Digital Success Institute Internet Coaching Business makes Misleading Claims and Charges Big Money! Utah

I have been extremely dissatisfied with my relationship with Digital Success Institute, an internet/e-commerce training business in Utah.  In Jan, 2014, I responded to an interet ad about having your own home-based business, from "On-Line Profit Stream," which has been exposed as fraudulent- and almost immediately, received a call from a representative from Digital Success, informing me that I needed to have their training to ever be successful with an internet-based home business.  The cost of the service was approx. $12,500, up front.  I never received ANYTHING from "On-Line Profit Stream," even though I paid them $97.  I guess it was just a "gateway" to Digital Success! 

Though Digital Success never made actual claims about what I could expect to earn if I subscribed to their educational services, they implied my goal of $3,000/mo as supplemental retirement income was reasonable, "if I was motivated enough to work at it."  I was told it would require only 8-10 hours/week of my time.  I was also assured that if I was teachable and did what they said, I would succeed.  I ignorantly bought the pitch.  Over the next few months, I had weekly "coaching" consultations, when my coach would give me the next week's assignment and training videos to watch on their website.  They were always nice, but I had a growing sense that this was way over my head, and that I was getting "lost," with such assignments as writing meta code for my "website," a mere template created by what I suspect is one of their subsidiaries, Ignite Web Services.

When I came to the conclusion this was not going to work for me (about 1/2 way through the program), I appealed to them to refund at least a part of my investment, to no avail.  They said they do not give refunds.

My chief complaints are these:

1. I was led to believe I would be earning income at home in the first six months.  After a year, I have netted a big zero.

2. I was NOT informed of all that would be involved in this process, and more was added each month, at which times I received numerous calls from other companies trying to sell me their services, from wholesale/dropship middlemen, to marketing companies, to agents wanting me to hire them to file business registration forms, to many others who informed me that my website would never draw any search engine recognition, because it was an overused template.  Each of these "services" would cost hundreds or thousands of dollars more!  At one point, I asked my "coach" why I wasn't informed of all these additional costs for a novice like me, and his response was that I could do all this myself, if I wanted to go to the effort.  I was told, "There is a difference between working hard and working smart."  Thanks a lot!

I feel Digital Success misrepresented a lot of things to me.  I was misled by volumes of things I was NOT told up front, and feel I should receive at least a partial refund.  I am going nowhere with this, and am so discouraged by the whole thing, I will likely never trust any online business again, besides the debt I am now carrying because of this "venture."

Mike