Ron Burley ON YOUR SIDE
YOUR MONEY
House-Flipper Flops
T
Armando Montelongo Seminars
“Where’s my $30,000?”
The doubt surfaced hours
after Lauri Lefner charged
the $30,000 contract to
two credit cards. She and
her daughter had just left a
three-day, $2,000 seminar
with A&E’s Flip This House
real estate guru Armando
Montelongo. House flipping is the rapid purchase
and resale of investment
properties, and when the
seminar was over, Lefner
and her daughter signed
up for a more extensive
program: a bus tour of
distressed properties, followed by a year of coaching
to help kick-start their own
venture in house flipping.
Once Lefner got home,
though, her fervor cooled.
“I felt like I’d been brain-
washed,” she recalls. She
immediately sent an e-mail
asking for a refund. Two
days later she sent a cancel-
lation letter by FedEx. Still
out $30,000 after six weeks
and what she says was a
string of broken promises,
Lefner finally wrote to On
Your Side. Fortunately,
she had canceled within
the three-day window
provided by the seminar
agreement. After I reached
Montelongo seminar
director Jordan Odiorne,
Lefner received her miss-
ing refund. Odiorne’s ex-
cuse: “The staff just took
too long to approve it.”
As Lefner learned, the
excitement of a seminar
pitch shouldn’t cloud your
judgment. Lefner brushed
aside these troubling signs:
misspellings,” she remembers, and she sent us the
proof. The firm’s website
also has careless errors.
Excessive pressure “Those
who didn’t sign up for the
bus tour were called losers,”
Lefner says. Montelongo
didn’t deny this in an inter-
Seminar Secrets Look behind the curtain
Before you hop onto anyone’s ride to riches, look past the hype—the
marketing brochures that promise big sales and big money—and evaluate
the company. Talk to others in the field, search for online complaints,
quiz past customers, and check with state regulators. In May, the Better
Business Bureau issued a warning about San Antonio–based Montelongo, citing 60 customer
complaints it had received about the company’s seminars over the past 36 months.
view, telling me it’s his job
to be tough on them. But
emotional coercion should
always be suspect. My rule:
If they won’t give me a day
to think about it, I won’t
give them my money.
Last, ask yourself one
question: If their advice
is so great, how come
they’re in here asking for
my money rather than out
there making a fortune for
themselves? ;
Have a complaint about
customer service? Write to
Ron at
aarp.org/ronburley.
FROM TOP: ART STREIBER; ADAM VOORHES (PROP STYLIST: ROBIN FINLAY); GETTY IMAGES
36 AARP THE MAGAZINE
