Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

i warned you about this cult a long time ago Paul. Nice to see you've finally realised it. Love Mr Power's twitter accounts. But his wifes blogs are even better. You would think she was Mother Mary the way she writes.

Thank you so much! Been trying and meaning to get rid of that thing for ages

@haikuriousgeorg - I realised a long time ago but didn't feel it was appropriate for me to publish the management email thread that you sent me - it would have made me look like an even bigger dick BTW I had it out with the CEO in Adam Street when he introduced himself to me in the gents toilets at Adam Street - how fitting huh!

@Webby Boy - glad to be of assistance lol

I've received many Twitter DMs, emails and FB messages since writing this post - all from people who wanted to delete their account but until now, found it too difficult. Here's a message I got from a FB friend request on FB - very funny:

Well done on the “Get Rid of the Scourge that is Ecademy” post. Getting rid of one's Ecademy account is like washing the filth off after visiting a rendering plant which only slaughters slow, dim-witted animals.

OK fair point. Dont need to know about your lavatorial habits. But answer me this. Maybe there are a lot of happy people on Ecademy. I thought about this after my last post http://www.whoisgeorgewiley.com/2008/07/leaving.... Ecademy does have a very loyal following. Maybe we should just realise it' not for us, but maybe it is for some people.

@haikuriousgeorg it is good for some - just like self-harm is good for some. It's full of people who don't know any better and people who don't know how to delete there account - oh, and those like me, who registered an account years ago and never used the account. How many active users does that leave?!

Without giving names, very qualified and respected people agree that the Blackstar thing is a little short of pyramid marketing.

There is a much simpler way, simply point out, on the Eek front page, that the place is a complete waste of time and run by by an incompetent bunch of no-hopers and they will do all the hard work for you.

Good point John

In the video clip here, Penny Power makes the breathtakingly false claim that Ecademy is “amongst the most visited sites in the world” - http://www.ecademy.com/membership.php

All a member needs to do is to point out that she's lying and they'll be erased from the site in minutes.

Spamming your contacts was becuase you failed to TURN OFF the auto repeat function.

Shame really because in over five years on Ecademy I have made some great friends and done some brilliant business

@laurence 1) having that feature is SPAM if it means that your contacts continue to receive invites **years** after they were sent! 2) it was switched off.

Blasphemy.

Bad things will happen to you Paul …..

Bad things will happen, every time you upset Penny Go kills a puppy. Honest.

@ANGELSDEN with the exception of the odd comment on here, I have yet to hear positive things about Ecademy - not one single person I know has a good word to say - and that's *a lot* of people. OK, so perhaps you're an exception to the rule

I must declare that I don't know Thomas or Penny. I can say however, that I kinda know (of) Julian - CTO. Here's the last (Twitter) conversation I had with him a while back:

Me: “I think Twitter is turning into a conversational tool” (we're going back a while!)
Julian in response to my comment: “I think Twitter turning into a conversational tool is stupid”
Me: “Julian, you're now conversing with me”
Julian: :::Radio silence:::

Dear 'bad things', bring it on baby.

@ANGELSDEN with the exception of the odd comment on here, I have yet to hear positive things about Ecademy - not one single person I know has a good word to say - and that's *a lot* of people. OK, so perhaps you're an exception to the rule

I must declare that I don't know Thomas or Penny. I can say however, that I kinda know (of) Julian - CTO. Here's the last (Twitter) conversation I had with him a while back:

Me: “I think Twitter is turning into a conversational tool” (we're going back a while!)
Julian in response to my comment: “I think Twitter turning into a conversational tool is stupid”
Me: “Julian, you're now conversing with me”
Julian: :::Radio silence:::

Dear 'bad things', bring it on baby.

Brilliant. Well done Paul I thought it was just me who found ecademy depressing and rather desperate. I closed my account a while ago by sending them increasingly aggressive emails asking them to delete it. I trusted them to do so. I think they did …

Hi Paul,

I am surprised to read your blog. I cannot speak highly enough of ecademy myself. The generousity of the many people I have met through ecademy in sharing ideas has been enormously valuable. I cannot put a price on the value I have got out of it personally.

We have made many new deep and lasting business relationships that have led to business and we have been able to promote what we do to over 300,000 business owners and entrepreneurs. You cannot get better niche marketing than that, and all at no other expense than the time that you take to make and nurture connections.

It also gives us profile and visibility as professional people when we are “google-d”.

ecademy takes time to master and understand how to get the best out of it. At the end of the day it's like anything - you get out what you put in.

I believe ecademy to be way ahead of its time in many ways, and attending the events has really expanded my thinking and helped us find a clear way forwards. Our business has never been in better shape, and I credit ecademy for a having a signficant input into that success.

Once I had a paid account on ecademy (cannot remember the justification - ebdex days). When I wanted to discuss a potential partnership, the CEO insisted I upgrade my membership to Blackstar before approaching them. I believe I downgraded my membership to FREE after this conversation but their CEO added me to their Blackstar e-mail list and the e-mails continue to arrive one after another.

Overall, I believe ecademy is not for lot of us, but there are people who continue to value its services. We have to accept that therefore there is a market for ecademy. An overhaul of the design is fundamental to building new opportunities as it is so out dated and they have only done minor changes ever since i came across it in the first place.

I believe their CEO is willing to listen, which is a major change, perhaps due to all the changes taking place around them with social networks. Going forward, they would also need to redefine their customer proposition as it is not clear to many of us.

Don't know if this is true or not but it is interesting:

http://ecademythomaspower.blogspot.com/

There is some interesting discussion re blackstar etc.

Vanessa I'm delighted to hear you got something out of Ecademy - really, I am. I'm sure others have benefited from it too. In the long run however, when it comes to any of the people I know (journalists, correspondents, entrepreneurs, PR people, marketers etc.) not one of them has anything positive to say about Ecademy. The Blackstar stuff is very close to pyramid marketing according to some. Also, there are lots of other negative threads going around. If you're plugged into the tech industry you'd know all of this.

Manoj - get off the political fence with the general obvious statements. There's a hospital for some people but it doesn't mean it's a good place for anyone.

Now that I've seen it's published I can confirm that it is true - I have a copy of the actual email thread. I decided against publishing it as it would have been irresponsible of me.

You can find out by clicking on the link in the post - try to login. I wouldn't make any assumptions as your contacts could still be getting invites from you - even after a few years - like mine!

Thanks for your reply Paul.

Like I said, I get enormous value out of it and I am really not too interested in what other people think. I choose to judge things by the actual results I achieve in my business, not hearsay. There are negative threads going around on every subject under the sun …. one of the good things about ecademy is that that it is policed by the community, much like Ebay is. That leads to transparency. People are intelligent enough to make up their own minds about things and don't have to rely on comments like “all the people I know … ” , they can find out for themselves. If ecademy works for you .. great. If it doesn't work for you … great. However, it does take consistency and effort to get the most out of it, so if you are a seeker of instant gratification you will be disappointed.

Although I never claimed to be in my original post, I am plugged into the tech industry to a degree, although probably not to the level you are. I am very interested in Web 2.0 and I believe in “contribution currency” and ecademy is a big part of implementing that philosophy. However, I've got better things to do than rubbernecking on negative threads. I am not willing to pay for rubbernecking with my time and attention. I'd rather put the energy into my property business. Thanks to using Web 2.0 strategies including blogs, social and business networking, forum posting, attending networking events, etc. our marketing budget is zero. I am a big fan of Seth Godin.

Anyway Paul. Let's agree to disagree. I find ecademy an incredible tool and if people make a few quid out of is, then good for them. As long as people get value from it, they will be willing to pay for it although I myself only joined the free part. From what I know, the Power's privately funded ecademy themselves. I think that took tremendous courage and I respect them for that.

I have joined you on Twitter and will look forward to reading more of your blogs as you seem to have some varied and interesting business ventures..

Thanks for the post Paul. Could I also suggest to people to add emails from ecademy to junk / blocked senders list, as even though my account has been deleted I still receive emails from them.

Edd

I just deleted my account but for some reason I can still log in. This is dodgy stuff!

Same here.. I deleted my account a few days ago, but still get tonnes of spam from Ecad. Just tried logging in again, and my account is still there. Deleted it again, and successfully logged in again.

thanks for the link. I was just looking for a way to delete my account, they keep that info pretty hidden.

Oh dear,
just sent you a mesaage about whether you knew about ecademy on facebook. Now I realise you do! I found them ok but agree with you about the awful emailing they do… I am still being haunted by one person in particular…

Vanessa, can I ask where you get the figures that Ecademy enables you to promote what you do to 300,000 business owners?

As far as I know Ecademy has something like 170,000 profiles on the site, but many are redundant — the majority of the 22,500 support e-mails leaked a few weeks back were requests that accounts be deleted. My own guess is that there is fewer than 10,000 active members on the site, although I welcome correction from someone with independently verifiable figures.

Compete says that Ecademy gets about 100,000 unique visitors a month. I just can't see a reach of 300,000 business owners as you state.

As an extension of that, even if it is JUST 100,000 business owners, how many of them do you believe make it to your profile or webpage? And I would also ask how many of those 100,000 actually have a need or interest in what it is you do? Perhaps the fact that is *is* possible to reach so many people on Ecademy regardless of any level of basic pre-qualification on the part of the sender of correspondence is what gets Ecademy a bad reputation with some people.

I consider Ecademy to be quite a useful site, although I am concerned that too many members send out broadcasts without any thought for the value in what they send to the recipients.

And how many aren't life bloody coaches?

thank you so much. that does feel better.

Thanks for the link Paul, it's saved me time.
Been there 5 years and just cancelled account. There are lots of reasons that I won't bore you with, you'll probably be aware of most of them, but the last straw has been the treatment of Sarah Arrow, who is accused of practices that the management themselves actively indulge in, namely third parties accessing member accounts. In seeking to blame anyone and anything but themselves for their predicament, (myself included for which I received no apology), they've chosen Sarah, someone revered by the membership and a great contributor to the website in numerous clubs, blogs and more. They don't appreciate the membership, so won't stick around any longer, there are better ways to spend ones time

I have just canceled our accounts over there.
I have never come across such a badly run business. Ever.
Management think its ok to harrass the members, fabricate lies about them, tamper with emails and outright lie. Lucky I had the proof of what was said. By all parties.
I feel so much better since I deleted the accounts, like a bath after a trip through an abattoir.

Hi,

Thank you for the tip for safe removal of ecademy from my life. Probably shortest member ever, half an hour in and i’d already been bombarded. Feel slightly disappointed by the experience but thank you!

Hi Paul

I stumbled across your blog whilst trying to find any comment about the success or lack of the ecademy site. I had felt a little guilty that i had been a member for 3 years but not really done a lot with it. I have had tonnes of spam from the site and also messages from people who always seem to be foreign and very strange. I know feel justified in thinking that it was a load of cack and i will be using your link to delete it properly. I am also a former BNI member, i actually spent 2 years doing that breakfast meeting thing and i hated it with a passion, i almost feel scarred for life from that experience, i wonder how many others may feel the same.

Hi Paul

I stumbled across your blog whilst trying to find any comment about the success or lack of the ecademy site. I had felt a little guilty that i had been a member for 3 years but not really done a lot with it. I have had tonnes of spam from the site and also messages from people who always seem to be foreign and very strange. I now feel justified in thinking that it was a load of cack and i will be using your link to delete it properly. I am also a former BNI member, i actually spent 2 years doing that breakfast meeting thing and i hated it with a passion, i almost feel scarred for life from that experience, i wonder how many others may feel the same.
i posted again to change a spelling error.

I have been a member of ecademy for five years since Nikki Pilkington joined me up. I used to promote it heavily and have received money from ecademy for the people I encouraged to join although that wasn’t why I did it.

I met met both Thomas and Penny and prefer her to him. Having said that I began to worry about her when I told her of my reservations about their friend Roger Hamilton and his XL Results foundation which appears to be a commercial cult and Ponzi Scheme. Penny told me that her and Thomas were distancing themselves from Roger Hamilton and then a day later she wrote an enormous blog describing him as one of the two people that she most admired in the world.

This year I sat down for lunch with some people who claimed to know Thomas and Penny. They said to me, did you know that there are only 400 paying members of ecademy. I disputed this because I had recently looked up the figures. Ecademy used to have an advanced search feature where you could find out exactly how many ‘Powernetworkers’ there were and how many ‘Blackstars’ From memory, at the time of checking, there were about 22,000 power netowrkers all paying £10 per month and about 500 blackstars who at the time would have been paying about £70 per month although many were life members who had paid a one off fee. I remember working out that the Powers were making about £250,000 per month if these figures were accurate. Ecademy only has about five staff and no offices at all so that sounds like a good wedge to me.

I have done most of my complaining in private which is probably why i have been heard and treated decently.

Paul, Your blog makes for very interesting reading !!

I spent 24 years in HP and believe that customer experience is everything. My experience of ecademy is significantly less than positive. It’s very much as others have found. I get BOMBARDED with the daily newsletter DESPITE having this option deselected in my settings section. I have also clicked the link at the bottom of these newsletters asking them to stop.

I have sent mails to the support email address and have even emailed the Management Team, including Penny, her husband and others. I have not received a reply from any of them and still the dailynews mails keep coming. They clearly are a bunch of profiteering incompetants !! I have not paid any money and certainly would not contemplate doing so or recommend them or their site. I acknowledge some of the positive comments and the fact that some find the site useful, but WHY oh WHY will ecademy not make it straight forward to stop all the SPAM mails and to delete your account for those of us who think it is a complete waste of our time. For a start it would stop all this negative press that they receive and if they are into ‘Customer Service’ you would think they would have this at the TOP of their DO list.

I find it difficult to think I could learn anything from people who seem to have such a lack of regard for their customers and I hope that they soon find their £250k income per month (mentioned in a previous blog) rapidly declining, particularly in the current economic climate.

I will now try to delete my account using the link you provided.

An update on Thomas Power and Penny Power’s business partner Roger Hamilton of XL Results Foundation.

Ecademy Blackstar Membership is the same as XL Results Foundation Life Membership - Thin Air.

Roger Hamilton and XL Results Foundation run out of victims and cash. (Businesses from Hell first alerted the community in January 2008 with bloggers claiming XL Results Foundation was a pyramid scheme recruiting life members into a scam).

http://www.businessesfromhell.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=401

The authorities should investigate ecademy and the blackstar membership. Like many people I suspect it is a pyramid scheme replicated from the XL Results Foundation. Roger Hamilton and the XL Results Foundation is mired in controversy including claims it is a pyramid scheme, duped consumers worldwide and defaulted on payments to a leading bank in Singapore.

Exactly what is the involvement of Roger Hamilton in ecademy? Is Roger Hamilton a business partner or share holder?

Paul,

Simply a thank you for making the delete link available. Hopefully no more pointless emails from Ecademy.

Right back to Linkedin where I get real results!

Regards

Stephen

Thanks Paul. I asked Ecademy how to delete my account earlier this year (got no reply).

I’ve just gone in there and deleted it now with your link.

I was a paid member for a couple of years and let it slide for a year or so after that. I never found it much use, tbh - other than to watch the regular bouts of ego vs. ego.

Several moves progressively turned me off it. First was the ‘get paid to recommend Ecademy to people’ approach (which totally devalued the otherwise heartfelt recommendations I used to give for free).

The second was the spammy Blackstar behaviour, followed by the endless ‘Hi, please connect with me’ inter-member spam.

Anyway, I’ll probably blog about finally closing my account - and drop a link in to yours along the way. Once again, thanks!

Sam

[...] got on with my life.  Until someone sent me a link to Paul Walsh’s blog where he provides a link straight through to a ‘delete your account’ page.  This page is pretty much invisible [...]