Tax Liens and Tax Deeds Seminar

I recently attended the Tax Lien and Tax Deeds Seminar promoted by Phil Jones and his Dane Academy partner Dan Eckelman and I am dissapointed.

In this post I will outline the lead up events to this seminar and tomorrow will provide details about the event itself. So here we go:
This is not a reflection of the opportunity as there certainly is money to be made through buying tax liens and tax deeds in the US. I am however not happy with the process and what they delivered at the course compared to what they promised or at least implied.
I also wish to add that I had previously attended the Richmastery's Property Academy and felt that I got good value for money and so my expectations were the same. So I believed that I would be getting as good an educational experience.

A number of my experiences were also expressed by other people I spoke to at the course who were equally disappointed.

I do admit that I made some critical errors as well which I will point out along the way.

Firstly I will make some comments about things we were told at the presentation as compared to what was actually delivered at the 2 day seminar.

At the "Beat the Recession Presentation" we were told that we could spend 15 to 20 minutes to do these deals after we had learnt what to do at the 2 day seminar. At the seminar the presenter Tommy Senatore told us we needed to spend 2 hours per day or 10 hours per week.

We were told they would help us buy a tax lien at the course and from other people I spoke to at the event their interpretation was like mine that we would actually do this ourselves at the course. We did get quickly shown how to buy one and when a guy asked if we could get shown another example he was told there wasn't time.

It was strongly implied that they would "hold our hand" and show us how to do this business and there was free support.....haha nothing of the sort and all the support costs you even more money.

We were told that you could invest as little as you wanted eg $12 (was the figure they used) and you simply went online, bought the lien and waited for your cheque to come in the mail....well actually you need at least a tax number in the States which either costs you money or a lot of forms and time. Plus it's also advantageous to have a US bank account which again is doable but complicated. After the presentation I learnt that for the small time investor the compliance costs and exchange rate risk out way the return.

We were told banks buy these in the billions of dollars and there is 0 risk...yeah as long as you go to their course to ensure you buy the right ones.

We were given a Guarantee that "We will assit in the purchase of your first lien" I do not know how you have just interpretated this statement but I along with a number of other participants at the course I spoke to believed that we would come away from the course having purchased a tax lien. This for me was perfectly feasible as at the property academy they provide a large number of laptops that participants can use so I just assumed this must be what would happen at the 2 day tax course....NO :( As I mentioned above we were hastily given one step through example.

At the end of the presentation we were given a form to complete and told we would get a discounted rate if you signed up today and something extra if we were one of the first 11 to sign up for the seminar, so heavy pressure to just sign and not read the fine print (which they did say to read but gave no time to do so). I did not rush up straight away but did read some of the fine print and of course the most important part was stuck in the middle where it was easy to gloss over it - if you want to pull out you must do so within 24 hours! I was also preoccupied with wanting to ask some more questions which they had conveniently told us we could ask at the end but interestingly this was not done before the forms were handed out and we were strongly encouraged to enroll. Anyway partly due to this distraction and to be fair my own lack of attention to the fine print I missed this crucial part. I signed up after loads of questions (and I got the feeling they were getting sick of me) handed in my form and money and went away thinking it was odd I never got a copy or a receipt of any sort. No worries, well maybe a little, the presentation implied that we would know exactly what to do to make buying tax liens and deeds a relatively easy thing once we went to the course, and I had looked on the richmastery website and found some guarantees that I thought applied to the live seminar as well seeing as there was no other information for course participants. Plus Richmastery generally offer good guarantees and I thought were fair business people - not so. At the seminar I met a lady who changed her mind 48 hours after and was told it was too late she would not get her money back as the refund period was only 24 hours.

When I got home I excitedly relayed this great opportunity to my partner who was very cautious about my proceeding, but after my sell and confidence that there were still some outs he agreed that it sounded like an ok event to attend. I did however still have some reservations so did a bit of "Googling" to see what I could find.

An article at Stuff.co.nz headed "Beware of Tax Lien return" which in summary warns of how much real financial merit there was in buying tax liens. Still full of hype and unable to find anything else that discredited the course, I felt this was just a "party pooper" type article poohooing something good.

The video of the first presentation Phil and Dan did prior to the first 2 day seminar they conducted here in NZ, which of course just reinforced all the things I had heard from them earlier that day. Note: I have since been back over the presentation and realised that they were a lot fairer and far less pushy the first time than they were recently as I will point out later.

So unfortunately not enough to put me off in time!

A few weeks passed and I was becoming a little uneasy about the course and so decided to do some more research. So I went back on line and looked up the guarantees on the richmastery course but decided they probably would not apply as the course was through the new company North Island Holdings Ltd.

I then found the online information about the tax liens course that had a 3 month money back guarantee so thought well that must apply to our course too...not so as I found out when I questioned Phil at the course.

A google search found a forum post by someone who had been to the first seminar along with a number of other responses that were not at all complimentary and to top it off a report by Gilligan Rowe who in a nutshell do not believe the company set up that is promoted at the seminar is the best way and that for the small investor the compliance costs and exchange rate risk outway any decent returns! As I knew Gilligan Rowe had been big supporters of Richmastery I gave this article serious attention. Here's a link to the article and you can get a copy of the report by emailing them.

As I was only going to be a small time investor with a small amount of time available to dedicate to learning and doing this business, I now was pretty nervous that I had indeed been scammed into buying an education opportunity that was not actually for me and there was no way to get out of it.

I must also add here that I also believed (as every other course I have attended at least provides morning and afternoon tea) that as it was over two days we would be provided meals included the cost....not so. A week before the seminar we received an email stating that no food was to be provided, not even a cup of coffee!

See you tomorrow for further details on how the seminar actually unfolded.