was again assured that the money would not come out until they had built the entire site and that I was happy with their service. Guess what happened less than 48 hours had gone by when the bank called to tell me they had paid an ACH from Web.com for services that I had ordered and it overdrafted the account, could I please put additional funds into the account ASAP.

I called their customer service, which is pretty much a joke and was assured that it was an error and that they would immediately refund the money. I informed them they should definitely refund the money and that I wanted to cancel the entire deal immediately.  I was told they would do that since they had not even begun to work on the site. About a week later I received an email from them stating that the account had been cancelled and they were issuing a refund of the full amount.  A few days later the refund was in my account so I thought they were legit and that everything was good.

I do not use that particular account much, putting small amounts in it now and then and just covering a couple of ACH withdrawals that I had set up and have never changed over to my primary account, so really did not pay a whole lot of attention to the account until I received notice in the mail from the bank that the account was overdraft and got a call from Web.com saying that my website service would be “interrupted” if I did not make the payment. I again called their customer service and explained that I did not have an account with them. The young lady on the phone agreed at first then during the conversation found where someone on their end had reinstated the account and over the past year they had sifted a total of over 1800.00 from my account without my authorization. She said she would process a refund request right away and she actually told me what her company owed me due to the company’s “mistake”.

It has been almost a month now and so far they have refunded about 400.00 of the 1800.00, will not acknowledge that they owe the money and refuse to speak with me on the phone. When I call customer service I am told that the only way to request a refund is to send a request in writing to that department and they give me the email of that department.  They sent me a survey in which I told them again that the service was not acceptable and that they needed to process a refund for the other 1400.00. So far I have heard absolutely nothing about the 1400.00 they still owe me. 

The people that actually are responsible for website design and publishing etc may do a good job, I don’t know, have not gotten past their lousy business practices. I know I should have been more careful and caught this much earlier, but that does not mean they should be allowed to keep money that they had no right to take. I have contacted a couple of attorneys and am told that the amount is really not enough for them to bother with. If I could prove other damages they may be willing to take it on contingency but for this little bit it just isn’t worth their time.

OK then, enough about bad things like Web.com, let’s talk about good stuff.  About a week ago I found a program that I had signed up for months ago and it got stuck on the back burner. With my schedule and the kids and grandkids etc some things just slip through the cracks, so it was with this program. It is called Free and Powerful. Even though that is its name and it is pretty powerful, I am not sure why they try to convince anyone that anything is truly FREE.  There is alway7s some cost though it may not be in money. In the case of this program, you can “join” the program FREE, but you really can’t do anything with it without spending a few dollars. Not a tremendous amount, you can actually make money on it in a very short time, one of the programs allows you to make 20.00 for everyone you give a free debit card to, and they get 20.00 too, so you can make 40-60-80.00 just by giving away a few debit cards. The details are here. I noted a post on the group’s facebook page where one person is only promoting that particular part of the program even though there is quite a bit more. For 10.00 you get a special advertising program to advertise the Free and Powerful Program and that helps you get the word out about the program. Then there a motivational program that you can buy, or not. If you do when someone else buys it from your link you get 27.00, so you only have to get 1 sale to break even. There is an online University with Paul Birdsall , you may have heard of him, he has done quite a bit around the web for several years and has a good reputation.

You don’t have to buy every program all at once, buy what you can afford, promote that and get some cash to buy the others. If you use the Debit card program you end up making 20.00 for each card you give away and everyone should be able to give 10-20 of those away in a very short time, If all the programs cost 200.00 total and you get 200.00 form giving away 10 Debit cards then your cost is indeed 0 dollars so technically I guess they can say it is FREE, even though there is an investment of your time. According to the program directions if you do everything in the right order and do everything you need to do correctly, you should make around 300,000.00 per year. I know that is not the 10,000.00 an hour that some programs would promote, but if I were making 300,000.00 per year, even if I paid 50% in taxes and was able to spend 150,000.00 it would be a good deal more than what I make now and the program parts I have don s far have been actually pretty fun. It does not seem like work at all. Right now I have invested a total of 37.00 out of pocket and have 40.00 set aside to “fund” my debit card. If everything works out after I fund the debit card with 40.00 there will be 60.00 on it. When the friends I have already given card links to fund theirs I will get 20.00 from each of them too so I should have 240.00 on my card when the people that I have given the cards to so far fund their card.  I should get my card in about 5 days, so within 24 hours after I get it, I should have more than twice all the money I paid out back in my account, less than a week and I will be in profit.

I would ask that you do me a favor and at least check the program out at this link, but really you will be doing yourself an even bigger favor, so check it out. There would appear to be some real money to be made with this program, and I fully intend to get a share of it, why not join me and I will do whatever I can to help you make some money too.


You Have a great day, watch for my next post, I will keep everyone updated on the Free and Powerful Program.



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