Guru event ticket undisclosed fees

[Jonathan Lee]

Hello BPers!

I had a poor experience with a real estate guru's sales tactics recently. As I prefer to steer clear of defamation (I have seen a few cases of borderline slander here on BP) whenever possible, I'm omitting the name of the guru for now. I am more interested in discussing the particular sales tactic that concerns me to see if anybody else has run into this and if it is even legal.

I recently bought a real estate education package that was said to include tickets to an event thrown by the guru who sold the package. After gaining access to the educational material, I received an email congratulating (ugh sales, am I right?) me on the purchase of the tickets. The email stated that the tickets were "100% paid for" and that I only needed to go online to RSVP to confirm that I would attend the event. Clicking through to the RSVP form, I see that additional payment was required to RSVP.

I inquired about the fee and was told that it was in response to previous events in which ticket-holders didn't show up, so they felt the materials that had been printed for the attendees amounted to waste. I somehow doubt environmental concerns are driving this seat reservation fee.

Now I understand that because the ticket was offered as part of a package, there will be a higher rate of no-shows due to interest in only a piece of the package. However, I can think of no other "ticket" that can't be used until additional fees (that were not disclosed up front) are paid. The closest example I can think of would be a tax levied by certain international airports and not collected with the ticket sale itself, but even in that case, the airline generally discloses that a fee will be owed at the airport.

So far, I'm having trouble getting my money back. Is this even legal?

Jonathan

[Richard Sherman]

@Jonathan Lee Lets see how much Guru hate I can get  :)

1. Call your credit card company and tell them you did not agree to additional charges and something that was supposed to be included was not and you want to charge them back (maybe call the "guru" company first and threaten the chargeback if they don't refund.

2. You do NOT need a guru...there is almost nothing you can not learn from reading (books and forums) and listening to relevant podcasts.  Until you are 100+books deep or 10 deals you do not even know what you need to learn and what you are missing.

Gurus are like MLMs...sure some people really do well, but you know what happens to the vast majority?  They waste their money they would have been better off saving for a deal because they want the real estate equivalent of a diet pill.