Posted on 03/05/2016 2:23:39 PM PST by SatinDoll
It's amusing to watch people latch onto something that they think is full of red meat and beat their heads against the wall pontificating on it, when there's just no "there" there.
This is one of those times.
Let's take the base argument: Trump University was a "per-se" fraud because it wasn't an accredited school.
Ok, fair enough -- and the name was changed to the Trump Entrepreneurship Institute [TEI] following NY State having a hissy fit over the name. But folks -- that's a naming dispute, not a dispute over the substance of the material.
Schneiderman has his own take on this and is suing; I predict he's going to lose, but I could be wrong. There's plenty of spin involved in these allegations by the people doing the suing and quite a bit of appearance of abuse of power (in the case of Schneiderman particularly), but here's the real problem all these suits have in common: There's apparently a record from many, if not most, filing evaluations at the time of the seminars in which they claim to be satisfied, and which bears their signatures. In other words where are the damages if almost nobody is unhappy with what they paid for? It certainly makes for a tough road if the essence of the suit is fraud (that is, material misrepresentation that induces someone to do a thing and they suffer loss as a result.)
There is also a lot of smoke out there about the price of these things -- 3 day seminars (a weekend, basically) costing about $1,500 to start, along with apparently a series of them you could take for quite a lot more.
I don't know where you folks have been in the last 20 or 30 years but $1,500 for a three-day seminar is pretty standard among for-profit events. They also tend to be held in pretty tony places; $300+ a night on top of the seminar cost is not abnormal at all for the requisite hotel. So yeah, you're into this for a clean $2k plus your travel costs to do them, and the organizers make a nice amount of money on them as a result. Get a couple hundred people in there and the gross just on registrations is about $300,000; yes, you have catering expenses and such but most hotels will comp the meeting space if you fill the room block. I've spoken at a couple, and I don't do it for free -- if the value is there for the organizer and guests then as a speaker I ought to get something for the considerable time and effort that I put into preparing for such an event, and I do. Virtually all of these events tend to have some sort of exhibit hall associated with them and the organizer makes money on the table rental there too, quite a bit of money in most cases, as the organizations that rent those tables are there to sell whatever associated product or service that they think attendees will be interested in. In fact I'd be shocked if running one of these wasn't worth a cool hundred large per weekend after all expenses, including paid speaker fees and their travel, your crew's costs including their travel and lodging, and everything else was all tidied up.
The Internet has greatly narrowed the field of the seminar folks, simply because it's made information so much more-available at far lower cost. I'm not even slightly surprised that these seminars are gone, having disappeared following the '08 crash, both due to the changes in the real estate market and the proliferation of information via online means.
As for the BBB angle, it's worthless in either direction. As a former CEO my view on the BBB is 180 degrees out-of-phase with that of most consumers. BBB "accreditation" requires membership for a fee. Unfortunately the fact that the BBB is decentralized (the various regional units are more-or-less independent), "pay to play" organization and businesses are the ones paying, while the consumer is the one allegedly protected, along with the fact that their measurement means you can't expect consistency, especially across organizations that are and are not "members" or are and are not "accredited." In other words whether the organization was listed as "A+", "D" or not at all gives you nothing actionable.
In short I don't think there's anything wrong with Trump's organization having a piece of itself that ran seminars that charged an amount of money that was roughly what I'd expect to see charged for this sort of thing. That they ran afoul of a state law on their name doesn't exercise me much either. And finally, given the apparent number of people who took these seminars and that nearly all of them appear to have been happy with what they received I'm trying to figure out exactly what the argument here is. If it's that he made money at it, well, isn't that what capitalists are supposed to be doing?
The bottom line is this: Have you ever seen a business operate with thousands of customers with a 100% satisfaction rate?
Neither have I.
Note: I used to involved in real estate sales and failed at it. The only person I blame for that is me, a person who could not even successfully sell Girl Scout Cookies back in the early 1960s.
Here is something for you to comment on:
Did the people of Texas have the right to know that cruz was a Canadian citizen before electing him the first Canadian to ever be a United States Congressman?
Trump has admitted in depositions that he didn’t pick the instructors as promised in the ads, he didn’t develop the curriculum as promised in the ads, and the seminars had to refund 30% of the participants money.
Did the people of Texas have the right to know that cruz was a Canadian citizen before electing him the first Canadian to ever be a United States Congressman?Typical Trump Chump response: ignore the content and launch attack on an unrelated issue.
Note that Cruz beat Trump handily in the primary a few days ago, knowing all the facts about their Senator.
And, "Congressman" is typically used for a member of the House of Representatives. You do understand the difference between a "congressman" and a "senator", don't you?
Based on the early returns in Maine and Kansas, Trump will be done tonight and we can all get behind Ted Cruz. This is especially important that we start raising funds for his legal defense fund. As soon as he is nominated, the Democrats are going to sue over his eligibility to be President.
What I don’t know is how many people attended Trump University and/or Trump Entrepreneurship Institute and how many graduates did they have? As I understand it (and I welcome correction here), they have 10,000 surveys that offer them a 98% satisfaction rate.
At the same time, they have class action lawsuits representing 5,000 students.
If they had 1,000,000 graduates and only 5,000 joined in on the class action lawsuit, then the 98% satisfaction rate is not out of line.
But if the 10,000 surveys represent all of the graduates, why are half of them now joining in on the lawsuit? I understand that it is sometimes tempting to join and “grab a piece of the pie”, but I’m wondering what percentage of the graduates this lawsuit actually represents.
As for the $1,500 price tag, that was the “get in the door” price, and you are correct in that it is not an out-of-line price point. To get the full benefit, however, you had to pay upwards of $30,000, and I don’t know if that one is justifiable for what the students received.
What would you expect from a supporter of the guy who thought Mitch McConnell would be a great "Speaker of the Senate"?
I find it staggering so called conservatives latch on to stuff like this and ignore Benghazi, emails and sex scandals not to mention the planned abolition of America as they are also busy doing to the UK and all European states by mass immigration.
They all seem determined to "throw" another election same as Romney done last time around
Cruz has committed election fraud in caucus states before today. Trump is collecting evidence to take Cruz down over it. That is Gov.Chris Cristie’s job.
The 98% approval rate is a lie, there is no way to substantiate that number, it comes directly from Trump. Believing the 98% is like believing the 99.9% approval rating given to dictators in their elections. However we do know from a disposition that Trump gave in the civil case that his “University” was forced to refund between 25 and 30% of the money that the suckers (I’m sorry I mean customers) paid for the short course.
If a “satin doll” can’t sell real estate....what’s the world coming to!
Back in the 80s two friends and I pitched in and paid for one to go to one of the house flipping seminars. We paid the money, the one guy attended the event and we never did a thing with it.
There’s another reason lots of people will say they’re satisfied. They don’t want to admit they are too lazy to do what they’re told they have to do.
Can people go to these seminars and learn to make money? The answer is “Those who want to work and put in the effort.” The rest are wanting to get rich quick. That was my motivation.
Just got off call from buddy in Texas, said Vets there were really ticked and no way they were voting for a illegal. Fought and bled for this Country but they will not get my vote for a Illegal either. We will set home time to take a stand and say no more.
Good post. Yep, Trump will lose a few delegates to Cruz and that’ll be it for Trump.
Oh, calm down! I was only kidding the Cruzadians! ;-) If Trump doesn’t win it out right, he will take any brokered convention away from the loser GOPee easily! Heck, all he has to do is offer the delegates rides on Trump 1, or better yet, rides on his helicopter.
The funny thing about my situation is that I made a deal with the manager of the real estate office that if I didn’t make a sale in 90 days, I would quit. I posted two properties for sale but made no sales, so the manager said good-bye.
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