**WON** Cheated consumer

[Omolayo]

Hello,

Please I need your honest advise on this matter. I registered on a 4 days training programme titled public speaker university offered by Andy Harrington. I went for Andy's seminar beginning of April and ended up signing up for a 4days course due to commence 30 June 2016. A deposit of £500 was paid on the day to show commitment and a final balance of £2,000 was paid on 29th April.

What really got me excited about the course was that there is a bonus offer of £20 for every of Andy's book promoted. I became an affiliate upon registration and I was sent a link to promote his books and also able to track books sold and bonuses earned. here is a cut from the email sent on the bonus offer

As part of the package you received when you enrolled you also had included as a bonus my 'Serve & Sell System' a fully automated highly converting sales funnel that is designed to covert leads into buyers!!.
Now all you have to do is promote the link below, which gives away a free copy of my book Passion Into Profit, and for every free book you give away I'll add £20 to your affiliate commission!! That's right you give away free stuff and I pay you for it
Your affiliate link below.....
https://inspwr.isrefer.com/go/passion/a14787
You can check your commission and track sales using the details below..


My objective was to sell £125 books and make my course fees back. I literally got so exited about this, calling friends and family to introduce their love ones to me so I can tell them about Andy and offer the book to them. The book is free but a postage cost of £4.99 is required in order to get a copy. I decide to pay the postage cost as people where not subscribing to pay the postage cost as this was the first time they are hearing about Andy, for over a month, I was speaking to friends, family, friends of friends etc about Andy, his free book, getting their contact address email, number and ordering the book for them. I was also able to track the bonus and I ordered for 125 books sent out through Andy's company.

The unfortunate thing for me was that no one called me from Andy's office that I am not allowed to pay for the postage on behalf of the people receiving the books. After, I have accumulated £2500 bonus, I requested for payment but I was told that is not the way it works. I asked why was I not told this earlier but I was accused that I might have made the details up.

I have also requested for the cancellation of the course paid if the bonus will not be paid but I have been totally ignored. No one is responding to my emails and not one is picking up my calls.

The course I registered for is scheduled to start 30 June. I attached the booking condition & terms of payment given to me when I registered. That is all I have from them in terms of their agreement and then the email on the bonus.

I have wasted my time, effort and paid for postage cost of £625 in sending out Andy's free books in addition to the course fee of £2,500 which I ignorantly taught I was going to get back through the bonus offered. Please I need your advice, have I got any right to fight this back or have I made a big silly mistake here?

Thank you

[EXC]

Re: Cheated consumer

Hiya

Can you answer some questions for us:

1) How and when did you pay each of the postage amounts?

2) Do you have a copy of the response the customer gets to filling in the order on the link?

The unfortunate thing for me was that no one called me from Andy's office that I am not allowed to pay for the postage on behalf of the people receiving the books. After, I have accumulated £2500 bonus, I requested for payment but I was told that is not the way it works. I asked why was I not told this earlier but I was accused that I might have made the details up.

3) Do you have it in writing that they told you you're not allowed to pay for the postage?

4) Did you receive any terms & conditions or anything else in writing about the serve & sell system other than what you posted from the e-mail?

Your affiliate link below.....
https://inspwr.isrefer.com/go/passion/a14787
You can check your commission and track sales using the details below..

5) I assume the above is a link to your sales account, what does it currently say?


@Amethyst

[Omolayo]

Re: Cheated consumer

1) I paid for the postage using my debit card. I ordered in blocks so if I have details of say 20 people, I order them one by one
2) Yes I have it. The first thing I did was to order the book for myself and read before telling people about it. I got
a) a transaction confirmation
b)invoice/receipt for your purchase
c) thank you for ordering new book email
Please do you have an email I can forward this to?

3) I do not have it in writing that I am not allowed to pay for postage
4) I did not receive anything else
5) the link is just a tracking system on commission earned. I can also forward this to you.

[Celestine]

Re: Cheated consumer

This has all the hallmarks of a scam....or at the very least very aggressive and misleading sales practices.

Have you discussed with Trading Standards at all? Might well be worth a discussion.

How would you feel if I added the words 'Andy Harrington Books' to your threads title so we can see if other people have been affected because your thread will come up in any google searching they do?

[Celestine]

Re: Cheated consumer

Omalayo - you can send docs to admin@legalbeagles.info x

[Celestine]

Re: Cheated consumer

Crikey! Did you Google him before you went on this course? He has LOTS of form for this sort of stuff

He needs a Beagle bite.

http://forum.culteducation.com/read.php?4,63682,79764

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/a-rev...-of-easy-money

[Omolayo]

Re: Cheated consumer

Yes I googled him and I went for is free seminars on public speaking on two or three occasions. He got me this time round with his bonus strategy which I taught would recoup back the payment made for his training programme.

[Omolayo]

Re: Cheated consumer

I haven't discuss with Trading Standards but might. I want to try and recover my cost from him first. Over £3k is a lot to me. May be if I write an email again or a letter from a lawyer could make him return my payment but I need professional advise on what to send to him. Do you have a lawyer you could recommend if not too expensive. The course is scheduled for 30 June and he could at least consider refunding my payment .

I won't want to add 'Andy Harrington Books' to my threads title for now.

Thanks

[wales01man]

Re: Cheated consumer

Am I reading this right? The OP gives away books but the receipient pays 4.99 postage and the OP gets paid 20 quid for each FREE book if this is true and its not a scam I would believe politicians tell the truth

[Omolayo]

Re: Cheated consumer

I'm afraid I have fallen for this.

[wales01man]

Re: Cheated consumer

I sincerely hope you get your money back whatever way this conman defends it its a scam

[EXC]

Re: Cheated consumer

I was thinking that you might be able to make a claim on the basis that in the absense of any terms to the contrary, as they repeatedly accepted your payments for the book orders it was an implied term that they should.

I think the question is whether they knowingly accepted your payments. You've sent me confirmation from them for an order in your name but it just gives the last 4 digits of the credit card number so for the other orders that you paid for it might be tough to argue that they knew you were paying for them.

I'd like to hear what [MENTION=6]Amethyst[/MENTION] thinks.

[Omolayo]

Re: Cheated consumer

I think they knowingly accepted payment because confirmation sent to all my contacts will have the same last 4 digits. Also the pattern in which I placed the order, I gather details from people first and did the order in blocks. I have a record of all of my contacts. I was doing this with the hope that this contacts could be my potential customers too in future. They won't have seen such pattern of sales at once especially from a new affiliate member since if people are meant to order by themselves, it won't have happened in blocks. They were posting the books and also sending confirmation emails. My contacts sometimes call back to thank me that they've received the confirmation and when they get the books. They left me to keep ordering for over a month. I now requested for payment and they told me I used the same card. They did but they just left me because they knew they'll tell me it doesn't work like that so I'll end up losing.

[Amethyst]

Re: Cheated consumer

I think they knowingly accepted payment because confirmation sent to all my contacts will have the same last 4 digits. Also the pattern in which I placed the order, I gather details from people first and did the order in blocks. I have a record of all of my contacts. I was doing this with the hope that this contacts could be my potential customers too in future. They won't have seen such pattern of sales at once especially from a new affiliate member since if people are meant to order by themselves, it won't have happened in blocks. They were posting the books and also sending confirmation emails. My contacts sometimes call back to thank me that they've received the confirmation and when they get the books. They left me to keep ordering for over a month. I now requested for payment and they told me I used the same card. They did but they just left me because they knew they'll tell me it doesn't work like that so I'll end up losing.

Hi

When you purchased the books for your customers, did you enter their email addresses, and postal addresses or your own ?

I have had a look in the back end and you do appear to have used the same name a few times to order, but not too many duplicates over the 128 books, maybe 20% of the sales will be void reasonably as going to the same individual.

There are no terms and conditions within the site that I can see.

The information on the affiliate program does state the commission earnt is the amount you stated.

However I think their issue may be that it was supposed to be an affiliate programme - so the individuals were supposed to visit the website following links you have placed in emails, on web pages, forums etc etc and then read the website, listen to the horrendous video and potentially purchase a book - ie they are interested in Andy's money making programme - your affiliate link shows only 39 hits and no sales/sign ups etc - half those may well be from here now. But you purchased the books yourself ( on behalf of others ) which didn't come from the affiliate link, so you haven't helped market Andy's ''services'' etc.

BUT there's no specific terms for the 'affiliate programme'.

The only mention is this

My Commission Structure

Your commission structure shows you what commissions you will receive for selling products or subscription plans. The Product and Subscription Plan Commission sections show you the specific commissions that you will be paid for certain products and/or subscription plans. The Default Commissions section will show you the commissions you will get paid for any product and/or subscription plan listed in the Products/Subscription Plans section above.

The Levels represent the commission you will be paid based on whether you make the sale, or one of your sub-referral partners makes the sale. (Level 1 = You make the sale. Level 2 = Your sub-affiliate makes the sale.)

Pay-If-Unused represents the additional commission you will potentially receive. The actual commissions paid out to you or any sub-referral partners will be subtracted from this figure and any remaining commissions will be paid to you.

Pay Type specifies at what point you earn your commission. "On Payment" means that you will earn your commissions as the client pays for the order. "Up Front" means that you earn the entire commission as soon as the order is placed, regardless of whether the client makes any payments.

Which does not state sales must be through affiliate links / adverts / made by / paid for by individuals themselves etc.

Most affiliate terms will have rules against the affiliate earning commissions of his own clicks and purchases - eg for something like MoneySupermarket - if they paid £30 each time someone using your affiliate link, completed their details on the MS website to obtain a quote for car insurance... then if the affiliate clicked the link and entered someone different's details each time for quotes to get the £30 - they would be breaching the terms of the affiliate agreement.

If there is no agreement in your case other than the email ( which is very unclear ) and that paragraph or two on the back end of the website - then I don't think they have any legs to stand on - so far as I can see it simply states to sell a book at £4.99 postage you earn £20 commission.

If some of their argument is that you made up the people, you could send them some form of evidence of the people who ordered from you - and explain that you hoped they would become customers of yours once you progress through the programme ( which, sorry, I have no idea what it does - something about giving you confidence to go and do 'make-lots-of-money' pyramid selling speeches yourself ?? )

Check through all your paperwork and emails to see if there are any terms at all about this.

[Omolayo]

Re: Cheated consumer

I entered their email and postal address but in some cases where my friends/family sends details of their friends address without email and contact number, I have used their own email and number. Looking at it again, I think the system is picking up a contact for an email, so the contact is the same where I have used same email address even though postal address and postal name is different.

According to Andy, his speaker university programme is designed to bring the product out of someone based on experience, knowledge etc. gained over the years. So creating a product called Unique Branded System (UBS) and how it can be package e.g. in form of writing a book, organising seminars e.t.c to provide solution.

There are no other terms. The only paperwork I received was the form I filled when payment of £500 was made. I have scanned the back of the form which showed their terms. There are no other paperwork sent. The other email I have is the booking confirmation which has no terms and also, the receipt for the course fees. I can forward this too. That is all nothing else.

Thank you so much for your time in looking into this.