To get ahead in the internet marketing field, it’s inevitable that you outsource certain portions of your workload instead of being a one man show. About 2 months back, I was considering between hiring a local intern vs. outsourcing online.
And I happened to chance upon a warrior special offer (WSO) that was providing traffic generation services for US$395 monthly with a results based money back guarantee. For those who haven’t heard of the WSOs before, they are special offers made available only at the Warrior Forum and have to be priced lower than what it retails elsewhere online. Do take a look at it by clicking here. They do have great deals from time to time and I have picked up a few gems previously. But in this particular situation, unfortunately I was to be the sucker.
Archive of the service provided in the WSO
I eventually decided to take up the traffic generation WSO over hiring an intern as the seller of the WSO, warrior member Deborah Avery seemed pretty decent, (200+ posts and decent content posts etc). I talked to her project manager KJ Ross over the phone and his answers to my questions seemed satisfying. Though in hindsight I sure looked like a fool. I realized that for whichever tough questions I asked KJ, he always replied me with the same line:
“We use propriety methods/technology to locate conversations throughout the internet to find conversations related to your website/niche and then generate comments/content there to lure traffic back to your website.”
I should have smelled a rat when he used the same line 4-5 times throughout our conversation.
Anyhow, the 1st week went by with KJ providing me with the keyword/conversation analysis that they had done. Their research was nothing to shout about, just some modifications here and there with regards to research methodology. But I didn’t care as I was merely interested in the results, and hey they guaranteed results else they would refund the money.
The 2nd week went by with zip! Nada! Nothing! And KJ apologized (after I looked for him on Skype) and mentioned that there will be some delays due to overload of clients..blablabla…Well things like that happen and so I put up with it, but week 3 passed by and it was already entering week 4 with ZERO results. There were other warriors in contact with me that were also experiencing the same delay issues and disappointment. It was then that everything came crashing down. I emailed/called Deborah Avery (keeping in mind I’m based in Singapore and purposely stayed up until the wee hours so that it’d be a decent time when she picks up my call) but could not reach her. Deborah Avery had mass messaged all her clients apologizing for the delays and promising us an extra week of work (hah what work) and a special 1-2 hour search engine optimization (SEO) consultation with KJ Ross.
I had no interest in her extra offer as I know my search engine optimization stuff well enough and wasn’t interested in wasting time getting advice from an “unknown”. If it was Aaron Wall of www.seobook.com, Dan thies etc, then I’ll definitely bite.
So I emailed Deborah again asking for a refund. Got no reply for a couple of days. Keeping mind that I was a customer and had not received any results, I quickly filed a paypal dispute. Managed to get ahold of KJ Ross and he said he was discussing with Deborah with regards to my refund. Eventually Deborah refunded but the status of the payment was set to pending. Then I knew it was almost a lost cause already.
True enough, 2 weeks went by and Paypal eventually got back to me. Telling me that Deborah Avery did not have money in her account and they were only able to get me back $18.10 of the $395 I paid. I wished that I had paid with a credit card instead of using my Paypal funds, else I could have filed a chargeback and probably gotten the full sum back.
I heard from another warrior that Deborah was having problems with her project manager KJ Ross and that he could not deliver on the services. And that she could not refund the clients because no client continued with the monthly service. A really lame excuse though, yeah who would continue paying $395 for the 2nd month when the 1st month yielded absolutely nothing.
Continued to call/email Deborah but there was absolute silence. At least she bothered to talk and explain to the other warrior. For me and probably a lot of other warriors who purchased her service, we did not even get a “sorry”. Overall I guess it was a well planned out scam, post a few hundred posts at the Warrior Forum and orchestrate something like this. From what I estimate, there seemed to be 15-20 warriors who took her up on this service. So that’s around a neat US$6000. I guess there will always be people who are really desperate for money to do something like this.
Total Losses
US$376.90 (395-18.10)
US$1000+ (profits from the website dropped as I refrained from any new traffic generation tactics for the whole 1 month)
Opportunity cost of hiring an intern
If you happen to know Deborah or KJ Ross (I doubt those are their real names), do let them know that whatever goes around comes around. Deborah Avery does run a nifty business at http://www.intergalacticmarketing.com providing Search Engine Marketing Services too. I hope her clients there don’t get ripped up too.
These are their contacts which I can never get through too.
KJ Ross
webskillz@gmail.com
201-340-2265
Skype: webskillz
Deborah Avery
davery@spiderdiner.com
206-347-7067
Skype: dmused
126 SW 148th C100-323
Burien, WA 98166 US
Deborah Avery’s Pic on Warrior Forum
Lessons Learnt:
- $395 was too cheap a deal for what she promised. As usual one falls prey to the human sin of greed and wanting to believe it as I wanted to get some work off my hands. Cheap can be good, but seldom is.
- Never buy a high priced item/service from someone who doesn’t even show a real pic. (haha)
- As one fellow warrior Ron advised, treat it as a lesson learnt and move on. After all, it ain’t productive getting angry over something you cannot control. Wise words.
- I’m hiring my own temp full timer in Dec for 1 grand and have more control over the work quality and work plan. I might even hire a team and create my own traffic generation service for others, and of course I won’t rip them off.
*Note: This post was not intended to be negative against the Warrior Forum or WSO section. I will still purchase products from WSOs when there are gems, but probably not high priced services for a while. And scam artists like Deborah and KJ will always exist in all forms and everywhere.
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