Knowing my financial industry position was ending, I sought a career change, and relocation if necessary. Telemarketer Emily Entress was adamant that she could find dream jobs for me and my husband. Since we both have college degrees and more than 20 years experience, we believed we were attractive candidates and just needed help targeting the right careers and firms, so her assertion that several firms would be calling us, that she would help us negotiate multiple offers within weeks did not seem "too good to be true".

Personality and career testing (advertised on CSI’s website as part of the package, http://www.careersi.com/IndividualServices2.aspx) was non-existent. Their “certified” writer (Rob Swanson) could not spell, punctuate or write grammatically, and had a penchant for over-the-top prose, requiring at least 10 revisions before we gave up. CSI did a data dump with nearly a thousand targets, most having no conceivable relevance to our career interests. Proposed document recipients included CEOs and Directors of multi-billion dollar firms, as well as firms with annual revenues less than the salary I sought! This was far from Emily’s promise to help select our ideal careers, develop compelling documents targeted to the specific people who could/would hire us!

Only AFTER sending these letters did the “career coach” tell us that we were expected to cold call the letter recipients, try to get past their gatekeepers, build rapport with these busy strangers over the phone, and hope they happened to have a suitable job for us. Did I mention that these firms are located all over the country? After hearing this “cold call” scheme, we asked for a refund (this was not the service we expected and paid for) and were told we could recoup $267.20 of our $3400 in un-used “coaching” fees and mailings. I've contacted the BBB, and am in receipt of a 14-page, single spaced legalistic lie-filled response offering a $500 refund of our $3400.

PLEASE, anyone similarly victimized by CSI, post your experience on LinkedIN, the FL Attorney General's complaint page (www.800helpfla.com/complnt, phone: 800-435-7352) and BBB (www.centralflorida.bbb.org, phone: 407-621-3300), as well as ripoffreport.com (you'll find LOTS of complaints there!). You can save others from similar CSI heartaches!