Some of you may be aware of my long travails with Clickbank, the famous (and some would say infamous) purveyor of digital products. Not that I have any troubles with Clickbank's service. That always works fine, and in my experience the company is well run and handles issues fairly expeditiously.
No, my problem is with the many, many, far-too-many crappy MMO/IM products that have been released under their umbrella in the last few years. Unfortunately, in my mind Clickbank has become utterly synonymous with crap.
As somebody who is very interested in the Make Money Online scene (duh), I have often bought releases through Clickbank because once upon a time, you could trust them (or so I thought) to release decent products – and because I like to keep abreast of what's happening. And Clickbank has their famous no-questions asked 60 day guarantee, so it's a no-biggie. If the product sucks, you send it back, right?
Well, they mostly seem to suck these days!
Right now the big thing is "blind" launches. One product after another that promises the moon and the stars... but doesn't really tell you what it is. You don't know exactly what you're buying, because it's never explicitly shown or detailed. Quite often it's some "miracle software" product. What it usually turns out to be is an RSS feed, article or social bookmark submitter. Nothing miraculous – nor even particularly innovative or exciting – about it.
The sales pitches and approaches are so similar, it's almost as if Clickbank is handing out a template.
Despite my growing dissatisfaction with Clickbank, I decided to buy something offer through them back in late November. It's a product called Instant Viral Income. If you're interested in learning about the product, you can read an Instant Viral Income Review by clicking the link.
I ultimately ended up asking for a refund on IVI (no surprise there, sigh), but that's not what's interesting to me. What's interesting is what happened earlier today.
In the last few days I've been getting repeated calls from a number I don't recognize. But whomever it was that called did not leave a message. At first I figured it was a wrong number. But clearly that wasn't the case, because they kept calling...
Well, today, I was available when they called. So I picked up.
And what was it?
Gak!
Nothing less than somebody trying to sell me a coaching program to go with Instant Viral Income!
Undoubtedly, a multi-hundred or even thousand dollar coaching program...
For a program that doesn't even work!
How's that for chutzpah?
Now when he first told me who he was, I was shocked. I thought to myself that this was somebody from IVI calling me in reference to my emails. I think I said: "Well, after five unanswered emails, I'm really surprised to hear from you."
Of course, in the shock of the moment I was dumb enough to actually think that somebody from a Clickbank-related product would actually take the time to call a disgruntled customer. Hah! As if.
More fool me, right?
I should have known it was a salesman. The gentleman went on to tell me that he was actually calling in regards to the Instant Viral Income coaching program, and wanted to know if I'd be interested.
I think I said something along the lines of: "I've returned the product for a refund. What do you think?"
He took the hint.
The upshot of all this? This is the last straw! While the call was clearly not Clickbank's doing, it never would have happened at all without having bought Instant Viral Income!
It's not the call that bugged me per se. I have no problem, in theory, with companies offering upsells like coaching programs (even though most of them are crap). It's that in this case, it was coming on the heels of having been thoroughly dissed and having said "to hell with it" on IVI!
Arrrrggggghhhhhhhhh!
So, it's going to take a REAL miracle product for me to buy any MMO/IM products from "good ol'" Clickbank in the future...
Don't leave without leavin' your mark! How 'bout scribblin' somethin'?