Slavery or real debt?

[justlistedslave]

I believe that I am a victim of 21st Century white collar slavery. One would ask, "How is this possible? How was a college educated woman duped into such a position in today's day and age? Youthful naiveté? A unyielding drive to succeed? Perhaps, but the issue goes far deeper than a unfulfilled promise or a bad business decision.

A company, HouseValues.com offers the JustListed.com service to millions of curious real estate enthusiasts and promises each one of them a realty service via email although they are not licensed to perform the services. Fulfilling this promise may not be a problem if the service was a fully automated, but it is not... Or if their paid employees were authorized by law to fulfill such requests, but they are not. And hiring licensed real estate agents to provide such a service to every curious consumer would be astronomical.

So this same company—who just went public this fall—"employs" agents under the guise of offering them a service as well. They insinuate that the service enhances the agents' chance of procuring sales and increasing business. However, they do not disclose to agents before signing up for the service that it can take up to a year for any of these leads to actually turn into a sale nor do they guarantee that any of them will.

But how do I think that this service constitutes slavery? Up until this point, their legal eagles have been able to cover them from numerous consumer complaints and legal actions. However, they forgot one—perhaps more-- important issues.

Without the agents, HouseValues.com would not be able to fulfill their promises to the end consumers. So they require agents—who technically are not employed by the company to attend seminars (some of which are NOT free), maintain a certain real estate status, and follow "order" fulfillment rules. From my understanding, all practices are illegal under IRS independent contractor laws. Finally, agents will not be compensated for the services they render to the company if they don't sell a house.

Here's the icing on the cake: once the real estate agent becomes wise to HouseValues/JustListed practices and wants to be released from the contract, they extort more money from the poor soul in the form of a cancellation fee. This cancellation fee is nothing more than a slavery bond: "Agents, if you want to stop working for HouseValues/JustListed, you must pay us for your freedom" is the idea that came to me. In my case a fee in excess of $3,000 was issued—which I refuse to pay. So they have enlisted a Collection service to collect a "debt" which I did not incur. Representatives from this company have threatened me with serving me legal documents at my office and with wrecking my credit and they have NOT contacted me in writing concerning the issues at hand. I will be following up with a specific complaint for them.

So what do I hope to accomplish by taking action against HouseValues/JustListed?
1) I would like a full refund for the amount that I have already paid to this service
2) I would like HouseValues.com to drop their collection case against me
3) I would like other agents to know exactly what they are getting into when they sign an agreement with this HouseValues or any other similar service company.
4) And I would like the general public to be aware of the business practices employed by this Corporation before choosing to invest in their publicly traded stock.

I must include that I am willing to attempt a class action approach to resolve this conflict. Any direction or help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your prompt attention.

 

[FloridaRE]

Confirming the threats...

After researching this company a little more and have receiving their bogus leads for the past six months, I can confirm that their services is a joke, if not illegal.

Their very high-pressure salesperson was calling me non-stop and telling me all about their awesome contact management services and leads for a amount of said dollars. They kept on lowering the price call after call. They promised great leads that were screened and a certain amount guaranteed monthly. The "heat" was really laid on the sales persons "pitch" and I learned right away that these promises were untrue and the "awesome" login website and contact management system were, to say the least, awful, unprofessional looking and very plain. So I never used the contact management program because of this. I was focusing on the leads instead. Then come to find out that the leads were bogus and that they charged me for leads such as "Donald Duck" and many bad duplicates over and over again. When I brought this to their attention, they said that every lead is workable with the right training and "pitched" a whole another program to get my sales skills up where they should be to work their awful leads. Not only do they rape you of a monthly fee under contract, they also insult you time and time again. The funny thing is that these so call trainers have no idea what they are talking about. It is like they are reading it from a book or a list of objectives that they were given to overcome the complaints that they get daily from customers that have figured out what they are doing, blaming the customers sales ability instead of their product and lies to get them to keep paying for their services. Then after telling them you want a refund and/or to cancel, they say that they are willing to cancel it for said amount of dollars. After you tell them no, they then send threaten email and messages that they are turning you over to a third party collection agency to handle from there if they do not receive payment immediately. Needless to say, I would never recommend their services, nor will I give up on warning others about their unethical business structure.

 

[mike]

I'm confused and unsure what white collar slavery means and how it relates to your case but I certainly sympathize with your pain regarding the sale of a service that may be a sham.

I'm not quite sure I understand completely what the company does except somehow generate "exclusive leads" which I question what that means and what it implies. From my understanding, you are upset that there were significant items that were not disclosed to you at the time that you signed up. The first place you should look is at the agreement you signed. Is there a state which you agreed to go to court (also known as a "choice of forum clause) and is there some specification about the services they agreed to render?

I'm not sure how they can charge you $3,000 for services rendered -- are these the "seminars." If the practice is illegal you should call the state attorney general to file a complaint, send a certified return receipt letter and fax to the housevalues.com legal department demanding a refund and releasing any claim to the money as a result of your reasons. The shorter the better.

I would also leave out all the anger and slavery comments. They will only make you look like the unreasonable angry person who is just wants her money back instead of having some good, solid points of contention with this company. The news is also a great source as they love to have juicy tidbits on big companies.

I believe that I am a victim of 21st Century white collar slavery. One would ask, "How is this possible? How was a college educated woman duped into such a position in today's day and age? Youthful naiveté? A unyielding drive to succeed? Perhaps, but the issue goes far deeper than a unfulfilled promise or a bad business decision.

A company, HouseValues.com offers the JustListed.com service to millions of curious real estate enthusiasts and promises each one of them a realty service via email although they are not licensed to perform the services. Fulfilling this promise may not be a problem if the service was a fully automated, but it is not... Or if their paid employees were authorized by law to fulfill such requests, but they are not. And hiring licensed real estate agents to provide such a service to every curious consumer would be astronomical.

So this same company—who just went public this fall—"employs" agents under the guise of offering them a service as well. They insinuate that the service enhances the agents' chance of procuring sales and increasing business. However, they do not disclose to agents before signing up for the service that it can take up to a year for any of these leads to actually turn into a sale nor do they guarantee that any of them will.

But how do I think that this service constitutes slavery? Up until this point, their legal eagles have been able to cover them from numerous consumer complaints and legal actions. However, they forgot one—perhaps more-- important issues.

Without the agents, HouseValues.com would not be able to fulfill their promises to the end consumers. So they require agents—who technically are not employed by the company to attend seminars (some of which are NOT free), maintain a certain real estate status, and follow "order" fulfillment rules. From my understanding, all practices are illegal under IRS independent contractor laws. Finally, agents will not be compensated for the services they render to the company if they don't sell a house.

Here's the icing on the cake: once the real estate agent becomes wise to HouseValues/JustListed practices and wants to be released from the contract, they extort more money from the poor soul in the form of a cancellation fee. This cancellation fee is nothing more than a slavery bond: "Agents, if you want to stop working for HouseValues/JustListed, you must pay us for your freedom" is the idea that came to me. In my case a fee in excess of $3,000 was issued—which I refuse to pay. So they have enlisted a Collection service to collect a "debt" which I did not incur. Representatives from this company have threatened me with serving me legal documents at my office and with wrecking my credit and they have NOT contacted me in writing concerning the issues at hand. I will be following up with a specific complaint for them.

So what do I hope to accomplish by taking action against HouseValues/JustListed?
1) I would like a full refund for the amount that I have already paid to this service
2) I would like HouseValues.com to drop their collection case against me
3) I would like other agents to know exactly what they are getting into when they sign an agreement with this HouseValues or any other similar service company.
4) And I would like the general public to be aware of the business practices employed by this Corporation before choosing to invest in their publicly traded stock.

I must include that I am willing to attempt a class action approach to resolve this conflict. Any direction or help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your prompt attention.