The Marvin Group Art Corrigan Don't fall for this scam. They will make promises, take your money, and do nothing to sell you business Alpharetta, Georgia

   I am coming to the end of a year-long fiasco with The Marvin Group.  The company is based near Atlanta, and their local Chicago rep is Art Corrigan.  Mr. Corrigan guaranteed that my small retail store would sell by the end of 2009.  He also promised that he would find a buyer that would pay $80,000.  I am not going to get into the details, but this company is nothing but a scam.  They promise that they will sell your business for much more than its worth, get you to fork over some money ($3,000 in my case) to get them started, and then do nothing but put your business listing on a couple of web sites.   Something I could have accomplised on my own for about $60 a month.  Don't get me started on the account manager, Lynda Norris.  She is a joke.  She claimed that there was some interest from a buyer who wanted to see my updated tax returns which I promptly scanned and sent to her.  6 weeks later, she called with the same request.  When I told her that I already sent them to her 6 weeks before, she said that she was too busy and forgot to send them to this supposed buyer.  Well, she is either totally incompetent or just pretending there is a buyer to keep clients from questioning their service.  My guess is the latter.  Either way, it is a pretty sad situation.  Every time I spoke to Lynda, she claimed that she had emailed prospective buyers but they never responded..great salesmanship there.  How about a phone call to find the reason for their disinterest and addressing it with me, the owner?  How about urging them to take another look and maybe tour the business?  For $3,000, I would think that the Marvin Group staff had some training in sales and an inkling of how to manage an account.  By the way, these same dead leads that Lynda described to me were described by Art at "almost ready to buy the business".  He brought up the same potential buyer on 3 separate phone calls over the course of a few months.  He was lying, plain and simple.  They were doing nothing to sell my business.

I am now wondering how many of us are out there and if we should get together to take some legal action.

Write me a rebuttal if you have a similar story and would be interested in trying to recover some of the upfront fees we paid.  I know several attorneys, but if someone has experience in this type of case, please send a rebuttal or contact me through this site.

Thanks for reading.