Trading Articles

Don Steinitz and Bad Customer Support

17
Dec

Written by Donna

Warning: There is (a small amount of) uncensored swearing/offensive text in this article. Please navigate away from this page if this offends you, and/or you have children present(!)


I have copied below the contents of an email conversation sent to us by one of our readers. The emails are exchanged between Don Stenitz of http://www.forexrobottrader.com/ and one of his customers who had newly purchased one of his products. The customer had a problem with using the indicators since he was deaf and unable to hear what the videos contained. I’ll explain more afterwards… here are the emails (Don’s mails are in bold):-

From: customer

Message: Thankyou Don I received the live indicator,  have loaded it and can see that it is working fine. However, I have a problem,  in that I am deaf,  and cannot access the videos to hear your instructions.  I have no idea on your methodology on how to achieve doubling my account in 14 days. Can you please help by sending me transcripts of the videos or full instructional material please. Thanking you in anticipation

From: Don Steinitz

There are no transcripts available at this time.

Please use the following “Contact Us” when sending ANY emails to me. Please click on this link and bookmark this page:

http://forexrobottrader.com/contactus.php

THANK YOU !!!

Don

From: customer

Very succint 8 word reply Don, what the hell am I supposed to do?

From Don Steinitz

Who’s going to pay for transcripts?

From: customer

I can see you are a man of few words Don

In order for me to trade your indicator, I need to have full instructions.

If you cannot supply transcripts or full instructions on how to trade your indicator, then it is worthless to both you and me

If you cannot supply full instructions for your indicator, to a person who cannot hear any audio, then, you have no product to sell, so i suggest, you immediately refund the purchase price of the product and we part our ways. I was hopeful that you would support your product, but it seems I assumed wrongly.

Thanking you in anticipation

From: Don Steinitz

You have full disclosure when you purchased your software. Nowhere did I ever say we provide transcripts. Do you really think I provide transcripts or braille?

Let’s get real here. I provide and owners manual. I provide seven videos at no charge. I provide e-mail support seven days a week.

I’m keeping all of our correspondents so if you try to get a refund after you have legally agreed by placing your checkmark that you’ve read our policy I will challenge you and win

Finally, when you purchased the robot you legally agreed to the following contract which is found on the link below:

http://www.forexrobottrader.com/new_buynow.php?product_id=Steinitz%20HAS%20MTF%20Hedge%20Robot

In part”

Purchase Terms:

Due to the nature of software once you have received, installed and/or used the software your purchased item becomes your property. We sell digital software that we believe is of the highest quality and sophistication, but personal preferences do vary and are not our responsibility. In the case that your software is defective or damaged, we will exchange the product for the same robot. All sales are final and there are no refunds.

From: customer

Thanks Don for your reply

It doesn’t help me very much at all.  You are aware of my disability, you have now taken advantage of that disabilty for 30 pieces of silver,  and you seemingly take a cheap shot at patronising me by suggesting that I would think you provide transcripts or braille.  You should be ashamed of yourself.

The owners manual that you provide is lacking,  obviously thats why you went to the trouble to record the videos.  Thats another reason that I asked if you could provide transcripts.  More pertinent information.  The robot is not performing as it showed on the demo account.  Have you sabotaged the live robot?

I am appalled at your response quite honestly.  I assumed that you would look after your customers,  and look forward to repeat business.  As for your last 2 paragraphs I find that very distasteful,  was there a desperate need on your part to try and brush me off.

Your actions and words are disgusting to say the least.  If you do not refund me my subscription immediately,  I will be taking a great deal of further action.   Rest assured that,

I will not be brow beaten into submission.  Your actions and name will be plastered throughout the FX community,  and any reasonable person would agree with me that you appear to be a snale oil salesman,  and only after the money from unsuspecting customers such as myself.

I trusted you in purchasing your product,  that it was a very good product, and that you would go the extra mile in assisting me to effectively operate the system.  How wrong I was indeed.  It appears that you are only interested in selling further programs that appear to be questionable,  and then trying to sell a 1 hour coaching session.  Obviously,  none of your products are worth anything, and thats why you resort to marketing to con people.

I expect an apology and a refund from you soonest.

Thanking you in anticipation

From: Don Steinitz

What are you talking about? You think I might take my videos and do a transcript for you and if I don’t I should feel bad.

What planet are you on?

My job is to provide award-winning software, e-mail support seven days a week and one on one tutoring and support. If you think for one second I’m going to feel guilty for not transcribing my videos or possibly translate my videos into different languages I’m not. It’s my business and I will run it the way I choose

have a great one

From: customer

Don for your information I am in Australia.   Here we give everybody a “fair go”.   You obviously don’t agree with that.

It seems to me that you are just money orientated.  You don’t give a damm what happens to your customers once they have purchased your useless products.  As for your claim that they are award winning…….what a joke……….they are all useless………just read the comments by independent users on a number of review sites.

My own use of the product has been to confirm what others are stating………completely useless.

I know its your business,  and I have no hesitation in awarding you the title of scam.  I will be alerting users worldwide to your dubious business tactics and even your unsubscribe button on your worthless emails you keep sending me do not work.  So take me off your email sending list.  I do not want anything more to do with you and your scams.

And as for the treatment you gave me,  I hope you rot in hell.

Enjoy the rest of your life Don taking money from unsuspecting fellow earthlings.  If I ever get over to Las Vegas,  you had better watch your back

From: Don Steinitz

So now you are threatening me your Las Vegas. I will be learning the FBI, NFA, IRS, Secret Service, Navy, Army, Marines, Green Beret, Pres. Obama for this threat on my life.

Oh my God what to do! Do I dare leave my home or should stay in my closet or hide under the bed.

Your mama sucks donkey Dicks and your dad is fucking you in your ass when you were just three years old

What an idiot

don

Quite honestly, i cannot understand how someone can sell a product and enjoy the money they earn as a result when they know people are upset with them. What’s more, our poor customer here has basically paid to be abused and sworn at by a seller.

As someone who “sells” something online myself via my website i have had my fair share of customer service experiences from both sides. Some clients can be put into the category of being “difficult” that is for sure. However i’d never consider being abusive towards them, even if they were demanding and annoying to me. This customer right here wasn’t even remotely annoying/difficult or otherwise. All they wanted was to be able to use the product they had paid for. We have a few issues here then as i see it:-

1. Obligation to help?

Does a seller have a legal obligation to help people with disabilities? In many countries the answer to this is “yes”. At the very least you cannot be abusive towards disabled people, i know of nowhere in the world where this is legal. Many westernised countries have legislation in place to deal specifically with these matters, requiring businesses to accommodate disabled clients where reasonably practical. I would have thought that in this case it is reasonable for a customer to request help with installation/instructions. Perhaps it is not practical for Don to have provided full transcripts, but at the very least i believe an overview would have been nice, even a few bullet points of what was in each video and matters of importance.

Even if there is no legal obligation here, there is most definitely a strong moral obligation – especially for a simple request.  The amount of energy and probable stress caused in responding to this customer could have easily be spent in just assisting him and answering the original queries.

2. Refund / Policy

The idea that you cannot get a refund because you agreed to the terms and conditions and nothing was mentioned in them about no transcripts being provided is ridiculous. I don’t think such an arguement would stand up when presented to the payment processor. When you pay for products/services it is worthwhile making sure you pay using a credit card which has the option of initiating chargebacks in the event of the product not being usable and/or paying via a method which involves a payment processor who will investigate your claims (paypal, clickbank, plimus, etc). It is not your fault if the seller refuses to offer support and assistance which you paid for as part of your purchase.

3. Threats

“I’m keeping all of our correspondents so if you try to get a refund after you have legally agreed by placing your checkmark that you’ve read our policy I will challenge you and win”

What is this all about? An attempt to beat the customer into submission i suppose. Not very nice. “I will challenge you and win.” Yeah. OK. Not on my watch, hehe.  Customer support for any service should not make you feel threatened, stupid, or put down at all. Customer support means just that – supporting customers (yes, even if we don’t happen to like them!).

4. What’s wrong with just being nice to people?

OK, so being nice may cost you a little extra time on occasion, and sometimes a little extra money. But surely this reaps rewards in other areas (the customer above for example could be now referring customers to Don rather than telling them to run away!). This is something we have seen in action here on our own site, and across several other forex sites online which operate with similar principles. You reap what you sow in this respect. In this case, even if he didn’t want to help, why not just give the customer the refund and move on? Still not a brilliant example of customer service, but still better than this outcome?

5. Annoying Customer

OK, the customer got a little irritating. They didn’t go away quietly and instead kept emailing and complaining and getting more and more wound up. This is a common experience with almost any company from time to time. Being abusive back is normally the response we see “on the floor” by underpaid, or ignorant disgruntled employees- not from the management / owner of the company and it is certainly unprofessional and not what i’m used to seeing myself.

———————

Don Steinitz is not ALL bad

Don did give us a copy of his latest Forex Robot No-Loss for free. We cannot complain about that. Unfortunately, a free robot doesn’t buy immunity from reporting about the issues raised here in this article though. I do know that some people find Don’s indicators and services to be helpful and good, and they genuinely get something of real value. There is no denying that and we will give credit where it is due, some of his service work for some people, some of the time. So it’s not the end of the world for Don by any means, he has the foundations of something good. We just need the customer support to match.

It is also worth bearing in mind that Don is not alone in his offerings of terrible customer service. We have many more unfortunate examples, although none quite so extreme as the abusive language used in this one. We don’t mean any harm to Don by creating this article, if anything we wish to offer our help in making customer experiences better ones and making the industry as a whole clean up its act and start treating customers with the dignity and patience they deserve. It’s always a real shame to see what could potentially be good products destroyed by poor service in this way.

59 Comments

  1. Stuart Ensign says:
    January 17, 2010 at 1:43 pm

    No Don no one is fueling anything. You are a pure piece of crap and after my friend Angus’s run in with you I can hardly think this person is fabricfating anthing.
    You are a miserable person and refusing to help a person who buys from is just your trademark.
    I have been playing the forex market for about 7 or 8 years and I have met liars cheaps and so forth. But in all those years i have never ever heard of a person doing and saying to people what you do. You are a disgrace the human race mate.
    It might be a really nice thing if Patty and Angus could get your hearing and you get theirs. That would be justice.

    You mister are the worst kind of people that I have ever come across.
    But you piece of garbage you will surely get your.

    Patty, when my friend Angus has a problem with a web site and can’t understand a short video he emails me and asks me to explain what was said.
    I make a short transcript of that video and email him back. He has like you a disability and people should learn how to be tolerant and help that person. Angus and me have been friends on the internet for almost three years now and we text every single day. Don Steinitz makes a mockery out of life. I hope you are successful in your quest to squash him like the rotten apple he is.

    I know Donna you are holding your breath reading this post. But i have been a good boy lol.

    Thism page would catch on fire if Donna would let me describe my feeling about this sh%tweasel.

    Good luck Patty and if you have any questions you can write me Stu4@aol.com

  2. Charles Burke says:
    January 21, 2010 at 10:18 pm

    I disagree with the point about annoying customer. And to say that sometimes customer service is “being abusive back” directly implies the customer abused Don, which is not true.

    Don is extremely verbally abusive, and does not care one spit what happens to his customers.

    The mature response for Don would have been to apologize that he cannot provide a transcript and then promptly issue a full refund. Instead, he behaved as if a deaf person’s reasonable request for help was an outrage. Worse, when presented with the customer’s reasonable disappointment at that, Don refused to take personal responsibility for his exceptionally uncharitable response, he condescended to a deaf person, and seems to have viewed every natural complaint about his utterly irrational behavior only as an opportunity to worsen his verbal abuse.

    He is a class act jerk, and the level of his verbal abuse is profane and hateful to a degree I have rarely seen.

    That Don is not alone in providing terrible customer service is irrelevant.

    Moreover, to describe Don’s behavior as poor customer service minimizes the real problem. Poor customer service would simply be failing to take care of the customer. But what Don did was actively and aggressively injure another.

    His unconscionable behavior is entirely his own responsibility, and he will abundantly reap his just reward of public contempt unless seriously cleans up his act.

  3. Stuart Ensign says:
    January 22, 2010 at 1:08 pm

    Hey Charles,

    Don Steinitz will not clean up his act because you said it correctly that he doesn’t care a spit about his customers…..Period.
    People who are physically challanged need a little more help than perhaps you or I. But this sorry bas@#$d once he has your money considers the game over unless of course you buy his video’s explaining how his system works (referring to the Fractal system) 50 bucks a shot.
    Real nice guy. He makes his manual vague in content so If you want to learn his system it will cost you more money.

    Let me go because Donna gets mad at me when I use discriptive adjectives and i am about to do that i get so aggrevated with this bum.

  4. Philip says:
    January 27, 2010 at 2:00 am

    Had the customer been in the same country as Don, there is little doubt that a case of discrimination could be brought.

    It is not unreasonable to expect that the written instructions would be adequate, although there is no obligation to provide video transcripts. Someone with a hearing impairment might reasonably expect that they could not hear a video and therefore could reasonably be expected to ask the question if adequate support could be provided before purchase, not after. It’s not unreasonable to expect to pay for that either.

    However, and this is where most of these situations fail, anger kicks in and both parties make threats towards each other which provides mitigation if a case is brought, and even if it isn’t, just entrenches the parties in a no win situation.

    What distinguishes a good supplier from a bad supplier is their attitude to customer service and after sales support. It is not unreasonable to have expected Don to have said I don’t have transcripts but, given your situation, you’ll need to have some additional support and I’ll provide that, but it will cost you or I’ll give you a refund.

    All together, all who look upon this escapade are left with a poor view of events, but in looking at it, realise mistakes were made on both sides that aggravated the situation.

  5. David Moser says:
    January 27, 2010 at 2:00 am

    What a terrible way to treat people. I own a business and you never, ever treat customers in this manner. Worst case scenario is you terminate the customer relationship amicably. A full refund and a sorry, I don’t have the resources to accommodate you response would have been enough. Yeesh.

  6. Din says:
    January 27, 2010 at 2:32 am

    Hey guys…

    I’ve use Mr Don indicator for several month already. So far so good. As long you know the rule, you see a clear trend, TP target. First week I used it, 80% gfain already. Recently I’ve double acc in 2 weeks.

    Of course not every week I can make that result but so far it give me a very consistant profit. Also, I can easily watch Don’z video without any problem and very fast support.

    I never have a bad experience with them. So I can conclude that those who always lost actually dont know and not clear what are they doing..!! Or in another word, amature?

    Learn the indi first before use. You must know which signal is excelent. I guess this is not for amature..

  7. Jerry says:
    January 27, 2010 at 8:22 pm

    I would be reporting this matter to the CFTC and the NFA at the very least… New regulations coming down the pike are designed in part to protect the trader against this kind of abuse.

    Perhaps the FBI should be informed while you are at it for using telecommunications equipment to insult and abuse a customer.

  8. George Crionas says:
    February 3, 2010 at 6:33 pm

    Hello everyone:

    My experince with Don’s software has been a very gratifying one. I just about gave up on Forex until a friend turned me on to his Fractal system.

    This is exactly what I have been looking for through years of searching and trying out new programs on the market.

    I had to leave my business as a Real Estate Appraiser ,(we all know why)and needed to find something that would make a similiar income.

    I trade his swing method on the Daily charts exactly at the same time each day and have been averaging around 900 pips a month. At $10 per pip I am right where I need to be, YEAH !!!

    His support has been superb and even called me on the phone over the weekend, no cost. No offense, but I couldn’t care less if he called me a name as long as I am making this kind of money.

    You must have caught him on an off day :-)

    Good luck to all

  9. Charles A. Floyd, II says:
    February 28, 2010 at 11:50 am

    Don has been around for a while and has always had a brash and offensive tone. I am sure that if he were face to face with his clients, his tone would change.

    The best way to deal with someone like this is to hit them in the wallet, since money is the only language they understand. Stop buying his products. There are other products just as good if not better, with better customer service.

    I will NEVER buy anything frm him again.

    I would IMMEDIATELY FIRE any FAPWINNER employee that spoke like that.

    Customers can be annoying, but there is always a non-offensive way to communicate. Stop buying his products, and I assure you he will speak differently.

    Thanks Donna for the quick lesson in Business Ethics.

    Best,

    Charles A. Floyd, II
    Presiddent & CEO
    FAPWINNER.com

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