Thanks for all your replies so far.... although still not sure what to do yet (other than filing the offical complaints though official channels). As if being burned by this company wasn't bad enough ... they put in the position to 'worry' about whether I can even come out and tell my story. It's hard to not become emotional and just spill out all the details ... it has become personal in a sense, but I'll try to hold those feelings back for now. I'll see if other opinions shed more light before I publicly post details of this fiasco.... in the mean time, anyone considering purchasing a trading method for >$5000 ... be VERY, VERY cautious. I thought I was being cautious going into this, but it has turned into a nightmare. Oddly, I'm accused of defrauding them. Anyway, thanks again... and I'll continue to monitor for more opinions.
I am an attorney. And I have some experience with this as it is my most effective way to get people to honor their commitments. Generally people do not care about a lawyer threatening to sue over a not great amounts of money. I have found that vendors back down when I tell them that I have a website and a web designer friend. And that we who know all about meta tags and search engines. I threatened the home builder of my home with a ______ sucks website, in which I planned to detail every bit of my correspondence with them. Guess what---- when they raised the homeowner fees on everyone in the neighborhood everyone paid except me. _____ subsidized mine. They admitted their salesperson said to all the buyers that the homeowner fees were never going to go up. When question they said oh well she goofed --- everyone else paid. They ran for the hills when I threated the internet site. A vendor of indicators gave me the updates I was promised but was being denied ---once, I said I was going to write and article about them and post it to a few websites. As long as what you write is truthful, you should prevail under all or almost all circumstances. ( I attended a top notch legal education conference in Vail a few winters ago and ----as of that time truthful vendor sucks websites were legally protected). Now as the poster before stated you could get maliciously sued. But I think you should have some fun with it. As long as you have the facts on your side you should be able to defend yourself quite well in a lawsuit. I suggest you get their threats in writing. If you do you can now tell them that you are going to speak with an attorney about a lawsuit, protection from their extortion and the legally protected so and so vendor sucks website. They should back down fast. Also you could always ask them how good they are at tracking down the authors of stuff written at internet cafes and published on elitetrader etc. Do not let the bastards win. Everyone should be forced to honor their commitments. Our society would be much better off.
Check out this guys site, he is a law professor at UCLA with an interest in free speech questions. I remember some recent posts touching this interest area. Looks around they're there somewhere: http://volokh.com/ I would also add that with the recent ruling declaring TA a fraud, you might have a lot of help on your side to go after these people your self.
BadExperience, with all respect to jem, I would think that you don't want to get it to the point where you do find yourself in a lawsuit, paying attorneys, committing time and resources, and cause emotional upset, regardless of whether the facts are on your side or not. jem, being an attorney, can defend himself if he gets embroiled in a lawsuit, we non-attorneys could likely get our asses handed over to us on some legal basis if we show up pro se against the other side's attorney unless we spend some funds consulting with or being represented by counsel. Here, rather than have you build a website that could prompt a lawsuit against you, I'd suggest another tactic that has been known to work. You may want to tell the company: "My lawyer says to tell you..." or, "My lawyer said that..." and if what follows is a nice legal point, such as that you do have the right to file complaints with the proper authorities without harrassment or threat of lawsuit for doing do by the vendor, then the company gets the message that you're probably more serious about this than they would like and may have been consulting attorneys about this. Then, if the aforementioned agencies aren't helpful, have an attorney write up a complaint or a letter threatening to file a complaint. You may not even have to actually put it on the calendar (check with the court clerk) for a while and you could see if they try to settle first. Again, not legal advice here, just discussing strategy.
Bad..., This is a followup to my post regarding SLAPP lawsuits. If you start posting about it and I wish that you do, you become open to a lawsuit. I referred to a lawsuit by an online petstore (Petswarehouse.com) vs. some customers. This all started in a discussion list not too different from this one where someone said they had a bad experience with the store and others posted that they had similar bad experiences. The owner (Robert Novak) sued the original poster and others. Other members of the discussion group started a defense fund and some who had websites put links to the defense fund up. The owner sued them too. The owner doing all the suing was doing it in Federal court a couple of miles from his home and he was acting pro se (as his own attorney, ie minimal cost to him.) One of the members being sued for putting the defense fund link up had this to say to someone who said she should continue fighting the suit in stead of settling: "That was until I became painfully aware of the high cost of my own defense. I have 3 kids to support and bills to pay. I've been told that I could expect my costs to range from $40,000 to over $100,000. This quickly became a matter of: my kids go to college vs. going into debt to the tune of $40,000 plus. All this assuming that I could find a way to come up with that money. What would you decide?" DS
Same case in France. In fact it was even the site where they posted which were sued for a 150000 Francs fees (divide / 8 for $) to pay to the store. Law is not Justice don't forget: law defends the richest. If you have financial means it's ok if not be careful at least with such crooks which seems to have no hesitation to continue to abuse. A mean would be that you write a fiction story disclaiming that any ressemblance with realities is just coïncidence .
DID YOU KNOW YOU CAN COUNTERSUE AGAINST FRIVOLOUS LITIGATION? Recover all your legal costs plus damages. You can bankrupt these guys. If the facts are on your side, their frivolous lawsuit will get quickly dismissed. AOL threatened to sue aolsucks.com long time ago. aolsucks.com threatened to countersue against frivolous litigation and suppression of free speech. AOL backed off. Plus, try to get CRIMINAL charges against these guys for FRAUD! Call your local police and say that you've been DE-FRAUDED. Call your State Attorney and say you've been DE-FRAUDED. Try to get criminal charges against them, that's the best, much better than slap on the wrists by CFTC. If you're afraid of legal B.S. post your experience everywhere anonymously (just don't give it away that it's you).
Yep, I can only second this. I once almost was in a situation like that. Don't do that. If you have a problem, this is a board that you can use to unload your frustration. Then, make sure that others don't make the same mistake, which obviously you try to do, although a PM to all interested parties would be even better. Good luck, Wally
Whats your time worth Pal ? If we are talking about some number around 5 grand then we are talking chicken feed in this business. Take the lost money as tuition and move on to making money. Sure, go ahead and file compaints; I would also put up the legal "sucks" website with the correspondance if you have someone who will host it for nothing ..... Send the problem company a note as mentioned previously stating your course of action. Unless there are lots of dollars involved these types of legal things are a sinkhole with respect to time: if yours is worth nothing then continue on with this .. otherwise its better to just make money and move on .....