Avid Amiri from Internet Enterprises

[alexjn]

[[Thread split from here - 3Six]]

...
At this point I am no longer considering doing business with him, but I would like to learn from the experience and understand some of the things that seemed questionable in case I encounter them again. Going forward, I need to know how to spot the con artists and to know what is reasonable and unreasonable.

I have personally dealt with Avid Amiri and Internet Enterprises. Signing a contract with Amiri was the single most regrettable business decision of my life.

CET, you are prudent and fortunate to run away from any deal involving Avid Amiri as fast as possible.

[ClaytonL]

Signing a contract with Amiri was the single most regrettable business decision of my life

Oh do tell

[Clinton]

alexjn, welcome to experienced-people.net.

Do tell us what your experience was like. I, for one, would find it very interesting, I'm sure others would too.

[CET]

alexjn - I would be very interested to hear about your experience. How did you find this forum and this discussion?

[alexjn]

The sales process I went through was probably quite similar to CET’s – perhaps CET can comment on the similarities and/or differences in the experience:

I met Avid Amiri from Internet Enterprises at a massive, white mansion in the foothills of Salt Lake City, Utah.

The place was quite gaudy with oversized leather furniture, expansive views, and the Porsche 911 parked in the driveway. My initial thought was: "Wow! Look at all the Internet Money this SEO Master of the Universe has made for himself!”

Then we moved on to the dog and pony show: Amiri talked about the amazing success of Internet Enterprises and how they had perfected a formula for getting top search engine results and generating website traffic, ad revenue, and product sales with these niche ecommerce sites they had incubated.

I bought the sales pitch – not only because Amiri is a very good salesman, but because I wanted to believe. This was something I needed to be a part of, these wunderkinds had figured out how to make millions on the web and they had chosen to give me the opportunity to join the party.

Sure I asked a few due diligence questions, but Amiri had polished answers to alleviate every concern I had. According to Amiri this business relationship had to rely on trust – and we trusted each other, right? Of course we did! Amiri was an ecommerce professor with the Midas touch – why would he ever misrepresent anything?

So I took Avid Amiri at his word, signed a contract, handed over a check, and congratulated myself on my wise investment.

It took about a month before I discovered that the representations made to me [[statement/s edited out]]*

Amiri quickly turned the tables and blamed me for the deal going south. He said there was no way I was ever getting any of my money back and if I thought about taking legal action his team of lawyers in Utah would bankrupt me with legal bills. [[statement edited out]]*

This was two years ago.

Since then I've kept tabs on Mr. Amiri. Karma has apparently caught up to him. [[statement edited out]]*

Congratulations to CET for walking away from this deal before it was too late. And, thank you to the posters on this site for their spot-on advice to CET.

*[[Edit Background: As alexjn hasn't returned to backup allegations made and not responded to subsequent messages, it's fair to the individual and company being discussed to edit some comments out as per our Forum Rules 4 and 8 without losing too much of the author's report. I do this reluctant to edit anyone's posts, but with an eye on fairness to all parties - Admin]]

[alexjn]

As a postscript to my experience with Internet Enterprises:
I do believe that Internet Enterprises has in fact helped create a small number of successful ecommerce businesses in the past. These few success stories are what Mr. Amiri relies on as reference accounts for prospective buyers.


[[statement edited out]]*

- The sites are cluttered with Google ads (a turnoff to prospective site customers)
- Fulfillment is done by third party drop-shippers of varying quality and reliability
- 30% restocking fees on returns
- Product pricing is MSRP – providing little incentive for customers to go with the no-name site instead of Amazon, etc.
- The poor reputation of Internet Enterprises is a huge disincentive for any prospective site customers doing research on the site operators
- Just look at the sites – would you feel safe entering your credit card information on solarhome.org?

The only competitive advantage Internet Enterprises sites bring to the table is search engine placement; this then becomes monetized one of two ways:

- By people on the web visiting the site (google ads)
- Collecting whatever margins are leftover after an order is placed and the drop-shipper completes order fulfillment

Overall the Internet Enterprises ecommerce sites really aren’t very good businesses because they lack a durable competitive advantage.

Certainly some sites could compliment the search placement with real value-adds and utility for potential customers, but that takes time, effort, and focus to develop. It’s much easier for Amiri and company to squat some expired urls, crank out ecommerce sites, pump up site metrics, and then sell them for whatever they can get on BizBuySell.

*[[Edit Background: As alexjn hasn't returned to backup allegations made and not responded to subsequent messages, it's fair to the individual and company being discussed to edit some comments out as per our Forum Rules 4 and 8 without losing too much of the author's report. I do this reluctant to edit anyone's posts, but with an eye on fairness to all parties - Admin]]

[alexjn]

There’s a loose network of people that have had negative experiences with Avid Amiri and Internet Enterprises. In the past we’ve shared information, resources, provided legal assistance, and generally commiserated with each other.

I received the link to this forum in an email from a friend in the network.

[3Six]

Fantastic posts, alexjn. Welcome to EP and thanks for sharing all that. I'm sorry your experience was a bad one and even sorrier that you lost so much of money. Maybe on these forums we can work together to get you finally running a profitable, successful internet business.

[Clinton]

Thanks for sharing all that, alexjn.

[REM]

I also bought a site from Avid Amiri. Had a good experience though.

[[Edit Note: This post would have been deleted for violating Rule 3 but I'm letting it run because of what hooperman has discovered later in this thread that Avid has replied to - Clinton]]