Global Cash Flow Network - Exposed

In an earlier post I started telling the story about my attempts to recover my $399 US ‘start up’ fee from Global Cash Flow Network as part of their promised ‘pay back’ program connected to a list of 14 things they require students to complete in order to qualify. I had completed these steps early in my time with GCFN and spent months (over a year, actually) fighting to just get my $399 US back. I had sent jpeg files to my Level 2 Coach and after a number of e-mails back and forth it became apparent to me that GCFN was doing everything possible to keep me separated from my $399 US.

Here is Sara Williamson’s response to a query I sent regarding the jpegs:

On Aug 12, 2008, at 4:11 PM, Sara Williamson wrote:




Hi George,
Here is a screen shot of the attachments I received from you. I’m not sure what that means then.

My follow-up to this was:

From: W. George Elliott [mailto:laptop@thenewsleader.ca]

Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2008 4:18 PM

To: Sara Williamson

Subject: Re: Screen shot

Sara:
Beats me. I converted all of them to jpeg’s except the one pdf.
This is getting frustrating.

By this time Sara had indicated she was going to contact their ‘technical support department’ to see what was preventing her from opening my jpegs. I had also sent them to another computer in my office (not connected to a network of any kind) and had no problem opening them.

Sara’s visit to the GCFN tech department resulted in this e-mail the following week:

On Aug 19, 2008, at 5:29 PM, Sara Williamson wrote:



Hi George,
This is what tech told me– not doing it right, he should take a screen shot and paste them in MS PAINT then send those as attachments.

The bells were ringing and red flags were flying as far as I was concerned at this point. There was no way possible that she could not open my screenshots saved as jpegs and I knew it, so it was pretty obvious to me that GCFN was yanking my chain, so I responded with this e-mail:

From: W. George Elliott [mailto:laptop@thenewsleader.ca] 

Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2008 7:38 AM

To: Sara Williamson

Subject: Re: Screen shot

Sara:
Impossible.
I use a Mac.

Later that day Sara sent this e-mail:

On Aug 20, 2008, at 1:20 PM, Sara Williamson wrote:


Hi George,
I let Tech know. I’ll get back to you.

So then I decided to let her know I knew the jpegs could be opened:

From: W. George Elliott [mailto:laptop@thenewsleader.ca] 

Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2008 3:45 PM

To: Sara Williamson

Subject: Re: Screen shot

Sara:
I just sent the jpegs to a friend’s PC and she opened them just fine.
I suspect your e-mail restrictions are either set too high or something else is going on over there.

And the final e-mail that day from Sara:

Alright. I’ll make sure Tech tried to open it too.

Hard to believe? There’s still more to this little saga as it got weirder and weirder in the months to follow as I try to get out from under the cloud of debt caused by CGFN and each time I tried they did something else to make me think they really didn’t have my best interest in mind. More to come…

A bribe is basically anything given to a person to influence that person to do something illegal or wrong. Bribes are sometimes disguised as a gift or a referral fee. Global Cash Flow Network uses bribery as a way to keep you interested in their program.

As I have discussed here already in an earlier post I received two cheques from GCFN early in my affiliation with their CMPS program. The first cheque, in the amount of $10.00, was dated November 5, 2007, barely days after I ‘joined’ the program. In the memo line of the cheque is the phrase ‘Referral Bonus.’ The second – and final – cheque received from the program was in the amount of $100.00 and was dated November 16, 2007 and also indicates in the memo line that it is a ‘Referral Bonus’ cheque. I have made reference to these cheques as ‘bait cheques’ and they are nothing more.

The bribe part of this is that GCFN hopes the bait cheques make you feel as if you are making progress with promoting their products. The tease along the way is two-fold. There’s the promise of making big bucks by funneling traffic to the CMPS program and the smaller opportunity of earning commissions through a number of affiliate advertising programs.

The reality is that by funneling traffic to the CMPS program, GCFN makes more money. There is no way of knowing how much commission you make from cheques generated through feeding business to GCFN’s CMPS program as they make it clear in their promotional material that they don’t do that. The reason they use is that they don’t want you to ‘pester’ a new client and attempt to up sell them deeper into the program – suggesting leaving that chore to the professionals at GCFN.

While part of that makes some sense – I didn’t know the program well enough in the beginning to try to up sell someone if I had to – it also gives GCFN another opportunity to make more money off of your efforts (providing one of your prospects actually does buy into the CMPS program) and giving you just a small piece of the action in what I can only describe as a sliding scale.

In my newspaper business, and any marketing job I have taken on, I have clearly stated up front to my sales staff that they will receive either a 10% or 15% commission (I use two different rates for two different types of projects). When you join the GFCN CMPS Program there is no clear figure given as to what percentage you will make. The deception here is the line, “Earn up to (fill in the blank) per week!”

The simple test here is, if you are receiving cheques from GFCN’s CMPS program, simply ask them how they came up with the figure they wrote your cheque out for. Ask how many new client sales it represents and at what commission rate. You’ll get a vague answer, which will likely include the phrase ‘client confidentiality’ which should be a red flag for you that they didn’t give you a lot of commission.

Global Cash Flow Network

On August 4, 2008 I received an e-mail from Level 2 VIP Media Coach Sara Williamson at Global Cash Flow Network. It was in reply to my e-mail sent a number of days before where I had attached jpegs of proof that I had completed the “14 Things” list. Sara could not open the jpegs, so I re-sent them later that same day. It took her just over a week to respond with the following e-mail:

On Aug 12, 2008, at 1:47 PM, Sara Williamson wrote:


Hi George,

I apologize about the delay in getting back to you. I got really busy. The attachments from internet explorer are still not opening. Maybe if you could take a screen shot.

Remember we are here to support you!!! We want to see you do well… so definitely keep in touch. :-)

Thank you for contacting Global Cash Flow Network 

Make it a great day!



Sara
 Level 2 V.I.P. Media Coach 
Global Cash Flow Network
 1-800-719-8270

International toll FREE: 1-888-719-2030

International: 480-355-5599
Sara@globalcashflownetwork.com

And my response below:

From: W. George Elliott [mailto:laptop@thenewsleader.ca]

Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2008 2:01 PM

To: Sara Williamson

Subject: Re: Attachments for Client 14181

Sara:

I sent them as jpegs and you STILL couldn’t open them?

W. George Elliott
Owner/Publisher
Similkameen News Leader

Sara’s follow-up e-mail explained that she still could not open the jpegs, so I took screenshots of the 14 items I had completed to prove completion. Later that same day Sara sent an e-mail to say she could not open the screenshots. I later converted them all to jpegs and sent them away. I also sent them to another computer in my office. Only two of the four computers in my office at the time were ‘networked’ using AppleShare just for file transfer purposes. I sent the screenshots and jpegs from my MacBook Pro (not on the AppleShare network) to a PC running Microsoft Windows 2000 through regular e-mail. Her next response was obviously part of the dodge employed to avoid my attempts with hopes of me giving up on this matter.

I’ll ask our Tech department! I’ll get back to you!

Remember we are here to support you!!! We want to see you do well… so definitely keep in touch. :-)

Thank you for contacting Global Cash Flow Network

 Make it a great day!



Sara 
Level 2 V.I.P. Media Coach
 Global Cash Flow Network 
1-800-719-8270

International toll FREE: 1-888-719-2030

International: 480-355-5599
 Sara@globalcashflownetwork.com

You won’t believe what the Global Cash Flow Network ‘tech department’ had to say about jpegs I could easily open on the PC elsewhere in my office! That post will be added here soon.

As I have stated in an earlier blog posting, you don’t need to become a member of Global Cash Flow Network to access online shopping/affiliate programs, although they make it sound as if the only way you’ll gain access to the best of them is through GCFN. In the time I spent with GCFN I discovered this very important detail when Commission Junction deactivated my account. I ‘signed’ up for CJ through CGFN. It took weeks to receive my passwords before I could add the advertising codes to my CGFN web pages.

On September 11, 2008 Commission Junction deactivated my account citing ‘lack of sales’ as the reason. I contacted GCFN with this e-mail looking for answers:

From: W. George Elliott [mailto:laptop@thenewsleader.ca] 

Sent: Thursday, September 11, 2008 3:09 PM

To: Sara Williamson

Subject: CJ deactivation

Sara:

I noted today that my Commission Junction Account has been deactivated. I had received a ‘warning’ e-mail some time ago indicating since there had been no sales in six months I was facing deactivation. Now what is my next option? Thanks.

The response from Sara told me everything I needed to know about how important it was to have a connection through GCFN:

From: sara@globalcashflownetwork.com
Subject: RE: CJ deactivation
Date: September 11, 2008 7:06:07 PM PDT (CA)
To: laptop@thenewsleader.ca

Hi George,

We no longer use CJ, nothing they have done wrong but the reason we had you set up with them was for eBay but eBay has the capabilities to do what CJ was doing for them so it is no longer necessary for eBay to use CJ services. Let me know if you have any questions? Sara

So if I had to use CJ to access eBay, why is it that you can just sign up for an affiliate account today from eBay? And if this was the case, why didn’t GCFN inform clients, like myself, that we didn’t need this costly step anymore? Something didn’t sound right and it was only a couple weeks later I attempted to cancel my partnership with GCFN.

It was on October 3, 2008 when Sara responded with ‘canned answer #4’ to my questions with the following e-mail:

Hi George,

In this case it sounds like a consultation would be appropriate. I can arrange a phone call if you like so we can trouble shoot what’s been done vs. what’s happening results wise to conclude what needs to be done. Let me know what you think? Sara

It’s the GCFN way of avoiding blame and trying to avoid having to act on their ‘Risk Free’ money back policy. I’ve since signed up with other online advertising and affiliate programs which were completely free to register with and generate a bit of a commission back to me. I only wish I had known about them about a year earlier.

As I have mentioned once before Global Cash Flow Network has a very simple way of tracking who’s webpages are driving traffic to them. In my case the two webpages I had ‘purchased’ from GCFN contained the suffix code of my last name and the last four digits of my phone number (elliot4149). It didn’t really matter to me that my last name was spelled incorrectly as I’m pretty used to seeing it spelled minus one ‘t’ but the spelling error did create a snag in the program.

At one point the webpages went down in order to allow GCFN to upgrade the ‘back office’ program. How long this took was beyond me, but for some reason it put my pages out of service for a period of time I considered longer than necessary for routine maintenance. I contacted GCFN via e-mail to inquire why I couldn’t access my webpages.

The response I received was that everything was up and running without problem. I pressed for further information and was told the same thing over again. What I didn’t know at the time was the Customer Service Rep was keying in the webpage addresses with the suffix code of ‘elliott4149’, which worked for her. What happened was that GCFN, in their keen eye for detail, somehow decided to add the extra ‘t’ to my name, which made it impossible for traffic directed to my sites through my marketing efforts to find the pages. In other words, after promoting the two webpages with the suffix code I was originally given, GFCN inadvertently created two new webpages replacing my original ones basically flushing all my work to this point down the drain.

After making some noise the sites were renamed with the proper code and I was able to proceed. It was one of the many red flags that popped up during my time with GCFN. I’m not sure why a company that claims to be so good at what they do would mess up on a simple detail, but they did.

Some of the hooks used by Global Cash Flow Network are built around big promises. And as far as these promises go, they are quite easy to break. I’m going to examine some of the tricks used in the marketing of GCFN starting with print advertising. All the references I make here are taken directly from marketing tools used by GFCN and in this post the information comes from one of the postcards I was to send out to potential new clients.

One of the ploys used is this line: Make money in 14 days or less! While it may actually happen, it didn’t with me and I am not sure how it is even possible. It takes days to sift through the volume of information sent to you in the first place. It’s going to take days to start feeding traffic to your sites. I think 14 days is a bit misleading.

Another line used in promoting the ease with which one can get involved is: No computer needed! Again, I find this to be misleading. While you don’t need a computer to build your ‘ready-made’ GCFN web pages, you will probably need one to do many of the other tasks related to promoting your sites. Without access to a computer you won’t receive the constant stream of e-mails fed to you by GCFN’s master auto responder (which may in fact be a good thing).

The most misleading line I have seen in the marketing of GCFN is: “I have the opportunity to earn up to $300 per hour and it’s RISK FREE…” If you were making $300 per hour, working part-time (average of 4 hours per day) you’d make $36,000 per month on this system. In the two years I was a member of the GCFN program I made $110 in total. Yes, others are making more, but I doubt no one, other than the people at GCFN themselves, are making anywhere near the amount they claim their program is earning clients. This is not only misleading it’s false advertising and GCFN should come clean on what people are really making with their program.

I challenge the people at GCFN to tell me how many people signed up to their program in the past year and how many dropped out. I’d also like to know the real average income made by the entire client list in the past year. I doubt anyone has reached $36,000 in one month.

Global Cash Flow Network sells you a program to earn your certificate as a Certified Media Placement Specialist (CMPS). While the ‘entry level’ program costs $399 US, the sales people on the phone are highly trained to up sell you to add on a variety of extras.

Let’s just look at the CMPS portion of the program. A Certified Media Placement Specialist is basically someone who has learned how to use various forms of advertising. A major focus is on online advertising, but other traditional forms are also touched on with a certain amount of emphasis on direct mail. For someone who has absolutely no knowledge of the internet, portions of the CMPS program may be useful, however, it’s not worth $399 US. Anyone learning how to use pay-per-click or similar tools online can find out how to use them without spending a single dime. A lot of informative websites exist offering very easy, simple explanations as well as instruction on how to put these tools to work promoting your website or blog.

What Global Cash Flow Network has devised is a clever way to promote and cross promote their program by using its CMPS students to do all the work. The goal is to get CMPS students to ‘advertise’ their two websites (more accurately, web pages) ‘purchased’ from GCFN. The mass marketing scheme funnels potential new clients directly to Global Cash Flow Network.

When you buy into the CMPS program the only way you earn your ‘certification’ is to complete the 14-point checklist, which includes the promise of returning your $399 US fee. What is not explained is that in order to complete the checklist there are extra ‘hidden’ costs to such things as registering your own domain name, purchasing pay-per-click ads and mailing postcards – to name a few.

I had to fight, phone, e-mail and basically pester GCFN to get my $399 US back over a year and a half after I had first faxed in my completed 14-point checklist. I never did get my certificate, which had no value as far as I was concerned when my credit card was finally credited. Obviously GCFN doesn’t want to make it as easy as they promote over the phone for you to get your $399 US back – which, is in reality false advertising.

In my opinion, one of the best blogs out there on the Global Cash Flow Network is written by Koala Bear (http://gcfnstory.blogspot.com) Global Cash Flow Network – My True Story. I referred to it often and had to give GFCN a fair shake here to show there are two sides to everything. While Koala Bear did not make the amount of money promised by the program, in the short excerpt from his blog below he gives a very fair assessment of the program:

MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2009
GCFN In Review…A Year After Leaving The Program

Hi folks. It’s been over a year since the last time I posted anything about my story. I think I owe you all an update.

What I Think of GCFN
First of all, GCFN is a legitimate company. They sell a legitimate product, for what it is worth. However, their products are sold at a highly inflated price relative to other products available on the market. Their prices are way too high for the value they provide to the buyer. That said, by reviewing their sales process you can learn a great deal about how to be successful with internet marketing by building a “sales funnel.” The only thing I’d change is to provide more value for the prices they charge. Now as far as value of the training…I never participated in Dan Kushell’s mentoring program, so I can’t say if his program is a good value or not…I’m still waiting for someone out there to post their success (or sob story) about Dan Kushell’s program. For all I know, Mr. Kushell’s program is excellent.

The Ultimate Traffic System really does come with some good training material that you won’t otherwise receive with the basic package. However, as I said…it is exorbitantly overpriced relative to other courses you can find elsewhere on the internet. While I do not consider GCFN to be a “scam”, they are overpriced…way way WAY overpriced!!

So what is the lesson here? Koala Bear spells it out clearly. Buyer beware!

In my research into Global Cash Flow Network I discovered a large number of blogs and websites on the program. To be fair, there appears to be as many sites that say the program has been wonderful as there are sites put up by those who feel ripped off (such as I do).

Here is a blog post from one of the sites where a member of GCFN is questioning whether or not the program is a scam. The blogger also identifies one key part of the GCFN scam that is used to keep the client feeling good about spending thousands of dollars on something that isn’t returning much revenue (the ‘bait’ cheque ploy I identified in an earlier post at this very site).

OCTOBER 19, 2008
THE “24 HOUR NIGHTMARE”

Is anyone really making money from Global Cashflow Network’s CMPS program? I really feel alone in this supposed home business until I read the Rip Off report, and other people’s blogs about this, in my opinion, a scam. I have been doing it for 6 months and have a $10.00 check to show for it. Come to find out they send everyone a $10.00 check in the beginning to keep you nibbling on that dangling hook. I have paid every month to get traffic to the website, and for website hosting. I have almost 10,000 people that have gone to my website. But according to them, I have nothing. I finally got 2 prospects that showed up in my back office. I called about them and talked to Steve. He said they are just prospects, not referrals. The sales pitch I got before I joined this program is a whole lot different than what I was told when I called. I guess I have no choice but to trust them when they say that out of 10,000 people, no one signed up from my website. Every day, this whole program turns into a bigger nightmare.

Taken from the website/blog http://www.24hourwebcashrealorscam.blogspot.com/

You’ve got to wonder about a company that boasts about superior customer service and top notch products when there’s people like myself who can prove otherwise. Global Cash Flow Network is nothing more than a scam and I will continue to prove it in this blog with future posts.