I hope no one else got ripped off but we did. There goes that bad taste in my mouth for paying for marketing these days unless it is Google adwords or Yahoo. 
We got a call from a salesperson last month for the Real Estate Home Show. They were having a special and it was a great price for putting our listings on Direct TV with a special package of being promoted and viewed in England and other European countries.
Even after we signed up we were called up by another salesperson who tried to sell us another spot and I told him I first wanted to see how the spots we just bought were going to work out.
I even told the sellers who had homes that this would be a good venue for that their homes were going to be on Direct TV and viewed by millions of people. I printed up the marketing flyers the company offered to show and use with our clients.
We had planned to get them going right after the new year. So last Friday I went in to reserve our spots and my link did not work.
They had sent me a receipt with the link right on it and when I clicked that link, I got the:
"This page can not be displayed" page.
I thought, OK, maybe there was something wrong with my connection to my wireless router. So I went to my computer that is hard wired to my router but the same thing happened.
Then I said, well, let me give them another day. Maybe their website is down.
So I clicked on the email link to contact the company to check on the problem.
The email was a contact form that came right back with "Internal Service error". Hmmm. this is not looking too good and suddenly I got that sick feeling in my stomach.
You know, the one that gives you the feeling of, " You just got screwed!".
They had a phone number on the receipt they sent to us so I started calling the phone number. The phone just rang and rang. No message, no answer.
Still giving them the benefit of the doubt I waited until today to check again. I went through the same steps today and still could not even get their website for agents.
Finally after much playing around with different extensions to their web address I was finally able to locate what appeared to be a working part of the site.
I clicked on the agent login tab there and got, "Directory Listing Denied."
I scrolled down to the bottom of the page and saw a link with the main company name, " Explicit Media Inc." I clicked on that and guess what I found there!
"We have ceased operations due to economic conditions"
You mean," Due to economic conditions we decided to screw all the agent we collected money from!"
Yep, no notice, no nothing! How rude is that!
I have put in a request for a refund through an email that may or may not work even though their site says there are no refunds.
But here is the kicker! You can't get on to your accounts, the business shut down, but the one page that does work is the SPECIAL OFFER page with a form to add your VISA account info and pay money to buy more shows!!!!!!!!!
Guess where this page is going! Straight to the Florida State Attorney General's office and the FTC!
This is not the same company as Real Estate Shows by ResPres- Jeff Turner! His product is awesome, he is still in business and every agent should buy his real estate shows.I have been using the real estate shows for 2 years now.
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Katerina,
What a bummer. Sorry you had to be the guinea pig for the rest of us. Don't worry what comes around goes around.