Please note, As always, These are my own personal (non-expert) opinions and should under no circumstances be purported as fact
I’m going to be direct, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) have in my own personal (non-expert) opinion been derelict in their duty to oversee and enforce financial regulations. May be it’s not entirely their fault, I wouldn’t know, all I know is that there is a proliferation of dodgy investment products being promoted on Australian Shores by way of high pressure cold calls to prospective investors.
In my own personal mind, It beggars belief that outfits such as World Binary Exchange (WBE) among others have been allowed to continue to promote their services from Australia to Australians and beyond (in my case, living in New Zealand) without an Australian Financial Services Licence (AFSL) for as long as they have.
I recall being contacted by this Entity (being World Binary Exchange) several times about a year ago engaging in what I feel was some pretty high pressure cold calling to try and sign me on to some unusual product trial. I told them I wasn’t interested and then blocked their number (with multiple attempts recorded).
They circumvented the block (whether consciously or not) by calling from a different number and started their high pressure sales pitch again, I then sent a strongly worded email to their listed common email address to the effect that I was not in any way interest, did not believe in their product and firmly asked them to remove my contact details from their contact database.
Again, despite my strongly worded email, they persisted and called a few days later with some assertion that I had expressed interest in their product and the rep was now ready to sign me on to their 3 day trial. Bzzzzzt. Not so fast buddy. This is when I have to admit I became rather hot under the collar.
- 3 days is hardly long enough to even properly evaluate any given financial or business system
- Pointing out that many people and companies in the past have attempted to sell me a similar system and have spectacularly failed and asking him of what their real point of difference is.
- If their system is so profitable, why are they not trading it themselves and instead needing to sell their system to others
…to which I felt the rep dodged all of the above three queries. It was clear that this representative was going through all the commonly used Sales techniques
- Repeating my first name ad nauseum.
- Having a overtly friendly and “sincere” tone that instead of making me comfortable, caused red lights to flash within the confines of my own mind.
- Attempting to paint their product as a license to run a legitimate business operation. (as if it was like something like a food franchise)
- Telling me to imagine the possibilities. Another psychological trap… where people are sold a dream.
- Passing me on to a “senior broker” (Then what I felt seemed like faking a different accent which I believe evolved back to his original voice),
The representative continued to persist and I just continually repeated the sentence “No, sorry, I’m not convinced” (A lot of Sales people absolutely hate “No”, because it means they are failing, they have been trained to illicit a “Yes” response as early on as possible). before the rep exhausted seemingly every sales trick in the book, got frustrated and just slammed the phone down. (LOL)
As an aside, since they explicitly mentioned “Senior broker” in their sales pitch… they admitted they are operating or intending to operate in a broking capacity and I therefore conclude in my own opinion they are in clear breach of Australian Financial regulations by operating without a clearly required AFS License.
What prompted this post and the rekindling of my personal anger and disdain of WBE’s behaviour was coming across a few posts from what appeared to be different people who mentioned they were coerced into doing the 3 day trial now have the debt collectors after them after declining to continue with their system. It appears that all the victims had to do was simply say the word “Yes” to something.
Now I have to admit, I am livid. I’m sure in the past, such entities behaving in the way that World Binary Exchange has been would have been stopped long before now. It shocked me as to how blasé ASIC has been in handling reports of misconduct by many entities peddling these funny exotic derivative instruments and have been so utterly unwilling to take any action against this particular entity in this case rather than just sabre rattling with all talk and no action? Sorry, but In my own mind, ASIC, I feel based on their achievements alone, has been scandalously and malignantly useless as a regulator and the current state of affairs has been doing investors in Australia a monumental disservice that words can not adequately describe.
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