Storesonline Review – Part 1
I will now write a review of the storesonline workshop that I attended a few days ago.
The workshop venue was already full when I arrived with my friend. So full that they had to bring in more chairs and binders for those who were still ariving. This was further evidence of the success of their marketing system.
The main speaker was a person by the name of Kory Thurston. He claimed that he wasn’t an employee of storesonline; rather he owns internet business and was paid by storesonline to conduct the workshop. As part of the agreement, he was not allowed to reveal any of his websites to us.
First, a bit on his background. Here’s a brief summary:
Many years ago, he attended a storesonline workshop just like what we did. Even though he had no technical skills, he purchased a few websites from storesonline. Thanks to storesonline, he could now work from home and take care of his three kids.
I must say that this was cleverly done to build rapport with the audience. If someone with his backgound could do it, then anyone of us present should be able to repeat his success.
The first part of this presentation was about the required tools and support required to succeed in an online business. Things like website, shopping cart, secure hosting, etc. All of which were provided by storesonline.
He mentioned that there was no need for us to create any new product. People usually buy common items on the internet, not something that they have not heard of.
Kory went on to correctly point out that information was the best selling item on the internet, and also the effectiveness of permission based marketing.
He stressed on the importance of having multiple websites. Having only one site was a big mistake. My personal opinion was that we should concentrate on one site and make it profitable before starting the next. If that one site has a certain theme and doesn’t deviate, it’s perfectly ok.
The next part of the workshop was a demonstration of some of the tools found in the storesonline platform. The first was on a keyword research tool. This was a very useful tool for estimating the demand of any potential product.
In actual fact, this tool is freely available. The exact tool that he used can be found here.
The next tool was the traffic statistics and tracking feature. We were shown that it was able to track the sources of traffic for the site and also which were the search engine keywords that were generating the orders.
A very useful tool I must say. But traffic statistics are provided as part of nearly all hosting packages. And most tracking tools are pretty affordable. Google Analytics provides all these for free.
Before lunch, another speaker came to talk to us about the 90 day offer and workshop offer. Essentially, participants were offered discounted prices on the storesonline software. We were able to purchase 3 or 6 websites for the startup cost of 1 and 2 websites respectively.
No wonder there were so many references earlier on the importance of having multiple websites.
We were told to sign up for our 1-1 consultation which would take place after lunch. The “consultations” turned out to be sales talk which took place throughout the rest of the afternoon, even while the workshop was going on.
As this review is getting a bit long, I will talk about the afternoon session in the next review post on the storesonline workshop. There were five strategies covered and a guaranteed method to get your website on the first page of a search engine within three days.
on August 21st, 2006 at 11:40 pm
Please, can anyone help us. My husband and I were stupid enough to join Storesonline. We signed up for 3 sites at $2500 dollars each. We have only 1 site up. We had such a hard time getting that site together and we feel it’s not even making any money. We got so discouraged and depressed that we put our site on construction and we think Storesonline people took it off construction. We have till December this year to come up with the other 2 sites. However, my husband became ill and is now on medical leave. I tried to work with storeonline to cancel our contract because we can’t seem to pay for it and besides we are very unhappy with them. Please, is there anyone out there that can help us. We’ve been having threatning letters from Duvera for payment. Please help us. Our email address is roxylei10@yahoo.com
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raymond e. carpenter Reply:
January 31st, 2009 at 10:36 pm
my name is MR.RAYMOND E. CARPENTER ,THE BROTHER OF GORDON E. CARPENTER OF CALGARY ALBERTA ,HE TOLD ME THAT HE ATTENDED ONE OF THOSE SIMINARS.HE GOT TAKEN FOR $6,000 ,MY MY MY .I TOLD HIM THAT I HAVE A SOLUTION TO HIS PROBLEM.LET ME EXPLAIN.IM A DIRECTOR WITH PRE PAID LEGAL SERVICES INC,.WE ARE IN BUSINESS FOR SITUATIONS JUST LIKE YOU HAVE JUST DISCRIBED FOR $26.00 PER MONTH YOU CAN HAVE A ATTORNEY IN 4 PROVINCES IN CANADA,AND ALL BUT 4 STATES IN THE U.S.A I THINK ,NO I KNOW WE CAN HELP YOU AND ALL OTHERS IN YOUR SAME SITUATION.YOU CAN GO TO MY WEB SITE ,OR CALL ME DIRECT AT 1-623-341-8001—1623 -444-2061.MY BROTHERS PHONE NUMBER IS 1-403-248-3763. PLEASE ALLOW ME TO HELP YOU AND ALL OTHERS THAT YOU WISH TO NOTIFIY. WE ARE A NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE COMPANY ,PUBLICLY TRADED CO.PLEASE GO TO THE WEB SITE.THERE YOU WILL FIND ALL THE INFORMATION ABOUT OUR CO.THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME.I HOPE TP HAER FROM SOON.MR. RAY CARPENTER INDEPENDENT ASSC.DIRECTOR WITH PREPAID LEGAL SERVICES INC,.
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Rob Reply:
March 19th, 2009 at 10:07 am
What do you mean by $26 per month. Sounds just like them.
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Joey Reply:
November 16th, 2009 at 8:36 am
Agreed, thats just some MLM crap..
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Suzanne Reply:
January 5th, 2010 at 11:43 am
Hi
I also bought 6 licenses a few years back (I am in Ottawa, Canada) and never did anything with them as it was soooo complicated…..can anything be done?
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nicnaz Reply:
February 6th, 2010 at 12:31 pm
Idiot can’t even spell. Ignore him.
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Jim Reply:
March 12th, 2010 at 10:40 pm
Idiot, first learn how to spell before you try to scam someone.
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whisperingsage Reply:
April 29th, 2010 at 11:41 am
I was part of prepaid legal services for a short time also- our lawyer was 170 miles away. So forget that.
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on August 22nd, 2006 at 12:00 am
My husband and I would like some help to cancel our contract with Storesonline. We beleive that they misled us with lies. Please email us at roxylei10@yahoo.com
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on March 27th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
Thank you so much for your review of Storesonline. I attended the full day seminar yesterday, and must admit that I was swept up in the excitment of their sales pitch. However, not having the finances to sign up on the day, I walked away a bit bummed, but now relieved! My best friend and her mum however did buy a package of 6 websites. After researching a number of reviews, I am now concerned that they have made a terrible decision. Thanks again for being so honest and forthcoming with your opinions of the company. I am sure you just saved me a lot of headaches!
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on May 16th, 2007 at 9:50 pm
Now I realize what a terrible mistake I have made. I feel the butterfly in my stomach as I think “money down the drain” I bought three websites of which I have not even one up. I f anyone an help me please do. let us get toguether and file class action law suit to this bunch of fakes. Is there any way out of this mess? is there any lawyer somewhere reading this comment? if there is please help us.!!!!
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on May 16th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
stores on line is just too good to be true, they make it seem so easy. although they admit that you are not going to become rich from the night to the morning. I am calling my lawyer on them to have thids contract cancelled. they presented so simple and the more I try to get my web site up I get even morefrustrated and confused. when ou use the chat line they only refer you to the same resource in the merchant tools. I need to cancel this contract this is really a licenced rip off.
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on May 16th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
Please heeeelllppp!!! Stores on line is a ripoff.
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on June 22nd, 2007 at 2:53 pm
I bought the 3 website package and I have been very impressed with the support. I am enjoying setting up my site and have followed the instructions closely. If I have a criticism its that there is too much detail.This can lead to confusion as you may be doing extra work not knowing if its necessary for the type of products you are selling. I am pleased with the professional look of the site. People learn in different ways . If you are visual learner then you can watch the instructions in movie form,if not then its in print. . It does take a lot of time for research and assembling the products and images you want to the site. There are a lot of cheaper web building programs out there and I investigated a lot of them. They usually looked cheap,had poor artwork,no choice of design and were constantly after more money.From a basic site,they went for more money for direct download to Ebay ,then more for email searches. One site even charges $100 per year for telephone support ! Another will answer your questions within 24 hrs ! Wow ! I get instant help with instant messaging. Yes a lot of the information is out there,but take it from someone who has been trying to figure out how to sell on the internet in a professional way for two years… I was thrilled to have it all in a nice neat package for me. Storesonline was not cheap,but my daughter had a professional company develop her site for her and that cost her close to $2000.She will not be able to wipe it out and start over again with another product if it doesnt work. I will.I think thats a very important point.I feel I am learning a great skill at the same time. I feel more like I have purchased a course that will earn me an income. I guess its all in how much you want to work and how you look at the opportunities out there.If you had the doubt butterflies you should have listened. I never did and I still dont.
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rochell Reply:
June 25th, 2009 at 11:59 am
do u still feel thet way? and now how is your web site doing?
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Betty Reply:
July 22nd, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Rochelle please list your websites so I can view them. Thank you
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Joey Reply:
November 16th, 2009 at 8:40 am
I just signed up for the 6 grand, just now logged into my site and I’m currently checking it out. I’m still very optimistic, though I may have a slight advantage being a web developer and technologist in general; and my business partner is a graphic artist and marketing extraordinaire. I’d be happy to help if people get stuck, email storesonline@jo3y.com even if you don’t need help but want to detail your experience, good or bad.
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shelly bowie Reply:
March 4th, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Joey,
I bought the pro package last Aug. and was really excited! But then I realized that I had not even been on a computor 15-20 yrs I didn’t even remember how to cut and paste! not to mention exporting files to jpg or gif so that I could create a file to program. The storesonline training was to fast and jumped around I couldn’t get it. But SOL built my first site with the pro program anyway. Just before the first site was built I was contacted by PMI about an additional investment for 3 sites built and online and live training gauranteed recovery! It was very expensive! It meant I would have 20k invested in this project!
Let me back up a second and tell you why I was so excited with the idea of a web business. I am 52 years old I wait tables for a living and do pretty good with it. Fortunately I am married to wonderful man who is 13yrs older than I. That makes him 65.
I knew that my husband could not retire. Now or ever if he wanted to keep me in Insurance and income to what we were used to. Even I a 52 year old cocktail waitress, can’t do it to much longer because to the tax it puts on my physical health. There sure isn’t any health benefits in waiting tables at $2.20/hr.
So, when I saw the opportunity to replace my income, stay home and make enough to replace our benefits so my husband could go ahead and retire, it was really easy!
20k is cheaper than college. It takes less time to complete.
No age discrimination in the work force. I didn’t have to wait 4-5 years for a degree that didn’t gaurantee me a job or income.
Its been tough but I have learned more in the last 4 months than I ever thought I would.
If one sticks with the program and work at it. You will learn it. The pmi education has been a “God Send” I can go back any amount of times I need to for a lesson.
I am learning how to ppc now. I’m only about 1/2 way through the course and although my first site took longer than the next 2, I am very pleased with the way it looks and hope it will be successful. Its been up for about 2-3 weeks and I have already seen some improvement on page placement.
All because I am sticking with it.
Even those that are so upset because they don’t think they can do it. It just goes to show you that we just have to listen,learn and apply the tools given us.
thank for your positive response Joey, I’ve heard all the bad ones too but I am determined to come out winning and making money!
shelly
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Craig Reply:
July 8th, 2010 at 8:10 am
Shelly,
Thank you for posting, I have been hard at work with my first site. It has been difficult find cetrtain suppliers for the site and currently have sent the products to programming for my first site. I am looking forward to the talk with the programmer and hope my site will be ready for previewing in a few weeks. Like you said this is not something that will be easy but as I am finding out SOL has been able to answer every question quickly and efficiently. It is said that in order to enjoy the better things in life the work to get there is equal to the task. For those who have complaints I think it is time to look and see if you are putting the necessary work in to do what you dream of, or are your dreams what keep you from working to get them.
Craig
on June 22nd, 2007 at 2:59 pm
<p>Hi Linda, nice to hear that you liked the package. Do keep us updated on how your site goes. The last time I heard, storesonline does charge you for extra support as well.</p>
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on June 23rd, 2007 at 10:47 am
I need help from someone out there.Me and my wife went to the storesonline seminar and we listened to their speaker on storesonline and how money could be made.The more we listened we got excited.Well they talked us into getting 3 websites they offered on a special deal that day.They made it sound so good.Well it cost us $4098.00 total and we gave a down payment of $320.00 and they had financing so we financed $3778.00.Any way we finally sent the finance company a check for $3778.00 which we really could not afford.Anyway we tried to make our web site over and over.We could not get it done Not Easy at all.Finally me and my wife got so frustrated we just gaveup.We called them but really did not help.Just coul not get it.Is there anyone out there that can help us get at least most of our money Back.Please Please Please Help us someone.
James Bernal
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andrew Reply:
October 27th, 2008 at 12:48 am
Hi James, I have been reading a lot about stores online and basicly i feel sick to my stomach. Dont tell me i have just been ripped off. I JUST CAME BACK FROM A STORES ONLINE INVITATION AND FREE LUNCH, and after thinking of the prospect of selling online purchased the binder only for $25.00 can, i have not gone to the internet workshop yet which is booked for nov 8/ 2008 and i am now trying to cancel this agreement which i have 3 bussiness days to do so, but have not had any luck getting through to cxlrequest@myquickresponse.com to give notice of cancelation prior to my three days grace, can you advise to what to do if i cannot get through to them for cancelling prior to the internet workshop where i suppose thay are going to give me the selling of website,s
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Hedles Reply:
November 2nd, 2008 at 2:31 am
Sorry, this post is a few days later than intended – due to my not reading the instructions carefully!
Hi Andrew,
If it is the initial one day workshop (£20 when I did it a year or so ago) that you have booked for, I wouldn’t be too worried about it. Yes you will get a hard sell of their web sites, but – depending upon how much you know already – you will likely learn a lot about web marketing and you are not committed to buying anything from them . . . go and learn, is my advice – I certainly learned a lot when I did the workshop, but don’t be suckered into believing that Storesonline web sites are the only ones that provide all the facilities they offer, and don’t take any means of payment with you! I also read a lot of this site between signing up for the £20 seminar and going to it. Forewarned is forearmed.
As you will see if you have read a lot of this web site there are other sites providing (often free) facilities that replicate the function of many of Storesonline’s
On the other, if you have paid an arm and a leg for the workshop keep trying to contact them.
Hedles
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raymond e. carpenter Reply:
January 31st, 2009 at 10:52 pm
call me at 1623-341-8001 or 623 444 2061, my name is MR RAY CARPENTER IM A DIRECTOR WITH PRE PAID LEGAL SERVICES INC,.WE AT PRE PAID LEGAL CAN HELP TOU AN ALL OTHERS IN THE SAME SITUATION ,.PLEASE CALL ME, MY BROTHER WHO LIVES IN CALGARY ALBERTA ,LOST $6,000 WITH THE SAME COMPANY.YOU CAN CALL HIM FOR VERIFICATION AT 1-403-248-3763 HIS NAME IS MR.GORDON CARPENTER. THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME ,HOPE TO HEAR FROM YOU SOON.
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Peter Reply:
May 10th, 2010 at 6:55 am
You Are As Bad As Storesonline. I will never understand how so many people can be so easily conned. Where are your brains ?? It’s so true that well known proverb : “A fool and his money are soon parted”
on June 23rd, 2007 at 11:20 am
I for got to list my e-mail address.It is navarro@tcaexpress.net.Again someone please help us get most our money back.
Thank You
James Bernal
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on June 27th, 2007 at 7:36 am
A few comments for storesonline.com’s starters! I have been a web developer/programmer for many years. My opinion, after working on a few storesonline.com’s website for a few years (belonging to my clients), is … don’t start your business with storesonline because
1- It’s relatively easier to start but once your business starts to expand; it’s hard to scale the expansion of your business with storesonline since they DO NOT give any access to YOUR own source files for your website. I can write pages on the problems caused because of that but so much for that.
2- NO scripting language is supported except Javascript. I remember I had to implement a custom search feature for my client and I was shocked to know that there was no database or script supported by them. Even free web servers offer basic database and scripting on their server. We ended up buying additional hosting to host this feature.
3- Their URL structure is a nightmare of any SEO. I have worked on many websites for search engine optimization and I found storesonline’s websites to be the worst. Weird domain name splitting, no .htaccess, no httpd.conf access etc. Simply put, Google does not like storesonline. Trust me, you can’t run an internet based business if Google doesn’t like you (unless all your customers live next door to you).
Finally, setting up a basic website on storesonline may look easy enough to you but watch out for what will follow when it will come to scalability in future.
Nadeem
admin@blueribbonventures.com
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Lava Reply:
March 3rd, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Nadeem, I like your comments. What company would you recommend for a website developer and supporter? We do not need all the bells and whistles as most retailers do. Our site will be more for information and communications. No payments will be conducted via the site.
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on June 27th, 2007 at 7:49 am
Hi Nadeem, very good points.
I wholeheartedly agree with your comments.
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on June 28th, 2007 at 2:33 am
I bet Linda Naneen work for Storesonline
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on June 28th, 2007 at 2:49 am
It certainly looked like that to me. A better and more unbaised review from a user of the system can be found here :
http://beginnerinternetmarketing.wordpress.com
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on June 28th, 2007 at 11:06 am
I went to a storesonline seminar today. It reminded me of those late night hard tv sell “scammers”. I luckily held to my gut feelings and did not succumb. I feel terrible for those that did. The audience today was mainly women over 45 and elderly couples. I watched in horror as innocent persons eagerly handed over about $6500.00 for the six website deal. I felt so sickened by what I observed that I had to leave. I was not brave enough to stand up and yell. These people are nothing but scammers and liars. I wish anyone who got involved with them the best of luck in pursuing the justice they deserve. I also found a lot of bad press today about this company and their parent company iMergant from around the globe. I did wonder during they speaches that seemed why they never mentioned the Better Business Bureau, after reading the proceeding comments and other critics of this company, I now don’t have to guess.
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Peter Reply:
May 10th, 2010 at 7:02 am
I certainly wasn’t too frightened to stand up and let them know it was a scam when they came to Australia and held similar seminars, I went with the sole purpose of having a free lunch, which I did. My wallet stayed at home. They are a bunch of devious professional bullshit artists (as we call them in Australia)
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on June 28th, 2007 at 11:08 am
Sorry my earlier comments were seem lacking in grammar, etc. I am still upset by the experience.
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on June 28th, 2007 at 11:11 am
Janet, it’s ok. Thanks for sharing.
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on June 29th, 2007 at 12:55 am
I have been a Sales Manager for Ford Dealerships, VW, and other imports for 25 years.
I retired and this week went to a seminar for Storesonline. I have to admit that it was exciting and fun to watch these guys deliver the message,and do everything they could to “close” the folks there. It did appear that most fo the people there could not write a check and they Zoomed in on those people to get the finance money also. They never really approached me until late in the afternoon, when I told them of my background and was asked to leave out the back way, so as not to disturb( or let others see me leave) the salespitch. I did leave without a purchase, but felt sorry for the ones they got….They Hit them like a SWAT Team. BEWARE of anyone who tells you ” If you don’t go into business with me NOW You will never get this chance again” Yeah Right ! ! !
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on June 29th, 2007 at 6:42 am
I went to the seminar today with my daughter. We listened to their sales pitch up until 1:00, then we left before lunch was served and never went back.
I felt they were using high pressure sales pitching, but softening the pitch by being so “down to earth” and congenial with the captive audience.
The speaker we heard stated that if we were worried about spending the money(right now!) to make money or spending the money if a business partner wasn’t at this seminar, that we would never get anywhere and would always be on the bottom.
Well, my dad who is my business partner was unable to attend the seminar with me and no way was I going to “jump on board” without his input or consulting with him about spending that kind of cash.
My gut feeling told me during the seminar to leave, the storesonline rep’s are a bunch of really smooth high pressure salesmen.
Am glad I listened to my instincts for once and my symphathies to the one’s that did get snookered in by Storesonline.
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Peter Reply:
May 10th, 2010 at 7:05 am
You should have enjoyed the lunch ?? Wonder if they paid the Food Bill or indeed, the Hotel account?? lol.
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on June 29th, 2007 at 7:50 am
the comment from Loreece is the date wrong. Today is june 28 2007 so how can her comment be for the 29 th which is tomorrow ?
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on June 29th, 2007 at 8:00 am
Hi Joe, previously I was using the time zone of another country that was way ahead of US, so there is some slight difference in the dates.
I will now slowly switch it to using US Central time. Hope that clarifies.
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on July 3rd, 2007 at 11:30 am
I have also purchased 6 websites and have been unable to start any one of them. I did try to cancel but they told me the time had expired which I knew it hadn’t. So I have 6 licenses which mean absolutely nothing. They have not helped me at all and I have tried to contact them on several attempts. Now I can’t even log on because they say my password is not working so when I call to complain no one gets back to me. I want to do something about this but I don’t know what. Does anyone have a lawsuit against them right now.
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Cristian Reply:
October 6th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
If you have your lic’s # all you have to do is click here and talk to them. http://support.myquickresponse.com
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on July 3rd, 2007 at 11:50 am
Hi Cindy, you can try contacting your State Attorneys General for advice and help.
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on July 3rd, 2007 at 7:00 pm
I did not have a credit card, but purchased 3 website packages, was not helped by any storeline employee, was told to send package back and no payments to be rendered thereafter, however I am being hounded by Duvera and now Polymar Associates to make the contract good. Next step: Attorney state General. Storesonline is a major ripoff, scam operation. Go to Ripoffs.com and read all the complaints. NBC Dateline did a story on them in January 06, get the transcripts. I will not pay anymore $$$ to this Satanic company that abuses the low to middle income workers!
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on July 14th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
I went to the free seminar recently with a VERY closed mind (I only wanted the free MP3 player and meal). I left there with the MP3 player afterwards, and that’s it.
My brother, however, made the mistake of buying the $25 kit and signed up for the day seminar. Now he knows that he was ripped off. Don’t make the same mistake that he did. If you DO go, DON’T buy anything from them. Just eat, take the gift, and go. 
These losers don’t deserve your business.
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trina Reply:
April 19th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Hi, Went to the free seminar and did pay $38.00 (check) called the bank next day yo canceled the check. The workshop is scheduled for the following Saterday. Do you know if there is going to be future problems. Is there more I should do? Please reply asap. Trina
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susan Reply:
May 14th, 2009 at 6:00 am
Trina,
At least you were smart enough to cancel your check. They got me for $38 and then I attended the workshop two weeks later, where, fortunately, I did not have money to upgrade to “Pro”. My friend with me, though, was suckered into signing up for the whole $6000 package, put $500 down and will be paying $208 a month for the next 3 years. I sent him this site and a few others that rated stroesonline poorly, but he hasn’t responded, yet.
Where did you attend? I went to Pensacola for the 6 hr. workshop. The well dressed, good looking guys were hard core salesmen, skilled at closing a sale…but they didn’t get mine! There was no food, either!
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on July 16th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
Im a full time Mechanic, My boss bought 6 websites from storesonline… I was roped into building the sites for him. so far we have one site that is almost ready to publish… My experience with storesonline has been great so far… they have been very helpful.. ( i have called them 5 times in the last 2 days) i was helped right away every time… as of now even though i have no investment i am pleased with their service… keep in mind that when you sell a product online or in your retail store you must market the product… i will post more later on the success or failure of our stores… so far so good!
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on July 16th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
Hi Darren, glad to hear you are doing well. Would you like to share your website url so that the rest of us can visit your site and have a look?
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on July 18th, 2007 at 12:17 am
I have been RIPPED OFF by storesonline. I have saved many of my chat contacts with them. Their csr’s are incompetent and have absolutely no idea of how to solve problems. I have been given incorrect solutions by them on how to solve a problems I have. All they do is say they’re sorry. They charged me $50 to tranfer my site from the old format to the newer PRO format. It’s been weeks and it hasn’t been done yet. It was promised to me by their programmer Josh Porter that it would be completed by Thursday, July 12, 2007. It’s now Wednesday, July 18th and it still hasn’t been done, despite them taking my money.
This is only one instance of my displeasure with this company. Could someone please help me to get my $6,000+ money back? Your advice would be appreciated. Thank you.
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on July 18th, 2007 at 12:21 am
Forgot to mention, when I call to speak to the programmer they say he’s in a meeting and will get back to me. He never does.
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on July 18th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Hi Mark, you can consider going to your State AG.
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on July 27th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
RE: STORES ONLINE
I ATTENDED A FREE SEMINAR THAT PROMISED A FREE DINNER AND A BUSINESS PLANNER WHICH WAS SUPPOSED TO BE WORTH 120.00 TOTAL. WHAT A JOKE! WE WERE SERVED COLD SANDWICHES AND CHIPS-FOR DINNER AND THE 49.95 PLANNER WAS CHEAP AND PLASTIC AND IT DIDN’T EVEN HAVE DATES. THE SEMINAR WAS IN A FANCY HOTEL AND THE SPEAKER WAS VERY CONVINCING- HE EVEN CRIED!!.WE WERE TOLD THEIR PURPOSE WAS DEFINITELY”NOT” TO SELL US ANYTHING. BOY,DID THEY LIE!!! WE WERE INVITED TO AN ALL DAY “LEARNING” SEMINAR FOR THE LOW PRICE OF 20.00 AND WE COULD EVEN BRING A GUEST-FREE.
AS A SNAKE OIL SALESMAN-WHO THEY SAID WAS NOT EMPLOYED BY THEM MISLEAD AND ENTERTAINED US, I LISTENED AND WATCHED IN HORROR AS PEOPLE LINED UP TO BUY A” VERY EXPENSIVE” DREAM-THAT I KNOW WILL PROBABLY NEVER COME TRUE. SOME SPENT ALL THEY HAD AND OTHERS SPENT MONEY THEY DIDN’T HAVE. FROM MY WEB RESEARCH, I HAVE LEARNED— BUYER BEWARE! THERE ARE TONS OF FREE INFORMATION ON THE WEB. PLEASE RESEARCH BEFORE YOU SPEND A DIME. IF SOMETHING LOOKS TO GOOD TO BE TRUE-IT USUALLY IS.
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on August 9th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
I have three websites hosted by storesonline. http://www.the-best-hot-sauce.com , http://www.selfdefenseequipment.biz , and http://www.mysimplifynurse.com . I have been doing pretty well with my sites, however I have been struggling to get high rankings on Google. I had no problem with yahoo and msn. I like the software and find it easy to use, but like I say it os hard to rank on google. I cannot find anyone who can do seo for my sites. I tryed several companys, but none of them could do anything for me.
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John Taberner Reply:
February 11th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Try to connect with http://www.flipnetworksinc.com
I haven’t used them but they offer a MONEY back and for a couple of sites they show number 1 to 5 on all the major search engines and say they do your SEO
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James Lim Reply:
June 2nd, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Hello my name is James Lim and I am a fellow Storesonline owner and I have had the same struggle in the past. I have paid a lot of “SEO” companies a considerable amount of money, to which I have seen very little results. So I decided to do some research for myself and over time was able to increase my own rankings without paying any more money. I am writing to you to let you know that I know what it is like to struggle with storesonline and have written a book on all of the techniques and failures that I have experienced so I can help other Storesonline websites owners with their websites. I am selling this E-book for $10 to cover the cost of writing develeoping it. I also am including many free tools that will help you in the process along with 24 hr support email only
Please pass the word
If you are interested please contact me at:
Jarafinc@yahoo.com
Thank you for your time
Good Luck in all of your future endeavors.
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on August 9th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
Hi Jon,
Thanks for sharing your sites. Finally, we have someone who managed to get their sites up. Great job.
Yes, the SEO portion can be a problem as the urls are not exactly SEO friendly. Can’t do anything about that. I see you have already optimised your title, keyword and description meta data for each individual page.
Other than getting more links (and some deep links) to your site, there probably isn’t much more that you can do.
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on August 9th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
Hi Jon, you can also try adding more words to your individual product descriptions.
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on August 12th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
I went to the introduction seminar today. Unfortunately I gave them the 20.00 so that my friend and I could go to the full days seminar. THANK YOU EVERYONE! For voicing your discontent with this company. Gotta love the internet. What ever you need to know…you can find out. I won’t be going to the full day seminar so I wasted 20.00 but ultimately I have saved thousands. I only decided to research this company because I was planning on going to the seminar. Thanks again everyone!!!
Jewel-atlanta,ga
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on August 14th, 2007 at 4:34 am
Hi All:
I also went to the full day seminar, but I considered the $25 as investing in what NOT to invest in. A lot of assurances and promises of making money, but in reality, it could take years before all those profits pile up.
1. The sales pitch was owning more than one web-site. Yatta Yatta Yatta, 6 is the best, you can’t go wrong for the cost of CAD $6500 with credit card processor and something else. Fine, but you only get 500MB of storage and as detailed earlier no database or scripting. In addition, you pay $30 per month per website for hosting and publishing. $150 for SOL to build your websites and $50 per hour after that for them to make changes to your website.
2. A lot was emphasised on dropshippers (a.k.a. suppiers who ship the product on your behalf. You take orders, but they ship). Although you may get the ‘tools’ to find a dropshipper, SOL is not helping you in lets say initiating contact or revewing the contractual agreement with the dropshipper. So bottom line is, you need to spend some more $$$ in lawyers fees to have that done.
3. The whole seminar as well as one on one consultation was geared to you buying the websites. Even if you can’t afford it, but your credit card is deep enough to charge it on, it’s still a good investment. The consultant was so desperate and proceeded to tell me that charging the cost of the website on my credit card and paying the minimum payments on the credit card would still be a wise investment decision. I dont’ know about you, but I’m seeing interest charges going over the roof here.
4. You can’t avail from their tools unless you’re a ‘merchant’ with them. That involves buying the websites. For people like me, who like to build everything from scratch, I only need to avail from their marketing tools (reverse search engine for example) for minimal charge.
All and all being said, they did provide some useful marketing information, which is what I needed. This SOL could work only if you already have a product to sell, but you don’t have the technical know how on building web-sites with shopping cart features. For everything else, you’re down the hole at least CAD $6500 for at least a couple of months before you begin to have sales.
As conculsion in my opinion I would say it’s worth spending the entrance fee and weed the information from the sales pitch and invest in a computer where you can install the web server, the database, and any scripting language. You get descent marketing ideas; computers are now cheap (not more than CAD $500 for a tower); the software (Apache web server, MySQL database, PHP language to connect the Apache and MySQL) are free.
Thank you for reading my comments….
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on August 14th, 2007 at 5:04 am
Thanks for sharing ScorpionFiko!
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on August 17th, 2007 at 2:59 am
Thank you all for your comments. My father had the joy of purchasing 5 – 6 web sites from these guys and asked me to build a web the web site for his nutritional company.
I have a little bit of experience but am not anything close to an expert. Had an online paintball company that was doing well but the increasing cost of shipping was just killing me. Added to that the paintball mfgs would go directly after my customers to have them buy from them it was very frustrating. But anyways I built my dads little site and added my two bits about using his products and started a bloggish section of how so far I have dropped about 30 pounds over the last month and a half.
I had no idea how much he had paid for these sites and thought maybe $100 bucks a piece was about what they were worth due to constraints of the template type model that most of these types of site companies have. I about flipped out when he told me how much he had spent. At that point I was thinking well hell you spent it we might as well use it. I think I spent something like $400 for my shopping cart when I did mine.
This all leads up to what these knuckleheads are up to now.
We get a call from a Heidi from stores online who is saying that they are looking for a few “open minded” = (dumb) and aggressive = (desperate) people that they can use as a case study. We set up a phone appointment and had an hour long conversation that was very professional and smooth. I will give them that, they are very smooth. During the whole call I had this feeling I was in the film the Boiler Room. It went something like this. Mostly the highlights.
Heidi: Thank you guys for your time, like I said we are only picking a few customers who are open minded and aggressive to take their sites to the next level.
Me: Well that’s great what’s so special about us, we are a Mom and Pop shop with a retarded son who can make a site kinda pretty.
Heidi: Laughs… I wouldn’t say you were retarted.
Me: I was talking about my brother.
Heidi: Laughs again… Anyways we are looking for a couple of people to put under our experts to get the results that you are looking for.
Dad: And what exactly are those results.
Heidi: We have had clients that have made $18k in three weeks.
Me: Is it that male enhancement guy that keeps sending me e-mails? And how do they know its starting to give me a bit of a complex?
Dad has to pull the phone away from his mouth because he is laughing to hard.
Heidi: Long awkward pause and kinda chuckles. No I don’t believe he is that guy.
Me: Oh ok I was wondering not that I have that problem or anything. So can I take a look at these experts sites?
Heidi: Well do to Non-disclosure reasons with our clients we cannot give out that information.
Me: Well it’s kinda hard to make a case study if you can’t give an example of said case study.
Heidi: No you’re the case they are the experts.
Me: The guy who is sending me male enhancement e-mails?
Heidi: exactly.. I mean no I don’t know who that guy is.
At this point I have her off her script and she is desperate to get back on it.
Heidi: Anyways we are looking for Open Minded and teachable people that we can show that our services work very well.
Me: Well the old man is open minded and I’m teachable so we have that going for us.
Heidi: pauses again… for an online business you need key ingredients. A product that people want, time, mentoring, and capital. (tah dah we get down to
business)
Dad: Well that makes sense.
Heidi: Are you willing to invest 8 hours of time a week into your business.
Dad: We both are workaholics and 8 hours is nothing.
Heidi: Well most of time when your starting something new a majority of the time spent is making mistakes. We have already invested that time so you don’t have to.
(Hell sounds good to me)
Heidi: We would like to be your mentors and enabling you to start making money quickly taking out the time you don’t have to spend figuring out what doesn’t work.
Dad: Sounds good to me.
Heidi: The number one reason that companies fail is lack of cash flow and capital. If we could get that kind of cash flow going through you company wouldn’t the capital investment be worth it.
Me: Generally is. But that doesn’t really happen in real life.
Heidi: Yes it does, we have 70,000 sites and people are making their livings on them every day.
Me: Sounds like you already have a good case study than.
Heidi: We want to be able to prove that we can do it from a startup.
At this point Heidi starts profiling us for how much we have available on credit cards which is about 20k. I start getting pissed off but am maintaining my cool. Time to harass Heidi some more.
Heidi: We would be very interested in working with you to make you successful.
Me: So Heidi tell me how is your sites doing.
Heidi: Excuse me?
Me: Well if it’s so doable how are YOUR sites doing.
Heidi: Well I don’t have any.
Me: Pardon me I’m just a simple country boy from Montana. And I’m a bit touched in the head. Please explain and use real little words that if this is so doable, how come your not making $18,000 in your first month.
Heidi: Well I umm, I work for the company and they pay me well.
Me: They pay you a quarter million dollars a year?
Heidi: Well no.
Me: Than it seems your under paid.
Heidi: I um ahh.
(at this point I actually start bouncing my head off the table)
Heidi: Ah whats that are you ok?
Me: Yeah sorry that was my retarted brother, he sings like a whale sometimes, TIMMY PUT YOUR HELMET BACK ON.
My dad once again has to put the phone down I think this time he might pee his pants he’s laughing so hard. At this point Heidi is so desperate to get hold of that $20k that she goes on to request that we talk with her consultant the next day.
We set up the appointment and I will look forward to torturing that rat bastard also. What these people are doing is simply wrong. It is the biggest scam as far as how much money they soak out of people I think I have ever seen.
My dads little nutritional network marketing company cost him $40 bucks to get in and he is doing well. He’s making some good money on it but he works hard at it. Someone earlier said there is no such thing a s free lunch. And I agree. There is also no such thing as instant mega money. If it is they are not going to share the secret unless they plan on using you.
I had to explain that to my father. He disagreed because of his network marketing business. I had to tell him that was different but still the same. Network marketing is about building a sales organization out of laymen. It’s possible but chances are to be successful your going to have to always work it. If you enjoy it and believe in your products like they do, (and I’m beginning
to) than be happy with that.
Thank you for this site and what you are doing.
God Bless.
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Dana Fowler Reply:
October 15th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
I am suppose to go to the free dinner and get a MP3 with storeonline this evening in Sheridan WY. I have some websites and I work hard at keeping up with the marketing changes, ie blogging, now your suppose to make a video, social networks etc…and I have purchased A LOT of get rich schemes-usually the information is the same. I am sitting here wondering if I should go to the dinner, just to protect my neighbors, as I was once ripped off by an “e commerce” sales pitch way back when internet just got started, cost me a lot, had to get a second job to pay the leasing charge, I had committed to. It was a terrible experience, effected my credit, my family time, etc…
Anyway my advice is that google and yahoo offer tutorials, and there are some really good hosting companies, that have website tonight type packages, and there is plenty of good inexpensive information available for building a web businesses. All of these cost much less then the $$$’s storesonline is charging. Like any business it all takes research, time, and a good plan and some investment. If there is a good “get rich quick” scheme for internet I have not found it. So like others have said “buyer beware”!!
I do not know very many network marketers in Montana, but I would like to, as there is some great ground floor companies out there right now. Good luck everyone.
Dana
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susan Reply:
May 14th, 2009 at 6:14 am
you never did say what happened. I felt cheated out of a conclusion….
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on August 22nd, 2007 at 8:07 am
I attended a StoresOnLine seminar on August 17 and got carried away and bought their 3 pack websites. The next day I did the research I should have done (including finding this website), and decided I wanted out. On Monday I phoned the number on the form and was told to look at the back of my yellow copy, and lo and behold, there was a cancellation form! We have 3 business days to cancel without penalty, so I did.
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on August 22nd, 2007 at 8:32 am
Hi Jan, good for you!
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on August 28th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Ok here is my thing , if you dont know much about the internet or HTML code then you should not have a website or go to any storesonline seminars. My background is with computers so before I started with storesonline I knew somenthing. After getting my sites running I found lots of free info on how to make my sites better from the internet. Storesonline also has live help all of the time. They are usefull most of the time, but some of them dont know much. I guess its what time of day you try to get live help. I think storesonline os ok, its easyer than starting a site from scratch. However I think storesonline needs to inform people more that it is not easy to make a site or to get high rankings on Google. You cannot just build a site and just leave it there, you always have to tweak it always. I spend some time each day doing this to my sites.
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on August 30th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
i have a website that cost me nothing and makes me no money from freeservers.com(a netzero affiliate)they have some better site building stuff for a small fee.
i got an invite to stores online and too felt like wheres the camera filming this late nite infomercial?. got my free cheap 128mb fake ipod nano and crosandwich with a peice of lettuce on the side. paid twentyfive bucks for the “ebay cd set” which came with a date for a full day sales pitch bombardment and never went back.
i looked for sol info like this site as i got another invite to an sol event at a local hotel. i called to reserve not 1 but 2 seats and on the day of the event (today) went to the local ymca and worked out in the gym and hit the hot tub. i suspect they will keep callin telling me to goto the site:
http://www.storesonlinesecondoffer.com which i looked at and was amazed at the ripoff price of 3999.00 for i beleive one web page hosting….well if u really wanna make money, lets get together and relabel bottled vitamins. we can send out invites to a seminar worth 150.00 give out bologna sandwiches and a free bottle of our super vitamins. selling them into our supervitamins business. they invest alot at 4.00 a bottle (retail 49.95) 100 bottle minimum we pay 1.00 per relabled bottle .. so guess who really wins.. if you want to make money never listen to someone who wants to tell you how. just watch what they do and make a moral and ethical decision.money aint everything.
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on August 30th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
i meant that i skiped my second visit to this in person infomercial and went to the wmca instead
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on August 31st, 2007 at 8:37 am
Wow. The second chance thing is something new. Thanks for sharing.
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on September 5th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
My partner and I purchased 3 sites from SOL in January of this year. It was a NIGHTMARE getting that first site up and running, but it grossed over $11,000 our first month and over $14,000 the next. Our second site went live two weeks ago. It’s not anywhere near as easy as SOL says it will be. I would advise most people to pay the extra money to have SOL set up your site for you. My partner and myself are highly educated, computer literate and getting that first site up was one headache after another that SOL could not give us any help with. If you want sound on your site, don’t bother asking SOL for help. They have no idea how to do it. But we are making good money. Would I buy from SOL again? No.
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on September 12th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
Hi Sherri,
Thanks for sharing. I’m glad to see that a couple of people are making money with Storesonline. Would you share your url’s so we can take a look?
I noticed that most of the people who complain never actually went through and built and site and optimized it. They just got scared and quit and tried to get their money back based on the complaints of others. I bought 6 sites and I had a pretty good programmer so no complaints there. There’s just a learning curve that’s kind of hard to get around unless you have a lot of time.
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on September 14th, 2007 at 9:21 am
Hello Shadrene,
Of course. My URL’s are:
http://www.CelticRenaissanceMusic.com
http://www.PoiDoggGourmetCoffee.com
I’m glad to hear your sites have done well too. Did you hire one of SOL’s programmers to build your sites or someone outside of SOL? We built our sites ourselves.
Thanks!
Sherri
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karen Reply:
December 18th, 2009 at 3:29 am
I’ve just purchased the pro package and am so far happy with the help I am getting. I thought of selling antique pianos – of course my block is where to get product. I am curious – where do you get your instruments from? Are they from drop shippers, do you make them, or do you find/buy and store them at home?
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on September 14th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
Nice sites! Here are mine if anyone wants to see them.
http://www.the-best-hot-sauce.com
http://www.selfdefenseequipment.biz
http://www.mysimplifynurse.com
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on September 15th, 2007 at 7:29 am
great, so some people have sites..
they paid too much as there are other companys that do it for much less than sol. how many people do you know that shop online.. i dont know any. everyone i know goes to walmart.. sol did say you would make more or LESS than what you paid them..sol also says that the results of the testimonials are not typical..
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on September 15th, 2007 at 10:13 am
Its all a matter of getting on the search engine’s first or second page. If you can do this people will buy from your site and not Walmart, besides lots of us have things that can’t be found in local stores. Most of the time it is easyer to shop online and save your gas.
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on September 15th, 2007 at 11:38 am
True. A lot of people do shop at WalMart. But billions of people shop online daily. I’m one of them. Like it, or not, it’s big business. We advertise with Google. Every day, 24/7 and it’s made a huge difference in our hits, which results in a lot more business.
Sherri
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on September 15th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
sherri, if thats your real name….probably an employee of stores online..the only people really making money here is “storesonlinesecondoffer.com” you may be making some money. i wonder if that hotsauce site is doing. i bet workin 24 hours a day bottling hotsauce or relabeling franks red hot.do they have a permit from the health department as a food processor.sounds like a lot of tedious work..sol robs money from people everyday all over the place.. they make more than you do..ruining peoples finances for their own gain..want a fairer internet server service, try http://www.freeservers.com they dont have to give you a cheap gift and dinky sandwich to get your business and they are bigger than sol. oh by the way once sol gets your money, sol stands for sh#t outof luck.
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Bill Reply:
November 17th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Thomas,
This might be too late, as it is over a year since you posted, but may I suggest you stick to the subject. If you do not care for the product, fine. Do not demean either yourself or others who simply are expressing their opinion.
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on September 16th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
If you think SOL charges too much. Go to Yahoo Stores, selling online. They have a list of people that design and build website. Average price? $3,800 to $4,500. These are properly built stores not the cheapies. I’ve had a cheapie and after spending my entire summer building it, it can’t even handle the inventory management that I need. They knew what I was selling when they charged me $299 to basically put up a home page and I still had to do all the work.
Not defending SOL. I just want to hear from people who have built and promoted their site and stuck with it.
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on September 18th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Has anyone followed through with SOL after the call about you being openminded and SOL needing a case study.What actually happens?
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on September 18th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Thanx 4 the info on sol, yu changed my mind and future, about waisting a full day sitting and some 1 tugging at my purse strings.
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on September 22nd, 2007 at 9:41 am
I don’t appreciate being called something akin to a liar after I take the time to post my experience here. Thomas, you must take the positive comments along with the negative. SOL does some really underhanded things. There is no denying that. My success story is in spite of them, not because of them. I’m sorry your sites didn’t do well. I’m sorry to hear you aren’t making money. As I said in my first posting…would I buy from SOL again? No.
Now allow everyone to state their opinions and experiences without attacking.
Sherri
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on September 22nd, 2007 at 9:45 am
Hi Sherri,
Thank you for sharing. I’m sure your site is real and you are not an employee of Storesonline. I have seen a few of those and their comments are way too obvious.
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on September 22nd, 2007 at 1:47 pm
hi sherri, was not attacking you. i was however attacking stores on line for deceptive practices towards uninformed consumers.i still highly recomend http://www.freeservers.com for anyone inexperienced to get their ears wet without being taken to the bank for their life savings.it is still possible to get good service and do some work to promote a web site or multipage site selling a product service or better yet software downloads.stores online is not the best or only service available and there are competitively priced servers for those of us that choose not to own our own server with a higher bandwidth internet connection. servers today need not be any larger than a standard computor tower unless your into selling “web hosting services” like stores on line. many successful companys own thier own servers and have automated creditcard processing via a merchant services company which processes and deposits the funds into a specified account.i like selling software as you only need one copy which can be sold over and over again without shipping a thing.like i said earlier i wonder if the best hot sauce site is tired of filling all those tiny bottles by hand or do they have a factory and permit from the local health department….sounds like very tedious work
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on September 22nd, 2007 at 5:29 pm
I am trying freeservers.com and it could be used to make a doorway page for your sol sites. On the plus side they have php scripts and you can edit your page right down to the html, there is also .hacess witch sol does not have. However it might take you a lot longer to build your site. There is no shopping cart and it would be extremly hard to put your credit card processor in. SOL is not the greatest but both sol and freeservers have their plus sides.
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on September 22nd, 2007 at 5:34 pm
Also my site http://www.the-best-hot-sauce.com I do not fill my own bottles. I do drop shipping and that way I have no inventory. My other sites do the same. http://www.selfdefenseequipment.biz and http://www.mysimplifynurse.com. We sell Dickies nursing uniforms and my site for self defense equipment is on page two of google for the keyword “self defense equipment”
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on September 26th, 2007 at 4:16 am
I just signed up yesterday for 6 sites. Now I am concerned that I made a mistake. I have a website but am not getting the traffic that I need and SOL convinced me that if I go with them and change the name of the site that I would do better in the search engines. I was told that there were no space limitations that you could post as many products as you like. Should I cancel while I can?
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on September 26th, 2007 at 4:17 am
I would liek to ask Jon if his sites are doing well and if he would do it again?
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on September 26th, 2007 at 5:04 am
Hey there! I found a site where you can sell your unused websites from storesonline. If you are frustrated with the program and don’t have time to learn how to publish your site you can sell it at http://www.StoresXchange.com
As long as you have not published the site it can be resold with the license numbers. So, if you have sites you are not using this is the way to get some of your money back.
After having “buyers remorse” it appears to me that many of the complaints here are because this wasn’t as easy as the buyers thought it would be. After viewing some of the sites I have to agree that they are all very professional looking and it seems that many are doing well. It is not a walk in the park to publish a website. I feel that Storesonline was very up front in explaining that there is a learning curve to this process and that our success is up to each one of us and how hard we are willing to work.
I felt that what I was paying for was the simplicity of the program, as well as being able to list products easily in E-Bay.
Sherri, your sites look great! Kudos to you! Glad to hear you are doing so well. At least you earned your investment back quickly.
Marie
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on September 26th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
I bought six sites and did not cancel. Yet I have not built and launced any sites. My advice? Go with your gut feeling. If you felt at all pressured, then cancel. Future advice, never let anyone make you feel that if you don’t take advantage of what they have to offer right away, it won’t be there tomorrow.
I don’t regret signing up. I won’t know until I launch a site and promote it for at least a year. You sound like you need some SEO, search engine optimization help and that costs a lot less than SOL. Type SEO into google and start reading. A lot of web design teams also will do SEO for you, but be careful.
Good luck,
Shadrene
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on September 26th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Hi Marie,
By itself, the Storesonline software doesn’t really do much to help your search engine rankings. In fact, sites built with them are very SEO unfriendly.
Post your site url here and I’ll help provide some additional comments on how to help your site ranked higher.
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Angel Burden Reply:
January 21st, 2010 at 6:06 pm
I have purchased the SOL pro it gives me unlimited sites. The first site they built for me & I sell Rada Knives I’ve worked very hard on getting it together the site they built was basic but looked good. I had to add a lot to it. Without SOL programing I couldn’t have done it. There are a lot of problems I have found. Still a progress in work. My site is doing ok not great but I have an ad running on Yahoo & Google all the time would love to have info on making it better in the rankings. My son built his own site looks good but nobody is buying candles online had to take it off cost to much. can anyone give me a good drop shipper. Thanks
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on September 26th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
My present site is http://www.feedmysheep.biz
I use Engine Seeker and I have checked the meta tags and virtually nothing shows up. My problem is that I can’t work on the front page myself and when I complain they tell me there is nothing wrong with it.
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on September 26th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Hi Marie, yes your meta tags are not found in the header portion. You just need to add in that few lines of code into the html file.
Another thing is that your main page has too little text for the search engine to classify it properly. You can consider using text for some of the text which you are currently using an image files to represent.
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on September 26th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
Marie I was looking at your site and I viewed the source code and I could not find a meta description or keyword tag, also your title needs to be longer. As for my sites I have been doing good with visitors around 70 to 80 per day, but I cannot break 100. The more visitors you have the more you can sell. I also go here: http://www.onlinemerchantforum.com/forums/ for help. There are many people here with sol sites and you can get lots of free help. If I know today and was to go to a sol site I would not do it again. I bought 6 sites also and I have three running and three is enough work. Websites have to be maintained and need fresh content for search engines. Also I am constantly trading links to get page rank.
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on September 26th, 2007 at 3:35 pm
Thank you for your respose. I also checked the meta tags today and found none. I did get my webmasters attentiion and they are taking care of it.
I have been working on setting up my first store in the sol system. I was going to transfer my book inventory to it and change it to http://www.christianbooksbyfms.com
I am not sure that changing the domain name is a good idea. They seem to believe that you will go up in the search engines quicker if you have the actual name of your product in the domain name.
What I like about it is that I am in control and don’t have to ask someone else to make my changes on the front page. I take care of uploading al product and pictures I just can’t get them to teach me how to do the front page.
If you prefer to e-mail me direct you can e-mail me at servant@feedmysheep.biz
I could still cancel my plan because I have 3 days. Would you advise me to do so?
Thanks for the help and advise.
Marie
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John Taberner Reply:
February 11th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
Nobody should advise you to do so, but when so many people have adverse comments about a product wouldn’t you think that in itself was enough to throw up at least one red flag.
I just wish I had found these comments before i threw 32,000 thousand at storesonline, PMI, The Tax Club, MYeBIZ, Production4Profit, All access books, Dropship University, The Megaphone, Documents, Planners and all the rest that they say will position my ahead of Google, Yahoo, Msn. Oh I did manage to get them to say refund on The PropertyWire, something I KNOW i didnt purchase.
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on September 28th, 2007 at 10:03 am
My husband and I went to the siminar last Friday and wanted to learn more so we went to the all day siminar this past Monday and was sold hook line and sinker. We bought 6 sites for 5698.00. My alarms went off when the salesman said we should use our 401K to finance this, but we went ahead. We are in debt and I didnt want to get any further into debt. After a sleepless night we TRIED to cancel this past Tuesday. What a joke. The fax number was busy all day. When I called they said they could not talk to me because my husband was the primary owner of the site. Yet it was ME the wife who signed all the paper work first. Finally yesterday we got our fax to go thru. In fact I faxed it 2 times from different locations, plus I emailed them. Luckly I was able to cancel the 5698 off my visa with no hassel.
Looking back, once I asked about the cancelation polilcy we were treated differently and told to put it on our credit card.
I see from reading from the above comments we were all offered different package prices. We had no option to buy 3 sites. Either one for 2700 or 6 for 5698
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on September 28th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Ripoffs.com is NOT a complaint website. They sell brand name Ripoffs electronics. Would love to find when that site went too.
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on October 12th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
It is easy. You just call them and they will help you through the process step by step. I have set up two very effective sites and am making a very healthy side profit because of them. Don’t stress, they have a whole customer service department there to help.
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on October 12th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Hi Jessica, will you mind sharing with the rest of us your two sites?
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on October 12th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
okay….just got back for a seminar and yes even tho my gut was SCREAMING NOOOOOO my husband and i gave our credit card for a down payment and also signed agreement for credit terms. I immediately regretted our decision and all the way home kicked my own butt. So i did a search and here i am feeling more anxious as i read all these comments. There is NO cancellation policy on the BLANK back side of the yellow form. I did call the finance carrier and was told i must send a registered letter of cancellation within 10 days directly to SOL as well as a copy to the carrier, one for ourselves and one to Canada’s Dept of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. We are protected under a policy known as the “10 day cooling off period”.
So i am preparing my letter tonite, will send it off first thing monday morning. Unfortunatley, My MC rep told me they cannot remove the charge without vendor authorization, even though i called in my request to do so 2 hours after signing the forms. This is the first time we have ever bought into such a “scheme” only because we thought the Personal invitation was through a referral from our economic development officer we were working with to get a small bussiness loan. Unfortunately he is on vacation til end of october so we made our decision without consulting with him first. Needless to say , we are both regretting not checking the company out more thoroughly before we signed on. We are on very shaky ground financially due to my current disability from a car accident and my husbands losing his full time job a while back. Our hopes are to build an online business that we can take with us where ever we go since we have families on both sides of the continent, 7 grandchildren and helping our daughter still in college. So much for that eh!
so my question for diane is this: how did you manage to get your full visa refund?
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on October 12th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
PS…My gratitude to all who have been so candid (with both pos and neg feedback). Too bad i did not find this site a few days ago when i did a quick SOL search before deciding to attend the workshop today.
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on October 12th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
Mdeussa….I just called my credit card co and had no problem. You mentioned Canada. I live in the states. Maybe its different. Since cancelling I did get my credit card bill and it was removed. SOL have not contacted us yet for the stuff back.
I still want to get a business up and running.
Since posting this and now looking back….I had so many questions, and we were rushed out at the end.
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on October 13th, 2007 at 7:37 am
I e-mailed and faxed my cancellation within the 3 day period. My card was refunded within 5 days and the contract cancelled. They even sent the check that I wrote for a downpayment back to me. They called and tried to lower my package to 3 websites for $3100 instead of 6 for $5600. I explained that I felt that it was a waste of money for me when I already know how to build a website. That I thought we were mislead in many respects. We were told that we would learn how to get our sites up in the search engines for free and all that talked about was pay per click, we were also told that we would get a list of drop shippers and all we got were 2 websites to go where you have to find your own dropshippers. He said that the reason that they could not distribute that kind of information was because they are selling software, not a business opportunity, and the laws concerning those things would not allow them to present that information. I believe that this SOL could be a good thing for some people, it just wasn’t for me at this time.
Marie
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on October 13th, 2007 at 11:00 am
We bought the 6 site package, never felt pressured, in fact my gut told me it was time to tak an enourmous leap of faith. I am a programmer, and didnt find the waters so smooth to sail. Perhaps my experience made me look for things that just werent there. Most troubling was that you are not allowed to alter your html, a very key ingredient to any web site.
I am the only one working, my wifes health has headed south, so i am like the one guy at a snipe hunt “im holding the bag”. I have done my absolute best, and I have gotten nothing but good reviews on the site appearance and prices. but my health is starting to suffer the consequences of the stress. weve been thru a chapter 7 bk, so my thoughts are that our credit couldnt get much worse anyway. guess im just gonna have to try to sell off the unused licenses and blow off the rest as best i can. first thing i do is cancel the auto payment, and make it an annual payment thing.
it is a knife store by the way.
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on October 13th, 2007 at 11:55 am
Thank you diane and marie. As stated in previous post, our yellow copy does not have cancellation policy on back side. Can you please give me relevant info such as email, fax or phone number since none of this info is posted on the SOL contacts page. Thank you so much
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on October 13th, 2007 at 11:56 am
PS today is day 2 so i need this info asap. thanks again.
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on October 13th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
fax-801-812-8453
email cxIrequest@myquickresponse.com
stores online inc
754 East Technology Ave
Orem, UT 84097
good luck
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on October 13th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
in spite of reading all the above comments, i am still considering giving the program a shot rather than freak out based on heresay. We just purchased the program yesterday but realize we may be in over our heads due to our limited tek skills. Since we do not have a cancellation policy with our recieipts, i need to know: if we open the kit and try to install the programs and have as much problems as we are reading here….can we get a refund if we return the kit/softwares within 10 days of purchase (according to canada regs)
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John Taberner Reply:
February 11th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
Unless you are over 65 years of age the return policy is 3 days. Over 65 years old it is 15 days.
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on October 13th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
I am not sure what the Canda regulations are. You should open the kit and try it out before your time is up. I worked with setting up a site before I cancelled. It wasn’t too bad but I have already built one site. I do believe that they will be very helpful and answer all your questions and guide you through the set up. I think, if you have the time, that you can make money. Read the above posts, not everyone is saying that SOL are bad. it ust was not good timing for me, that is why I cancelled. I have an online business and I can hardly kep up with the orders and the setting up that I have to do right now. I just could not affford the time to set up 6 new sites. Keeping your site and products current and submitting to search engines is a full time job with 2 sites I knew there was no way I could handle 6. If Canda has a 10 day cancellation I would take the time to check it out.
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on October 13th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
TY again diane. well here is some info i found in doing more research before i bail: very interesting indeed. i post this with intent that anyone considering doing business with SOL will have more info to consider before taking that leap of (blind) faith such as we did. If you just recently purchased a program you DO have 10 days to bail if in Canada and if i am not mistaken, only 3 days if in US.
http://www.maine.gov/pfr/securities/consent_agreements/StoresOnline_CA.pdf
http://www.spokane.bbb.org/alerts/alerts.html?newsid=626&newstype=1
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=storesonline+and+utah+government+order+to+cease+and+desist&ei=utf-8&fr=b1ie7
wishing success to all who are dealing with trying to reclaim their investment losses
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on October 13th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
lil’ol’me,
Honestly speaking, I feel that the pricing of the product makes it extremely difficult for the newcomer to succeed. Building a successful website does take time and your expenses are going to be a big stumbling block.
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on October 13th, 2007 at 11:37 pm
thank you marie. we are not going to keep the program we have decided not to waste time with it. so back to SOL land it goes! we appreciate the insights and experiences shared here by all.
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on October 13th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
thank you martin. your comments helped us make our decision.
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on October 15th, 2007 at 12:33 am
Oh man I just spent $5698 on my six sites just yesterday at their conference and now hearing all of your comments, I am scared shitless. Even though I know html code etc, what good is it with SOL if I will not be allowed to “tweek”
my sites a little.
However – funny this sounds – my gut is telling me to “work it ” and make it into something big (big enough to pay back what $ I am putting into it and then some). I have always been an entrepreneur at heart. I have tried and bought so many different programs over the years and “ditched” them all really because they make it sound so easy to make money and then to find out it is not. Just like anything else – it just is going to take real hard work to “make” it work. Since I am unemployed due to injury and basically gave SOL a large chunk of my “hopes and dreams” money that I had left in savings, I am determined to make this work.
I know I still have time to bail, but I am tired of working for large corporations and now that I am limited to what kind of work I can do. I want to make this work so that I can be in business for myself for once. I am still scared, but I feel I gotta start somewhere. I am so glad you guys posted your comments here. I don’t feel so lost and alone in this anymore.
For those of us that are going to stick it out for the long haul- we should continue to share what we learn with each other. We also should get together a list of 100 ways to “not” give a seminar and give it to SOL (and they claim to have so much integrity -lol). We could also create an ” All the things you need 2 know B4 you buy SOL” list. I almost bailed today after re-reading my signed agreements, and reading their -non informative dropshipping tips. After spending all day online today- I found out that basically if you google long enough you’ll find what you need for most any thing that SOL didn’t tell us. (SOL listed tips are not all that great) I have also bugged customer service 3 times today already- (so far they are pretty good and knowledgeable) So I guess I will stick it out until I strike gold. I hope this will be easier than building a site from scratch (html coding can be a pain too) it better be easier, for all that money you pay! I guess I will find out!
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on October 15th, 2007 at 8:04 am
Jennifer,
I think you can make it work but it will take some long hours and effort on your part.
I found that researching what to sell was taking a ton of time. I am still researching drop shippers for product to sell on E-Bay and my website. What I am finding is that everyone is selling the same things and the competition is fierce.I found quite a few through Alibaba. Almost got hooked on a few scams on that as well. Stay away from Simplx.com they want hundreds of dollars and won’t even show you the products that you would be selling or the prices that you would be getting. Don’t go with any drop shipers that will not show the product or pricing beforehand. They WILL NOT refund any money.Be sure and check out any and all dropshippers by doing a ton of searching about the company on Google. All the supposed “great” info that SOL gave for “free” I found free on the internet anyway. They are just serving as a finder of “free” info.
Whatever your decision, may God Bless your endeavor.
Marie
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Able Reply:
February 5th, 2009 at 1:57 am
talk to who tech support ppl? they are not the accounting or escalation department… !
chat support consist of bootom of the barrel agent … who’s job is to answer technical issues… they have nothing to business development….. the accounting dept i learned from inside source will not compremize and will not speak with any customers … front line Agents (Anroids) are directed to repeat a (nonsense speach) = (script) selling there souls for a few bucks .. while the big players poket the money… indeed they have the best ppl to provide the most convincing sales pitches.,,,
pSttt let me tell u a secret…
I have worked for 17 unfortunatly fortune 500 companies in the past 12 years…. Fired 3 times quit 4 times .. i have a backround In INformation technology and network ENG.
MIcro/Macro Computers , I have worked in IT OperationS
SERVER FARMS, IT sales and Consulting 1st , second , 3nd lever support…
I have worked AS a BUsiness and Technical Analyst
Joined …. Bell Canada…. Pepsico, IBM, Scocia bank,, EATNA life insurance company, Kraft, Roche Phramasuitical, GlaxoSmithKleine Phrama, CGI GROUP, Ingram Multimicro, MARCH/Mercer HR, and the list goes on….i all of my technical and sales roles …
I attended Stores Online Seminar… I had a hunch .. too good to be true .. presure selling .. these guys where good……. yes is true all of what i have read about the steps taken in order to close the sale on u .. is true..
When i Submited and sighned the paper… i was thinkning ( These sales ppl think they are too smart .. i sighned the form purchased the licence for 6 … yeah sure whatever 6300.00 Dollars yaaayps…
U see … I wanted to test these guys… i gave them a valid paycheque/VOID
but an invalid Security #… so they dont pinch my credit.
BEfore the date of the 1st withdrawl, i tryed contacting the sales Directors who Gave the speach… no one returned my call ( I said fine keepit up) I tryed to talk to the accounting DEPT.. All i get is call center Floor supervisors With VISORS that PRINTED SCAMERS on there foarheads.. GAVE me the RUNARROUND.
I put a stop on the check (and i gave them the finger)
U see what i understood in business is that the customer is not always right acording to experience, but the compaanies that really looked after there customers Gained Consumer confidence.. I have no confidence in STORES online , GOING from IMERGENT changing there name STORES NOT ONLINE
..
U see I dont understand why a company that makes so much PROFIT outa scaming ppl .. worked hard to create beautifull looking template with LIMITED capabilities (I AGREE WITH Nadeem said)
AFter the fact that i have TURNED DOWN STORES ONLINE gave tHEM WRONG INFORMATION to cover my back, STOPED VOID cheque
i stayed on this subject researshing these guys .. the more i read the more i see the bigger picture………in business it is 2 ways .. suply and demand… if ure demand are not met … then cut out the supply…
dont suply them with money… example u might pay them all the money .. but if they go banckrupt….. there is nothing u can do to get ure money…
allthough u have suplied there business with enerrgy(money) to pay for the R&D , Support staff that are ineficent and only support and know what the SCRIPT says… u have payed for the big boys pokets.. who delivered tthe speach….. and they payed u nothing…. if everybody stop paying these guys..
results … I was lucky i sliped passed the sharp teeth of the great ONLINE WHITE and BLUE SHARK….
WRONG information wrong wguy… CANT TOUCH THIS .. SUKKERS (SONLINE)…
DONT waite ure money… goto ure banck and put a “stop payment” let them > tell storesonline 007 and there supervisors ..
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on October 15th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
hello everyone.
first i want to say to Jennifer: “power to you and your determination”! IF we were not so up against the wall financially we would have probably stuck with it. but as it is…..with a kid still in college, 5 fatherless grandchildren and our own health issues….we just could not take such a risk after reading of all the difficulties others have experienced—especially the technical frustrations and extra costs.
We would rather invest those funds into helping our children and grandchildren—the “collective our” true future!
On another note…..i made phone contact with SOL today. They were very polite and cooperative about honoring our refund with no hassle. I am glad we initiated that immediately because i am not so sure they would have been so accomodating once our “time” expired.
I am awaiting someone to contact me with instructions in regards to returning the merchandise.
So all i can suggest to anyone with butterfly bellies and ice cold feet…DO NOT procrastinate. get your request in immediately. I e-mailed mine to
cxlrequest@myquickresponse.com
I got confirmation by auto response almost immeditely. but just to be safe i called first thing this morning and as i said, they were very courteous.
thank you again Diane for the info you shared on how to contact by email.
for any Canadian newbies here is something else. Read your merchant’s packet immediately and very carefully. we noticed a few things like the fact that our license agreement was never given to us so there fore we never signed it. It was in the little portfolio along with the chat license and ECI merchant acct info. that is another thing to check…..it is tucked away in back of other materials.
If i understand the ECI packet info correctly, Just to set up a credit card will cost 999.00 in CAD funds. then you will have all the other extras: MONTHLY charges as well as transaction and charge back charges etc. According to their terms charges will begin immediately upon confirming the account. also the ECI fees are PER SITE not PER package (”under certain circumstances”). HMMMM. i do not remember that little detail being mentioned.
If they mentioned this little detail in the workshop we either missed it or it just got jumbled up with everything else we were trying to absorb.
another thing…..DO NOT sign anything before you read it. Really. I have been in business for most of my adult life….i KNOW this. but still blindly signed what was handed to me….i was so overwhelmed i guess….not to mention spaced out from dental related pain meds. I just wanted to get out of there! I should have skipped the workshop…..
So read everything. DO not let them push or rush you into signing anything. read first….thoroughly!!!! We noticed after the fact things like we would have to abide by calif law and therefore attend court in calif if there were any litigations(from either party)……we live in nova scotia! THAT is insane!
Also……be sure you read the bottom line. In our case we were told the TOTAL price would be $2700 for the single site deal. But after signing then reviewing the copy we were given we saw that there was an additional 14% tax added bringing our balance to 3078.00 which increased our agreed upon monthly payment by $11. the amt we agreed on was already pushing our budget to the edge and that $11 DID make a difference.
when i asked the young man to remove the tax since we were told $2700 was the total cost. Tax included was never mentioned. Since We were NOT advised of this fee i told him i did not feel we should pay it! he said he could not do that. we would have to take it up with SOL.
So just be VERY careful of what you sign.
OH and per advise from legal counsel: if you put any payment on your Checking account, shadow checks or CC and also agreed to have monthly auto pays against either of them….when you cancel be sure to notify(by phone and in writing) your banks and CC company and make it very clear that you DO NOT authorize future debits against your account from SOL or any co associated with them. This is very important.
i sure hope this saves someone from getting into any hardships as a result of making a committment that you really are not willing or able to honor.
Good luck to all of you. I would love to hear of any of your successes.
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on October 16th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
I just wanted to let everyone know that if you do sign on with Stores on Line, I hope that you already own a home. My husband and I were strong armed about three years ago into buying a startup kit for 3 sites. We were told that we could get out of it but that was a lie. They called us and I told them repeatedly that I did not want their services. I thought I was buying one thing but when I got home with the start up packet, it was not what they had told us it would be. My husband spent our last bit of money on those things and had us on a payment plan for the remainder of the money. I was outraged when recently we began to get financing together for a house and have a collection on our credit report from them. When I told them three years ago that I didn’t want their services, they stopped contacting me after a few months. I was under the impression that I was out the initial money but at least they would not get any more of my money. Now they are the reason that we cannot get financed on a house. THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS and if the attorney general would do anything about it, it would be too late now. I don’t have any recourse now since we left the state we bought them in. All I can say is DON’T GO! DON’T BE SUCKERED IN BY THEIR SMOOTH TALK! I did not want to do this, my husband did and thought that nothing bad could come of it. We could use it as a ministry tool, he said. Now he is really kicking himself. And if you think that it is over, it is not. All of you who say that you got your money back…please take time in the next few months to check your credit report. They are not so ready to let go as they seem to be.
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on October 18th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
wow lisa. that is terrible. I really feel for you and your husband. I sure hope this does not mess up our credit.
and we thought it will be over as soon as SOL credits our CC acct.
I just spoke with someone about the possiblity of this happening to us. I was told NOT in Canada.
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on October 20th, 2007 at 3:36 am
I believe SOL has to do several things to make their service better. First allow us to edit our sites at the HTML level. You can add almost any HTML in a text box, but it would be better if you could edit all the way down to the HTML level. Next they should allow PHP, ASP, and CGI scripts. Many link exchange programs have this and it makes it much easyer to exchange links. Exchanging links will increase your page rank. Next they should have an optimization service included with the package. To me this is the hardest part of SOL because I am always trying to acheive optimization for my sites in order to be higher on the search engine pages. The last thing is when you go to their show and tell sesion they should tell you that it is not easy to build a site and that it can take lots of time before you make any money. Many search engines take several weeks before your site is indexed after you submit your site to them and be prepaired to do lots of tweaking to your sites to acheive a higher ranking. Nothing is easy and to do any website you need some idea of how HTML and search engines work.
http://www.the-best-hot-sauce.com
http://www.selfdefenseequipment.biz
http://www.mysimplifynurse.com
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on October 20th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
Thanks for all your veiws on StoresOnLine. I’ve been wanting to do drop shipping and using ebay as a way to advertise and sell. I am off the plymouth in a few days for the SOL seminar which I paid £20. I will take in their information but I will not be purchusing ant of there products.
Thank you to all of you for stopping me from making a big mistake.
It also goe’s to show, whatever you do don’t get hurried or pushed into it, and most of all always make sure you research your company and products, espcially if it involve a large amount of cash that you can’t afford to lose.
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on October 26th, 2007 at 10:37 am
I have been to the 8 hour seminar, It was interesting from what I could see of it as I was constantly pested by them trying to get me to purchase there sites. The sites and software are way over priced. for a reverse search engine. try overture.com, it’s free there. There is also very cheap web site building company’s, so save your self thousands and don’t sign up.
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on October 26th, 2007 at 10:55 am
For very a reasonable website prices check out the pricing on my website at http://www.feedmysheep.biz
Go to the FAQ’S page and click on the webhosting specials.
I have a very large shipping cart and very reasonable rates.
I have asked them to give discounted prices to people that come to them through my website, so you do save a little. I am not telling you this make money, only to give you a site to look at and save you some money. I have had other companies quote me 6 times what I am paying for the same size site.
Marie
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on October 26th, 2007 at 11:38 am
The overture keyword research tool is already not working. You can try the free and paid version of wordtracker.
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on October 26th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
I use the software and it is a lot of work, but I will say that it has made a bunch of money that I wouldn’t have made otherwise.
The software is a real good fit for a company who has a small product line, or is a reseller of a small product line.
I truly wish the best to you all. There might be a product out there that your neighbor has that will sell great online!
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on October 27th, 2007 at 5:17 pm
I went to one of storesonline work shop about a year ago and luckily I was not stupid to get caught up with all the sales pitch and smooth talks.They are very aggressive, and make you feel as though you are getting a deal of a lifetime.If anyone really wants residual or passive income they should check out http://www.noniusers.com/2552430.No regrets
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on November 4th, 2007 at 3:50 am
Thanks to all for your comments. I am attending a SOL workshop on 11/16 and will go more informed. Since my husband is not able to go with me, I will not be spending or committing our finances to anything before discussing with him. That’s just how we do things… neither commits big finances without discussing with the other. If we miss out on an opportunity that way, well, so be it. Big read warning flag is always when you must commit NOW!
I signed up for the workshop (a $20 commitment) with the thought that even if I have one or two new ideas of how to market a website, it would be worth the investment (free meal at a decent hotel in town). The introductory seminar I attended was very good in so much that it got me to thinking in a different direction.
I would welcome thoughts from those who know HTML, etc. but do not have as much marketing expertise… do you think the seminar is worth attending for gleaning additional marketing ideas, suggestions, etc.?
One thought about the organizer given away at the seminar… for a company that is supposed to be into technology, why give away a 1990s PAPER organizer? How about a cheap PDA even rather than the no-brand MP3 player? I just thought that was VERY odd…
Thanks again, and good luck to all in your ventures!
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on November 5th, 2007 at 7:29 am
The workshop I attended was $100 and they allowed you to bring your”partner.” We also were suppose to get a free MP3 player, which they happened to be out of and were suppose to ship it to us and we have never seen it yet. That has been over 2 moths ago. I also, thought that it would be “worth” the fee if we got some good ideas but most of the things they told us were either pay per click or already free on the ointernet anyway. I would not waste my time or money to go to anything like this again. Be careful!!
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on November 5th, 2007 at 5:38 pm
I went to the full day seminar (in Hedge End, Southampton, UK) on 29th Oct. They charge £20 for it over here – of course you can bring a guest free as well (if you are already convinced enough to pay £20 for a workshop, then you are likely to be a good person to do their recruiting for them!).
I am not sorry that I went to the seminar, because I did learn a lot about marketing web sites. This information is still to be checked out from other sources – I have around 25 years experience as a software engineer and a good friend who has been making and using web sites for commerce for more than 10 years – and even if not everything that we were told is quite as good as it sounds, at least, now, I know what to go searching for and the questions to ask.
The technical content of our seminar was presented by Brock Madsen: he did seem to really know his stuff and he was a very good presenter. Specifically, I learned about increasing your ranking in the search engines, the existence of pay-per-click search engines, link trading, how to use these last two as tools to increase your ranking in the relevancy search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc), affiliate marketing programmes, a bit about drop shipping, and a number of other things that I had no previous knowledge of. However, I had read half-way through this forum page before I went (I’d only found it the previous night) as well as all of http://beginnerinternetmarketing.wordpress.com/ (not the archives), and so I had gone with a firm resolve NOT TO BUY ANYTHING on the day – no matter how good they made it sound!!
Even with all that preparation, I was almost convinced that what they are selling could be worth the money – if you make good use of it! But I still don’t like their selling tactics.
Right at the beginning of the first session, the big sell began in earnest. Brock presented “Three major mistakes to avoid”.
1. Trying to control all of the eyeballs (people)
2. Having only one web site
3. Marketing dissimilar products or services on the same web site
The first is the reasonable observation that you need to target your marketing at your most likely buyers – and this theme was revisited many times during the day – how you achieve this in many different ways using the tools and statistics provided by an SOL site.
The second is, in my opinion, very questionable and clearly designed (along with the third) to convince you that buying six web sites straight off is the most reasonable strategy for success. To me it seems to fly on the face of both common sense and good business decision making to try to start six new businesses simultaneously – particularly if you have no previous experience of this method of selling. The most reasonable course of action seems to me to make a success of one new business first, and then – if you have time – proceed to work on another similar business, perhaps using some of what you have learned from the first.
The third ‘mistake’ may have some sense behind it, but I can envisage how you could easily use the same ‘payment engine’ web site as a back end to receive payments from several ’shop front’ web sites. This however would probably not work well using an SOL site as the back end, because then you would probably lose all benefit of the SOL statistical analysis of who clicked on what or searched for what keywords to get to your site and the stats for all your different products would be aggregated into one amorphous mass rather than telling you anything useful and specific to each product (line). So using web sites set up as SOL provides probably does lead to the third mistake being a reasonable thing to avoid.
Brock Madsen said that he was not an employee of Stores Online – that’s why he could get away without wearing a suit like all the SOL personnel around that day, but – he said – he was a “web marketing professional” who (enthusiastically) used Stores Online products to do his marketing (”I love drop shipping”). However, he later posed the question to himself why did he do these workshops? And he made it clear that – as well as getting a holiday away from his six kids – he was paid to do the presentation by SOL. So, while he might not be an employee of SOL it is really a matter of semantics – he actually does work for and get paid by SOL for doing these workshops – so much for the impression of independence that he and SOL wanted .to create.
At the penultimate session of the day, Brock opened the question/objection that he said he had been presented with by several delegates during the day: “I never make same day buying decisions.”
In response, Brock said, (my summary, not his exact words – we were forbidden to record) that this is not a same day decision: you have had a fortnight to do your research and any due diligence; you were told at the previous free seminar that there would be workshop day only special offers and what the prices would be.
My considered response to that is:
1. We were not told at the free seminar exactly what workshop offers would be. We were told at the free seminar (a) what the Stores Online ‘normal’ prices are: namely £2,000 one off fee for per web site plus £1,900 per year for hosting and maintenance, and (b) that . . . .
[one week later, just picking up the thread of what I began to write the morning after the workshop]
(b) . . . there would be further reductions and offers on the day of the workshop – “so come with your cheque book/credit card and come prepared to negotiate” (That is my best attempt at a direct quote from Lance (surname unremembered) who led the free seminar a couple of weeks before.
2. At the free seminar Nobody mentioned, so far as I can remember, about doing any due diligence in the two weeks between the seminar and the workshop.
3. The decision that they are asking you to make on the day of the workshop IS a same day decision in essence because you do not have all the facts about the offers you are going to receive on the day of the workshop, and you certainly don’t have ‘leisure’ to read and consider all the small print that you sign up to. In fact they made a big thing of it that the one-to-one ‘consultations’ that they are keen for you to sign up to during the day – and during which thy are hoping to persuade you to accept one of their workshop offers – last only 7 minutes and 13 seconds! That certainly isn’t enough time to carefully consider an offer that you have not previous seen!
Because I had firmly decided beforehand not to buy anything on the day of the workshop, and because I did feel (at least, after the first session in the morning), that I was actually learning some quite valuable things from the workshop and did not want to miss any of it, I did not go forward to sign up for one of their “one-to-one consultations” – which I had prior knowledge from this forum would be a hard sell.
Toward the end of the day one, however, of the seminar ‘consultants’ came to me during the workshop and said that he had some spare time if I’d like to have a consultation. I explained politely that I did not want one and that I’d like to listen to the seminar content. He was polite but quite persistent – saying that what was being taught right now was how to use the software and that if I was not going to buy it, it was pointless listening. He was quite difficult to shake off: I needed to refuse very clearly several times before he would stop interrupting my attention to the presentation, which at that time was, if memory serve me correctly, a discussion of pay-per-click search engines and how they can affect your ranking in the relevancy engines.
I said above that I was almost convinced that what they are selling could be worth the money. What I meant by this was that I was impressed by all the tools that they demonstrated to help you do your marketing. Although some of this is probably available either totally free (keyword analysis for example) or at much lower prices, what SOL build into the ‘back end’ of your marketing sites are tools to allow you to see instantly the statistics associated with your sales for last month etc., the keywords that people searched for to find your site, so that you can target your marketing more accurately at the right buyers, automatic link trading, and much more that would be invaluable as marketing tools.
If – and it is a big IF – you have the confidence that you can sell your chosen product effectively enough to pay SOL’s fees, the merchant account charges etc., etc. and make a profit on top, then I think that these tools could be a huge asset.
If you are new to this whole game of Internet marketing, then I would say that the best way to feel your way into it would be to create your own web site using one of the free web site providers, e.g. http://www.freewebs.com. This will cost you nothing (apart from some time) and will give you the experience of running a web site.
If you already have a web marketing business and you want to give it some extra ‘oomph’, then, if you can afford it, an SOL site might well provide the additional marketing power you need. If nothing else, you will probably learn a lot from operating an SOL site for a year and if you chose not to continue, you could write off the expense and use your new knowledge to good effect – maybe get a web designer to program up some of the tools you have found most useful on the SOL site.
Some of the other posts on this forum and other sites referenced here regarding SOL’s strong arm tactics, their trading practices and many trading names are very worrying though.
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on November 6th, 2007 at 6:56 pm
Thank you Hedles for your very articulate, thorough and objective comments. I must say you shared some great insight besides being quite informative.
In hindsight…. i do feel that we should have done more research prior to attending the second workshop. Yes, we did know the package prices that would be offered. Yes we did know that we would be expected to make a decision for that “seminar only” price. But what we did not know was what we learned AFTER PURCHASING THE PROGRAM when we were reviewing the materials. For example– the additional fees to set up the merchant’s acct PER SITE!!!!
also, once we read all the comments here, well it scared the bejeebies outta me!!!! I realized that we just did not have the tek know how to embark on such a venture at this point in our lives. As you suggested we had decided to cancel (before it was too late to get our full refund or to be buried in debt to their finance carrier) and work on setting up a store on one of the many free websites avail.
A while back, We did try putting together a site through tripod. The tools and templates are user friendly although a bit restrictive. However, i am happy with our first time attempt which we built pretty much by the seat of our pants!!!!
the only thing is….my husband made a big boo boo. He typed in his acct name by mistake where he should have typed in our Store Name!!! Unfortunately, once he did that, it got locked in so he cannot change it. But we went ahead and built the site anyway just to practice since it was free.
We still need to get our shopping carts in order as well as set up a merchants account. Our next step will be to try building a new site using Yahoo. We have heard some good things from folks who have used the Yahoo venue for free web building.
Anyways, we did learn some valuable tactics at the workshop and some very valuable insights from all who have shared their stories and knowledge here. thanks to all.
PS….we did get our FULL credit card refund within a few days of speaking with the SOL customer service rep. Our contract withthe finance co has also been nullified. So we are okay.
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on November 7th, 2007 at 1:27 am
Hi Hedles,
“tools to allow you to see instantly the statistics associated with your sales for last month etc., the keywords that people searched for to find your site, so that you can target your marketing more accurately at the right buyers,”
Google offers such a service for free. It’s called google analytics.
http://www.google.com/analytics
Hi Medussa,
You can setup your storefront for a very low price compared to storesonline. However, if you are serious about the business, you need to get your own domain name for your store (and not some free service). A domain name will cost you $9/year.
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on November 7th, 2007 at 3:10 am
Hi Martin,
“Google offers such a service for free. It’s called google analytics.”
You are right. I still have a lot of investigation to do – especially of Google analytics. Thanks for the guidance.
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on November 7th, 2007 at 11:26 pm
thank you martin. we will look into your suggestions.
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on November 8th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
On Tuesday Nov. 7 we attended a seminar in Windsor,ON. The following is part of a letter I sent explaining why we didn’t join.
“I found your “marketing strategy” offensive. For one thing, this was billed as a full day training seminar. I came there expecting to learn how to sell products or in my case, promote my business on the internet . Too much of the day was filled with exhortations to “act now.” While there are supposedly fifty or more strategies we were only given a few. In our personal interview we were told that “The best are saved for our buying customers.” Actual training time was greatly reduced by a variety of non-essential remarks, reiterations and obtaining agreement to various statements. All of this wasted time that could have been spent providing information. Your clever pricing scheme designed to force individuals to make a quick decision had exactly that effect; we decided not to partake. You see, in my business I don’t play games with prices. I don’t try to trick my clients into making a decision by supposedly offering a huge discount. Please don’t tell me that you think that your service is actually worth $2700.00 per year ad infinitum ad nauseum but that just for today we can have it for $2700.00 forever. And that $2800.00 set-up or whatever it was that you “waived”. Pleeeease! That sort of ploy may work on those poor people, many of whom were there in d esperation due to a floundering economy, but not on me. Either the product is worth $x.xx or it’s not. Trying to fool people into thinking they are getting a great deal by acting now is immoral. You prey on the dreams of the helpless and hopeless, filling their heads while emptying their pockets. I’m not saying that your system doesn’t work, but people need to take what they have learned and digest it before making such a life changing decision. When the consultant asked me for my credit card after I had filled out one of your forms, I was taken aback. In all my training in sales I was never instructed to be so pushy. It immediately reinforced my earlier perception that we were being railroaded into making a decision that upon more careful consideration we may have foregone; not because the product is not all you say it is but because it is just not the right thing for us.
The second thing that bothered me was the refusal to allow questions, ostensibly due to time constraints. Had you actually “taught” and foregone the “hype” there would have been time to field questions. I believe the real reason for not answering questions is that you don’t want anyone to rock your boat. Pointed questions by thinking individuals is anathema to your objective.
You stated that you have no statistics on the success of people in your programme. That leads me to conclude that the majority of people that start out are generally unsuccessful. During the break I was able to ascertain that a significant percentage were still in business(i.e. paying your fees) after three years. That’s not very conclusive but that was the only statistic the consultant could provide. If you supposedly have a long-term relationship with your clients then you should know something about their success rate. The presenters were great at saying “These results are not typical.” I’ll bet there not.
Despite all this we agonized over the decision. We spoke with one of your consultants. We told him about my business. I suggested that he look up my business on the internet and see if he thought you could help me. He said he would try and get back to us at the next break. Well we were still there at the end of the day but he never came back. Too busy? Maybe. Didn’t think he could intimidate us? Probably. It was funny. He almost ran away from us as soon as we got up. Left a real warm fuzzy feeling. Must have been a hairball. So your claims of excellent customer service fell on deaf ears; I didn’t feel that we were given the information we needed and asked for and therefore we decided not to participate. Finally, I’m sitting here after a long day and it occured to me that I don’t even know what you are so I decided to try to “find” you on the net. I tried internet training courses, internet business and internet solutions with no luck. Then I tried web hosting. You are not in the top ten list nor anywhere else for that matter. “e-commerce?” Nope. “e-commerce training?” No. “e-stores?” No. “Web-site development?” No. I finally gave up. You may want to practice what you preach and put some “key words” into your own site so that people can find you. Having said all this we came away troubled. We feel we made the right decision for our situation but had the consultant gotten back to us as he said, things might have been different. We may have made the right decision because of your lack of customer service. Something to think about.
I would advise anyone thinking of going to a Stores on line seminar to think twice about it. Read these reviews carefully. These people are super salesman. They try to make you feel like you’d be crazy not to join up, not just for one but six sites.
The day after the seminar I got a call from Stores on Line. Before he could give me “one last chance” I asked if he had seen my letter. He said no. I suggested he read it and call back. Funny! There’s been no response other than an e-mail thanking me for my letter. No response. No rebuttal. No phone call. Good luck. You’ll need it.
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on November 17th, 2007 at 12:55 am
We would like to join a class action suit against Stores Online.
Please contact us with any info.
Thanks,
Tony and Annelie Piccino
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John Steele Reply:
June 30th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
I just found your post and would love to know if you found ANY class actions against SOL.
I hope you did asw I would love to be part of it.
Thanks
John
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Jill Reply:
July 1st, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Dear John
A class action that we a tryin to get going and it is with Anita and Joe in Canada they got hold of a lawyer in Utah
Please email them at
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Jill Reply:
July 1st, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Dear John
A class action suit is taken place by Anita and Joe in Canada and you can email them as I did at lindsaycoupl@hotmail.com. Ignore the message I first sent as I hit enter before completeing the message take care
Yours truly
Jill
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on November 19th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
They were here in vancouver, canada. I went to their 2 hour presentation with my friend. i can’t agree more with Bob about how they were trying to convince people it is today or never. what kind of buisness is this. They wanted people to register for their one day workshop. me and my friend did not know our work schedule since we work shifts, they did not give us the option of geting back to them to register the next day. it seemed like they were afraid that we will have time to realize what a scam they are. their gift was a $1worth organizer made of cheap material. they calimed it worth $39.00 There was no room for questions, I rasied my hands a few times, with no result. i have to admit that i was a little interested, but since i had tried internet store with another company in the internet with way less money or for free (can’t remember exactly) and i did not make any money out of it and i knew i could try to sell in ebay with not much cost, i told my freind i dont think this would work. when they said the cost of $2800, i totaly refused it. Although i was interested in going to their workshop. now i am glad i did not register. I think something realy has to be done. They are working full time to trick people. thanks afsaneh
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on December 2nd, 2007 at 5:05 pm
My friend and I attended the 90 min seminar Nov. 28. Yes it all sounded very appealing, especially to two stay at home mom’s. We even decided to sign up for the ALL day seminar that will be held Dec. 13. As many of you have said, SOL has a very aggressive approach, though we were a little questionable on some of the things they brought up, we still signed up for the all day. We are hoping to gain some information that we don’t know about running are own online business. Having the time to reasearch all this, which is really the best thing to do, just isn’t realistic. After reading all of these blogs, since 2006 comments, I also wonder, what does Martin Lee have to gain from all this? Sorry to be so skeptical, but . . . My friend and I will definitely sit on our wallets Dec. 13.
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on December 4th, 2007 at 5:12 am
Hi, just reading these posts and thought i would just add, i went to the free seminar had my SANDWHICH and got my free DIARY, and well going over the selling techniques mentioned here its funny that these different named sales people had the same lives and experences such as 3 kids etc…. haven’t gone to the all day seminar however have paid for it so i might go to and check it out. These methods remind me of the late night phone up game shows, the ones where you just don’t get through!!
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on December 4th, 2007 at 5:42 am
Hi Nicole,
Go ahead and attend the 1-day event and see whether what I have written here is true.
What do I have to gain?
A few pennies a day from those google advertisements you see on this site.
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on December 4th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
anyone want transfer a storesonline account,
I would like to spend some money to try out.
It’s better if you are in vancouver BC Canada
My email: shaggyoo@hotmail.com
Dont email me about after Dec30,07 to ruin my newyear,Please
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on December 5th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
Thank you all for your information and warnings. I am sooo glad that I looked this up before even going to the “all day workshop”. I’m not going now. I don’t have the time or the money to waste on lies. Thanks again!
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on December 6th, 2007 at 8:43 am
Raine..
I would NOT cancel going to the all day event. If you are interested in starting a business, they do give out a lot of information. Take their information and start your business on your own. Just be firm and tell the salesmen you are here to listen ONLY and bug off.
IF they ever come back to Rockford IL again, I do plan to go, just to listen more carefully and take better notes.
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on December 13th, 2007 at 10:52 am
One of the website building solutions that I have always recommended as an alternative to Storesonline, “Site Build It” is having a 50% offer until Christmas.
You can watch this SBI video tour to see what’s it all about.
http://www.storesonline-reviews.com/go/sbi-video-tour.php
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on December 19th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
Has anyone been called with an offer to fly you to Salt Lake City for personal training? At a cost of $15,000?
Is this a new tactic?
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on December 26th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Martin: Where are all the postings after Dec 19th, is this where I should be contacting you with my comments? I don’t see my previous comments? Thanks, Bruce,Seaweedman
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on January 9th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
If all of you put half as much effort into building your sites as you did bitching about why you quit, you would all be rich. And for all of you that are experts on seminars and scams why are you the ones always going to them and then rushing back to your part time job at the drive thru window and then looking for the next seminar you can go to. Nothing comes free and nothing comes easy so instead of griping about all your failed experiences (because you quit) how bout putting all that energy into something constructive?
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on January 17th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Hey, I just read all the comments about Sol I have to admit that their are scams i bought 6 websites for 6000 plus 900 to set up my credit card account so after 2 years and half to tried to make money i did make only 2000 in 2.5 but spent more than i earn. It is not complicate to design and use their software but they forget that you need unique content to be succesful online. If some one want to buy a website with them please do not do it. if for some reason you are still want to a buy a website i can offer you a good deal. chambras1281@yahoo.com also i can recomment SBi to start a business.
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on January 22nd, 2008 at 12:48 pm
This is a scam and a rip off. They always say they will help. Ever wonder why the people helping you are slaving away at a regular job instead of having web sites. This is a rip off. Do not buy it. I am losing my 6000. I was told all of these people that made bad comments have been helped and never go back and put good comments down. Good luck.
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on January 23rd, 2008 at 9:25 am
ANYONE BEEN CONTACTED BY A MR BRIAN HEATON ABOUT STORES SUPER FAST MARKETING PROGRAM
WHERE THEY WILL GET 3 SITE UP AND RUNNING IN 6 MONTHS FOR $8,000…PLEASE ADVISE 1 24 08
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on January 24th, 2008 at 7:49 am
I attended the SOL seminar alone in May 2007 and bought the 3 website package paying a total of C$4,671.72. I was all excited to start after hearing about how easy it was to do so even though if you have the least internet knowledge – that what was emphasized during the whole day seminar. Unfortunately, it was not to be. Even with their chathelp, it was painstakingly very frustrating until I feel that my interest started to wane. About a month later, I received a call from SOL enquiring about the progress that I have made so far. In all honesty, I told him truthfully what was going on. It did not take him long to automatically suggest that I might consider getting myself a mentor. At last I thought someone cared enough to ask but my delight turned to horror at his suggestion that it would cost around $3,000 to acquire one! I declined as this would certainly put more financial strain on my new marriage. Already with the initial amount I had foolishly ‘invested’, I felt so cheated. The process of building just one website is just too overwhelming to an old man like me and to be billed further for a help badly needed is just too much that I simply gave up.
Then magically, came another invitation for another seminar in Oct, hardly 5 months later. Same venue, same tactics, same promises. I jumped at the ’second’ chance, thinking that this time, I could ‘jumpstart’ my waning interest and thought it would be an excellent idea to take along my wife for moral support. Paid the C$20 and was all set to the BIG day.
Unfortunately that day, the wife could not make it so I had to go alone, again. I got into the registration line alright and given a tag but nothing else. Upon entering the seminar hall, I smell something fishy. One of the guys asked for a certain form which I could not produce. I got my seat anyway amongst a very big enthusiastic crowd of would-be enteprenuers, a big part of them being elderly people like myself. But within minutes, I was ushered to the side and I heard one guy telling the other that I am not qualified as I am now a vendor! I was shown the door and advised to exit ‘quietly’. I patiently explained to them that I came on invitation and that since I have a lot of problems with my initial website, I thought it would be like a kind of refresher course for me.
They told me that this is useless as I would not learn anything from this session. I explained that since I have a lot of problems with the designing, I do not mind at all. But they DO mind and asked me to leave. I was very embarassed and disheartened but not before I turned around and asked for a refund of my money – which they promply did to avoid stares from the stream of people walking in.
Till this day, my website is still on suspended animation and seven months after charging my credit card, I am still painfully paying my monthly installment to pay off this debt which should not have been if I have been smart enough to read this website before I dive into the liars’ den. Anybody has any idea how to recoup the loss?
So Diane McCue, forget about going the second time for more observation. You will be KICKed OFF without any second thought! They are a bunch of ruthless people who have no compassion for people whom financially they have ruined.
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on January 24th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Mr William here is a solution for you if you live in USA you can contact your the attorney of your state & BBB.com and make a complaint. this people have all kind of complaints. I Hope this will help you. i am sorry you can contact Ftc.gov this goverment entities
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on January 24th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
joe martin, man please you do not need to spend that kind of money to make your business run. please man try site sell.com for only a fraction you can learn to design and do the marketing they are the best . you can have my word
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on January 27th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Jose, thank you for the suggestion.
This is such a painful experience no one should have to go through. Bless you!
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on February 7th, 2008 at 11:58 am
For those handfull of you that have found success with SOL, God bless you and I wish you best of your success (unless you are secretly representives of SOL)
Mine is a similar story of the rest of you all. Just over 1 year ago, my wife and I sat in on the same 2 seminars as the rest of you where they insured a dumb blue collar worker (me) fortunes can be made thru the help of these fully loaded websites.
The mood and excitement was so rich, against my wifes better judgement, I bought into there “Fail Safe Program”. After countless hours of researching Drop shippers and all the same stuff you good people went thru, I recieved the same phone call that I’m sure most of you all did. An invitation for much needed further assistance, but not without a huge nomonal fee.
We had already spent our money we had saved up to start our Painting Bussiness. I asked the gentleman on the phone, “Was it not explained that with our original investment, we are provided all the tools and training necessary for a computer illiterate person to succeed with the ‘point and click’ technology?” His responce was “Yes but the actual marketing comes with experiance not possesed by there cust. support team, that there expertece is simply refering information from the same text that came with my package, Heck, I know how to read!!
Something I did learn form this whole experiance, There IS life after Blue Collar.
When God closes one door, he opens another. Although we lost a ton of money to SOL, an Entrepreneural spirit was sparked. After weeding thru all the so called Internet guru’s who all had the same lies to deliver, My Sister-in-Law introduced me to a very unique opportunity which after careful research I came to the conclusion there was no way to get hurt, I took the ball and ran with it.
SOL had a plan for SOL…God had a plan for me.visit me at MrCashFlow.com for more details
Best to your success, Wes
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on February 7th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
My mother signed up for 3 websites at $4000 even though I warned her. It’s been 6 months and she barley has one site up and running. Plus, if you don’t sell x amount in a month, you are charged $50 a month by the “drop shippper” Total rip-off, just Google storesonline/fraud and read for yourself. They take your money and only offer a 3 day money back guarantee, that alone should be enough to scare you.
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on February 16th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
Congratualations to all those who were able to get the Storesonline sites up and working. These comments are not meant for you. I was talked into getting six of these sites. I am educated and somewhat computer literate (or so I thought) and I could not get even one site to run properly. The platform is confusing and not at all user friendly. The live chat is a joke. For about 3 months, I spent 5 to 6 hours daily trying to get questions answered. The techs would take hours to type in responses. I say “are you still there” and they would say “yes” and we would go on like that for hours. I usually ended up frustrated and the problem would never get resolved. I’d even ask for a supervisor, who just continued with more of the same. Their techs were horrible. Then the next day I’d call the company for help. I would navigate the phone system only to encounter more unintelligible people. Once however I got a person who managed to fix a problem (this only took about an hour and a half). Only to hang up and find that in fixing the problem she screwed up something else. I tried following their instructions to the letter. I even invested $395 in the suggested dropshipper (Doba). Supposedly, Doba was able to download the items directly to storesonline. It only took me 4 or 5 hours to discover this was just not going to work. I called Doba. They said it was a Storesonline problem. I called Storesonline, they said it was a Doba problem. In the meantime, the whole damn thing shutdown. What little I was able to accomplish got washed away. I went to the Domain name website that Storesonline reccommended. That worked. I was so excited, (I had picked out the products I wanted to sell even though I coudn’t get them onto the site) so I published the website even though it was not yet completed. After 6 months of fumbling I couldn’t get the site to work right so I never even got to the marketing part. From these experiences, I have concluded that nothing and noone Storesonline presented at the seminars really works as they said. So over three thousand dollars in the hole, I haved faced the fact that I have been bamboozled. I tried to get someone to talk to about cancelling the contract at the point it was at. No one was available. I sent a certified letter which was delivered but ignored. So, I have stopped paying them (which I am sure will screw up my credit). In my opinion though I have been scammed so I see no reason to continue to pay into the scam. I will also be contacting the Attorney General in my state. I believe in free enterprise, but someone needs to stop Storesonline. They are marketing services that they knowingly cannot (will not) provide. That’s fraud. I am also willing to participate in any joint action that can taken against these seminar gangsters.
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on February 17th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
I talked with Jeremy Gere on chat to request cancellation of my purchase from Storesonline within the 3-day rescission period. (workshop date,2/15/08). Please process this cancellation request and my initial $170 deposit. Thank you.
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on February 17th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Once this purchase has been cancelled, do I need to return the Store Building Packet I received at the workshop?
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on February 17th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
I have drop shippers that dont charge me anything, just the wholesale price and shipping costs.
http://www.the-best-hot-sauce.com
http://www.mysimplifynurse.com
http://www.selfdefenseequipment.biz
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on February 23rd, 2008 at 7:17 pm
LISA P:
I sure hope you look here again. PLEASE call your local, Utah and your State of purchase Attorney Generals. It is not too late to file!
You just purchased the sites last October and I purchased mine in March ‘07.
You can also file a small claims against them as well.
Please focus on lies told to you, not money promised or ease of use of product.
They lied to me about ownership of templates and the ability to change the code within the templates.
Sadly, I own nothing. This is a time share essentially. They reap the benefits of you paying for their property upkeep. You pay maintenance on something you do not own.
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on March 19th, 2008 at 9:53 am
that not only will we not attend, but spread the word…thanks for the forum
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on March 20th, 2008 at 6:54 am
Thanks for posting. I receiveed a storesonline mailer and your comments saved me a lot of time and money. BTW, SEO’s don’t used keyword searches, they search for non-alias text threaded thru each page of your actual site. If you want a real inexpensive way to make a site, I have a link on the front page of my site – comps-illustration.com—(I’m not selling anything, REALLY)- to a company where you can put up a webpage in a few hours, but—–you have to KNOW HOW TO USE PHOTOSHOP. It uses photoshop to make them. For the ecommerce, you have to link to paypal, or most hosting companies have their own ecommerce. The reason I had you go to my site to access the company, is I put up their link as an affiliate, which means, if you decide to buy their program, I get a few bucks because of the referral. It’s the best program I’ve ever found. You can demo their program until you have your whole site built. Check out their reviews.
I am not saying this to make a few $’s. It allowed me to build a site for myself the way I wanted it to look, without using someone else’s templates and without knowing html or php.
As many of you have stated, thanks for this forum!
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on March 27th, 2008 at 11:34 am
URGENT – URGENT – URGENT
I need all people from Pennsylvania to contact me immediately.
I spoke with the Consumer Protection (Attorney General’s Office) about getting StoresOnLine banned from PA and was informed if there is a reoccurring problem, they can get them banned.
Any PA residents who have been lied to by StoresOnLine, contact me at 610-495-0176 or 610-213-9011 or
stephanie@ushopeurope.com
We need to file complaints with the Attorney General’s Office. Don’t worry about how long it has been. I filed 11 months after I was scammed.
We need to show a pattern of deceit. This should be pretty easy considering the fact these people do not tell the truth about anything.
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on March 30th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
I recently attended the full day work shop in Pennsylvania. After sitting there all day and taking notes, my wife and I ultimately did NOT buy anything. I hadn’t done any research into this company prior to and just couldn’t muster laying out any cash at that moment. I told my wife I thought those guys were smoothe, expert sales people from start to finish, and they are.
After reading all of your comments, I most likely will not sign with them. I’m not at all comfortable with what I’ve just read and felt compelled to write to you. At least you helped one person out there in educating about this company. Thank you for your stories. God Bless.
-Anonymous
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on March 30th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Our newspaper wrote a story on them before the seminar
scheduled for April 2nd in CT. You can go to:
http://www.fairfieldweekly.com/blogs/home.cfm?uid=84
and leave a comment if you like!
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on May 5th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
Medussa, if you still read these reviews, could you advise how you found out Canadians have 10 days to cancel?
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on May 24th, 2008 at 6:09 am
I purchased in Feb 2007 and still have yet to get published. I have not been able to locate a dropshipper that would have my product. I tried to send an e-mail to cxIrequest@myquickresponse.com but it came back as a bad one. Is anyone able to get some kind of resolve from this yet? Particularly those that purchased and did try to start this but have no experience in building sites or the technical stuff? I am going to try the site that was listed to sell off my licenses, has anyone had any luck with that? e-mail me at msmiller613@yahoo.com if you have any insight. Thanks!
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on May 24th, 2008 at 10:29 am
This is a chat with customers support at storesonline
Welcome To Storesonline Storefront Support! Good to have you on chat, how may I help you today?
are you interested in buying over my License
I apologize robert, but storesonline do not but sites back
you can sell them on reseller sites link ebay
i am talking about storesonline i am asking you.
dont you work with storesonline
dont you have websites which is being hosted by storesonline
guess the sites you have are all up and running and making money
yes I do work for storesonline , but on buying the sites back , we do not have this policy implemented
what i am asking you has nothing to do with storesonline
if you have sites up and running why cant you buy another one
I apologize truly Robert, I really want to help as much as I can , but I dont have money to buy another one
why not
that means that the sites you have are not making any money or you dont have any site at all?.
it’s only one i will sell you for $500.00 i’ve already paid $700.00
Once again, I wish I have the money so that I can help you out. But I do have other responsibilities also and I need to prioritize those first.
I suggest that you sell the licenses on reseller sites like Ebay
ok. what if i gave it to you free
no one else wants to buy a licenses from storesonline
so i figure i would get someone who works with storesonline to buy it.
Okay , we will check on the management if we can do buy it back
when will that be
I will send an email today and we will check that first thing on tuesday
so who will respond to my request.
you will
I can tell you what they will say..they cannot buy it back jus as you told me.
I will contact them and as soon as they have responded to the request , we will get back to you
are you sending the email now?. when you do please let me have the ticket number.
you already know what they will say.
Okay please hold on as I create a ticket for that
ok
thank you for waiting
the tracking number is Ticket 23077110
what is the name of your site if you dont mind telling me.
it is under site construction but I do plan in selling refurbished turntables , im working on it now
ok. i thought is was that easy to build the site, so how come u r working there and urs in under construction, u have all the programmers close to u.
Okay here is the site I am did previously http://www.tipid-racing.com
I did*
I removed the underconstruction site
ok.
okay
looks intersting
okay thanks
you still have lots of work to do.
yes
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on June 4th, 2008 at 7:13 am
Ann UK 4th June 2008
Hi to everybody who will read this. Just to let you know I am in the UK, I also received an invitation to go to a conference and dinner, which should be tomorrow tonight. I will not be going now thanks to your comments. I dont like people who rip other people off, just con men to me. I am a novice when it comes to the internet and would like to work from home, filling in surveys for large companies would do. The sites I have looked at all want a registration fee, I wont pay anyone to work for them. So I thought this conference would shed light on how to get earning, I did not realise it meant buying licences for new web sites to be set up. I dont want that too technical for me. OH! well back to the drawing board, thanks again and good luck to those poor people who bought in.
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on June 6th, 2008 at 5:21 am
Ann since you are a novice I would still suggest in going to the seminar just to learn more about the internet world. We bought in but then canceled after my alarms went off, BUT I did learn a lot from them that I can use on my own. Just be firm with them and tell them that you want to just sit and listen and not buy
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on June 18th, 2008 at 7:50 am
I came back from the seminar today.It really opened my eyes to a lot of interesting ideas. I almost bought their $6000 package which now includes unlimited web sites. If it all worked as well as they say then maybe it would be worth it as they seemed to make it easy. I was weighing up whether at my hourly rate of pay how many hours it would take to go find out how to do all this stuff myself (170 hrs) and I thought it might be worthwhile to save the time. Unfortunately judging from most comments here they don’t live up to expectations. During a break I rang a friend and asked him to check them on the internet and lots of court cases turned up. Later in the day I went to an internet cafe to see if their ‘proprietary’ tools were available elsewhere and found that they were so I decided against forking out the money. I feel good about the decision now.
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on June 19th, 2008 at 6:10 am
Geez, why complain about SOL? No one was forced to sign up. Like any business sector there will be those who make it and those that dont. I signed up; but have canceled, not because of SOL, I am a web developer and can do it myself if I’m willing to put the work in. Using SOL would save me time, but I can create websites the way I like them (using C# and ASP.Net). No one is forced to use SOL. What SOL do is put all the pieces together in one place and they should be applauded for that; their tools Reverse Search etc, are really good. For e-Commerce you need a site, most ISP’s provide SSL, Cart packages and site templates. You would source the products as per normal; so nothing new there, and would have to set up the customer database, but most people know how to use Microsoft Access or a college student should be able to do it. But again that’s what SOL are doing for you. What I would say is that it would be very helpful if you are technically (web) aware; a course in web design (HTML) would go a long way; but you can buy books (online even!) You could ask a company to write an e-Commerce system for you to your own spec, but what would that cost? Much, much more than £3K? Its NOT a scam. It’s an idea; what you do with it is up to you! I have a site http://www.doublehandful.com (not SOL) that I don’t really use any more, but got 4000 hits this year and I don’t advertise it. But SOL has given me the inspiration to get it finished as well as some useful tips about Search Engine Optimsation (SEO).
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on June 19th, 2008 at 6:26 am
So Owen is saying he signed up, then cancelled. I guess by “cancel” you mean you let them keep you’re cash because they do not refund. I tried to check the doublehandful.com site. It’s under construction. LOL
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on June 19th, 2008 at 6:41 am
I distrust anyone that is positive about them. Too many have been hurt by their false promises. Attorney General’s of several states in the US have slapped them with fines or prevented them for doing business. I guess some people don’t see the harm inflicted, or think everyone is as ’smart’ as they are.
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on June 19th, 2008 at 8:27 am
I’m not here to defend SOL. May be they have a good business model, just badly implemented. I dont know.
If anyone finds an opportunity with no risk, zero failure rate, very little effort and it’s free let me know.
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Cristian S Reply:
March 6th, 2009 at 12:17 am
I’m with you Owen. I purchased 6 websites in 2007, have 2 running right know, it wasn’t easy but what business is, but I can say I’M SELF EMPLOYED thanks to SOL. Everybody wants to get rich with no work put into it. SOL is not the lotto.
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on June 23rd, 2008 at 11:04 am
I attended the initial free seminar. They covered the StoresOnline Express, showed how easy it was to use. We signed up for the all day conference, which, cost us $50. I went prepared though. I googled everything I could find on them, and none of it was positive. The main speaker, Kory Thurston…we got his name at the initial freebie, and googled him as well…what a joke! I am suprised these people are not serving any time….or at least have Academy Awards for their outstanding performances!
I decided to attend, because a lot of the comments I had read were preaching “scam”, but also read that a lot of great information could be obtained. I did obtain a lot of useful information, but not from the gentlemen putting on the lecture, but from people like me, and there experiences, and what has and has not worked for them. That alone, for me, was worth the money!
I let the man doing my “personal consultation” know that I was not buying into it, and that I would try the $24/month site first, and if I found success with it, I would bite their bait later. His tone automatically changed. He went on to tell me that I was making a mistake, and that the “Express” package was difficult to use, at which point I interrupted him explaining that at the intitial conference they went on and on about how easy it was to use. I left him speechless on many occassions.
I was eventually asked to leave because I had a question for the speaker and the main guy from SOL. I asked how comfortable they would be “googling” SOL and Mr. Thurston on the big screen so all could see that, 1., they all show up on the 1st page of the search, and 2. what information they could all learn about them.
I, before exiting, asked how to prevent my credit card from being charged the $24/month charge, and they told me I would have to log into my account to do this. Needless-to-say, I tried to log in, and the screen reads that my “account has been removed”. I would place a bet that my credit card still gets charged!
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on June 23rd, 2008 at 11:32 am
Notfallinforit,
Sounds like you did your homework. I hope other people were helped because of your knowledge of them. They asked to leave? You paid, free country. That’s a good one. I’d like to see what would’ve happened if you protested. It would be kind of funny if the police came because of a disturbance? Great story! Let us know if you get charged. Sounds like they might have removed you for good. That would be a blessing! Thanks for posting.
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on June 24th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
I have purchased the $50 website package and am planning on attending the day-long marketing seminar on June 27th. Based on what I’m reading, I don’t plan to buy anything additional, but my question for everyone is this: is it worth my time to attend the seminar and perhaps glean valuable, usable information that will assist me? If so, I will attend. If I MUST buy more in order to reap any benefit of gained knowledge, then I will not attend. Thank you for your opinion(s)!
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on June 24th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Maureen,
I learned a lot from the seminar (see my comment above),. However,
1. I could conceivably have learned it elsewhere – but it was a convenient and concentrated learning forum.
2. I have not yet put any of it to use and probably forgotten some of it, although I did make a lot of notes on paper provided by SOL!!.
If the seminar you attend is anything like the one I went to, I think there will be a lot you can apply without buying anything from SOL – depends, of course on how much you already know!
See also the replies to my original post here for info about alternative free tools that allow you to make use of the knowledge gained.
hedles
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on June 25th, 2008 at 7:04 am
I never attended a seminar, I was forewarned, but sounds like hedles has good advice from his/her experience. The only thing I can add is that if you feel pressured and aren’t sure about making a decision, then don’t. If it’s a ‘now or never’, then never. There is no such thing as ‘never’ when dealing with people trying sell you something. Always a sale down the road. Besides, you can find all advice you’ll ever need free on the internet. People love to help and share their experiences.
Good Luck!
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on August 4th, 2008 at 9:51 am
Due to the great response we’ve had in resolving customer service issues with past and present StoresOnline merchants on these blogs, we wanted to publish the official StoresOnline contact information for those who will visit this blog:
Mari Silva
Director of Customer Relations
Stores Online Inc.
Phone: (801) 227-0004
Fax: 801-426-6712
Toll Free Fax: (888) 416-7370
Email: msilva@storesonline.com
We look forward to hearing from you.
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on August 4th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
My mother has been having an issue with the company that Stores Online put her in touch with to do a logo for her website. The problem is that she paid them an additional $900+ to do her logo 3 months ago and they haven’t done anything yet. They never return phone calls and they sound like complete idiots. She is currently working with her credit card company to get her money back. My question is: What state organization do you file a complaint with?? Is it the Florida Better Business Bureau?? or similar branch??
I assume Mari Silva could provide some info considering all of the states that currently have lawsuits against StoresOnline and their shoddy business practices.
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on August 4th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Attorney General Richard Blumenthal in the State of CT won a lawsuit against them. You should try your Atty General, BBB and the Dept of Consumer Affairs. You won’t be the only one.
I do logos when I have the time, and my friend does also:
http://www.72-hour-logo-design.com/index.html
What the heck takes SOL so long?
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on August 11th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
I just registered for a free lunch and MP3 player in the Milwaukee area. After reading all the complaints here though I can’t help but now think SOL really stands for: Sh!t Out of Luck.
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on August 11th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
I’d go and at least get the free MP3 & Lunch. Ask them about their 3-day money back guarantee. It’ll take a week for them to even answer the phone. 3 days is laughable. I never understand why people give away information for a program that makes so much money. Wouldn’t you want to corner the market yourself??
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on August 11th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Also, ask about all the lawsuits pending.
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on August 12th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Nothing angers me more than good, hard working people getting scammed. I run a couple of businesses, both have websites on the net, were not created by storesonline but this is about refund. As a credit card merchant, you can get your money back from any purchase for up to 60 days or so, it has happened to me where i sent a product and a month later i get a debit against my account saying the credit card was stolen, nothing I could do, had to eat the cost of the product I sent. I just paid $60 to get all this training and a free website under the name MYEBIZ which is storesonline reseller. I am going to the conference here in detroit area and going to make sure they don’t get anybody to waste there money-however I have learned a ton about marketing through another company, and the practices are real but not close to being easy, it will take alot of work, work that I have not done yet.
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on August 12th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Mario, If you can, alert the newspapers. I had our local paper write about them a week before the seminar. It might help.
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on August 12th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
There have been questions on the blog about getting in touch with Mari Silva. In order to contact her directly, you need to call 801-234-5976 or email her at msilva@storesonline.com. Mari is working with merchants and others who have questions about StoresOnline and seems to be very passionate about her work. She is someone you can talk to and get help from, so I recommend that you get in touch with her.
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on August 29th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
I went to a 90-minute presentation last night with my wife. It was impressive. Fortunately I did a google search on my iPhone after the presentation, searching “Storesonline and scam”. That’s all I needed to know to stay away. It was confirmed when we received the “MP3 player” gift that was marketed as an Apple iPod Shuffle. They definitely used Apple images and did the ol’ “Bait and Switch” routine. What we received was a very cheap chinese knock-off that didn’t even work for more than a day. It was a classic example of they entire schtick! Stay away…from the program that is,….the food was fabulous!
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on August 30th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Glad to know I can now use msilva@storesonline.com any time some stupid internet sale requests an email.
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on August 30th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
My husband and I attended a workshop for storesonline last year. I was skeptical and did not want to purchase but my husband did(even though he knows nothing about computers at all). But then again Storeonline said you didnt need to know anything! I at least have some computer knowledge. Thanks goodness for that! I do not feel that they adequately prepare you. It is NOT AS EASY as they say. In fact, without computer knowledge there is no way the average person could build a webstore. I worked very very hard……and called customer support often…they were ALWAYS very very helpful. Without their help I don’t know how I would have managed. As much as I have a problem with the way Storesonline does take advantage of people, I have been very succesful. But the key is finding a great product to sell. I have just activated my 3rd website and should have 4 up by Christmas. My website http://www.hillarysanutcracker.com had me so busy last holiday season. I was shipping 100 nutcrackers a day. All on my own. I just started http://www.cottonorganicbabyclothes.com and also have high hopes. Let me know what you think about them!
As much as I do have a problem with StoresOnline Sales pitch I would not have done any of this on my own.
I have figured it out because I took the time to. I have actually thought about teaching a class to people who have purchased thru storesonline and walk them thru their first website. Once you do one it really isnt that bad.
Also Storesonline doesnt tell you how to even look for something to sell.
But I do believe you can be succesfull and they do give you the tools you need. They are just not accurate as to OH ANYBODY CAN DO THIS! It takes many hours to figure it out!! But once you do I do believe it is worth it. I can be contacted thru my website if anyone has any questions.
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on August 30th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
hey, all the guys that are saying sol is so helpful and it was a good investment that you made, i just have 1 question do you receive traffic from your sites? let me answer for you, No. that is right i do not know how can you said that you selling 100 nutcrakers a day when you do not have traffic in your site. If you you want me to prove it just talk to me. Hey, if the sol lover want to buy 6 sol site i can give you a very good price. Sol sucks.
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on August 30th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
ok raoul, im not saying im a sol lover…i do think they do not give u all of the information you need. But if you are willing to take the time……it can work……And i have already purchased more sites from someone who did not use theirs. But it really doesnt make a difference to me whether you believe me or not because I know what I have done and I know the money that I have made and yes I have paid back my sites with my profits and still have money in the bank!
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on August 31st, 2008 at 8:50 am
JoAnn…I am glad that you found SOL customer service so easy to work with. I had so many questions and they would not talk to me…WHY??? because it was in my husbands name which was NOT true. I signed the paperwork and I used MY credit card. Once I mentioned that I wanted to cancel they transfered me to a number that just rang and rang.
I did learn a lot from the 2 day seminar tho.
It has been 9 months now and we still get phone calls from them checking to see how our site is doing. DAH….we canceled, yet they can’t seem to stop calling..
I did check out your site, and not all of your links work either…FYI
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on August 31st, 2008 at 9:26 am
I though this site looked better.
http://www.hillarynutcracker.com/
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on August 31st, 2008 at 11:34 am
I haven’t had any problems with their customer support. The other site from hillary nutcracker is better but he is the man who designed the hillary nutcracker and he has his site professionally done. I think mine considering looks pretty good and I have good results so Im happy. I fixed my links so they now do work. That problem had nothing to do with SOL but rather my error.
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on September 8th, 2008 at 11:13 am
My mom and I attended the Storesonline seminar and it was just what we needed, or so we thought. I’m still in the process of trying to understand how our website functions. I’ve read and read and read the material they gave only to have a dumb founded look on my face. What i can’t get over is the fact where they said “if you know how to point and click you can build a website” Are you serious? We bought back in June and have everything registered with the IRS, bank and license. I find more and more thing you can’t do on the site than things you can do.
My mom had received a phone call from Storesonline asking how everything was going. She thought it was nice that they were calling maybe she could get a step closer than what we were. Well it turns out he wanted to know if we wanted to get the site up and running by next month. She of course replied yes. Guess what??? only $10,000. We’ve already paid $6000. I’m still trying like hell to get this up but it’s so incredible hard.
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on September 8th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Has anyone in the UK (England) been ripped off by these guys yet? I need to read what you think about them, I think the are bunch of sleek scam artists.
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on September 8th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Jo, Storesonline and there marketing people hound me all the time. I felt like you, what another 10,000 on top of the 6,000 for the sites no way. They can be quite pushy and rude. I will not give them any more money. I just dont answer the phone if i see its a marketing company or a call from utah.I do all of my own advertising using yahoo search marketing. I can do this for about 50.00 a mos and it works. I feel like they are not honest about oh anyone can do this. it took me a while to figure it out. But I do have succesful sites and do make money from them and am setting up my 4th site shortly. it is a lot of work and there is alot i do not how to do with my sites. I try to make it as basic as i need. Customer service actually did my shipping for me. They are there so use them. they will actually work on it as you are on your site looking at at it at same time. Use them as often as you have to. They will help you. I actually have even hung up on them when they call and try to sell me advertising and marketing stuff. They can be really pushy but don’t give in. I use yahoo search marketing and it works and is very affordable.
Jo, be patient, you sound like me, determined to get this going after dishing out 6,000. It took me 3 months for my first site. I had to find something to even sell. I just last mos got my 2nd site up. My 3rd site is a site for a local service business. don’t sell anything on line but I do make money for managing the site. My 4th will be up next month. I bought my sites in august of 2007. So it takes time! good luck!
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on September 12th, 2008 at 10:54 am
Hello. I went to the seminar last night and everything sounded so good. But I decided o do some research while I was there so i pulled out my sidekick phone and googled them. This website appeared and I couldnt believe what i was reading. So the joke was on them…I gave them a old canceled credit card and payed (wink wink) for myself and my friend…I was so generous that night…LMAO!!! I enjoyed a nice lunch on them and a MP3 player. Cant wait til they find out they got PLAYED…So long Suckers!!!
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on September 12th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Went to seminar 9/11/08 and signed up. After seminar my sister (who also attended) checked this site and called me to tell me to get out. So today 9/12/08 called States Attorney to see where I stood. They informed me I have 3 days to cancel so got a hold of the company and the gentlemen (John) was very persistent and said I wasn’t open minded. I kept my calm and said I appreate that his doing his job well but I am not intrested (firm but very nicely). He tried to tell me competers where setting up sites and giving them a bad name. Thank you for setting up this site.
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on September 12th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Hey just use those bastards and bring all your friends to eat a free dinner on them and ruin the whole thing abd bring in copies of these complaints and pass them around to everyone. Im going to find out when the next one is so I can ruin it for them.
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patricia lazar Reply:
December 11th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Good for you Key! Just be careful with all those hunky goonies they have standing around – they look to me like they’re Mafioso!
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on September 12th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
I have yet to receive a return call from Mari Silva. It has been 3 days, maybe give a little more time? I stopped my payments for SOL. The collector from the account says that I have to pay. I told the they got $4000 and the aren’t getting any more $ for nothing. So they told me to call SOL and I did, and SOL has not returned my call, so I am not taking the collector’s calls.
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on September 13th, 2008 at 9:38 am
Rose, Consider calling your BBB and State’s Atty General. They probably have heard it before and can help or take action against them. This is the action our state took:
_____________
http://www.ct.gov/AG/cwp/view.asp?A=2795&Q=412534
Connecticut Attorney General’s Office
Press Release
Attorney General Announces $130,000 Settlement With Storesonline, Inc. And Imergent, Inc., Restitution To Consumers
April 1, 2008
Attorney General Richard Blumenthal today announced that Storesonline, Inc. will pay $130,000 to the state and in restitution to consumers.
Storesonline, Inc., which also operates under the name Imergent, Inc., charges consumers to set up online businesses or create websites for existing companies. The agreement settles allegations that the company’s online businesses made exaggerated and deceptive claims regarding its virtual storefronts.
Under the settlement, Storesonline, Inc. will pay the state $65,000 and another $65,000 in restitution to Connecticut consumers who bought its services. Blumenthal estimates 10 to 12 consumers will be eligible for restitution.
The settlement comes the day before Storesonline, Inc. will hold a recruitment seminar in Stratford. The company plans to conduct similar seminars on April 8 in New Haven and April 9 in Hartford.
“”This settlement bars Storesonline, Inc. from making exaggerated and deceptive claims about its products and requires restitution to consumers,” Blumenthal said. “I urge consumers attending this company’s seminars to ask tough questions and demand honest answers. Remember: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
“Storesonline, Inc. capitalizes on consumer dreams, promising superior and state of the art products. This settlement requires that reality match the hype. My office will continue fighting to enforce consumer protection laws that shield consumers from deceptive business practices.”
The agreement also creates a process for handling any future consumer complaints about alleged company misrepresentations. If a dispute persists, Blumenthal’s office will make the final determination.
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Jerry Reply:
December 6th, 2008 at 6:38 am
They do not give you a chance to ask questions. They tell you to write them down and ask later.
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on September 13th, 2008 at 10:55 am
I bought into it and canceled within 3 days. On the back of your paper work, the pink/yellow copy there is the information.
I loved the concept that they were selling but were not too helpful at the seminar AFTER we signed up and I started asking help questions. They said call the help line. Our major problem was getting our products manufacture or distubutor to help us or respond to us.
They also didnt go into how to set up the business either
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on September 18th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Hello everyone,
I went to the first( free) seminar yesterday with my father and it was pretty good. Reading the bulk of these comments I notice something that most people did…they bought packages from the all day training…something like that in my opinion can only be your fault. One comment about last night was that you did not HAVE to buy anything they even said it. I felt that they were rushing, but look in <=90 minutes how much information can you give. My opinion for those who said that “they felt that they were forced into it” is that it was your fault that you signed up, many people in my group didn’t even look at the paper and I’m sure they didn’t even look at all the comments about the company on the internet. Not to sound harsh I just got into this so I can not completely say that it is liget, but this is what I can say-I plan on going to the training day, but I DO NOT PLAN ON TO BUY ANY EXTRA SERVICE because that’s what most people said. Let me leave with this thought: how did you people market your site, do you honestly think you marketted it well enough or did you just put it up and expect it to make you a billionare?-Just a thought.
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S Hails Reply:
October 6th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Hello,
I agree on that you do not have to purchase anything.
I believe I’ll not buy anything other than the one site.
I would like to know HOW they teach clients to market as this would be in their best interest for clients to be a success.
Marketing in my opinion is the crucial part of it all. Google changed it’s ways a few years ago on reaching number 1 in it’s natural search engine – so from my perspective you must learn now to Market.
I’m going to the training tomorrow. And I’ll be asking questions on Marketing.
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patricia lazar Reply:
December 11th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
We worked on it so bloody hard, followed every thing they said we should do to a ‘T’. My partner’s a professional webmaster – he said it was the most convoluted website to put together and they didn’t know what they were talking about. We signed on only for the Marketing Techniques – it was a huge scam and money down the toilet, along with our 15 months of 18 hour workdays and disappointment and loss of other income while doing that!
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on October 6th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
last year I purchased 6 websites, and I understand what most of you guys are aying. honestly right after I purchased these site I felt like I made the worst mistake ever. But I run with it. It wasn’t easy to start, I think I tried 3 different businesses but finally found the right one and now I’m doing pretty well with it. Most people on this Review sound like they got riped off but the truth is, if you can’t make Storesonline work for you then you WON’T be able to make anyother program/softwear work. Storesonline is very easy to use, you just need to take your time and start working hard. Yes they do have some problems but eveything can be solved. Learn to manage your website. And once you learn to build a website from scratch, then complain about it but right now Storesonline.com is the only thing you have so make the most of it. If you need help with your website check out http://www.freemoneyinformation.com I’ll be happy to help.
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on October 8th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Hey Martin, great site. Very informative and even more responsible. I’ve read many of the postings after receiving their mailer, and researching who they are. At this time, am not sure how they got my postal address, but sure would like to stop future solicitations. Any ideas?
George
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on November 18th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
I too went to storesonline free seminar/lunch and paid $50 for the workshop which is being held tomorrow. After reading several comments on this company on this and other websites I will not be attending their workshop as I do not want to waste my time or get caught up in the hype and cost of using them.
I thank all the people who commented on this company, both positive(not many of them) and negative which has helped me make up my mind not to attend, done need the drama!!
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on December 11th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
It just makes me so mad that SoL has ripped off so many people, including my partner and myself. Everything written above about their sales pitch and guarantees of how easy it is and how they guarantee we will get to the top of the search engines is true! They are indeed scam artists. I am in the process now of trying to get a full refund from them. We had bought 6 licenses too, and had only opened one, worked day and night on it for over a year and got absolutely nowhere, other than being contacted every few days by their Affilifate marketing companies who tried to coax us into buying more marketing strategies for thousands of dollars more! I am beyond furious and would like to see all of us victims getting back our money, and also to see those bloody scumbags in jail where they belong for their fraudulent practices. I’m in Canada. Are there any class action lawsuits going on here, or what can I do? Please help.
Patricia
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on December 14th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
well, i went to the SOL thing 2 days ago . . . i was actually reading all of these comments while at the seminar . . .the problem is the program they now present is a bit different and APPEARED much improved. Now you have unlimited sites, not just 6 . . .their customer service won an award for 2007 that was also given to big companies like SAP, IBM and Xerox . . . I even talked with the guy about several of the comments on this site and others. He had calmed my “fears” and after I negotiated a reduced price, i went ahead and took the leap . . . of course the next day i was already wondering if i had made a mistake . . .and now that i decided to really see what i had purchased, i have now had absolutely NO luck contacting their SUPPOSED “award winning” 24/7 service . . . In fact there is No One available to answer the live chat (I singed in 4 separate times to check). the email support gives an automated response and their 801 # not only is a pay number but is only open mon-fri.
I did pay $1000 less than everyone else supposedely but man, it wasn’t cheap . . .I really hope i’m not out all that money 
(
So I will be attempting to get my money back and cancel tomorrow = Monday, which will be the official 3rd day . . .wish me luck!! i didn’t even get the pink and green copies they promised of what i signed detailing the 3 day cancelation policy
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on December 14th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Actually I have been doing quite well with my sites, However I am using the old version of SOL which I think is better and easyer to use. If you dont know anything about the internet you will have a hard time. It took me a while to figure things out, but I also have a computer background. I tryed to use the SOL pro version and could not generate very much traffic, but with the old version of SOL I am getting lots of traffic. My site http://www.the-best-hot-sauce.com is getting an average of 100 hits per day and my sales from october have gone up. It seems that the bigger your site is the better. You cannot get into this and expect to get sales right away. It takes time, even search engines take weeks or months before your site will get indexed. I think SOL needs to explain this more at their seminars. You have to be persistant and patient, dont give up ever.
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on January 2nd, 2009 at 6:19 pm
I have had a very hard time with sol to get a url that they recommend to get from go daddy.Nobody there knows hmmm. Now that my credit cards are maxed and that PMI company made me promises I now have no choice to declare bankruptcy. Ten thousand dollars latter . Please let me know if there are ANY lawsuits ,,
because IM IN .SOL only helps to a small degree and Do not deliver ..If you are canadian stay away the SOL
are US based and many rules change when it comes down to the sales of all products,, Ten grand is alot of coin that well i ,,lost
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hedles Reply:
January 6th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
John,
For help with your maxed out credit cards see,
http://www.getoutofdebtfree.org/
http://www.reddit.com/r/CommonLaw/comments/78k58/interview_with_mary_elizabeth_croft_on_credit/
http://www.thecrowhouse.com/Documents/mary-book.pdf
http://thinkfree.ca/
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6729904244308031068
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on January 4th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
I had posted a statement how me and my wife purchased 3 web sites from stores on line and was not happy.Is there any law suites does any one know.I still have not given up about getting some of the money back.Or has anyone got their money back.It was back in June 23,2007 I know its been a while.Please e-mail me at navarro@tcaexpress.net.Thank You James Bernal
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on January 6th, 2009 at 9:05 am
I think they only have a 3 day money back guarantee. I believe the way it works is once they hold a seminar and take everyones money, they give you a number to call if you happen to change your mind. Of course nobody will answer that line and after 3 days you’re screwed. I’d be more interested in finding out when and where they are planning on holding future seminars. I’d love to attend one so I could save a lot of people from wasting their time and money.
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Christie Reply:
January 6th, 2009 at 10:45 am
i have to say i signed up fri night. on sunday, after freaking out because no one answered their online, supposed 24 hour chat help, i did call first thing the next biz day and they did answer the phone. it is a pay call. they put you on hold a long time but they were polite and curteous and according to my credit card statement the money was returned. Good Luck to everyone else!
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Michelle Reply:
January 30th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
Doubletree Hotel
8250 N Central
Dallas TX
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Michelle Reply:
January 30th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Sorry 2/10 at the Doubletree and I think we should all show up!
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on January 31st, 2009 at 9:54 am
My husband and I signed up for this program on Thursday Jan. 29th. After spending 2 days trying to figure out how to get this all started I am completely confused. We have decided to cancel. I am hopeing we don’t have any trouble doing so since it has not been 3 business days yet.
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Cristian S Reply:
May 26th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Giving up just after 3 days. might aswell give up all your other dreams.
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on February 11th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
OH how i wish i had seen these other emails before i was overwhelmed with eagerness to open my own web store with Storesonline. For the price everyone else paid to aquire 3 sites ive paid for an unlimited number of sites. Ummm. There’s a size 10 hook. (Each still requires a hosting fee, emerchant account). Next comes PMI programming. Over priced totally un-necessary extra expense. Included was 2 hidden myEbiz packages and Extreme Web Marketing. OH i almost forgot the Other extra hits from The Tax Club and all the other acossiates for the same company portraying themselves as Storeonline, PMI The Tax Club, MyEbiz, all owned by the same outfit. PMI sells MYeBIZ at 2990 and The Tax Club sell the same package for $4000 out of the same office. I now wish the xxxL i’d cancelled in the 15 days but due to an eye operation i didn’t get to do that. Damb! and other expletives too strong to be printed here
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on February 12th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
I was invited to one of these seminars by a friend. Thought i would google it before I went. Came across terrible results.I copied some of the negative comments and a couple of lawsuits and took them with me to the seminar. When they started asking people to sign up I started to give the copied comments to people around me and told them it was a rip off. I’m sure I would have been thrown out if i had been found out but it just wasn’t right. There were a lot of old people there and I didn’t want them to get taken advantage of. I stopped some but not all. After it was over I stood at the door as people left and let them see the copies of the lawsuits. WARNING If you are going to attend one of these things at least look it up before you go. It could save you time and money. One man asked if he could go home and talk it over with his wife. He was told if he did he wouldn’t be eligible for the packet anymore. Who doesn’t let you check this stuff out?? Crooks thats who.
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on February 12th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Hhs anyone received the e-mail below recently? I just received it and was wondering if anyone was going. I have stopped paying for the sites and just decided to let it be a strike on my credit, they won’t get another dime from me.
Dear Merchant,
We have had changes to the dates of the following events:
3/4/09 WED 12:30-6:30pm
Arlington VA (changed from 3/5/09)
3/5/09 THU 12:30-6:30pm
Milwaukee WI (changed from 3/6/09)
Please note that these changes have been made. If you have already registered, you will receive an email confirmation with the new dates.
These dates are now confirmed.
Thank you for your understanding and we apologize for any inconvenience.
StoresOnline, Inc.
You and a Guest are Personally Invited!
Here’s what you will learn:
• How to use a straightforward, 5-point to-do list to guide you through the creation and promotion of your StoresOnline storefront
• How to refine your searches for appropriate products, limiting the guesswork about profitability and demand BEFORE you build your website
• How better to use the StoresOnline user interface by watching a storefront creation, beginning to end, right in the presentation
Additional Training:
Come and learn:
• How to set up a business entity to get the most tax-free income and preserve your profits
• How to have the government help pay for your health insurance, medical expenses, meals, travel, vehicles, life insurance, and even part of your mortgage!
• How to set up your business so your personal assets are safe from business creditors
• How to keep the most of your business and personal assets in case of a divorce
• How to have the government help pay for your business training.
Click here to learn more: http://www.storesonlinespecialtraining.com
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John Taberner Reply:
February 13th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
You know they actually tell you everything if you listen to them.
They are after all trying to get your money and once they have the first amount it is really easy for them to get everything you have.
The internet require a lot of money to get it to catch on, thats the hook you see. They have all these people who are supposedly making money 100’s of thousands of bucks. What they don’t tell you is that, that amount is actually a couple dozen or more web sites combines.
Who on earth eats wheat grass? Well check out the site. Google is great to learn everything there is about StoresonlinePro. PMI, The Tax Club or as the call themselves too The Manhattan Professional Group. MYeBIZ, The Document Center, MY Credit Solutions, The Drop Ship University, P4P, Storesonlinelogo, ECIpay and there are numerous others too. Average cost of each call $3000-8500.
Do you make any money on the web site. Rarely. In Canada not a chance because of drop ship import duties, when a client get asked at the door to pay customs it returned to you and you loses both the order payment plus refund to the credit card payment, shipping and out of other pocket charges.
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John Reply:
March 3rd, 2009 at 2:06 pm
I have written to numerous agencies including RECOL and registered a file and case number.
Since doing so I have been told that The Tax Club has canceled my involvement and are to refund my money. We will wait and see if that actually happens.
Another great place to get some help is at rippoffrevenge.com
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Cristian S Reply:
May 26th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Drop shipping is a huge joke, even if your selling using ebay. Try finding a local wholesaler and sell things that local customers need.
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JT Reply:
May 26th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
I really do wish I could offer a further comment on this and all the other particular subjects regarding the above content.
BUT!
I can’t due to legal requirements of none disclosure.
Sorry to you all who might be reading these pages!
on March 5th, 2009 at 11:51 pm
LOL this message is to everybody in here. I hope you know the website your on right is using Storesonline. I guess it’s working for the owner of this website since there making money off you guys. Because you guys want to know more about Storeonline, you click on these Google ads for information, Guess what? PAY PER CLICK!
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on March 6th, 2009 at 12:48 am
LOL just kidding, but that would be funny. Anyway hope you all read these comments before you buy. I does work but not for most. Also not think you’ll be making money off the bat, it takes alot of time and a great business plan. I tried about 4 ideas before I found the right one. If you have purchased SOL websites, then getting traffic will be the hardest thing to do. Visit my site http://www.freemoneyinformation.com for Free Traffic tips and more.
And YES! this is a Storesonline website. It’s only about %40 done but still making OK money with it.
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on April 5th, 2009 at 6:46 am
Were did you find these informations?
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Cristian S Reply:
April 7th, 2009 at 12:19 am
LOL it took about 3 month of research and purchased a few books. Also alot of this information is by SOL. You can find this information anywhere, I just placed it all on under one website.
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James C Reply:
May 2nd, 2009 at 10:15 am
Tried to click on your website link…came up empty. Did SOL force you to take it down?
TO ALL PEOPLE: If you go to anything showing you a great opportunity, do not forget you have a cell phone that is more than likely capable of internet searches. WHILE in the presentation, look up {name of company} scam on google. It will save you so MUCH PAIN. It works for me and I can tell you that there are some things out there that are legitimate opportunities set up for beginners in the skill….most are not.
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Cristian S Reply:
May 26th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
The link is just fine, Your internet or computer most be messed up. and NO! SOL didn’t force me to take it off. And if you google scam, all you get is George W Bush LOL. Let I said before your not buying a business your buying some softwear that will help you run a business. %94 of any kind of business fail. So it’s really up to you.
on April 26th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
I wish I had read this website BEFORE going to the seminar, but be assured that I will be cancelling my charge tomorrow. I was not impressed with the “Internet Income Training Conference”. First of all, it was supposed to include lunch. We got there at noon, and the presenter proceeded to tell us that he would give a 90 minute presentation, and then we would be served lunch. If I had known that, we would have eaten before we came. (My husband is a diabetic.) The ninety minute presentation went fairly quickly. I was not suprised that they were trying to sell us something – after all, they were giving us a free lunch and a mp3 player. However, everything that they told us we would learn in the seminar only had ONE answer – take the class, and buy the website. By the time everyone had filled out their forms and turned them it, we were served lunch at 2 PM which consisted of a soggy sandwich, pasta salad, and a cookie. What a waste of time! I still plan to send in for my mp3 player! On the redemption certificate it is for an ipod shuffle 1g, with $14.95 for shipping and handling. We’ll see….
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on April 27th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
I went to a seminar, and there was a promise of a free mp3 player since they waste your time. i didnt recieve it i asked they gave me a runaround…..assholes
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on May 2nd, 2009 at 10:17 am
well, we went…the food was good actually (must have heard the stale stuff sucked) and the MP3 player works. So, no complaints there. Free stuff is nice. Just important to leave without opening the wallet (unless you get the free money they give out during the presentation. that is nice…paid for the parking)
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lulu Reply:
May 12th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
We also went got sandwishes for lunch and NO mp3 player. Hate it when people tell you you will get something you don’t get.
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anthony Reply:
June 16th, 2009 at 1:47 am
i got the free money but no mp3, this is a totalscam jokes were rehearsed and the instructor even made some comment about me selling porn on my website. real classy. i made $20 bucks and got a free lunch. parking was $4 and cost me $1 for the 20 so i made out with $15 and lunch. lmao suckers
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on May 12th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
I am about to go to the day long seminar. After reading all these reports I am very hesitant to buy anything but is there anything to learn about web marketing at the day long seminar or do they really just market the website packages?
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on May 12th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
Is there a way to unload our store? We tried and tried to come up with a product that would sell and, at the same time, be handled by a dropshipper. No luck.
bw
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on June 17th, 2009 at 11:12 am
I got a phone call this morning from PMI on behalf of storesonline. I told them a year ago I was not interested I did not pick up the phone as I saw it was from Utah. So beware it has been over a year since I bought into this scam but it looks like PMI might be calling some of us again and I am not spending another cent. I am not going to return the phone call. Just a heads up for some of you.
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on June 22nd, 2009 at 1:56 pm
I purchased my 6 websites on 01/31/2008 Athens, GA. I now have the strength and means to fight this untrustworthy company with bad product and am doing so. I have officially requested a full refund both verbally and in a written letter. I then sent the letter to the StoresOnline, Inc. physical address and cc’d it to the attorney general in CA (because I recently moved to CA and didn’t know which state would handle it), UT, and GA, state senators in CA, UT, and GA, and the BBB of Utah. I also included supporting documents with the letter requesting a refund and why.
I did receive a response from SOL but it is a pressured attempt to get me to sign a quick fix to the initial and larger problem. (They offered free programming for 1 year and hosting for 3 months). The issue is the company is not trust worthy, the product is faulty, their business practices deceptive, and I am completely unsatisfied with the product after making reasonable attempts to work with the software. Normally this would work with any company that respects it’s product and customer.
Does anyone know what more I can do? Where can I send more complaint letters to? Has anyone had any luck with getting a full refund?
Update: They are now offering half a refund but I would only have access to one of my websites… if I only keep 1 out of 6 websites then I should receive 5/6 of a refund. They are also making me decide by the 29th… so for as slow as they move I’m being forced to decide in one week. The point is that the product is faulty… so I still think a FULL refund is warranted.
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on July 7th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Hi. And Bye.
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on July 10th, 2009 at 12:36 am
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on July 14th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
sure wish I had read all the stuff you folks have posted here before I bought the platinum package … have had no cooperation so far only headaches
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Jessica Reply:
July 24th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
If you write your Attorney General, file complaint with the BBB of Utah, and copies of everything to StoresOnline… then you will get a responce. You have lost so much already, so spend a little time and postage and they will pay attention to you when you treat it as a serious and formal complaint. Follow the proper channels and you will get a responce.
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on July 22nd, 2009 at 4:24 pm
storeonline is verry difficult to work with … all they seem to want is more and more money … they are very smooth … too bad they don’t back up what they sell … I’ve learned my lesson and have taken the tax break and moved on … I have found something else that is working … feel free to contact me for more info if you wish ( lsanger@live.ca ) … it’s a bitter pill to swallow when you get scammed but life does go on
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on July 27th, 2009 at 11:41 am
Before visiting this website, I was tempted to attend one of these seminars – more to try to market my own business than buy from StoresOnLine.
It’s a shame that companies like this prey on folks who are trying to build a business (especially during these difficult times). For anyone who is looking for a LEGITIMATE business, they should look into Melaleuca (www.melaleuca.com). It has a brilliant business model where no one can get hurt and helps people make their homes safer and more environmentally friendly at a better value than at the grocery stores.
If you’re interested in learning more check out the website and contact me at bobandella@wedeliverwellness.com.
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on September 10th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
had recently herpes virus found in my blood. what I haveto do??? I’m in panic…
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Jill Reply:
September 11th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
I am sorry Margohelp I will pray for you.
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rhonda Reply:
October 14th, 2009 at 4:10 am
START ALKALINING YOUR BODY…LIQUID GREEN JUICE…JUICE HIGH INTAKE OF GREEN VEG…DRINK CHLORAFILL…MY BE MIS SPELLED…THIS WILL PURIFY YOUR BLOOD.
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on September 12th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
I have been reading everyones comments about stores online and I here is my dissipation: In the beginning, about a year ago, I bought the single package deal storesonline pro for $2500.00. Like everyone else I was sold by the percieved ease of operating and setting up of my site. I was soon disappointed because it was not easy and I couldn’t get any of suport via phone or quick response. I contacted them and the attorney generals office, and after a short period was allowed out of my financed contract with them. Now, I must say that after I worked with them I decided that I wanted the monthly hosting because it wasn’t too bad. Therefore, I am now on a month to month basis with them without a contract for hosting only. After semi-designing my site, I sent it to their programmers for fine tuning before publishing (they allowed me to use the one time free programming). Let me just say this, I was so very pleased with how the programmer took my ideas from our conversation and designed my site exactly as I envisioned. I don’t know what they are doing but their customer service has gotten better too. They answer everytime I contact them phone or quick response chat. I will say this, you get out of a business what you put into it. No matter how easy they or any business owner tells you set up is, without work and due deligence you won’t succeed in any business. For those of you who have had issues with them, I was there too, but they have really come along and gotten better at support. If you don’t stop and read the tutorials on your own and send them e-mails for help, you won’t succeed, and don’t let anyone tell you about some other hosting company because they are all after one thing, your business. Which in a nut shell is what “you” were after when you purchased the program. Feel free to visit my site and though it’s new, judge for yourself the design of it, and give your opinion. Good night/morning all and I hope I have been somewhat helpful. Again this is just my individual experience and opinion of SOL.
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Hmmm Reply:
October 23rd, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Would this Tiger be Tiger Birrell, former employee of Storesonline
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Rev Andrew Salinas Reply:
February 23rd, 2010 at 2:15 pm
Andrew Salinas here, I am a pastor and was interested in the software to build sites for local churches in my area. I am also involved with parents who have lost children (as I too have lost a son) and would like to host sites for there kids as well. I went to the Storesonline Pro Workshop and I paid the $7,000.00 almost 15 months ago and was told then that I could host the sites with whomever I wish. I have a local IP that will host the church sites for free but storesonline will not let me have a copy of the software I paid for. I have called twice a week for about 2 1/2 months trying to get a copy of the “storesonline downloadable pro” I haven’t seen it yet.. maybe you can help me. email to revsalinas@charter.net
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on September 12th, 2009 at 11:48 pm
OOps, forgot to include the link to my site, which, by the way, is still not recognized by many search engines. I have found that yahoo will recognize it but not the others. type: http://www.signatureimprovementsplus.com. I am still trying to learn about search engine optimization and I am sure I’ll get it soon. Peace be with you.
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on October 12th, 2009 at 7:40 am
My partner and I have struggled for 3 years and have spent neigh to bankruptcy on this Store On Line venture and will be shutting down the one site we were able to actually get some sales from but not enough to say there was any profit whatsoever and all their fees & investment for their PMI and My EBiz partners. We simply cannot go on another moment with Stores on Line! After learning so much feel the site can be moved to another host away from Stores on Line without all that pushy & insistent methods they use! Nancy
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Ian Reply:
November 10th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
You said it, Nancy! The only things they have that no one else does are a reverse search tool and inflated prices. They admitted to me that they do not have proprietary tools and that they are way more expensive than anyone else, and they said it was because of putting them all together. I wish I had done my research better in the beginning, because a look at wholesaler and dropshipping websites and at Google Analytics would have saved us thousands…
Go to nomorestoresonline@gmail.com and tell us all your story, and we’ll see what we can do together.
Ian
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on November 5th, 2009 at 11:53 am
Hey… if you want to fight back at Stores Online, join us and together we will take down the giant. Email your story to nomorestoresonline@gmail.com, then tweet everyone you can reach and tell them not to use Stores Online! Tell them to tell everyone they know how crooked this company is! If we join together we can tweet the entire world…
Ian
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on November 7th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Tiger. You’re a liar big boy!
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on December 9th, 2009 at 2:38 am
Hey there nice post and nice blog you have here!
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on December 11th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
First, I am the sales director at a major web strategy and marketing firm and my wife received a flyer in the mail so she and I attended a seminar for giggles and grins. Let me tell you, even without the knowledge I have, my wife was calling BS almost immediately. From my end, these sites are a nightmare and as Nadeem said above an SEO trainwreck. Now, the presenter did demonstrate years old web statstics and used several sites “#1 google rankings” as validation of their program. Here’s the catch people, 2 or the 3 sample sites only came up for their domain names AND had amazon listings right after their search engine listing (which actually were driving site traffic). The other site “discountboots.com” does in fact come up for the search term “discount boots”… the catch is the site owner has spent thousands of dollars with a professional SEO company that has NOTHING TO DO with storesonline. I’m not going to say “be careful” people… I’m going to say “STAY AWAY”.
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Ryan Reply:
May 12th, 2010 at 3:38 pm
Bill,
You’re as big a scam as ANYONE on this site. You’re full of lies and deception. I personally know the owner of discountedboots.com (by the way, you misspelled it on your entry… good job). The did NOT spend thousands of dollars with a internet marketing firm. They did it themselves. But I find it interesting how the owner of an INTERNET MARKETING FIRM (like yourself) want to claim that you have to buy YOUR marketing products to get to the top. BAHH. I’ve got a website at the top of the google and yahoo rankings and I haven’t paid you buggers a lousy penny.
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Bill Reply:
May 12th, 2010 at 8:02 pm
With all due respect Ryan, you are an uniformed and, frankly, a fool. Your discountboots.com site not only paid a professional SEO company to SEO their site, the SEO actually added their name to the META on the site:
They also have over 3000 back links and have a slew of pro-SEO tricks on that site.
Secondly, of the 200+ Criteria for listing in Google’s index you can summarize the “buckets” into technical factors (how the site is coded, internal linking structure, visible and XML sitemaps), on-site content (both keyword rich static copy and frequency of content updates), and lastly off-site content and back-links. The Storesonline platform fails on all 3 levels. Sorry, pal, there is no secret to SEO… just effort. If you’ve optimized your site for some obscure terms, congratulations – try competing against hundreds or thousands of competing sites in ultracompetitive spaces and we’ll talk.
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on February 6th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
Why are so many of you posting here to ask for help? There’s no one that can help you if you were duped into buying into a pie-in-the-sky internet scam. It’s called Live And Learn. This site does a very good job of making Storesonline completely unappealing to the reader doing research (like myself). I’m sorry so many people were lured and caught in their web (!) but reading these pleas has been very helpful. For me. Best of luck.
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on February 23rd, 2010 at 4:37 pm
Storesonline enticed us into purchasing 3 websites, than sent our way EMS to charge another $7500 for help in constructing and marketing the site. One month after purchase and not getting anywhere we asked for refund, buy back all 3 websites!!! I am senior, they lied, telling how easy one can make extra money. They still continue the same marketing techniques in Canada with the same pitch, and getting more suckers like us into their fraudulent scheme
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on February 24th, 2010 at 9:02 pm
I just returned from the all-day marketing seminar that cost me $58.00. That was all I intended to do and that was all that I did (and I took copious notes). I mainly wanted internet marketing ideas, and felt that the information I gleaned was worth it. So the initial presentation, plus lunches and I-pods were worth the money for me. But that’s IT! I neither had nor have I any intention of pursuing any further participation with SOL.
The sad part was that the people I saw lining up to sign up looked as if they were investing their last dime. When questioned, over half of the people in the room raised their hands that they’d never participated in a live, on-line “chat” session.
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on March 11th, 2010 at 12:48 pm
I signed on with them about 5 years ago. I asked for my money back within the 3 day grace period. They did very reluctantly re-credit back my credit card. Very reluctantly.:) You have to ask with in 3 days time or forget it. You’ll never see your money again!
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on March 12th, 2010 at 4:32 pm
Any one can post a web site for minimal investment my art work was done with Intuit for $9.00 per month you can upgrade to a store for $19.95 per month it does take a little bit of skill to set it up. But there are a lot of other companies that have free websites. For every one out there that is looking for the easy way there is no such thing everything takes some sort of effort. I’ve been looking for the easy way and I guaranty it is not there. I’m going to attend a workshop for Stores On line on March 16th but just for the education. I’m prepared for the hard sell. Maggie
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on March 19th, 2010 at 2:23 pm
After losing my job a few weeks ago, my mom said she got a card in the mail for an internet business conference. I decided to go thinking it’s worth a shot. I’m an eBay seller and thought this might be the key to growing my ’side business’.
After reading the HUGE list of reviews on here, I am SO GLAD I didn’t fork over any money. My mom came with me to this and she seemed sold. I told her, “Look around mom, it’s the elderly and unemployed here.” When Duane discussed a story about his friend who worked for a Fortune 5,000 company survived many rounds of layoffs where his friends did not, there were multiple groans in the room…so many unemployed people in there. I am 32 years old and notably the youngest one in there. They were selling the full-day conference for $58. I would guess that 75% of the people signed up. It was really sad. I agree with the posts on here that there are companies that offer the same service with no upfront costs and better customer service. You just have to look. Unfortunately, people in their target group don’t know that…and SOL KNOWS this.
The 90-minute seminar included a lunch and an MP-3 player. We were informed at NOON that lunch would be served after the 90-min. seminar and after 2 hours, they were just starting to bring it out. It’s a Friday during lent and my mom and I are Catholic, which means no meat on Friday. They were bringing out croissants with meat and cheese on them with a small cup of potato salad and a pickle. My mom and I walked out. My mom approached one of the helpers and said, “You should tell people to eat before they come. It’s 2:00 and if anyone were diabetic here, you’d be in trouble.” The man walked away from her…COMPLETELY IGNORED HER.
I will be telling everyone I know not do do this seminar. Total. Waste. of. Time.
…and to anyone who is going to go to the seminar anyway. When they wave $10 in the air and say, “I’d love for someone to have this $10.” …..they want you to run up and get it. It’s their way of saying, you have to shake the money tree to get the money to fall down.
My advice to you, run up to him, take the $10. Thank him, grab your coat and GET OUT OF THERE.
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on March 26th, 2010 at 8:00 pm
Wow How come we are only finding this out now. With STL & the tax club they got about 20k from me, I got involoved in Aug 2009 in Calgary. I had lost my job and had to start from the bottom again, of course extra moneys were needed. It looked and sounded great as anyone could get it done with little to none computer skills. One guy even asked if you needed a computer and the instructor said he could bowrow a friends if need be. Its interesting that they sever the same borring corsants everywhere. Funny thing is I got anther invitaion to a semar THEY are having here in Calgary next month. Maybe I should go and tell them my disgust story and whorn everyone who the really are. If theres a classaction I’m there. I would like to get my hard earned fund back.
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on March 29th, 2010 at 2:11 am
READ AND HEAD!!!
This IS a High Pressure Sales Pitch to anyone in need of money, or Think they may even REMOTELY like to start an internet business!
DO NOT FALL FOR THIS SCAM! You can get the same stuff FOR FREE other locations.
I went to the $58 dollar ‘training’/ SALES PITCH just to get some Internet Marketing Ideas. I don’t think it was worth the wasted day for the free ‘box lunch’ and few ’sales pitch’ ideas they throw out. Cost them MAYBE $5-8 for the lunch.
Oh, and they use DECEPTIVE training. IE… Notice when they give ‘Examples of some of their students successes’ that when they do a search they are claiming the PAID Spots on Google Searches as their successes!!! WHAT A LIE!!! Those ‘SPONSORED’ Ad Sites ARE PAID FOR by the Seller, or advertiser, NOT By any of Stores On Line ‘tactics’ at SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
THEN, they click on one of the links ‘that clearly states see more links of this advertizer’. This pulls up One or two Pages showing ONLY THIS ADVERTISER and THEN they Act Like ‘LOOK AT WHAT WE DID FOR HIM’!!! WHAT A JOKE!!
To the UNTRAINED EYE, they will FOOL you into thinking their SEO Did this for him, when it is REALLY only Slight of Hand.!
IF the above 2 Paragraphs are above your understanding, then don’t feel bad, as it is above 90% of the attendees, AND THAT IS WHO THEY ARE SCAMMING! Show this to any of your family or friends that are familiar with Google Searches, Sponsored Links, and ‘link to advertiser’ links, and they may be able to help you understand how they are trying to MISLEAD you into thinking THEIR Company is doing all of this.
Oh, and by the way, the mp3 player is not an ipod, or ANYTHING LIKE one! it is a little Chinese piece of crap! it holds LESS THAN 250 Meg Bytes of info! You can buy crap like this for a few dollars on ebay or at the Dollar Store!
TOTAL WASTE OF TIME!!! AND MONEY!!!
OH, and Get This! During the Private One on One SALES PITCH I got the High Pressure Sales Person to FINALLY ADMIT after 30 MINUTES OF Pressuring him, and PRYING the Details out of him that it would take me 10-20 Hours PER WEEK of MY TIME, FOR MONTHS!!! To Make this work!!! WHAT THE HECK AM I PAYING THEM $6,000+ FOR!!??? Oh, and the $25-30 PER SITE, PER MONTH!!! GLAD I DIDN’T FALL FOR IT!!!
I have been to MANY High Pressure Sales Pitches/Seminars. ONE Thing I can tell EVERYONE Here for SURE is IF IT SOUNDS TO GOOD TO BE TRUE, or TODAY IS THE ONLY DAY FOR THIS ‘SPECIAL’ PRICE, then RUN FORREST, RUN!! AND FAST!!!!
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on March 30th, 2010 at 10:54 am
i’m confused why people paid $6000 + for this?
I just went to their first seminar last night, and the cost to sign up is $58 (one time only). And the monthly cost is $24.95 for the express site OR $29.95 for the pro site. That’s the only cost i’m seeing SO FAR. So what is it that i haven’t seen yet about this company? Please, enlighten me cause i seem to love the software! thanks much in advance.
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on April 29th, 2010 at 11:49 am
Looked at the links this author provided. though I am still in the early stages of working on my storesonline website, and disappointed about finding a dropshipper without paying $500/yr, this author is no better. His top recommendations are things I have tried before this and those cost too. And I got nothing, never understood the whole process because the training was incomplete.
Also, our SO trainer did show us the free tools from Google and Alexa.
So though I am unhappy, I am giving it a go anyway. At least they recommend real products instead of clicks and credits.
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on May 13th, 2010 at 5:16 pm
Hey Lulu,
The first wkshop you attend they keep the prices small…It’s when you go back for your 1st little ‘training’ that you get this huge sales pitch where you may end up paying thousands of dollars.They basically corner you if you try to leave or come up to you while you’re eating (and not filling out paper work to shell out thousands), to ask you “What’s stopping you?” They are very good at making you feel like an idiot for not jumping at their offer…
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on June 22nd, 2010 at 11:17 pm
Thank you for your help! This was what I needed to know.
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