The next order arrived and I was disappointed to see that they’d done such a shoddy job packaging the prints. It got a little wet sitting under my porch and they hadn’t even sealed the box correctly, so I was afraid that the rain had seeped in.

That turned out to be the least of my worries when I opened the box. Do you see anything wrong with these cards (below)?

They’re the wrong cards! They were for some dentist office in Wisconsin. Wow, who fulfills an order with the wrong contents? I called OvernightPrints and was confronted with the rudest rep. I asked if they wanted me to describe the cards sent to me so they could inform their other customer of the mismatch. “They’ll figure it out.” I also told them about their packaging issues. A simple strip of tape around the edges (DUH, who doesn’t seal the edges of a box?) would go a long way in protecting contents. At this point, I don’t think the rep was even listening to me.

Next order came, same problem. The box hadn’t been sealed and the contents were literally spilling out. Luckily, it was not raining this time so only the top cards were a little dusty.

I opened the box and what surprise awaited? The cards were of such substandard quality that I couldn’t use them. There was dirt smudges on them as if it’d been run through dirty rollers.

And the cards looked like they’d been cut with a bread-knife.

I complained again. The cards were unusable and I did not want them. They were holiday cards and it was already too late to order more. I asked for a credit. “Sorry, we’ll only reprint the same order.” I explained that they were holiday cards and it was too late to use them. I’d like a credit on my NEXT order. “No, you’ll have to ship them back to us.” Well, the pictures speak for themselves and I do not have the time to run to the post office and waste more $ to correct OvernightPrints’ repeated mistakes. It’s not worth my time and besides, the quality of their printing was laughable.

I moved on and have had way better results with a company called Uprinting. Lesson learned!

During the refi process, I was notified that I would have to increase the insurance on my condo to 20% of its appraised value. This was due to one line of wording in our condo association’s documents that stated that the master insurance policy was “all-in, minus betterments and improvements.” I was told that because the policy wasn’t “all-in [period],” I’d have to take out this extra insurance.

This didn’t make any sense because, barring some wood floors that were refinished by a previous owner, there had been absolutely no betterments and improvements on my condo since construction. So what exactly was I being asked to insure? Nothing, but I was told that this was non-negotiable, even after getting a letter from my condo policy insurer that there was absolutely no question of coverage of my personal belongings and the aforementioned floors.

I talked to a lawyer who informed me that MetLife’s practice is actually illegal. You cannot ask someone to insure something that does not exist or double-insure the same property. If you do, then this is an incentive to – as crazy as it sounds – burn down your house for insurance. Still, MetLife would not budge. With the prospect of having to pay hundreds in unnecessary insurance indefinitely, I had to stop the refi process, losing out on hundreds in fees.

This ended up being a blessing in disguise because I immediately started the process over again with a local bank. For them, there was no question: “There are no uninsured betterments and improvements? Then your insurance is perfectly adequate.” After my experience with MetLife, it was a relief to work with someone who was logical and reasonable!

I’ve receive tons of these scam letters, but this is the first time someone sought me out personally and with such great detail. If this actually played out, I’m sure this shipping company would’ve asked me for an advance, etc. etc. Luckily it didn’t reach that point. And I still have my artwork!

Full thread:

From: Shan Oakes
Subject: Purchase of Art

Good day,
I am a librarian in a private library here in Liechtenstein and we are looking at equipping and beautifying our Library with artworks of diverse artist in order to lecture and broaden our students horizon on art and culture when they come to the library to study and read books on art and culture.
We will be glad if you can assist us with how to purchase the artworks from your website and we shall make payment immediately with charge card (Visa or Master card)either one you prefer for the purchase before you send the artwork to us.
We anticipate your kindness in assisting us with the purchase.
Sincerely
Shan Oakes

To: Shan Oakes <shanoakes@rocketmail.com>
Subject: Re: Purchase of Art

Hello Shan,
Thank you for contacting me about my artwork. Which were you interested? I’d be happy to speak with you in greater detail about any piece.

From: Shan Oakes
Subject: Re: Purchase of Art

Great hearing from you, I want you to get back to me with the cost of each and shipping cost of the below:

(List of Sculptures)

I want you to get back to me with the cost and shipping of the above so that you can have the credit card to run for the payment.
I will be looking forward to hear from you asap.
Thanks
Shipping Address
Shan Oakes
Gerberweg 10
FL-9490 Vaduz
Liechtenstein

To: Shan Oakes <shanoakes@rocketmail.com>
Subject: Re: Purchase of Art

Hello Shan,
I will have to inquire at UPS and other carriers regarding crating, shipping, and insurance to Lichtenstein. In the meantime, I wanted to give you some other details to help in your decision. Sculpture 1 is approximately 10 lbs (4.5 kgs). Sculpture 2 is approximately 30 lbs (13.5 kgs). I’ve attached some higher resolution photos for your review.
I will get back to you with a more complete quote after I contact some shippers.
Thank you again for your interest, Shan!

From: Shan Oakes
Subject: Re: Purchase of Art

Hi,
How are you doing today,your family and business?
I am okay with the cost of the painting therefore i want you to get them packed.On the shipping,one will have to pay additional fee at the delivery point here in Liechtenstein because they will never bring to ones address. courier like Fedex, UPS are not worth it here especially USPS all of them are not rendering good service here probably because they already known very well.
You can contact this courier Hush Delivery Service (hushdelivery@hush.com) as well with the weight and cost of the artwork for the shipping and insurance to my address because they ship and deliver safely without one paying any other money before collecting the goods unlike some other courier where it will not be delivered to your address rather you will have to go to their office to pick it up and when you get there you will be told to pay other money before collecting it.
I will be looking forward to hearing from you asap.
Thanks
Shipping Address
Shan Oakes
Gerberweg 10
FL-9490 Vaduz
Liechtenstein

To: Shan Oakes
Subject: Re: Purchase of Art

Hello Shan,
Thank you for asking about my family and business. To be honest, not so well. My wife is in the hospital. That is where I was most of today, so I could not respond earlier. Her illness has been a drain on my business so I’m very thankful for your order. It could not have come at a better time.
I wish I’d received your email earlier because I actually took my sculptures to a local shipping company this morning and they said it’d be no problem to ship them to your address. They are packing them and shipping them now through a company called Unishipper and will arrive to you in about 2 weeks. The shipping cost was less than expected, only $100. So as a thank you for purchasing TWO of my pieces, I will cover that cost. Thank you! When you receive them, we can exchange credit card information for the total.
I hope you will take a photo of them in your library for my portfolio since I will probably never see them again in person! Thanks again!
All the best to you.

To: Shan Oakes
Subject: Re: Purchase of Art

Hello Shan,
I just received a notice from Unishipper that my artwork has been delivered. Have you had a chance to inspect it? I hope nothing broke in transit. I have the paperwork ready once you’re ready to settle up our credit card charges.
Nice doing business with you! Again, please take a photo of my sculptures on display so that I can put them in my portfolio.
Thanks.

Now I thought I understood the purpose of change fees, but I’m confused now. Who knows why they wouldn’t allow me to swap credit cards. Maybe their systems are too outdated to do this. Maybe they don’t have the checks-and-balances in place to allow their agents to edit the transactions. Maybe someone at some time figured out some way to game the system by doing what I wanted to do. (How? Who knows.) But I think the answer is really this: they just don’t want to be bothered.

During our subsequent series of discovery meetings, she poked holes in my current portfolio (I didn’t take it personally), and made my head spin with long explanations of benchmarks, alphas, betas…. It was a lot to take in! I broke down my expectations for our engagement in simple terms. I wanted to try this for a year and my benchmark was simple: I just wanted to know that she was doing better than I was doing on my own. Even if she broke even, I’d consider her advisory fee the cost of not having to worry about my portfolio.

So we continued on our way. I was slightly peeved that a bell didn’t go off when I told her I’d just rebalanced my portfolio, so I was hit with some short-term trading fees. I would’ve thought a professional would hear that and say, “Hey, let’s wait a month-or-so before starting this.” But that may have been an unrealistic expectation. There was nothing to be done about it by then anyway, so I chalked it up as a misunderstanding.

I don’t know what level of communication is common for these engagements, but ours was pretty infrequent. In fact, I later realized that she missed the quarterly call that was in our original plan. As we approached our midyear meeting, I wanted to see how she was doing against my “benchmark”. But how? Here’s a tip for anyone who shares my expectations for a professional advisor: Open a hypothetical portfolio at Morningstar.com. Look at your last statement from your old brokerage and enter all of your investments. Morningstar will track them and even calculate dividend reinvestments.

I told my advisor that I would be bringing my Morningstar reports to our midyear meeting to see “what would’ve happened if I’d never walked through that door.” The results weren’t great. Her investments were trailing mine by quite a bit. I have no idea whether she was offended by this exercise, but to me it made perfect sense: how else was I to know what I was getting out of this? I was certainly not standoffish; I had committed to this for a year and I owed it to my advisor not to jump the gun.

The next six months were just as silent as the previous ones. I watched her portfolio plug along and compared each statement with my Morningstar portfolio. Our end-of-year meeting was approaching and there was still a significant gap between them. Here’s where things got tense: she delayed my EOY meeting several times. On one occasion, she canceled on me while I was on my way to her office. Was she avoiding our meeting intentionally? Who knows. What I do know is that the final meeting was brief. We looked over her investments and my Morningstar portfolio and we both knew that it was unlikely that I’d continue with this. She told me to give it some time before I made a final decision and even asked for some tweaks to my numbers to try to explain the differences. Any way you sliced it, the answer was clear: this was a loss.

I began the process of moving the investments back to my old brokerage. That was fun! Of course there were exorbitant transfer and closure fees on EACH account. I’d remembered that at our first meeting, my advisor had mentioned that her fee was refundable if I wasn’t satisfied at the end of our engagement. I downloaded the form from Ameriprise’s website and sent it in. Lo and behold, my refund request was rejected because I didn’t send it in within 30 days of the one-year anniversary of our first meeting! In other words, if our final meeting hadn’t been delayed several times, I wouldn’t have missed the deadline! How convenient!

After months of back-and-forth with Ameriprise corporate, I finally received my refund. Does the story end there? No, of course not! I still had to liquidate my advisor’s investments at my new brokerage. What, they’re special “Class B” funds with exorbitant “deferred sales charges”? How convenient again! To top it all off, there is still one fund that I can’t get rid of: some funky “real estate investment trust” (REIT) that she signed me up for. Yeah, google “REIT” and “Ameriprise” and you can read about a class-action lawsuit they were involved in regarding hidden commissions. Apparently, the REIT had been doing so poorly that a few months after she purchased it, the REIT was closed for all purchases and sales! It’s now in some “cryogenic” state for an indefinite amount of time. Wait for it… HOW CONVENIENT THRICE!

Hopefully this story will have a real ending soon, but until then… YOU HAVE BEEN FOREWARNED. Adios, Ameriprise!

UPDATE: I am still unable to unload the REIT (“Hines” REIT, to be specific) that Ameriprise dumped me with. Hines just informed me that their value nosedived by 20% but there’s still no way to dump it. Well, actually there is a way: a few third-party companies (“Mackenzie Patterson Fuller” and “MIRELF”) have sent me letters offering to take it off my hands for less than half its value. How kind!

Thinking back, I recall some interesting advice my Ameriprise advisor gave me at our final meeting. She said, “Don’t sell the Hines REIT. That’s one you’ll want to hold on to for a long time.” I imagine she said that because she already knew that the fund had shut down sales and I couldn’t sell even if I wanted to! Thanks for the advice!

Recently, decided to give their Behr Ultra a try. It costs a little more, but they claim that you don’t have to prime under it. Worked out great. Painted a room a “brick red” with two coats. The color came out rich and consistent.

Behr, you’ve redeemed yourself!