Can you update us on any contact you’ve had with a lawyer. I am pretty sure that we now have enough people here who have been taken advantage of. I would love to talk to you so we can possibly split the responsibilities of making a lawsuit happen. You can reach me at michelegiel@gmail.com.

JRT, I feel your pain!! I still get soooo mad every time I think of my experience with Haverhill. It is just absolutely ridiculous that this is happening to people and they are not being made responsible!!

Michele

Hi Elaine,

Can you update us on any contact you’ve had with a lawyer. I am pretty sure that we now have enough people here who have been taken advantage of. I would love to talk to you so we can possibly split the responsibilities of making a lawsuit happen. You can reach me at michelegiel@gmail.com.

JRT, I feel your pain!! I still get soooo mad every time I think of my experience with Haverhill. It is just absolutely ridiculous that this is happening to people and they are not being made responsible!!

Michele

I applied for the course May 09 and was skepticle due to the many negative comments I had seen but I too was convinced by the course representative that these were just negative people who could not “make the cut” and she also informed me of the lawsuit they were filing against the blogger back in March of last year. She also had one of their recently hired homestagers call me and answer any questions or concerns that I had so that immediately made me fell better (Now I’m pretty positive all of this was part of the scam as well). I pursued the course and completed the course material as required. I passed the exercises with no problems at all, however I had to contact all of my tradespeople and have them send emails to haverhill confirming my credentials because Haverhill never contacted them directly to request their information, which in turn would have caused me to fail my course material.

I then took the test the first time and was absolutely dumbfounded by the ridiculous questions. Everything stated above is true about the “word for word” answers so I will not reiterate. However, I took it a second time after forcing myself to memorize the book and I passed. (I honestly believe that they do choose who passes because they don’t tell you what questions you missed so who’s to know if they’re being honest or not, probably NOT according to everything else they have done).

I was then notified in late November that I was eligible for employment so I began gathering all of the useless and time wasting information that they required, which took me almost 3 weeks to get together before I could send it off. I applied within the 30 day deadline to get all of my information in and I waited and waited and waited. I didn’t want to feel pushy so I emailed and posted a question on the FAQ’s page and was notified that they were understaffed at the time and that they had to catch up before they could get back to me. I waited a few more weeks. Then, 2 months after I had sent in all of my application information, I called and spoke with someone who told me I should hear back within the next day or two if I was accepted or not. (Why this had not happened sooner, who knows?) I then received an email stating that I had been accepted and it directed me to the hire agreement under my student login, which I was required to sign and send in for further information on training, etc. Well, I had a few questions regarding the hiring agreement so I wanted to call before I signed anything. I was told that they are not actually hiring stagers anymore because they are fully staffed due to the “buy out” back in July (which I had absolutely no knowledge of) and they have had to lay off a large percentage of their company , however I was still offered the “independent stager position”. Translation,” independent stager position” means that you are able to open your own company, charge what you want, run it the way you want, and Haverhill has absolutely NOTHING to do with you except give you a free 5 page website for a year (whoop di doo) and a free webinar training video (which I think is a total hoax as well) to get you started. The whole reason that I took this course is because I was not sure if I wanted to pursue starting my own interior design/staging company yet. If they were no longer hiring then they should have informed the current students months ago. It even states under the home page “Haverhill will no longer be accepting enrollment for our “Hire Program”. If you have already paid to enroll in the “Hire Program”, your terms will be honored as originally contracted.” This means that even though they may have stopped hiring then you should still get your money back if you pass the course with the required marks, which was originally stated in the contract I signed on for. The worse part of it is that the Hire Agreement they wanted me to sign is the exact same agreement that they have their actual full time employees sign. It tells you the rate you will make and everything!! I just don’t understand how they can expect me to sign some irrelevant contract when it possibly could come back to haunt me down the road somehow. That’s fine that they can’t hire me, I could care less (I’m actually grateful because it would have wasted that much more time) , but the fact that I wasted 8 months of my life on this company and $1000.00 when I could have started my own company and used the money to invest in that instead just really really irritates me.

Please include me on any upcoming law suit. My email is jrose611@gmail.com. They should not be allowed to take advantage of any other innocent victims, especially in such a crappy economy where we are all struggling to get by. (I’m sorry for the long rampage but I literally just got off the phone with them about an hour ago and did not know what else to do!) Thanks for any help you can provide.

My advice is to find a school in your area. You don’t have to work with Haverhill to be successful anyway. As a matter of fact, in time, it will probably hurt you rather than help you with all of the complaints across the Internet. I see few positive comments. Forgive me if you are legitimate, but since I think I was scammed, I have to question the legitimacy for those posting in Haverhill’s favor. I suggest U.S. citizens to look for schools locally. They are there, and they are cheaper.

Haverhill advertised as a school, and if you were successful in their course, they guaranteed to offer you employment. I’m sure they use this as a justification to weed people out. Microsoft’s certifications exams are tough and weed people out. That’s legitimate. What is not legitimate is advertising as a “school” and doing this. If they advertise as a school, then I expect support, feedback, good customer service, a learning environment and one set up to help me succeed.

The lack of interest in their “students” is a red flag. I should have known when the girl I initially talked to was more interested in signing me up for the class than providing me information on the school. I was foolish for trusting its legitimacy simply because they advertised on HGTV. I learned my lesson and encourage you to do the same–always research the school before getting in their program. Watch for red flags:

Eager to sign you up for the course rather than give you the information to make up your mind.
Not good customer service
Unwilling to talk with customers over the phone
Unwilling to followup with customers to see if they are ok and if they have any questions.
Unforgiving over extenuating circumstances
Threatening
Vague
…
You can probably add to this list.

As they say, “Buyer Beware”.