Website Reviews by marie

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Member Since:Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Reviews posted by marie

	1. blockbuster.com Wednesday, October 03, 2007 @ 3:10:00 PM I work with disabled adults. One of these clients received a gift card for Christmas 2005 in the amount of $30.00. It was misplaced for a while and when we found it, I took this client to the local Blockbuster to spend it. I was shocked and dismayed to be informed that these gift cards expire 1 year from date of issue! How does a gift card which has been purchased and paid for EXPIRE? Imagine what a difficult concept this is to explain to a mentally challenged adult! I don't understand this and I imagine that there are many others who have suffered a loss like this. I doubt that the purchaser is made aware of this at the time of purchase. In any case, 1 year expiration seems like it is much too short. As a result of this and other unfortunate experiences with blockbuster, I will no longer do business there. Life is too short to tolerate this sort of aggravation when there are so many other places to rent or purchase videos. marie Helpful (0)
	2. investools.com Monday, May 14, 2007 @ 11:45:00 PM Maan, Please reconsider paying for these seminars. I was a novice investor when I attended the Get Motivated! Seminar, at which Phil Town was demonstrating the software. Based on the reputation of the speakers at the Get Motivated! Seminar, I thought it might not be a scam. Unfortunately, now that I have taken the course, gotten the materials, studied a lot and searched for stocks a lot, and lost money (only paper trading, thank goodness) and gotten no e-mail support as was promised, I think it is a scam AND a ripoff. I did not learn anything I didn't already know from my Investments class in college. Your two-day course is probably the Basic Stocks course, which is required just to be able to use the web site. I never did "get it" - I don't think there is anything to "get" (I took the Associates course, which was 6 months when I took it from Success Magazine Investor Education for $4,999. Later I found out the INVESTools "brand" had the same thing (Associates) for 9 months, for the same price. Boy did I feel gyped just by that!) I spent an average of 3 hours per night searching and studying. I never switched from paper trading to real trading. I lost a bunch of money in my original paper trading account (just trying things out), and started over with what I could afford to put into the market (OK, really a little more) of $5,000. Within two months, I had lost 15% of the account, at which point I decided (based also on some other things) that the program was a scam, and started asking for my money back. Haven't got it yet, but haven't filed a lawsuit yet, either - might be coming, who knows? Before you spring for the $2,000 to whatever - buy a basic investing book - it is a lot cheaper than Investools, and will not try to sell you another $5,000 to $24,000 book. "How to Make Money In Stocks" by William O'Neill shows the "CANSLIM" method of investing, which is very close to the Phase I of INVESTools - picking a good stock in which to invest. "Technical Analysis for Dummies" by Barbara Rockefeller has all the technical analysis information INVESTools does (all the way through Advanced Technicals, at least), AND warns you about what you are getting into, which INVESTools doesn't. At least read these two books before you attend the 2-day class. Then compare what you see in the class to what you read, and see if you get anything out of the class that you didn't get from the book. By the way, you won’t get more out of the second day than you got out of the first, so ask for your money back at the end of the first day. You can also get some good information from Phil Town’s book, “Rule #1 Investing” (rule #1 is “Don’t lose money” – duh) and some information on FREE web sites that will give you the same information as INVESTools. Finally, if you absolutely have to have the INVESTools materials, you can get them from e-Bay at maybe just a little bit more than they are actually worth (a couple of hundred dollars for Advanced Options). If you go to this seminar, at least half the time will be devoted to trying to sell you on the higher priced courses. I bought into the Associates program, and was NOT impressed. I also bought the Advanced Options course on e-Bay, and discovered that the trades they were recommending in the book were not those found by the web site searches. They tell you they are selling you a financial education, and that you will be able to make money from only the Basic Stocks course (yes, that is probably what your 2 day course is). I can only tell you my experience – I was told I did not see an advanced technical signal when they were evaluating a losing trade. Advanced Technicals in INVESTools is at least Masters (self-study, $12,000) level, or PhD level (you may get a live class, but it costs $24,000), well above the Basic Stocks course, or even the Basic Options course I took. Also, when you take the Associates Course, you will be told that you must come up with your own trading system. I took the course to use THEIR trading system, not to have to make one up on my own based on NO experience! See this post on Joe Citarelli's blog for the view from a former instructor: (sorry I can't get you straight to the web site, but this site won't let me post links) find the joecit.com web site, then add this after ".com": /2007/03/13/response-to-investools-inc-post/#comments. Brad Moore says further down that THERE IS NO SYSTEM! This is a quote from that post: "There really is no sytem actually. All they will do is ask you to pay up for the next level of education with promises that profits will come with that next class (”You must be a PhD to make money.” Then, “You have to learn currencies to make money” etc.). Each class gets further and further away from the method they use as a marketing tool (basic fundamentals and MACD/Stochastic/MA technicals ie red/green arrows, plus industry group analysis, etc.). There is an entry/exit system involved in the basics, but they also exclude some of the most important aspects of what makes a trader successful (namely controlling risk). I can testify that in the 1.5 years I worked at SWIM and of the many hundreds (thousands?) of students I met, only a handful were profitable traders. Many wiped out accounts or took retirement capital down 30-50%. It was a very serious problem. I tried to make changes within the company, alerting management to issues in the sales tactics, but was routinely brushed off. So I guess the short answer is that no, the method really doesn’t work. At least I have never seen any evidence to suggest that more than a handful of people (who, I might add, were not even trading the method!) who went through the program were profitable." I have e-mailed Brad Moore (you can too, there is contact information available) and he confirmed the information in the post, and that he did post the comments, and did work for INVESTools. INVESTools teaches you short-term trading. I have read that it is called "swing trading", although I think the time frame is actually a little longer than the one to four days time frame shown on Investopedia – it seems to be two to six weeks. This is VERY risky - although INVESTools does not caution you enough about this. They will tell you "this is a little risky" but do not impress upon you EXACTLY HOW risky it really is. Do not believe the amount of time they say you need to spend in learning. You will be living and breathing the market – watching ALL the “keeping up with the market” shows on TV, etc.. The one thing I really learned in the time I spent with INVESTools is that almost every stock, no matter how good or bad it is, will move with the market - so why bother with spending the time to know where the market is and try to predict it and/or a specific stock, when I can just put the money in a money market fund or mutual fund, and go on with my life? And now, finally, look at their December 2006 10-K on the SEC web site (EDGAR). They say they have more than 285,000 graduates of their basic courses (read this as the Basic Stocks course, which is required just to use the web site, unless they fudged and these are the “free preview” class attendees) and 85,400 subscribers to the web site. What happened to the other nearly 200,000 who shelled out between $1,000 and $3,000 just to be able to access the web site? Why did they not renew the web site if it was such a great tool? This is an over 70% FAILURE rate (199,600 who didn't renew the web site, divided by 285,000). Doesn't this tell us something? By the way, if you get free access to the web site before the class, do some searching as directed in the materials. Then start wondering (and perhaps asking in class) why the stocks you found while searching are not the stocks that are being demonstrated ... (see the Elite Trader web site, "Investor's Toolbox (www.investools.com)" thread, page 4, for a somewhat scrambled, but pointed, description of why the INVESTools method actually doesn't work, and more of what you will be subjected to in the 2 day workshop in two posts by Grob109: (again, find the elitetrader.com website, then add "/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=60624&perpage=6&pagenumber=4", and look for Grob109's two posts). Marie Helpful (0)
	3. centerformassage.com Wednesday, May 09, 2007 @ 2:20:00 PM This one is the BEST!!! Marie Helpful (0)
	4. investools.com Tuesday, April 24, 2007 @ 1:50:00 AM While they have great salesmen who use very sophisticated techniques to sell you their training, the training is not up to par, and does not succeed in giving you "financial freedom" as promised. Then when you ask for a refund, they say "you got what you contracted for" because they provided you with useless materials. If you want to know how to do technical trading, which is what Investools teaches, try "Technical Analysis for Dummies" by Barbara Rockefeller. After spending over $6,000 with Investools, and asking for a refund because their training did not fulfill their promises of never having to worry about money again, I was amazed to find a "Dummies" book that taught the same thing they do! It, however, actually WARNS you that you are taking risks, as opposed to Investools, which poo-poo's the market risk. And if you try to cancel, they will keep you hanging on as long as they can. Don't wait for them to answer you by phone, send a letter by some method that requires a signature at the receiving end - Fed Ex or US mail, certified mail, return receipt requested. Then immediately dispute the charges with your credit card company without waiting for a reply - because you won't get one until your time to dispute is up, no matter how many times you try to contact them. You will continuously get voice mail, and no reply to your voice mail. With the credit card dispute - do not file it by phone! You must make it in writing, and provide evidence. If you are disputing based on the quality of goods or services (and you probably are, unless you went to one of their trainings, cancelled while they say they let you, and they still charged you), you MUST send a letter from an expert saying that the quality of the instruction is not acceptable. (I made the mistake of not doing this, and will be paying off the over $6,000 they convinced me to put on my credit card over the next two to three years.) I have read that you can hire an expert through the local bar association, or you might try an independent stock broker (mine can't do it because of the liability that might attach to his major company) or a college instructor in finance or the stock market. A former Investools instructor posted his opinion at Joe Citarellis' blog - at joecit.com Search for the March 13, 2007 post entitled "Response to INVESTools, Inc. post" posted on March 13, 2007 at 6:11 p.m., filed under "General" (sorry, I tried to include the link, but this web site does not allow links). (Or google this phrase: "I once worked for INVESTools and was FIRED for trying to change the way they do business".) The former instructor's comment is the first comment, from Brad (Moore). If you cannot find any other expert, you might at least try sending a copy of this in to the credit card company. Also, you most likely need to dispute within 180 days of the original charge - so if you are just figuring out that you should be disputing, and it is 179 days past the charge date, DISPUTE NOW and use the web site above for your lack of quality documentation. I have also read that a merchant will lose their ability to accept Mastercard or Visa if they have more than 1% disputes - so if you honestly have a problem with the education you received, do not hesitate to file the credit card dispute! Even if you do not win, perhaps the credit card companies will see that the merchant is generating dissatisfaction amongst its customers, and is not necessarily an honest merchant, and cut off their privileges to accept the credit card. This company took over $6,000 that I could have used for my retirement, and when asked for a refund, stalled. They finally responded to my request to cancel additional web time I had been induced to purchase with more impossible promises (of course, not enforceable promises, but still, that's the only inducement to give them your money!), above and beyond the original six months, after I sent a formal letter by Fed Ex AND long distance fax. However, they dishonestly retained a portion of the refund, stating that it was for USED web time, when in fact the time it covered did not even start until after the original six month period ended, and it only took me until the start of the fifth month of the original six month period to know enough to ask for a refund. They also tried to link the purchase of education with the purchase of web time; so beware, they make the transaction so complicated the credit card company has a hard time sorting it out. Be specific in your dispute letter as to what exactly was purchased, and provide copies of the contracts. If you can argue that they did not provide what they contracted for, point by point, you have a stronger case. For example, their instructors NEVER answered my hot line e-mails, sent through their own e-mail system, but because they were sent through their system, I do not have copies. So make screen prints of those e-mails! (Press Ctrl-PrtScn, then paste into a Word document.) Oh, they had no problem answering the e-mails where we were making payment arrangements … This company engages in high-pressure, sophisticated sales tactics disguised as "education". If you attend one of their “classes” at least 40-50% of the class will be sales pitches for more, higher-priced classes. The so-called education they provide can be much less expensively, more honestly, provided by a Dummies book! Not only the basics, but all the way through Advanced Technical Analysis is covered by this one book that is less than $25 retail! And there are more books out there that can be found, without paying $6,000 to $25,000. And don’t even think that you will save time in learning by taking their classes – not true at all, no matter what they tell you to induce you to buy. When you spend the time they originally tell you you need to spend to make large profits, and don’t make money, they will tell you you are not spending enough time learning the market. Duh, if I wanted to live the market, I would have become a stockbroker! Read the information from the former "instructor" Brad Moore (remember, google "I once worked for INVESTools and was FIRED for trying to change the way they do business" or joecit.com/2007/03/13/response-to-investools-inc-post/ - put the appropriate four letters and // before the joecit.com). If his post is not still there, post a request here and I will find a way to get you a copy if you need it. Based on my very unhappy experience with Investools, I could certainly not recommend that anyone else purchase their education. Marie Helpful (0)
	5. badgirlsclub.com Tuesday, March 27, 2007 @ 9:54:00 PM this is the best show ever i love it..so much drama its awesome..i cant stand kerry though cuz she is a two face..i love amy cuz she dont give wat anyone says shes like me tells it like it is! MARIE Helpful (0)
	6. intimaca.com Thursday, January 18, 2007 @ 8:27:00 PM I bought maca from them three weeks ago and I did not like their products. They don`t sell quality products. marie Helpful (0)
	7. fergus1.com Wednesday, January 10, 2007 @ 11:37:00 PM An amazing artist. I feel he really deserves more attention. Would make a fantastic children's book illustrator. Check out his work you wont be disappointed. Marie Helpful (0)
	8. silkpeach.co.uk Saturday, January 06, 2007 @ 10:05:00 AM I was charged twice for same item. Nothing arrived. Chased several times. Told items on way. They weren't. Eventually got full refund but a lot of hassle. Would never use again and certainly not recommend. Marie Helpful (0)
	9. nannydaycare.com Thursday, December 21, 2006 @ 6:53:00 PM I found child care for my 2 children within minutes after logging onto the site. Very easy to use. Marie Helpful (0)