Freight Broker Institute aka on Scam Guard as Freight Agent Training is a supposed training school for freight agents. Tom Mercer, provides this training over Skype. He boasts about being a business guy with business and logistics history, but hides his face. The first night we were suppose to meet, his "dog ate [my] microphone," so he couldn't do training. Training lasted two weeks, and for another $50, I had to take a Certification course. I completed 75% of the course before he changed the passwords and I no longer have access to the material. Tom stated that I could take the Certification exam, but that the links were having issues. I have yet to take the Exam! Tom added me to his brokerage firm. Come to find out, it just opened two weeks ago. It is registered in Florida, so I am unsure where does this business (FBI aka FAS) actually exist. He uses the same phone number for three different business, including the brokerage firm going by the name of Load & Go Logistics Inc. This is also the name of a firm in Shrevepoprt LA as well as a defunct trucking company out of Hazlewood MO. I paid Tom his subbroker franchise fee of $250 as well as $85 for his required use of his own software, Shipper Pro. After a few days, I find a client that offered me its transportation business. I contacted Tom; he was impressed: "this is a $100,00 client." I submitted the information to him for Credit Review and a day later, not the 30 minutes he states in the beginning, I am told the client doesn't meet credit review. It's a national pharmaceutical company! Why the delay? His electric was out (3/11/14)! I called Milan Public Utilities (Milan TN...Tom's listed city on his Skype profile) this morning (3/12/14). The rep stated there were no outages yesterday (3/11/14). For a guy that is an experienced business man with businesses in the past, developing software for transportation, talks about his major financial contacts that he is working with, all his logistics experience, and the many students he has trained, his practice is shady. Your electric out and yet you have no smartphone to let anyone know? You run a business hiding behind Skype? Addresses don't match? And now I find that he operated under one name that obtained a bad reputation, so he changed it to keep scamming people?
Show more...My demands:
Full refund of Certification fee, "Sub Broker" franchise fee, and Software fee!
User Recommendation:
Stay away
Resolution:
Unresolved
Monetary damages:
$385.00
Additional information
Additional URL reported: http://www.freightbrokerinstitute.com/
i paid for freight broker training. a total of 320.00. I had 2 training sessions and never heard from tom mercer again. I have made repeated phone calls and emails to the company without any response. when it was time for our third training session tom mercer sent me a message on Skype saying he was having internet problems that was 2 months ago. he has totally disappeared.
Show more...My demands:
total refund 320.00. charges placed if possible
User Recommendation:
Stay away
Resolution:
Resolved
Monetary damages:
$320.00
Comments:
Jeremy and Amanda
Feb 28, 2014 10:57 PM
Tom made contact with us and we completed out class. He also refunded part of out money due to us not being satisfied with the way things went. We would like to also take this opportunity to say thank you Tom for introducing us to a amazing broker to work under.
Bill Vroman
Feb 07, 2014 4:24 PM
well i tried to take the class and their was nothing but a run around. then did two classes and payed 190.00 and was to pay another 71.00 when class was done and i was happy. well never completed class and tom wanted the rest of his money. he never really did anything for his money