Profitable Group - is it credible?

[probono]

If that is true

Ask your lawyer to write or fax Advanced Lubrication Technology, www.altboron.com and ask the CEO Mr Phelps to confirm have Profitable Group ordered a significant amount of Boron to Dubai this year, the answer will be NO.
Have they ordered product other than samples in the last 12 months, NO
Do they have exclusive contract? NO

Do you have a letter from the same ? Can you post it somewhere or even pass to the authorities in Singapore.

If that is true (sorry to doubt but you are a first time poster) then surely that would be absolute proof of deception as a large number of people have been told here that there is a significant order from Dubai that Profitable Group have not been paid for.

 

[cacwai]

Congratulations to belledonne for finally receiving her payment from Profitable. It is sad that Profitable actually found it necessary to have their director attend a Small Claims Tribunal hearing for a sum under SGD10,000, before eventually settling. That does not bode well...

I've proceeded with legal action. so the matter is now with my lawyer. Just as unacceptable as it is to delay payment, is the manner that Profitable has chosen to handle the situation. I'm sure joyjoyhope is not the only investor here to find getting money back from Profitable traumatising. I personally find the stonewalling, the excuses, the silence ... truly, stupefying!

Now that belledonne & joyjoyjope have successfully managed to recover their money, how many here have still yet to resolve payment from Profitable? Of these, may I know how many are AAAs & how many are Borons? And for how long now have the matters been unresolved?

I am a newbie here and have followed the thread to this forum because like many of you, I am a victim of this Prfitable Group fiasco. I have quite a substantial investment in both Borons and UK land plots, with a USD34k Boron matured on 8th Jan 2010. Unfortunately, even though I have received email confirmation from PG that they have received my signed surrender documents since Dec, they have failed to process my payment on maturity.

After reading this thread, I have come to realize just how bad the situation is, and many of you have not even received your money for over 6 months. I have already spoken to my lawyers and are waiting for their direction here. Unlike Chubbytubby, my lawyers seem less optimistic, so perhaps I should join forces with chubbytubby on this matter.

I have also visited their office today, following some of your advice. Not very fruitful but hopefully, as you said, persistence will somehow payoff. The SQC certification is still hung on the wall - issued as of April 2009 and valid until April 2012. Was given the runaround by their people, as usual and also promised a call from one of their useless directors. Will try to go again tonorrow, and the day after..... if any of you are still up to going to their office in mass, am keen to join. Just give me an indication, and hopefully we can all get our money back. I know several other people who are not on this forum who are affected and are nervously waiting to see if I get my money back. Theirs are not due yet but will soon come due - in Feb, Mar, and so forth. Will rope them in when the time comes and host a mini-gribe gathering at PG office...

 

[bbchan]

Hi. i am a victim too. I have followed this thread 1 month ago when i was still full of hope that they will pay my money back asap. Till now they have hold my money for more than 3 months. i don't know what to do now, beside chase them thru phone and go to their office. submit to the court is last thing in my mind..
I will definately join all of you if you want to go their office in mass.

Cacwai: have you go to their office today?

 

[belledonne99]

Hi. i am a victim too. I have followed this thread 1 month ago when i was still full of hope that they will pay my money back asap. Till now they have hold my money for more than 3 months. i don't know what to do now, beside chase them thru phone and go to their office. submit to the court is last thing in my mind..
I will definately join all of you if you want to go their office in mass.

Cacwai: have you go to their office today?

I feel going to court should not be the last thing on your mind. Do give this option a serious thought. If not, who will keep the pressure on Profitable Group? You can talk to your lawyer about claiming the legal fees on them too if you are concerned with the cost. That's what I really feel. You don't know what will happen next.

 

[redkop74]

It has been a while since I last visited this thread.

I realised that there are more people out there are affected by the payment delay.

For those who have not received payment for their Borons investment, please send me a private message. We shall explore the possibility of appointing the same lawyer to file the claim. In this way, the legal cost will be spread evenly if we need to pay.

If PP is not able to pay the Borons to us, I wonder what is going to happen to my land in Concorde Village. Though I have the title deed, who am I going to liaise with should PP wind up? The Trust fund which they claim is likely non existent. I now considering if I should put my land for sale at a loss.

 

[chubbytubby]

I am a newbie here and have followed the thread to this forum because like many of you, I am a victim of this Prfitable Group fiasco. I have quite a substantial investment in both Borons and UK land plots, with a USD34k Boron matured on 8th Jan 2010. Unfortunately, even though I have received email confirmation from PG that they have received my signed surrender documents since Dec, they have failed to process my payment on maturity.

After reading this thread, I have come to realize just how bad the situation is, and many of you have not even received your money for over 6 months. I have already spoken to my lawyers and are waiting for their direction here. Unlike Chubbytubby, my lawyers seem less optimistic, so perhaps I should join forces with chubbytubby on this matter.

I have also visited their office today, following some of your advice. Not very fruitful but hopefully, as you said, persistence will somehow payoff. The SQC certification is still hung on the wall - issued as of April 2009 and valid until April 2012. Was given the runaround by their people, as usual and also promised a call from one of their useless directors. Will try to go again tonorrow, and the day after..... if any of you are still up to going to their office in mass, am keen to join. Just give me an indication, and hopefully we can all get our money back. I know several other people who are not on this forum who are affected and are nervously waiting to see if I get my money back. Theirs are not due yet but will soon come due - in Feb, Mar, and so forth. Will rope them in when the time comes and host a mini-gribe gathering at PG office...

Hi Caiwai,

From what I understand about Boron and the AAA, I believe it's stated in the option that investor should be paid within 30 days from date of maturity. Since your Boron matured on 8 Jan, you should get paid in Feb. But, you probably already have an idea of the difficulty many here are experiencing with getting their money from Profitable...

As for SQC certification, I think it's best we leave it to Profitable to answer whether or not, they actually consider themselves worthy...

Being given the runaround sounds all too familiar! I can't say that I've seen any genuine attempt from their management to engage the investor in any meaningful way to try to resolve the issue.

Like you, I too know of a separate group of investors who are also affected. I understand some of them did consider taking up a class civil suit against Profitable, but I do not know if they went ahead.

I don't know if they'd already been groups of investors showing up at the Profitable office to demand payment, and if that had been effective. Do share with us if you manage to get in touch with others to do the same. For now, I'll leave communicating with Profitable to my lawyer.

If you've been promised a call from one of their directors, just follow-up closely. At this point, there's little or nothing their staff can do. They're merely messengers. Good luck!

 

[chubbytubby]

I am a newbie here and have followed the thread to this forum because like many of you, I am a victim of this Prfitable Group fiasco. I have quite a substantial investment in both Borons and UK land plots, with a USD34k Boron matured on 8th Jan 2010. Unfortunately, even though I have received email confirmation from PG that they have received my signed surrender documents since Dec, they have failed to process my payment on maturity.

After reading this thread, I have come to realize just how bad the situation is, and many of you have not even received your money for over 6 months. I have already spoken to my lawyers and are waiting for their direction here. Unlike Chubbytubby, my lawyers seem less optimistic, so perhaps I should join forces with chubbytubby on this matter.

I have also visited their office today, following some of your advice. Not very fruitful but hopefully, as you said, persistence will somehow payoff. The SQC certification is still hung on the wall - issued as of April 2009 and valid until April 2012. Was given the runaround by their people, as usual and also promised a call from one of their useless directors. Will try to go again tonorrow, and the day after..... if any of you are still up to going to their office in mass, am keen to join. Just give me an indication, and hopefully we can all get our money back. I know several other people who are not on this forum who are affected and are nervously waiting to see if I get my money back. Theirs are not due yet but will soon come due - in Feb, Mar, and so forth. Will rope them in when the time comes and host a mini-gribe gathering at PG office...

Hi Cacwai,

From what I understand about Boron and the AAA, I believe it's stated in the option that investor should be paid within 30 days from date of maturity. Since your Boron matured on 8 Jan, you should get paid in Feb. But, you probably already have an idea of the difficulty many here are experiencing with getting their money from Profitable...

As for SQC certification, I think it's best we leave it to Profitable to answer whether or not, they actually consider themselves worthy...

Being given the runaround sounds all too familiar! I can't say that I've seen any genuine attempt from their management to engage the investor in any meaningful way to try to resolve the issue.

Like you, I too know of a separate group of investors who are also affected. I understand some of them did consider taking up a class civil suit against Profitable, but I do not know if they went ahead.

I don't know if they'd already been groups of investors showing up at the Profitable office to demand payment, and if that had been effective. Do share with us if you manage to get in touch with others to do the same. For now, I'll leave communicating with Profitable to my lawyer.

If you've been promised a call from one of their directors, just follow-up closely. At this point, there's little or nothing their staff can do. They're merely messengers.

Good luck!

 

[chubbytubby]

This is disturbing

Ask your lawyer to write or fax Advanced Lubrication Technology, www.altboron.com and ask the CEO Mr Phelps to confirm have Profitable Group ordered a significant amount of Boron to Dubai this year, the answer will be NO.
Have they ordered product other than samples in the last 12 months, NO
Do they have exclusive contract? NO

He will only reply to a written request from a lawyer.

Hi,

If TRUE (I haven't ask my lawyer to write to ALT), your relevation is deeply disturbing... BORON has been offered as a "pre-sold" contract. There's supposed to be a REAL buyer, with a REAL contract, and a REAL shipment.

While I don't for a moment buy Profitable's "Dubai Crisis" story, as some of the delays in Boron payment predates Dubai's financial woes; the significance of what you seemed to suggest is enormous...

Thoughts on this, anyone?

 

[cacwai]

Hi

Technically, the BORONs contract indicates that you can submit your signed surrender forms 30 days prior to maturity. I think that is under Clause 2.2. And in Clause 2.3, it indicates that PG will have to pay you within 30 days of acceptance of your surrender form. Knowing that, I submitted my surrender forms to them as early as 8 Dec 2009 which they accepted. They would then need to pay me on Jan 8, the maturity date. Obviously, that did not happen.

I have previous experience trying to re-coup my money dating back to Oct 2009 and ever since then, the only PG person who at least would answer my phone calls (though not always) has been Simon Dawson, the Singapore Client Services Manager. Recently, I have been in contact with him about recovering my matured investments, and he arranged for me to speak with a newly appointed Sales Director of Singapore operations, a Tim Folgeberg (I think its spelled like that). I met up with this guy yesterday and was basically given the same story we have all heard...

Basically, PG has run into some cashflow issues due to BORON products customers not paying (do you believe they have a 90 day credit term, and investors like us are supposed to get our matured money back in 30? How stupid is that!), delays in the final phase of AAA (Philippines) land plots realization due to governmental procedures. In short, they are out of cash, and have been strategising to pay off investors they have owed for more than 6 months first - this being the most pressing. They have been paying off a bit at a time, some 700k in Jan, and they are also struggling to keep the office running. The other thing he mentioned was compensation and he has been trying to get the other Directors to agree to the idea of compensating the delays by offering investors a chance to covered to AAA plots which are due to get the big payoff - how bloody dense can he be? Investors can't even get their money when it is matured, you think they want to wait a little longer for a "guaranteed" (in his own words) payoff from AAA plots? He mentioned that they are soon to realize the payoff from the AAA plots as they are undergoing the final phase of governmental approvals to develop the land. They have got the developers who are willing to come in and he is expecting about USD92m that will get PG back on the surface and allow them to catch up with the backlog repayments to investors.

I told him I wasn't interested in any of that and just want my money back where it is due. I told him to try compensating pro-rata interest on the BORONs instead! In any case, I told him that if they knew they were having all these problems and they were serious about doing their best to meet obligations, why not come clean with investors and provide a schedule for repayment + compensation for lost time? It's probably all bulls**t from his month anyway. I told him I want my money and that's the bottom line. It's giving me a lot of grief and I am already taking action. He finally "promised" to take my case personally to the Directors on 28th to fast track me to the next cycle of payment. He again cannot "promise" me anything but he will try to get me at least part payment and propose the compensation. Ha Ha Ha...

Anyway, I will wait for his call on 29th to see what turns out. Meantime, legal action continues. Its not good though. Legally, our claim for BORON is against a Dubai company, which will probably get us no where. Plots have such a weak agreement that it probably cannot be brought to court. That all from my lawyers so if anyone has better luck with their lawyers, let me know and I will join.

Surprisingly, I got a call from Spring Singapore today regarding the letter of complaint I wrote against PG. I gave them the low down and even mentioned you guys here on this forum. They indicated that they will be performing some investigation and will be approaching the company about its conduct. While this will just be superficial damage to PG, I plan to take them apart piece by piece - hopefully not before everyone affected have recovered their money

In any case, CAD, Spring Singapore, and Legal Actions have been on the board. I will give them a cooling off period and wait until the 29th to see what happens. If it turns positive, will let you guys know. Meantime, keep the pressure on. I want to recover both BORONs and Plots. I am not waiting for maturity anymore and am not going through another round of their charade. Any of you have legal eagles who can help in this, let me know 'cos mine are pretty pessimistic about the whole thing.

Cheers and keep the faith!

 

[syung75]

The significance of what I'm saying IS enourmous.
I have given the most valuable info you need to persue this.
Whether you choose to act on it is up to you.

 

[kelvintyy]

Hi Still Have Not Been Paid

Hi guys,

just came back to this forum. I have still not been paid by Profitable Group. Going to 8 months after maturity now.. these 8 mths we might clearly see how the delay tactics work; first your CSO delay you; secondly ask a CS manager to delay for a few more mths; and then get a sales director to delay you again; lastly the directors / owners will then delay you until they have no choice.

It will be very scary if the story about Boron distributorship is true..

 

[probono]

Is anything they say true ?

According to two stories ( here and here) in the UK press and one here in the Singapore press and this UK freedom of information request all of Profitable Groups UK land plots have little or zero chance of planning permission. Profitable claimed in their TV advertising it would happen in Nov 2011 (3 years from October 2008)

According to this thread post the Boron investments have no real customer contracts behind them.
Yet people who were sold the contracts have been told by Profitable Group that there are major contacts in Dubai and Europe.

Now Profitable Group staff are claiming that all payments are hung up on a "just about to happen" AAA investment in the Philippines.

Has anyone done any verification with the Philippines Government, or local authorities on the AAA investments to see if there is any real prospect behind them? Given the high optimism or serious exaggeration that seems to have taken place on the other Profitable investments I would not believe anything Profitable Group report on any investment status without independent proof.

 

[redkop74]

Syung75 & Chuubytubby,

Please send me a pte message providing me your email or contact. Would like to communicate with you since we are having the same goal in common.

 

[bbchan]

They have scheduled my payment on 5th Feb next week. but i am not sure they will really pay me as at "scheduled" or will give me more excuses. i will update all of u again..
Cheers everyone.. we should get what is due to us!

 

[redkop74]

BBchan, I do hope PP really make payment as per their schedule. They have scheduled my payment to be made in Oct ,Nov and Dec last year but none came true.

I just received a offical reply from MAS. They are unable to investigate or intervene as PP is selling investment not licensed / registered by MAS. I was advised to refer to CAD.

Now that MAS has given their reply, I urge more affected people to stand up and report to CAD. Regardless how big or little is your investment, do not simply lie down and do nothing.

PP need to be pushed. They are a bully with the intention to stall time with our payment.

I do believe PP has the money to pay, otherwise, they will wind down by now.

If you are a boss of the company, do you pay those people who simply do nothing but wait for payment or will you pay those who seek some form of action?

 

[probono]

Hong Kong Advert for PG

Suggest you write to the South China Morning Post and SPRING. In this advert here on the 29th January 2010 Profitable Group are still using their SQC certification to establish their "business excellence".

Does anyone here believe what is written below is true? I dont. Note they use employee quotes they dont make the quotes themselves.

The Profitable Group has grown exponentially over the past 5 years and have built a diverse workforce of professional people across the region. In addition to this, we have recently been awarded the prestigious Singapore Quality Class (SQC) Certification, for overall business excellence standard.
Profitable Group strives to be a responsible and ethical builder of wealth. We have always focused on our clients needs
“We have delivered returns between 12.5% p.a. and 433% in 3 years.” Simon Dawson (4th Year)
“Not one client has ever lost money with us.” Warren Chelvan (4th Year)
“72% of our clients reinvested with us and 67% of our staff invested as clients.” Rebecca Cheung (3rd Year)

 

[bbchan]

hi all.. you're right! i shouldn't believe in what they said and their promises. even the director is untrustworthy. i am going to find a lawyer now.
i can't believe they can sleep well at night and didn't feel guilty when tell me their rubbish excuses while more and more people are anxious about they hard-earned money fate.

 

[probono]

Did anyone get paid yet ?

I saw this thread was down for a while. Did anyone get paid yet ?

 

[Drav03]

Hi All,

I have been also wondering. Many pple claimed that they have not been paid in this forum. But they have remained silent since the beginning of this year. Have they been paid ?? I spoke to one of PPG managers this week and he claimed that a few of the forumers here have been paid and they have chosen not to reveal that here. I want to know if it is true. Or is this another lie....

 

[kelvintyy]

Nope. No replies from Profitable Group.
Called Steven Harris on Monday, he said they have a meeting regarding the payment that day, will get back to me immediately.

He used this excuse on me I think about 3 times throughout my waiting months. He will then not get back to me or reply my emails. Until maybe a month or two later, he will "reuse" this excuse on me again.

Sent an email to their Sales Director, regards to his last email telling me I most likely to get paid by mid January. He did not bother to reply.

Last month, was told by one of the management that I am putting myself at risk when I go to the CAD. (Already reported this to CAD)

I am tired of updating when there no news. My next and last update will be the date that they paid me. If I do not put up here, that means I still have not been paid by them.

Happy Lunar New Year by the way!