Social media has become a minefield for nearly every business, religion, color, sex and political bent. And unless everyone actively fights back against the dishonesty and smears by those who wish them harm, it will spell doom for our entire society. Look around - then tell me I am wrong.
Every business, no matter how good they are, will get complaints, simply because some people cannot be pleased no matter how hard a business might try. And there are those who have a different agenda - they may be a competitor, out to smear their competition. And now, in today's "cancel culture" world, there are those malcontents whose only joy in life comes from finding things to be offended by, and then smear anyone who does not believe the same things they believe.
Until now, we have been remiss in dealing with fraudulent complaints directed at IntelliBiz and "The Simple Man's Guide to Real Estate". But now the time has come to take on the smear merchants, and that is what this post will do. We are not perfect, but all the "complaints" - every last one - on the "gripe" sites like Rip-off Report and many others are either inaccurate, "sour grapes" or just plain bogus. Some were even posted by people who never even purchased our materials. We will list some here as examples of the dishonesty, and provide our response.
One complaint states that our materials are "basic and out of date." Upon checking, the person who posted that complaint never even ordered our program. The fact remains that our materials are updated constantly, and he would know that if he had ever seen our materials.
One person claimed the info in our program can be found free on the internet. While many methods are widely published in condensed form, the bulk of our material is original (and copyrighted) material, and goes into detail, and our contract software is patented and trademarked.
One person who posted on several gripe sites claim we charge a "hidden fee" of $9.95/month. When we checked out that person, it was discovered that he purchased our materials on our E-Z payment plan of $9.95/month. It was not a "hidden fee" - it was the cost of the program materials in a monthly payment plan, which, by the way, he refused to pay. He literally stole our materials. When we sent him a bill, he filed those bogus complaints. And that is the reason we no longer offer any payment plan.
One lady posted she did not get everything she was supposed to receive, but did not bother to retract her complaint even after she discovered she did get everything - she had not read the directions, so she had not located the 24 Bonus Ebooks on one of the CD's, or the contract software on another.
One customer complained she was unable to connect with her free, lifetime mentor. Upon checking, it was discovered that she sent 3 "requests" - empty emails without any actual request. We responded to each, stating she had to at least tell the mentor what she needed help with. She did not respond to any of our emails. We have no idea what she expected, but our mentors are not psychic.
A social media "influencer", or so she thinks because she had over 100K followers on Twitter, demanded a free copy of our materials, claiming she would give us a "good review", and if we refused, she would post a bad review. We advised her that we do not want nor need phony reviews and do not cave to extortion. She then proceeded to trash us with bogus complaints on the gripe sites. We were successful in getting her Twitter account shut down for her illegal activity.
One person even posted a complaint because we did not have any customers from Falls Church, VA, as if that was even under our control. We are relatively certain that there are other communities we do not have clients in, as well - but not many, as we have served over 316,000 customers to date in 19 countries.
Here's the point: anyone can post anything on the gripe sites, even anonymously. The gripe sites do not vet them to find out if there may be any grain of truth. For that reason, alone, only foolish people would give any credibility to anything posted thereon. If you want to check on a company to see if they are legitimate, and see if there are any vetted complaints, check with the Better Business Bureau or other credible consumer advocacy sites that require a poster to at least identify themselves and accept responsibility for what they post. If a person has a valid complaint, they will post to the BBB. If they only post on a smear site, it is likely because they could not authenticate their complaint with the BBB.
To make it easy to check up on us, you can view our BBB report here...
As you can see, we have been in business since 1989 and maintain a rating of A+ at the Better Business Bureau. You might also notice we are not "BBB Accredited", which only means we are NOT a dues paying member, so you can rest assured we have not "purchased" that rating with payments to the BBB.
We are not perfect by any means, but our program works, it works well, and thousands have profited from it.
'Nuff said.
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