Freight Broker Institute aka Freight Agent Training is a supposed training school for freight agents. Tom Mercer, provides this training over Skype. He boasts about being a business guy with business and logistics history, but hides his face. The first night we were suppose to meet, his ""dog ate [my] microphone,"" so he couldn't do training. Training lasted two weeks, and for another $50, I had to take a Certification course. I completed 75% of the course before he changed the passwords and I no longer have access to the material.
Tom stated that I could take the Certification exam, but that the links were having issues. I have yet to take the Exam! Tom added me to his brokerage firm. Come to find out, it just opened two weeks ago. It is registered in Florida, so I am unsure where does this business (FBI aka FAS) actually exist. He uses the same phone number for three different business, including the brokerage firm going by the name of Load & Go Logistics Inc. This is also the name of a firm in Shrevepoprt LA as well as a defunct trucking company out of Hazlewood MO.
I paid Tom his subbroker franchise fee of $250 as well as $85 for his required use of his own software, Shipper Pro. After a few days, I find a client that offered me its transportation business. I contacted Tom; he was impressed: ""this is a $100,00 client."" I submitted the information to him for Credit Review and a day later, not the 30 minutes he states in the beginning, I am told the client doesn't meet credit review. It's a national pharmaceutical company! Why the delay? His electric was out (3/11/14)! I called Milan Public Utilities (Milan TN...Tom's listed city on his Skype profile) this morning (3/12/14).
The rep stated there were no outages yesterday (3/11/14). For a guy that is an experienced business man with businesses in the past, developing software for transportation, talks about his major financial contacts that he is working with, all his logistics experience, and the many students he has trained, his practice is shady. Your electric out and yet you have no smartphone to let anyone know? You run a business hiding behind Skype? Addresses don't match? And now I find that he operated under one name that obtained a bad reputation, so he changed it to keep scamming people?
He is nothing but a scam artist he doesn't pay his agents or carriers . All he is woried about is who he can scam the next time. He doesn't answer telephone calls or e-mail. He is making a bad name for the industry.
EXACTLY what I did! Apparently, he is BACK up and running! THIS time, from GA by way of the PHILIPPINES by way of LA! I searched and searched and could find NOTHING about this man NOR his company online NEITHER with the BBB, so i opened a case with them. FORTUNATELY, I never signed up, but I'm VERY close with someone who did. My husband always says "Signs are there, but people choose to ignore them!". Don't Ignore The Signs! If it sounds TOO good to be true.....
Pro's He does know something about freight-brokering but as far as teaching it he is flying by the seat of his pants
he needs to sharpen his skills in several area's. I was turned off by the arrogance he demonstrated in class some of comments were out of order .. he liked to boast about how smart he was, if the students did get all that top grade information he was teaching he did not know what else he could do for them, teacher are suppose inspire and motivate the student. My experience with Mr. Mercer when we initially spoke about the training program was the cost of the basic program $98 and becoming a sub-broker for a 6-month program of over $2000 with an $89 monthly fee to use the software. When I told Mr. Mercer I only want to be an agent his immediate response was I was not going to make any money, when in fact the only difference in a sub-broker and an agent was the money that he wanted you to spend neither has a MC Authority both would operate under his affiliate's MC#. 2, His training had several grammatical errors and more over the Certification Material's first training session was so bazar I had to read it several times to make some sense of it. In my opinion Mr. Mercer put the horse before the cart he was so interested in gaining recruits for the sub-broker he did not take time to establish credibility. In summary I took the basic training for what it was worth and moved on, I will say that Mr. Mercer did insult my intelligence by making the mistake of thinking that I was a sucker or perhaps he was biased or thought all his student would be dumb truck drive (no disrespect to driver this is being said just to prove my point); never the less he was speaking with someone who was just as, if not more intelligent as he say's he is. I do wish Mr. Mercer success in his venture and I hope he can put aside some of he negative thinking and responses and take the positive or constructive criticism out of this post and make some improvements, just as we all have to do ...
Freight Broker Institute Reviews
Freight Broker Institute aka Freight Agent Training is a supposed training school for freight agents. Tom Mercer, provides this training over Skype. He boasts about being a business guy with business and logistics history, but hides his face. The first night we were suppose to meet, his ""dog ate [my] microphone,"" so he couldn't do training. Training lasted two weeks, and for another $50, I had to take a Certification course. I completed 75% of the course before he changed the passwords and I no longer have access to the material.
Tom stated that I could take the Certification exam, but that the links were having issues. I have yet to take the Exam! Tom added me to his brokerage firm. Come to find out, it just opened two weeks ago. It is registered in Florida, so I am unsure where does this business (FBI aka FAS) actually exist. He uses the same phone number for three different business, including the brokerage firm going by the name of Load & Go Logistics Inc. This is also the name of a firm in Shrevepoprt LA as well as a defunct trucking company out of Hazlewood MO.
I paid Tom his subbroker franchise fee of $250 as well as $85 for his required use of his own software, Shipper Pro. After a few days, I find a client that offered me its transportation business. I contacted Tom; he was impressed: ""this is a $100,00 client."" I submitted the information to him for Credit Review and a day later, not the 30 minutes he states in the beginning, I am told the client doesn't meet credit review. It's a national pharmaceutical company! Why the delay? His electric was out (3/11/14)! I called Milan Public Utilities (Milan TN...Tom's listed city on his Skype profile) this morning (3/12/14).
The rep stated there were no outages yesterday (3/11/14). For a guy that is an experienced business man with businesses in the past, developing software for transportation, talks about his major financial contacts that he is working with, all his logistics experience, and the many students he has trained, his practice is shady. Your electric out and yet you have no smartphone to let anyone know? You run a business hiding behind Skype? Addresses don't match? And now I find that he operated under one name that obtained a bad reputation, so he changed it to keep scamming people?
Freight broker institute and load n go logistics
He is nothing but a scam artist he doesn't pay his agents or carriers . All he is woried about is who he can scam the next time. He doesn't answer telephone calls or e-mail. He is making a bad name for the industry.
Please do a background check
Before you start any Broker school,please do a background check,reviews,BBB & talk to people who go through the training your looking into.
Exactly
EXACTLY what I did! Apparently, he is BACK up and running! THIS time, from GA by way of the PHILIPPINES by way of LA! I searched and searched and could find NOTHING about this man NOR his company online NEITHER with the BBB, so i opened a case with them. FORTUNATELY, I never signed up, but I'm VERY close with someone who did. My husband always says "Signs are there, but people choose to ignore them!". Don't Ignore The Signs! If it sounds TOO good to be true.....
Freight Broker Institute
I had an experience with FBI Tom Mercer CEO
Pro's He does know something about freight-brokering but as far as teaching it he is flying by the seat of his pants
he needs to sharpen his skills in several area's. I was turned off by the arrogance he demonstrated in class some of comments were out of order .. he liked to boast about how smart he was, if the students did get all that top grade information he was teaching he did not know what else he could do for them, teacher are suppose inspire and motivate the student. My experience with Mr. Mercer when we initially spoke about the training program was the cost of the basic program $98 and becoming a sub-broker for a 6-month program of over $2000 with an $89 monthly fee to use the software. When I told Mr. Mercer I only want to be an agent his immediate response was I was not going to make any money, when in fact the only difference in a sub-broker and an agent was the money that he wanted you to spend neither has a MC Authority both would operate under his affiliate's MC#. 2, His training had several grammatical errors and more over the Certification Material's first training session was so bazar I had to read it several times to make some sense of it. In my opinion Mr. Mercer put the horse before the cart he was so interested in gaining recruits for the sub-broker he did not take time to establish credibility. In summary I took the basic training for what it was worth and moved on, I will say that Mr. Mercer did insult my intelligence by making the mistake of thinking that I was a sucker or perhaps he was biased or thought all his student would be dumb truck drive (no disrespect to driver this is being said just to prove my point); never the less he was speaking with someone who was just as, if not more intelligent as he say's he is. I do wish Mr. Mercer success in his venture and I hope he can put aside some of he negative thinking and responses and take the positive or constructive criticism out of this post and make some improvements, just as we all have to do ...