SCAMAIA Academy (aka: Publishing.com or PublishingLife.com) Reports & Reviews (1)
AIA Academy (aka: Publishing.com or PublishingLife.com) Contacts
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Scammer's address WY, USA
Country United States
Victim Location WA 98034, USA
Total money lost $1,995
Type of a scam Online Purchase
Audiobook Income Academy has a few different names. It’s been difficult for me to find places where I can leave reviews for them. I’ve come to discover that on their social media/YouTube marketing ads, they call themselves AIA Publishing but when I attempted to find their ScamPulse.com profile to leave a review, I couldn’t locate the business under that name. I did some research and found they are registered in Wyoming as Publishing.com (formerly Publishinglife.com). It is near impossible to communicate with them, they do no list an email or phone number on their website. I want a FULL refund.
In less than one week, I've discovered they misrepresented their service, pricing and upfront investment required. During my success call this past week, I was told it would cost even more money than I had already given ($1,995) to have full access to their program and publishing software. I was angry and didn’t appreciate they didn’t specify that upfront. They made it seem like my $1,995 would get me the publishing software, the data analytics tools they use, and full mentorship/support every step of the way. However, the goal of the success call is to get people to set up a 2nd call, with a different person in the company to discuss paying even more money for full access to the program and private mentoring with the Mikklesen twins (the founders). I wasn’t given those figures on this phone call even though I had asked. I shared I was scared to learn how much more it would cost and the tone changed from friendly to stern. His response was, “You seem like the kind of person that believes in the power of mentorship. I don’t recommend just anyone but I can tell you’re someone worth recommending. Am I right?”. I was stunned and quite frankly… confused. Hindsight is 20/20 vision so as I went about my day. I began thinking how their character didn’t sit right with me. I've learned to trust my instinct and the fact I'm writing this tells me I need to fine tune it even more. I struggled writing this and asking for a refund because I was afraid of losing an opportunity of a lifetime. That's how well they've ingrained it in us through their program. I bet you they offer the opportunity to privately mentor with the Mikklesen twins to each person despite them telling me I was considered special and not everyone gets this opportunity. When I thought about how this opportunity was presented, I knew in my core this didn't feel right. But, I was still processing everything because the Mikklesen twins have done an excellent job at tapping into your fears, emotions, dreams, etc. For example, they have a mandatory expectation you listen to a 5.5 hour module before this 1st success call. The entire module is about calling people out on being lazy, low-effort and inspiring them to pursue their dreams of financial freedom. It was soooo long and gave me “cult vibes”. Also, it’s important to note they constantly say to use credit cards, borrow money, put yourself in debt in order to afford this program. BAD ADVICE! Your debt is making them rich. Think about it, nothing should cost this amount of money. Yet, this goes against their advice to be smart with money, etc. Gaslighting at its finest. Of course it's great to teach people to live under their means, but that doesn't mean you pay thousands of dollars to someone to tell you that. It's insane!
Aside from that, it’s imperative to circle back to them setting up the success call as a ploy to obtain even more money from you. That’s dishonest marketing practices and at this price point, it’s unacceptable. Further, they dismiss their obvious “omission” of not telling us we won’t have full privileges to the software by saying the publishing software is in a "beta phase". This should fire off alarm bells! I was told since the software is in a “beta testing” phase, they can’t have everyone in the program using it at once because it will “crash the system”. Yet somehow, if I magically pay thousands of more dollars, I’m able to cut to the front of the line, ahead of all the other paying customers, and get red carpet treatment. Bottom line: the agenda is to obtain thousands upon thousands of more dollars from people. This is way overpriced.
Actually, I suspect the publishing software is capable of managing each paying member and they’re saying this to entice you to hand over more money (thousands more). If Amazon, eBay, Alibaba and other websites can handle millions of customers using their site daily, then Ai Publishing is perfectly capable of doing the same. Especially since Inc.com published an article titled about The Mikklesen twins, How the Mikkelsen Twins Built a $50 Million-a-Year Business Around 1 Product. Bottom line: it’s not a product they’re selling, it’s their mentorship. They’ve curated a program based on belonging to a “cool” community and having access to them.
I believe they are gaslighting people out of an absurd amount of money for the sake of greed. This should have been communicated BEFORE people pay $1995. Something to note: Ai Publishing has been around since 2018. It’s now 2024. With that amount of time and money, there’s no reason their software should still be in a beta phase. There’s been plenty of opportunity for them to scale. This has the hallmark signs of grooming people out of more money and devastating them financially. If you were honest, you’d be clear about the pricing and expectations upfront. Instead, their 3-day return policy but in actuality, they’ve lied to us and have structured it so we learn that we didn’t get what we paid for until we go through a series of Zoom calls. I canceled my 2nd call. No thank you! It’s a bait-and-switch and there’s no excuse for it. Telling people BEFORE they pay would be the ethical thing to do versus hyping them up to believe a $1995 investment is all that’s required. This is so disappointing. It’s playing off people’s emotions and completely ruins their credibility. Another thing to note, they say that we’re getting a deal at $1995 because the program used to cost $5k. Yet, when I did more research, I discovered they charged $500 at the start. Again, they are lying. This is criminal.
As a final note, during my success call, I was told I can gift my module training to one person. After researching online, I’ve discovered it seems they have you pedal this to family & friends. I asked them if gifting the module trainings would allow them access to the publishing and couldn’t get an answer. My guess is “no”. I’m assuming it’s a “free marketing” tactic they use; leveraging the trust from our inner circle and/or Center of Influences in business/work by word-of-mouth. This makes me believe they revenue they’re generating is from people paying them thousands upon thousands of dollars over time. They dangle a carrot here and there instead of declaring that they’ll be asking for more money. Have you heard of the oft-quoted frog-in-boiling-water myth? The fable states if you plunge a frog into boiling water they'll immediately jump out. But if you place them into room temperature water and slowly heat to boiling, the frog won't notice and will slowly cook to death. The moral of the story: It describes a part of human psychology: we tend to accept and/or not notice changes that grow on us gradually but steadily, even when they seize command over our lives. But then, one day, we are awakened to discover ourselves in boiling water. And such is the nature of excess.
Even though publishing audiobooks has merit, charging this amount to teach us does not. Especially when more money is asked of us at different stages through these so-called “support calls” and the expectation we recruit others to give thousands and thousands of dollars to The Mikklesen twins. Don’t do it. There’s other ways to go about doing audiobooks if you so choose. You just need to believe you can do it without them, and trust me… you can. Save your money. This is a ridiculous amount to fork over (red flag #1).
Lesson learned.
I am now in the process of disputing the charges with my bank because they refuse to refund me after only 5 days of asking. Please know your rights. Their 3-day return policy won’t hold. I find it appalling they don’t have a ScamPulse.com profile. If you think about it, if you don’t want people to read these types of reviews, then you hide all attempts to do so. Funny how I find videos and fake articles on Google about whether this is legit or a scam. Don’t fall for that… just because they’ve optimized Google keywords for searches, doesn’t mean they’re legit. They’re just smart and very prepared to ensure you can’t find these types of details. I'm presuming those articles are from websites they've created. It's been done before. A Better Business Bureau profile should have been made.... that's the only place consumers can read about authentic, verified experiences.