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Report: #255026

Complaint Review: Esbex - HB Products - Rochester New York

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  • Reported By: Greece New York
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  • Esbex - HB Products 926 N. 1430 W. Rochester, New York U.S.A.

Esbex - HB Products Unlimited Big Promises, Crappy Overpriced Products, Crappy Business Program ripoff Orem Utah

*Author of original report: Truth in Advertising

*UPDATE Employee: Vaughn has not been a client since 2002

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We wanted to start an onlne business, and my husband ordered a late-night video from something about making money online. It was an intro piece to Esbex / HB Products Unlimited. He was contacted by a sales rep, and felt the internet would be a good tool for launching a home-based business.

We invested about $10,000 all together. We received two sets of "training" manuals, a bunch of "membership offers" to give to customers to give them a free membership to our discount website, and we were given a generic, cookie-cutter website.

We were promised the products we could purchase at 50-90% off would be sellable on ebay (one of the training programs emphasized this route) and we could list them on our website.

We advertised locally in a valpak type mailer, at an additional cost. We also set up a bank account that charged us $50 a month just to be able to process credit cards. We were also charged a monthly "membership" fee for the program. I don't remember the exact amount, but we were spending about $100 a month just for fees.

We were assigned a business coach. Then another. then another. Each one gave us different information.

In a nutshell, we barely made any money, and it was only from ebaying items I had around the house to sell at very low prices. None of the HB Products ever sold, because every time I listed them, they were being sold on Ebay for less than I could buy them for from HB Products.

I bought some HB Products for myself to check out and give them as gifts. They were junk. Poorly made, break easily, etc. For example, a knife set we purchased was about as good as a plastic knife with a thin metal serrated edge. We also bought a case lot of laser pointers, I think there were like 10 in the case, and of those, 5 were either broken or broke quickly with use. I was emabarrassed giving them out!

Long story short, we were not confident in the products and chose not to put our names on them, so we stopped using HB products, but still tried to make a go using their "business plan". We never made a dime. We are out the $10k initial investment along with all of our extra charges.

Worse, we put the investment on a credit card, because we were promised by our coaches that we would recoup our money within 3 months. Obviously that never happened. So we paid interest on the $10k+ until we were able to pay them off.

The program materials are a joke, the coaching is inadequate, by people who don't believe in the plan and quit within a few months, and the products are flea market junk. But that would probably be an insult to flea market junk. I would love to get a class-action suit against them and get our money back.

Vaughn
Greece, New York
U.S.A.

This report was posted on Ripoff Report on 06/17/2007 09:36 AM and is a permanent record located here: https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/esbex-hb-products/rochester-new-york/esbex-hb-products-unlimited-big-promises-crappy-overpriced-products-crappy-business-pr-255026. The posting time indicated is Arizona local time. Arizona does not observe daylight savings so the post time may be Mountain or Pacific depending on the time of year. Ripoff Report has an exclusive license to this report. It may not be copied without the written permission of Ripoff Report. READ: Foreign websites steal our content

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REBUTTALS & REPLIES:
0Author
2Consumer
0Employee/Owner

#2 Author of original report

Truth in Advertising

AUTHOR: Vaughn - (U.S.A.)

POSTED: Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Your response was that we were not members since 2002. You are correct. As I recall, we gave up and cut our losses. Regardless, the date or length of membership doesn't change the results.

In addition, you asked why we waited five years. The answer is simple: 1) we weren't aware this forum existed; was it around five years ago? I stumbled on it by accident. 2) Two babies. 3) We did file a complaint with the NY state attorney generals office, but didn't follow up because of time constraints, and since I am now a full time medical student in addition to being a parent of four, priorities must be set.

Regardless, it doesn't change the fact that your sales representative who sold us the initial program "promised" us we would make our money back in three months. We were promised top quality products. We were promised great training and support.

None of those were true. As for the $100/month; as I recall, we paid $20 for access to the poor quality products on HBUnlimited, $40 for monthly coaching/website, another $40?? for the bank account that you required us to set up for taking credit cards. Which, by the way, we never used.

Not once. We never sold one product off the website, despite advertising locally. In addition, by the time products were advertised locally, they were sold out from the warehouse, and again, my purchase cost was higher than the prices products were selling for on Ebay. All in all, we easily spent over $10000 in investments towards this scheme, when you take into account our advertising, website fees, coaching/monthly fees, etc. In addition, I spent countless hours trying to work the system to no avail. What is your time worth?

Incidentally, one of our favorite coaches, I think number 3 or 4, recently contacted us through our still active ebay account. They did not have a positive experience as an employee.

I give you a challenge. If you truly believe your program has changed and is now a much stronger, more valid program, give us the updated program and we'll try it again. If we can't make it go, give us a refund. And we can keep meticulous records of our activities to insure we are following your program to the letter. Should you prove to be correct, I will come on this forum and update the information I've written.

In addition, as a former television journalist, I am sure I can contact local media to cover this challenge.

Our home telephone number has not changed since 2002. You should still have it on file.

Vaughn & Wanda

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#1 UPDATE Employee

Vaughn has not been a client since 2002

AUTHOR: Kathleen - (U.S.A.)

POSTED: Monday, August 13, 2007

Vaughn and Wanda,

I am sorry that you were not satisfied with our program. You canceled your membership with HB Products back in 2002. 5 years our program has changed a lot. Why did you wait 5 years to write something, the report shows that it was created on 6/17/2007. Our records indicate that you spent just under $8,000 not the reported $10,000.00 The monthly membership fees you paid to HB Products were only $20.00/month not the reported $100.00.

Our products are very competitive on eBay and other online aution sites.

Thank you,
Kathleen
HB Products Unlimited, Inc.

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