Network Direct, Inc. Unethical Business Practices Overland Park Kansas

Here is what you need to know about this company (NDI, they, them and all associated pronouns), and college students (me, we & us, though I am now far removed from that demographic) in a nutshell. Please see the other Rip-off Reports & rebuttals regarding this company for details regarding prices/guarantees/usage etc. as the other Reports are excellent in their assessments, and this report will benefit from their foundations rather than simply rehashing everything.

For legal purposes, please note that this report is in no way a claim that NDI does not provide the services advertised.

That said:

a. NDI unfairly targets college students by promising us "pays for itself" savings on items the typical college grad will not truly need or be able to afford (even at the reduced rate they promise) for years, and possibly even decades, after entering into the program. We, however, believe while we are in school that we will get great jobs with great salaries immediately upon graduation, and that NDI will give us the edge needed to be the Joneses rather than simply keeping up with them.

b. Other reports provide varying rates for NDI's interest rate on the payment plan for the purchase price of the College Student Special membership, but mine was 15%. FIFTEEN PERCENT! And of course they get everyone on the payment plan, because any college kid that has $1500 to blow on something this far-fetched would never even bother.

b.1 As other reports have stated, they say in their presentation that the Late-Adopter membership is upwards of $5000. This, they say, is why no one you know (like, your parents, teachers, bankers, for example) is a member; because missing out on this valuable opportunity when you are young makes the savings so negligible to older prospective members that they don't bother marketing to them. So, if it can pay for itself at $1500, why can't it pay for itself at $5000?

b.2 I never heard anything about a No-Risk-3-day-trial the other reports mention, but they are dead-on in saying that there is no way a 19-year-old kid could gauge the risk-reward aspect of this financial decision in that short of a time.

c. People who attempt to exit the program are told it is a lifetime membership and therefore ou can't cancel. I tried this after a year, when the first annual membership fee came around. The best I could get out of them was, 1. You still owe us the money, due to the contract you signed. (It's almost as if I bought a car or house or something.) 2. I can waive your annual membership fee of $65 (levied even while you are still paying for the membership in the first place!) for now but if you choose to re-activate your membership you will be charged all lapsed yearly fees in arrears.

Even though I was approximately $700 into the program, and didn't even want my money back, I was told there was nothing I could do. I had signed my life away, I thought, beholden to this company whose services I will never utilize. So what do you do? I kept paying them. To me, it was let's just pay this off, get it the Hell over with.

Never mind that they still send me yearly renewal notices, the most recent of which prompted my writing of this report with its giant headline, DON'T LET YOUR MEMBERSHIP EXPIRE!!

Oh, so now the lifetime membership which I couldn't cancel (while I owed them $1500 at 15% interest) can all of a sudden expire now that I've paid off the debt?

And if I do choose to renew, I get to pay not only the 65$ for the next year of membership, I also get to pay the $195 for the 3 previous years of inactive membership. If I can't afford that all at once, they'll be more than happy to finance the total at 18% interest.

d. And the ultimate insult: A few years after getting into this mess, I ran into a girl who was in the presentation with me. She won the vacation voucher, went on a free vacation, and didn't sign up. I, on the other hand, did not win anything at the presentation, and ended up paying over $2500 for a service I will never use, and apparently can never unsubscribe from.

Randall
Omaha, Nebraska
U.S.A.