In the last few days the journalists at the Sydney Morning Herald and the ABC have put together a number of reports on the plight of those who have got involved with the AVEO retirement group – some of their experiences as set out in these reports are truly horrible.
Note: “Bleed them dry until they die.”
These reports can be readily accessed, of course, by carrying out Google searches.
We can’t stress strongly enough how much we believe that nobody would get involved with AVEO at all if, first of all, they sent them one or two emails asking them a couple of questions, as we believe that AVEO have probably never provided an upfront and honest response to even one email in their entire existence, which should have put them off – that’s, of course, if there was/is any way in which emails can be sent to them.
In regard to this, we went to their website, and the only thing we could find about contacting them was this – “Corporate Contact” – (why “Corporate Contact?”) and when we clicked on this we were taken to an email form with four “required” fields.
We’ve found that whenever a phone number is “required,” that the very best we can expect is a phone call in which we are fed rubbish, and so in these circumstances we always enter a wrong number to try and ensure that we get something in writing, which, of course, never works with organisations like AVEO. This is what we did in this case – 3 days ago, when we asked AVEO a question – of course we’ll never get a reply.
In circumstances like this there are always calls for things like Royal Commissions blah blah.
In the meantime, the developments in communication technology in the last 25 years or so, have given us all the opportunity to surround ourselves with only the best in experts and information – by following these simple rules.
- Don’t contemplate for a second dealing with people and organisations that aren’t relatively easy to contact by emails.
- With those that are, send them an email about something or other and see what sort of response you get – only deal with those who provide you with reasonable responses.
Of course, in the end it’s all about competition – perhaps all the retirement organisations are the same???!!!
One thing is for sure – it will be a different world if people and organisations in all sorts of fields can only survive if they provide reasonable responses to reasonable emails.