InventHelp Scam - Stay very far away!! Bingham Farms, MI Nationwide

My experience with the Company Inventhelp has been an 11 month ordeal from which I now want nothing but liberation. After paying a $3000 down-payment on a roughly $12,000 promotional package, I went through a several month period where literally nothing happened. When they did start their alleged marketing, it consisted of several poorly-drafted paragraph-long documents. The brochure could have been done by a high school student and turned out better than their professionals.

As the months rolled along and their finance department drained my account at a rate of $370/month, they sent me periodic updates as to what they've done for me. They sent lists of companies to which the idea was submitted, along with a very nice letter of inspiration. The mailing consisted of about a dozen pages, including the glossy flyer they had printed up to describe the idea to those companies with whom they had confidentiality agreements. When I contacted them, asking for more detailed documentation regarding these submissions (copies of the mailings they sent out, names of the recipients, dates, etc...) I was turned down yet again. They actually refused to explain to their client exactly what their service consisted of.

At this point I asked that they terminate my contract. Paul the man who had made initial and repeated contact with me in response to my preliminary interest in the company. I spoke with Mike, from client services, who quite jovially explained that I was well past my 7 day termination period. A 7 day termination period on a 2 year contract. Moreover, they actually refused to stop working on the marketing. Mike explained to me that they would only terminate if I stopped allowing them to debit my bank account-in which case I would face the collection agencies, a ruined credit rating, and potential lawsuit. When I asked Mike what percentage of their clients got a positive return on their investment, he claimed not to know the specifics. This came as a shock because after a sizeable lawsuit was successfully leveled against Inventhelp in 1994, they were ordered to disclose their success rate to any future clients. Mike ventured a guess, stating it was "probably less than 1 percent". In fact, it's closer to .25 percent. This translates to about 15 happy clients out of a pool of 6000. It is of little doubt to me that this statistic is well known to every employee of the company. However, their reluctance to ever utter it out loud-even to clients whom they've already trapped-is extremely telling of the results that can be expected of their services.

Their reluctance to deal with their clients, however, goes even farther. The company refuses to communicate by email. They will receive them, but will never respond, preferring instead to talk on the phone where documentation is far more difficult. Email addresses for the company are very hard to find in general, and when they are found they are always generic addresses such as clientservices@inventhelp.com. There is never a specific name attached to any correspondences. Their official mailings are always signed at the end: "the Client Services Department".

In fact, in my entire 11 month relationship with them, I have yet to receive a single document from this company signed by an actual person. It seems that they will do anything to avoid any personal responsibility for their actions. Given such a diehard commitment to their own anonymity, it comes as no surprise that their thousands of clients and tens of millions of dollars in fees are balanced by just a handful of happy endings.

Of course, as Inventhelp will point out, they do everything their contract says. They do not promise results-which is reasonable. What they must promise, however, is a good faith effort to achieve a result. Evidence of this good faith, as the above story illustrates, is not available to those to whom it matters most-their clients. But while the good people at Inventhelp may consider their treatment of their clientele to be enough to stay in business, it in no way makes their business justified or ethical. Their business model depends on hopeful but naïve laypeople rushing into purchases they often cannot afford, and then paying the consequences. If an invention gets sold, it generally has little if anything to do with their marketing efforts. I urge anybody who is considering this company to go elsewhere-preferably a company that does not charge a fee in advance and actually has a selection process for the products they market.