PPC Classroom Launch Less Than Stellar

The much anticipated launch of PPC Classroom happened today. It just didn’t go off precisely as scheduled, which was 12pm EDT.

The sales page had a countdown timer and when it finally got down to 00:00:00, refreshing the page caused it to put 7 more minutes back on the clock. OK, some minor technical glitches, it’s to be expected.

However, the delays till launch continued.

The sales page with the order link didn’t finally appear until sometime after 1pm — more than an hour after the scheduled launch. At this point, I was feeling pretty frustrated as well as annoyed. I then had problems submitting my order, but finally overcame that with a couple of page refreshes.

Once my order was completed there really wasn’t much to see. I knew it was a physical course and would take a few days to receive in the mail. So, no problem. I logged into the forum and saw that there were already a few posts. I decided to chime in and reply to one of the posts there, but when I hit the submit button my browser just spun. OK, probably lingering server problems.

At this point, I needed to make up for the hour and 15 minutes I wasted waiting to fork over my $497 for PPC Classroom, so I got back to a project that was desperately awaiting my attention. I would just check back in at the forum later and was looking forward to the first webinar tomorrow evening to kick things off.

After dinner I checked my email and saw an message from PPC Classroom. It apologized for the server problems and explained that it was due to a denial of service attack. That explained a lot and there was really nothing Anik and Jeremy as well as their team could do about it. Their launch was just too high profile and was probably a huge target for someone with malicious intentions. Nevertheless, I’m sure they still took in quite a few orders. They at least got mine.

What got my attention next in the email was the part telling me that I was getting a 30 day free trial to the members area after which time I would be charged a monthly fee.

WTF!

I totally missed that part in the sales material. I knew there was a members’ forum and I thought that was a very cool part of the course and made forking over the $497 much easier. The sneaky part is that no where in the follow up email was the amount of the monthly fee mentioned.

At this point, I was starting to get both suspicious and a little pissed.

The email also stated that the forum was not currently functional. I submitted a support ticket mentioning that I didn’t see the fine print about the monthly membership fee and asked how much it was.

I then headed over to Jeremy Palmer’s QYDJ members’ forum to see what people were saying about PPC Classroom over there. Well, I have to say, that overall, it wasn’t pretty. It seems that a lot of the other customers of PPC Classroom were also blindsided by the monthly fee, which turns out to be $49.97. It was pointed out that the monthly fee was posted on the launch blog.

OK, so I missed it, but I still feel like I was tricked.

At this point, I’m going to hang in there and give the course a chance. My mantra is that it’s Jeremy Palmer behind it and I have an awful lot of respect in Jeremy. However, the marketing of PPC Classroom and it’s launch is pretty much Anik’s doing.

That’s the part that’s giving me that uneasy sinking feeling at the moment.