The public v. the publisher
Regulators count penalties. Lawyers count paragraphs. These are the people who paid: 98 customers of the Agora network, and what they say happened to them.
Money customers say they paid, were charged, or were told they would have to pay.
Ranked by how serious the account is, then by the money involved. Choose a kind of harm to see only those.
A severely disabled, elderly customer was charged more than sixty separate times in two years, from $19 to $4,000 a charge. He took out home loans to keep paying. After he died, his family found he had spent more than $30,000.
Received invoices totaling $20,000 for charges he says he never authorized, after cancelling inside the trial window.
A customer who says chemotherapy had clouded her thinking asked to cancel three programs costing almost $6,000. She says the representative refused any refund, shouted over her, and hung up.
Unanswered by the company
A customer with Parkinson's was promised a notice before his subscription renewed. None came. The charge simply appeared on his card statement.
Says he wasted more than $15,000 on the network's products, more than $9,000 of it on a single VIP membership.
Paid $10,750 in December 2017 for a lifetime membership with no annual fee. In July 2024 he was told to pay $164 a year or lose access. He showed them the original agreement. No reply, and no access.
Resolved only after the BBB complaint was filed
Paid $8,649 for a lifetime subscription with one editor and his software. Ten weeks later she was switched to a different editor with no software. A $1,695 service was swapped out after two months. Three refund requests by email got no reply. She wants $10,641 back.
Resolved
The company said several of the products belong to affiliated companies and offered to direct her to them. She later reported a refund was promised.
Paid $2,620 for a lifetime service. It was discontinued and handed to a sister company along with only part of the money. Months of being told to call someone else. The sister company refunded its share at once. Money Map Press had not returned the difference.
Unanswered by the company
Paid $2,500 for a trading newsletter that was shut down soon after. Asked for the unused months back. Refused, and offered credit toward other products.
An older customer with no income found a $2,160 installment on her card for a service she says she does not remember buying and would never have agreed to. The account manager would not give his last name or a number for his supervisor. Her words for it: elder abuse.
The company said all terms were disclosed at the sale and that the matter was resolved with a refund.
Paid $2,134.28 for 18 months of a service in February 2023. It was terminated in August and he was moved into a different service he did not want. Asked for a refund several times. Refused every time.
Unanswered by the company
Paid $2,100 after ads claimed 100 percent historical returns and a webinar promised a no-questions refund within 30 days. Customer service told him no such refund policy existed.
The same account is on the Better Business Bureau record (April 16, 2025). There the company says it made an exception and refunded $2,104.73. The customer answered that his card company showed no credit.
A 79-year-old retiree paid $2,032.38 after a video said a small company's stock would most likely double within two weeks and had to be bought at once. It fell 20 percent. He asked for his money and was offered store credit.
Resolved
The company said its policy is store credit only, explained by phone and in the confirmation email, then made an exception and refunded $1,960.47.
Paid $1,950 in February 2021 to upgrade to a lifetime membership. The service was discontinued without so much as an email. The lifetime lasted less than a year.
Unanswered by the company
Paid $129 for a subscription, said no to a $999 upsell, and was charged the $999 anyway. Asked for a refund and was offered store credit instead.
The same account is on the Better Business Bureau record (April 22, 2025). There the company says it found no system error and refunded the $999 as a courtesy.
Out of work, she looked at the site, saw that joining cost $474, and left. She says she never entered her details or agreed to buy. The next day $474 was gone from her bank account. Two weeks and three phone calls later she still did not have it back.
After the BBB complaint the company apologized and refunded the $474.
A former employee says that within a week of starting she understood the business was deceiving older people. She searched the customer database for her own elderly relatives to make sure they were not in it.
Bought eleven times. Each purchase teased a pick with the name withheld, available only at the next paid level. The customer's own word for it was a treadmill.
Her mother died in March 2024. She called and emailed repeatedly asking the company to stop mailing her mother's account and was told to produce a death certificate.
The company apologized, cited data-security rules, and offered to cancel everything if given the last name and zip code on the account.
Her husband died on Aug. 30, 2025. She asked the company to close his account so the estate would not keep being charged. It refused without a copy of his death certificate, which carries his Social Security number.
After the BBB complaint the company offered condolences and closed the account.
A widow asked the company to delete her late husband's online account and was told that was not possible. She also asked how it came to hold her own new credit card details, from cards opened after he died and never entered on its site.
Resolved
The company said the card details were removed and the account made inactive, and that it cannot erase every record for audit and compliance reasons.
Bought a lifetime subscription in 2020. The editor was replaced two years later, and two years after that the service was shut down and everyone was moved into a different one. He asked for a refund and was told the company treats a lifetime membership as a five-year term.
The company said it had merged two services under one editor, that he was far past any refund period, and that he could cancel but there would be no refund.
Called to act on what her subscription seemed to offer and was told the picks she wanted required another $12,000 lifetime membership plus a yearly fee. When she objected, she was told her membership would be cancelled.
The company replied that it is a publisher of financial information, not an investment adviser, and pointed to its terms of use.
Paid $4,000 for two lifetime services, then $6,000 for a bundle of every editor's lifetime service, and learned the first $4,000 earned no credit even though the bundle made it redundant.
Spent more than $4,000 across several services, was steered toward new programs constantly, and says the trade alerts arrived late and lost about ten times what he paid.
Holds a lifetime subscription and says the company still took more than $4,000 in renewals he never agreed to, some before the renewal date, on top of $7,000 he did agree to pay. Nobody answered his emails.
Resolved
The company said renewal notices go out weeks ahead by email and postcard, then offered to refund everything he had ever bought, $6,840.72, and part ways.
Paid $2,999 for what he calls misleading information and wanted it back. Nobody answered the phones and nobody returned his calls.
The company apologized and said the purchase was cancelled and refunded.
Cancelled two weeks into a $2,707.50 subscription and learned there are no cash refunds, only credit toward more of the company's products. After she disputed the charge with her card, months passed with the company saying the dispute was still pending.
The company said its credit-only policy was disclosed in the sales video, on the order form and in the confirmation email.
Paid $179 and $2,694 on the understanding that both could be cancelled within 30 days for a full refund. Cancelled after a week. The $179 came back. He was told the $2,694 was nonrefundable, though nothing on his order said so.
The company said a full refund was issued on April 30.
A pitch offered a $5,000 service at half price with a full refund inside 90 days and nothing to lose. He paid $2,500, found three thin tips, and asked for the refund. He was told the terms had come in an email after he paid: no refund, only credit.
Paid $2,500 for an options alert service pitched with a promise of 3,400 percent returns and a 100 percent money-back guarantee. Fewer than a third of the picks won. He asked for the $2,500 and was told his losses did not count.
Bought and upgraded a lifetime subscription for its many model portfolios, then watched them cut back year after year. Asked for a refund and was told the policy is never to give one. His email went unanswered for two months.
After the BBB complaint the company refunded $2,500.
A first-time investor, swamped by newsletters and half-hour sales videos, found a $2,176.55 charge for a service she is not sure she ever chose. Every offer had promised a 90-day refund. When she called inside the 90 days she was told this one was exempt from any refund.
Resolved
The company cancelled and refunded in full within a day of the BBB complaint.
Bought a trading service sold with a money-back guarantee, called to cancel, and was still waiting for the money.
Resolved
The company said it refunded $2,125.64, the price less a 10 percent handling fee. The customer later wrote that the refund never reached his account and his card issuer had no record of it.
Signed up in August 2017 for $2,000 after a pitch promising near-perfect accuracy. Asked for a refund several times and never heard back. Then the card was auto-charged at the one-year mark.
Paid $1,995 for an options trading service, decided within ten days that the advertising had been misleading, and asked for his money back. The company would not refund it.
Bought a $1,799 service sold with a 90-day money-back guarantee and asked for a refund within 24 hours. It was approved. A week later he was told the money could only come back as account credit.
Resolved
The company said the order form stated in bold that there are no cash refunds for the offer, and that the guarantee was honored because credit is the refund type it provides.
Listened to nearly an hour about a back door into a private company before it went public. The answer cost $1,799. He paid, read and heard everything, and never found it. He was told the money was non-refundable, and on his last call they hung up.
The company said the answer was in a separate $49 product he had also bought, and cancelled both subscriptions.
Bought a five-year subscription for $150 and a lifetime subscription for $1,500. Both services were shut down in March 2024. Asked for $1,545 back.
Unanswered by the company
Answered a starter offer of $29 for a year and says his account was debited $1,250, a subscription he would never have agreed to.
The company said its records show a $1,250 order with auto-renewal and a 30-day credit-only policy, then refunded the charge as a one-time exception.
Returned a product for store credit because cash refunds are not offered. A year later she was told the remaining $1,028.28 would expire, and that the services she wanted to spend it on belong to sister brands where the credit cannot be used.
The company said the one-year limit was explained when the credit was issued and offered to help her use the balance before it lapsed.
Bought a $99 yearly subscription and was charged three times in one day, $857.35 in all, including a lifetime membership she never asked for. The website gave her no way to cancel.
The company said its order forms show several subscription levels, which can be confusing, and that both orders were refunded in full.
A subscriber of many years paid $795 for a lifetime subscription in June 2019. The newsletter was discontinued in May 2023.
The company apologized for the delay in responding and said it had arranged two alternative products for subscribers.
Says $200 was taken from his account without his permission on a weekend, with nobody at the company to call, leaving him unable to pay his bills on Monday.
Saw a $15.90 charge from a name her bank could not identify. It was the yearly maintenance fee on a $179 lifetime membership she has no memory of buying and had never noticed being charged for.
Resolved
The company said the fee was in the billing terms and refunded both the $15.90 and the $179.
A $74 charge appeared from a company he says he has never contacted. It was the second time in six months, and the second time he needed the BBB to get it reversed.
Resolved
The charge was credited back.
Asked for a refund under a 365-day guarantee and was told to wait out a 30-day trial first. The request was never logged, and when the trial ended the refund was refused.
Signed up for a trial, was hit with an annual charge, and was told it was too late for a refund, by a company advertising that customers can always get their money back.
Filled out the cancellation form and was promised a reply in five days. Nothing. Emailed and got the same promise. Nothing. Got through by phone two weeks later, charged the whole time.
Clicked the opt-out button 50 times. The emails kept coming.
Counted more than 1,000 emails from Agora companies in six months.
Received a cancer-cure promotion by email with no way to opt out and, the customer says, a virus attached.
Paid for the report behind an ad promising Americans a share of a $150 trillion government windfall. Found nothing about it inside, only buy-and-hold stock picks that would not be updated.
Eight years of lifetime subscriptions and paid tiers: preferred customer, gold card, founding member, black card. Says the sell alerts came too late to matter. Asking only for the fees back, not the market losses.
Unanswered by the company
Tried to unsubscribe dozens of times, by link, by phone and by email. The junk mail kept coming several times a day with the brand's name all over it.
The company said the emails come from separate companies and it cannot remove him from their lists. He answered that every one of them links back to it.
Never subscribed to anything and was getting nearly 20 emails a day. Every attempt to unsubscribe seemed to bring more.
Resolved
The company said the emails promote its offers but are sent by outside marketing partners from their own lists, which is why she was not in its database. It added her to a suppression list.
His wife emailed to cancel every subscription. A manager wrote back that she could not cancel any of them. They were not asking for a refund, only to stop.
Followed every trade exactly as recommended, lost on four of five, and asked to be moved to another service. He was seven days past a 30-day window. He asked why the guarantee was so short when no trade could prove itself that fast, then asked for a refund. None came.
Paid thousands of dollars for lifetime subscriptions to four services built around one editor. When the editor left the company, the services were discontinued.
Kept getting unwanted emails from a sender he never signed up with, each stating it was sent on behalf of the company. Clicking unsubscribe brought mail from more senders like it.
The company first said the sender was not its operation, then unsubscribed him from all third-party emails associated with it.
Paid $2,234.40 for a trading service advertised with gains of 1,000 percent. Asked for a refund nine days in and was refused, then told to email a team that never wrote back.
After the BBB complaint the company refunded the full amount.
Spent about $1,900 and was told by his account manager that two of the editors worked for two different companies, while the sales recording called them colleagues. Says the company would not let him remove his payment details.
Resolved
The company refunded $1,937.73 and said the two brands operate independently but belong to the same family of companies.
Paid $1,888.95 on the strength of a promotional email and could not follow the system she had bought. She asked for help and a refund. She was told to switch to another service instead, lost money on its first trade, and gave up.
The company said it had given her two free service swaps and that its terms limit liability for investment results.
The moment she entered her card details for a $49 annual subscription, the next screen pressed her hard to switch to a $475 lifetime subscription instead.
Paid $290 for lifetime access and signed up ahead of time for live investing webinars. Every one he attended turned out to be pre-recorded.
Signed up for something priced at about $50 and found $250 taken from his bank. Says membership only opens a ladder of six or seven tiers, each with another fee.
The company replied that he had selected a lifetime offer on the order form, which explained the price.
Found a $212.93 charge dated the last day of the year for a service he says he had not asked for, from a company still holding his card two years after his last purchase.
The company said it was the auto-renewal of a 2022 subscription, that a reminder went out a month earlier, and refunded it.
Retired and on a fixed income. Had not bought anything in years and had cancelled the emails. A $199 renewal went through on a card she no longer used, and when she asked for it back the company first tried to make a deal.
Resolved
The company said the subscription renews automatically with a reminder beforehand, and refunded the $199.
Charged $99 twice for a newsletter the customer does not believe they ever subscribed to.
Unanswered by the company
Sat through a very long video promising free information on buying a private space company's shares before its IPO. At the end the only way to get it was to pay $99. The information was free elsewhere online, and the investment needed $10,000 she did not have.
Resolved
The company refunded her and stopped contacting her.
A television promotion offered the $249 package for $49. At checkout it was $99. When he called, he was told $49 would only buy the basic package.
The company said the subscription comes at several price levels and had a representative call him.
Paid $49 for reports on how to collect money from the U.S. government before an April deadline. Two weeks later the reports had not arrived. What came instead was an investment newsletter.
Bought a book. The book never came, the promotional emails did, and a year later his card was charged again for a recurring subscription he did not know he had.
The company said the order was a $49 annual subscription with auto-renewal, refunded the renewal, and removed him from its mailing list.
Her subscription was paid through November 2024, yet the company tried to charge her card $39 four separate times. Her bank blocked each one. She had emailed asking them to stop.
Resolved
The company ended the automatic payments.
Bought a membership sold as a lifetime for one payment. Asked the company to take his card off file and heard nothing. A year later the card was charged again.
The company said it had emailed him instructions for switching off auto-renewal, that the charge was a $24 maintenance fee, and that it refunded it.
Called to stop the emails and was asked for his name and home mailing address first. Nobody could say why. The emails continued anyway.
Two programs sold as simple stock and crypto trades switched to options only, which the customer's broker does not let him trade. Asked for his money back and was told anyone can do it.
Unanswered by the company
Was told he could have his money back within three months if unsatisfied. Paper-traded the picks for two weeks, lost every trade, and called for the refund.
Reached a representative and was told there were no refunds at all.
A company representative replied publicly, offered to help by email, and said each promotion has its own refund policy.
Could not get off the mailing list. The emails kept arriving from changing addresses, so blocking did nothing.
The company said it could not find him in its database and asked him to forward the emails. He answered that nobody had contacted him and the emails were still coming.
Clicked unsubscribe and nothing stopped. Reported that he was still getting mail and was told to forward the emails to an address that does not exist.
The company said it follows the rules on removals and could not find him in its database.
Started getting emails saying he had subscribed in March. He had not. Could not unsubscribe, called twice, and was left on hold until he gave up.
The company said his details came over when another publisher closed and its analyst joined Paradigm, and that it cancelled the free subscription and removed him.
Only after paying could he see the portfolio, and he says the record was nothing like the wins in the presentation. Asked for a refund and was offered a swap for another service. Waited on hold for an hour.
Resolved
The company processed a full refund and called it a communication issue.
Bought a high-priced service because it promised VIP support. The VIP line turned out to be an answering service that could only take messages, and nobody called back while he lost thousands following the picks.
Resolved
After the BBB complaint a representative called and extended his service at no charge.
A long video offered a report as a public service to ordinary savers. The report was not free. It came only with a $99 subscription, cut to $39 when he called to object.
Resolved
The company said the report is a bonus for subscribers and is not sold on its own.
Housebound, with almost no internet and no printer, he subscribed to four health newsletters only to get them on paper. Three came online only, and nobody he called could change it.
After the BBB complaint the company mailed the materials and switched all four to print. It confirmed it is moving customers to online-only delivery.
Warns that the recurring charges followed him even after his card number changed, and that the 30-day cancellation window closes before a customer knows a charge has gone through.
Made a high-cost purchase in the early hours of the morning after an ad that said immediate action was required and a presentation built to be watched in one sitting. Describes buying under stress and manufactured urgency.
Joined on a promise of a 90 percent refund within 90 days. Was handed the top stock pick of the year and told to sell it two days later, then got five emails in a row pushing a lifetime membership. Three refund requests over twelve days went unanswered.
The company replied publicly that it stands behind the guarantee and was disappointed he had not received a response.
After several months it was clear he would never earn back even the subscription price. He called to cancel and says they would not do it. His card company gave him a temporary credit, then took it back when the company never responded.
Bought a lifetime membership and then watched the services change hands, change strategy, and spin off new services he would have to buy separately, all while paying more than $500 a year in maintenance fees.
Says a small fee for a research report locked him into recurring payments he never knew about, and that his email address was passed on, bringing thousands of scare emails.
Resolved
The company said it contacted the customer and resolved the issue.
Clicked what looked like an article on an investing site. It was an ad promising free reports in exchange for an email address. After more than 20 pages of sales copy, the button for the free reports led to a paid subscription.
The company apologized and emailed him the reports.
Opted out again and again and still got several emails a day. He forwarded every one to the company's support line and never heard back.
The company said his address is on none of its lists, that someone may be imitating it, and asked the BBB to remove the complaint.
Says the subscription renews by itself but can only be cancelled by telephone, and that what he got for his money was pitches to buy again the advice he had already paid for.
His account page showed a second newsletter renewing free alongside the one he paid for, and he kept screenshots. At renewal it was cut off without warning, while he still held the stocks it had recommended. He was told the website had been wrong.
The company apologized, agreed the account wording could have led him to expect it, and switched the service back on for a year at no charge.
Paid $99 under an advertised money-back offer and asked for it back. He was told to call a number. He called twice, was promised a call back both times, and never got one.
Resolved
The company blamed a week of heavy call volume and refunded him after the BBB complaint.
Received a renewal notice for a subscription he did not know he had. The login he was sent did not work, and his emails asking for help went unanswered.
Resolved
The company said it had replied twice by email and refunded the original $89.
Each of these Better Business Bureau profiles is a company the City of Baltimore names as a defendant or describes as part of the Agora network. The bureau itself lists them as part of The Agora Companies. None is accredited.
| Company | Complaints, last 3 years | Resolved | Answered, customer not satisfied or silent | Unanswered |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Oxford Club | 20 | 8 | 12 | 0 |
| InvestorPlace, MarketWise | 18 | 8 | 10 | 0 |
| Stansberry Research, MarketWise | 17 | 5 | 12 | 0 |
| Paradigm Press | 13 | 5 | 7 | 1 |
| NewMarket Health Publishing | 12 | 5 | 7 | 0 |
| Money Map Press | 8 | 0 | 0 | 8 |
| Banyan Hill | 4 | 1 | 3 | 0 |
In 55 of the 98 accounts on this page the company's answer is on the card. In 8 of them the refund or the fix came only after the customer went to the bureau. The bureau says complaint counts should be weighed against a company's size, and it does not verify what customers submit.
Every card is one customer's own account of what happened to them. The accounts are retold in plain words, not quoted, and each one links to where it was found. They are customers' statements. Nobody has tested them in court, and this page does not claim to have verified them. Where the company answered a customer publicly, its answer is on the card.
Accounts drawn from the City of Baltimore's complaint were collected and anonymized by the City's lawyers, who say they reviewed more than 1,000 consumer complaints. That case is civil and pending, and its claims are allegations that the defendants dispute. The earlier FTC settlement with Agora Financial was entered without admission of liability; the Oregon and Pennsylvania settlement with Money Map Press (Oregon's announced settlement, $141,499, June 18, 2020) resolved allegations.
No customer is named, and no editor or employee is named. Some linked review pages carry staff names in their own web addresses. Nothing on this wall was written by Chad Arrington, by anyone he knows, or by any account he controlled. Reviews of Money Map Press posted in June and July 2019, the weeks after his indictment, were left out on purpose. Where a review site blocks automated reading, the account was taken from the text the site shows publicly in search listings, and the link goes to the page it sits on.
Exhibit 05, The Smoking Gun shows what the company's own budget did about pages like these. Exhibit 06, The Agora Files holds the full record.