Be Warned

[Richard]

I decided to check out some of their services, but all they did was take my money with nothing in return. Absolutely nothing.

They would not respond to any of the numerous responses I sent to them, and now I have to go through my credit card company to deal with them. I gave them about 75 days to respond, nothing.

www.oncewritten.com/

[Lily]

Sorry about that, Richard. Perhaps if you tell them you're going to contact their webhost, they might decide to respond to you. They wouldn't want their site taken down.

I did a quick check and it's Impact Global Marketing.

www.whohost.org/index.php

impactglobalmarketing.com/

Also let them know you intend to contact the California Attorney General's office, the Better Business Bureau, and LA city hall to see if they have a business license. And that you're going to send a copy of all this correspondence to their local newspaper, while at the same time, you will inform all the writers advocate sites on the Internet about your experience, and post about it on every writers forum you can find.

Hope this helps. Good luck with it.

[Richard]

Appreciate that information Lily.

[Lily]

You're more than welcome, Richard. You might also want to do a quick search of the address on Google Maps. It appears as if this is being run by someone out of their apartment rather than from a business address, such as an office.

[Lily]

I hope this matter has been resolved, Richard. If not, you might like to do a search of the Los Angeles courts to see if the individual involved has been named in any sort of legal action.

www.lasuperiorcourt.org/onlineServices/civilIndex/

[Richard]

Appreciate the info. Lily, still working on it.

Since the payment was made through Paypal, I am going through them first to maybe have them shut down that avenue of receiving funds, etc.

Nothing is quick on resolutions.

[Lily]

Yes, the wheels of justice grind slowly. ;D You could also set up a blog about your experience as a warning to other writers and send her the url. That worked for me while dealing with a pretty awful publisher. She contacted me and said, "Get the blog down and I'll let you out of your contract without a termination fee." (That's all I ever wanted!)

That kind of bad publicity is the last thing they want popping up when someone does a Google search on their name. The lengths we have to go to at times just to get people to do the decent thing, is incredible.

[greg]

Good pointers for anyone in a fix with a scammer. Thanx muchly. :-)