Sunday, December 20, 2009

The New Wage Lottery Ticket

Compared to last week, this week has been pretty quiet. Pat O'Bryan locked down his twitter account and seemingly calmed down, though he apparently has turned everything over to his legal team. I'm excitedly awaiting subpoena notification.

I guess what riled Pat up last week, at least from the timing of his @criticwatch rampage, was my statement that according to Google maps, it doesn't look like Mr. Fire's house is an "estate" the way he markets it to be. Pat asked to see MY house, but I reminded him that I don't use my house to sell people miracles, awakened millionaire programs, or any other overpriced deceptive crap. Joe Vitale DOES. And that is the problem.

I was talking with someone about the definition of estate, and showed them the Google maps overview. And we wondered if it really was Joe Vitale's house or not. We didn't really believe that he'd actually put his HOME address on his web site and marketing, and my friend wondered if perhaps the local assessor had a web site. Hey good idea.

We figured out that Wimberley is in Hays County, Texas, so we searched for the Hays County Assessor. Found it.

I feel weird posting the actual link to Joe Vitale's property details on the assessor's site. But you can go look.

It says the property at that address is indeed Joe Vitale's. And it's worth $317,000.

Meanwhile, he says on his attractmiracles.com web site:
Today I live with my love, Nerissa, in a multi-million dollar estate and I recently added a $375,000 Rolls Royce Phantom to my growing exotic car collection.
Something weird happened when I saw that assessor web site. I realized that my property is worth a bit more than his. And then I started to feel something.

Yes, even critics have hearts slightly larger than the Grinch.

I started to feel really sorry for Joe Vitale. Sorry for him that he apparently feels a need to puff himself up on his web sites to make it sound like he has more than he has. I then had to wonder if maybe he doesn't own a Rolls Royce, he just rents one whenever he needs to do one of his ever popular Rolls Royce Masterminds. Who knows? The incongruency in his marketing makes me have to question everything he says.

Why don't you just tell the truth, Joe? I'm sure you've been very successful in your business. And I know a lot of businesses that have very successful copywriters teaching how to do that. Why does it have to puff up into a business that is telling people they can have "champagne wishes and caviar dreams" ... just like you ... but like you ... Well, you're not.

So, I feel pity for him. And I feel pity for the people who get suckered in by the deception. The whole thing is just incredibly sad.

And it's just not right.

To me, this is worse than the lottery. At least the lottery, by law, has to give odds.  It's like people are buying a "new wage" lottery ticket. Except they think, because of the marketing, that it's a sure thing. They think that Joe Vitale and his sigloid merry marketers really do care whether or not they make a 100 millionaires (do they? your guess is as good as mine), they think that because Joe is SO GENEROUS (look at how he gave $100 to the movers! Operation YES! ... better known as Operation PROBABLY NOT) he absolutely MUST care about them, too. Right?

Right?

If he truly cared, he'd tell you the truth from the start. He wouldn't dangle a phony reality in front of your face and say "if I can have this, you can too." Well, maybe that is the truth. He apparently doesn't have it. And you probably won't either.