The company in mention is Tigrent Learning ltd, a company supposedly running high quality property investment courses. They claim to be part of Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad empire, a US based adult financial education company founded by the successful entrepreneur himself. The Rich Dad brand is heavily incorporated into all of Tigrent Learning's adverts and study materials, and the degree of usage of Kiyosaki's font, colour scheme, name and images is sufficient to mislead a layperson to believe Tigrent is a UK subsidiary of Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Education. I fell victim to this and paid 997 GBP in March to attend their 3-day seminar. However on further research the two companies were found to be completely separate and unrelated bodies. In addition, I came across a long history of court injunctions, formal complaints and stories of people who lost tens of thousands of pounds. They also appeared to adopt very predatory sales tactics by bullying attendees to buy top-up courses. So I decided to seek a refund of my 997 GBP. Unfortunately I was refused by them and my bank, Natwest. Natwest also refused as I hadn't attended the seminar, it was still possible that I attend in the future, so nondelivery of goods was not established. I was also outsite their 7-day 'cooling period' cancellation window so could not cancel the contract. I explained to them the goods are not as described because they are not in fact Robert Kiyosaki's own property investment course and I had been a victim of misrepresentation, but it was no use. I gave up, and decided to attend the cheaper Women In Wealth course and try to reclaim 500 GBP at least. However, Tigrent is now TOTALLY AVOIDING MY COMMUNICATIONS. I CAN'T BOOK FOR SOMETHING I PAID FOR NOR SOMETHING THAT IS OF LESS VALUE THAN WHAT I PAID! I've explained this to Natwest again, but they were again sceptical and told me they will only ATTEMPT to reclaim the money. What does that even mean?!? I've tried everything - the Police, Consumer Direct, the bank, even Evening Standard asking them to refuse all future advert enquiries by them and perhaps run a story on it. But no one seems to care, and I just feel angry, alone and stupid for letting this happen. If anyone has any advice on how I could proceed from here, or anyone has a success story relating to a claim back from this company please share!

I have been inspired to post here by the brilliant and successful advice I have read given by "legalpickle" to someone who had a very similar problem to me, in the thread "Un-fair admin charges through Rich Dad (RDE) ***SUCCESS***". The quickest way to learn about how these people operate is to google "rich dad [problem]". Briefly - I backed out of a contract with them on the first day of the cooling off period. They then should have returned the several thousand pounds that I had paid them by credit card, perhaps deducting an admin fee. Although they concede that they owe me the money and that I have done everything they ask, they simply do not return the money. They claim it is due to their inefficiency rather than dishonesty. Every successful case of money returned that I have (now) read about involves threatening them with court. At one stage, in order to get your money back, they insist that you sign a form saying "I agree with the terms described above and acknowledge that Whitney UK has handled this matter to my complete satisfaction. Furthermore, I shall keep the existence and terms of this refund settlement agreement strictly confidential. Neither party shall divulge said terms to any third party in any matter." I don't know whether they can do that, but where I differ from the similar case mentioned above is that unfortunately I DID sign this, putting the loss of the 5% admin fee down to experience. How do I go about taking these people to court? Do I claim for * all my money back; * all but 5% (losing more than £700); * all my money plus some interest (it's been more than 6 months)? All advice welcome ... especially from legalpickle.