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Mar-08-06 23:21 PST

First, this is my posting ID, since some people may not like what I am saying here.

The above listed company states that it is an official eBay Development Partner owned by Pacific WebWorks, Inc. in Salt Lake City. Tweadvantage.com ran full page ads in the Columbia South Carolina State Newspaper for several days in a row in late February-early March touting 4 workshops during March 6-7, 2006 at local hotels in Columbia, SC. The full page ads touted that eBay sellers could become much more effective and make more profit by attending this workshop and would receive a free $80 digital camera. (We got a coupon for this camera requiring a shipping fee of almost $16, which is probably more than the camera actually cost!) Gee, wonder of wonders.

These March 6 and 7 "workshops" were led by a man named Mark Dove (an eBay seller) which were nothing more than two-hour sales pitches for yet ANOTHER workshop that cost $79 that was being put on by another tweadvantage-connected eBay seller, Bill Bain, today, March 8, 2006, at yet another hotel in Columbia, SC. The $79 seminar was billed as being something you did not want to miss.

The $79 payment (made preferably by credit card so that they can bill you $30 a month for the website you will be creating) guaranteed you a place in what Mark Dove described as a "hands-on individual instruction" workshop using Pacific WebWorks Inc. proprietary technology (that in effect builds web pages that can be hooked into your eBay auctions). The $79 payment also gives you a one-year membership into the TradeWorks Product Club, an entity that according to Mark Dove has "thousands of products" that eBayers could sell before actually purchasing them, with the Product Club doing the drop-shipping.

OH MY GOD WHAT A SCAM! I cannot believe that eBay actually sanctioned this.

FIRST, THERE WAS NO HANDS-ON INDIVIDUAL INSTRUCTION AT ALL at this $79 workshop. NONE. NONE. What a whopping lie by Mark Dove! Instead, the ever fast-talking hypermanic Bill Bain proceeded with another sales pitch using a PowerPoint type of presentation in which he jumped around from topic to topic to topic to topic while REFUSING to take ANY formal questions while jabbering on about so many complexities that I doubt anyone really absorbed the information, while at the END of the program proceeding to announce that in order to use the Pacific WebWorks proprietary software with your auctions, that you would have to pay $995 to set up a Merchant Account (or you could go with the 24 payments of $54 a month). All of the people around me were shocked as this "presentation" came to an end. Several of us said this has got to be a sham. Maybe it really is a good program if you have that kind of money, but I sure don't. And I don't think the average seller does either, especially when Bill Bain said that only 8% of sellers were actually at a true level of success on eBay, and that the other 92% don't know what they are doing. YES HE SAID THAT. MAYBE IT'S TRUE, and I'm one of them. Bill Bain even presented electronic slides of paypalsucks.com and proceeded to bash and bash PayPal for sellers while promoting this $995 NON-PAYPAL Merchant account that was affiliated with Pacific WebWorks or God knows who! After all, as he said, why pay 8% PayPal fees (hello, aren't they 2.9% + 30 cents?) for getting your money? NOW, WHAT KIND OF EBAY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM AFFILIATE BASHES PAYPAL AND CLAIMS THAT PAYPAL TAKES 8 PERCENT? Yes, eBay plus PayPal might take around 8% plus eBay listing fees, but that is NOT what he said. So, if this is what Bill Bain says, then why does eBay promote PayPal as the ultimate electronic payment method with all those PayPal logos everywhere? If you knew nothing about PayPal you certainly wouldn't want to use it unless you were a buyer, according to Bill Bain. And this is not all. To top it off, there were TWO MORE $995 fees that allowed you to have access to the additional necessary components that are part of this proprietary website development software called Visual Web Tools by Pacific WebWorks. In order to fully take part in this program, we were told that we would need to fork out $3000 TONIGHT, which we would all quickly earn back by selling 250-300 items with a $10 profit on each item. YEAH RIGHT! And the $3000 was a special price just for tonight, so that by signing up and paying tonight that you were saving over $5000. Like all these people came prepared to fork over $3000. I guess with the 50 or so people who had already forked over $79, they weren't doing too bad pulling in $4K or so for two 3-4 hour sessions!

There was so much misinformation or confusing information that it was hard to believe. And when we all signed up for the $79 workshop one or two days before (in which we thought was going to receive individual hands-on instruction), we realized that we had signed contracts that never mentioned an additional $3000 in fees but that committed us to $30 per month for website storage and support with a nasty "you-can't-get-out-of-this-clause" on the back of the form. The problem is that there was in no way FULL DISCLOSURE in this agreement so I DARE Pacific WebWorks or their proxies to try and take any more of my money. The website for $30 sounds basically useless if you don't at least opt for the tie-in $995 Merchant Account, since it doesn't work with a "ripoff" (according to Bill Bain) PAYPAL Merchant Account. And there was NO mention of these extra THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS by Mark Dove at the initial presentation. Plus, Mark Dove said that there were only 724,000 sellers and 104,000,000 registered eBay users and that therefore the buyer to seller ratio was well over 100 to 1. I don't know if that's true or not, and if so, is that really that good of a thing? I would think sellers would want a much higher ratio than that! That is why the majority of eBay items do not sell.

So, again, why would eBay partner with such a company? Bill Bain bragged that 1200 people had just signed up for his company's program in Norfolk, Virginia last week, and that us South Carolians were getting in early. I guess it's great if you have $1000-$3000 to just hand over but WHY IN THE SLEAZY HECK DO YOU HAVE TO PAY $79 to learn that? This was an UNETHICAL AND VERY SLIMY THING TO PULL, and if this was eBay-endorsed then we've got real problems. I am stopping payment on my check tomorrow after this slime of all this, not to mention all the time I wasted. Plus Bill Bain bashed the hell out of eBay's new package deal where you get gallery, subtitle, and listing designer for 65 cents. THIS IS A GUY THAT IS UNDER CONTRACT FOR EBAY DEVELOPMENT? NO NO NO NO THANKS AT ALL!

And now guess what? They are going to do this same Dog and Pony Show in Washington DC, Louisville KY, and Chicago during March. I HOPE NONE OF YOU SPRING FOR THE $79 NOW THAT YOU KNOW THE ACTUAL COST IS AT LEAST $995 IF NOT MORE. Plus what a time-waster when I could have been listing some items on eBay, pathetic unsuccessful seller that I am.

PLUS, the TradeWorks Product Club has all of 10,000 products (it sounded like from the initial presentation from Mark Dove that it was far more than this!) And Bill Bain "assured me" that these products would be changing over time as items went cold or got hot.

So, let's say that 10,000 of the "724,000" sellers "bite" and put out the $1000-$3000. Sounds like we are going to have a lot more duplicate articles on eBay and that eventually no one is going to be able to sell these things for real profit if they get in "later" in the game! And even those of us who get in "early" aren't going to get much out of that TradeWorks Products deal either. GEEZ what a racket!

I really want to hear from eBay management about how they hire someone like Bill Bain who repeatedly said that PayPal is totally unsafe for sellers, but just fine for buyers. HE SAID THAT AND EVERYONE IN THE ROOM HEARD IT. Is this company REALLY affiliated with eBay, with as much sabotage of eBay and PayPal as I heard tonight??