I wish we'd never come across this name, never had any contact with the group, for then we wouldn't be in such a fix at the moment!
It is such a bane and thorn in my life at the moment.
We signed up with the Glitterati marketing group initially, believing in their promises of great service and cost savings to be had. And paid up $12000. What fools we were. So easily taken.
Anyway, call it ESP or bad vibes, I chickened out pretty much soon after. Fortunately we were within the 5 day cooling off period and they gave us the termination letter after we made a surprise visit to their office. More promises. We should not have believed them. They told us we'd get the money back in 6 to 8 weeks.
After 6 weeks I started to get nervous and began calling them. Half the time the phone went unanswered. The other half someone ( different each time ) would pick up and promise to call back but never did. Same thing with emails.
8 weeks went by and it was time to find out for sure what was happening. The Chinese New Year holidays were already over. It took another 2 days before someone even picked the phone up, then we made a trip down to see them. That was dramatic. A short punk called Brian met us ( he didn't even know the security pin to get into the room!) and called himself "team leader". Then he disappeared for a good 15 to20 minutes claiming to find out what was happening to our refund. Finally he reappeared ( thank goodness) and gave us this piece of paper saying to call the bank to find out what happened to the money!! I was furious. He could not even explain himself adequately and I could see it was a waste of time even talking to him.
I noticed that the staff seemed to come from another area on the same floor so I made my way there to see if there was anybody more senior to speak to.
The back room was a shocking mess. A few desks, 4 staff sitting there with a Chinese dude calling himself Henry Lee saying he was the " General Manager" . He claimed he'd been "away" during the period that our contract was made and terminated, hence the mess. Then he showed me a slip of paper stating that he'd actually been in Changi Prison! My heart sank. OMG. He's a gangster.
Anyhow, he had a pretty glib tongue, managed to calm us down, and told us that the bank was freezing their credit card facilities due to large numbers of refunds that were occurring. We called the bank and that part was true, but the bank said that the money that was charged in December would have already been given to the company if the refund did not go through. Hence the onus was on the company to refund us directly!! So where does that leave us!!!
Promises later, we are still stuck in this conundrum and he has gone on to prove that he is a liar and an unreliable person. I guess we are now faced with having to go through the legal system to get our money back, or the possibility of "donating" $12k to their activities, whatever they may be.
Well... whatever the outcome, I really hope no one else would have this misfortune of meeting these people.... and it's a grim reminder to the 2 of us never to attend any more marketing talks! Expensive and painful lesson learned..
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