Warning: Stay Away From The Offline Assistant Company & Kevin O’Connor
On November 18th, 2015 during a routine review of our books, our accountant noticed a $7,897.68 error caused by Kevin O’Connor’s Offline Assistant Company.
We hired Kevin and his company to fulfill our physical product store orders and it turns out that they had been double ordering and shipping our most popular item to customers at our expense for no understandable reason.
Once the error was discovered, I immediately had the last 100 orders they had placed for us reviewed, and there was an 85% error rate in those orders so we started to dig deeper.
I immediately let Kevin know about this issue personally and told him I would get him a full report by the following Monday (this was Friday).
We pulled our financial records from the store, the supplier, and matched them to our credit card statements for them to get a full accounting of just how bad it was.
When all was said in done, Kevin’s employees had over ordered and shipped products to the tune of a $14,968.45 – almost DOUBLE what the orders should have cost and costing us $7,897.68 in profit.
Armed with this information I sent everything to Kevin and asked him to review everything and if the numbers were correct explain why none of the orders were checked by his project manager (as promised when we signed up) or anyone else on is staff for accuracy, how his employees could see us losing money on ever order and not say anything, and why they hadn’t followed the spreadsheet directions we gave them.
When he finally responded 3 days later, he blamed us for not catching the error and cited a training example order we included in the training materials (of a totally different product than the one they misordered above) as a reason why they had doubled ordered everything.
Except they hadn’t double ordered every item.
His team managed to order the correct quantities of other items we sold in different amounts (1, 2, 4 etc) with no problem.
When confronted with this, he went radio silent and refused to respond to any more of my emails.
It was only after I demanded repayment for the $7,897.68 error that he finally responded, and only to tell me that he considered the matter closed on his part and that he and his employees had done nothing wrong and that he wouldn’t be paying for his employee’s mistake.
So here’s where we stand
– Kevin’s company over ordered and shipped an additional $7,897.68 worth of products to my customers which I now have to pay out of my own pocket
– No one from his company (that we hired to manage this for us) reviewed any of the orders to ensure they were being done correctly despite his assurances they do quality control and project management on all jobs.
– There was an 85% error rate by his staff in ordering products for us
– When presented with facts (credit card statements, Shopify print outs, and AliExpress orders) Kevin still refused to accept any responsibility and to this day has refused to pay me back for his company and employee’s mistakes.
The money part stings, but here’s the worst part.
I first met Kevin when I and several others (Brad Gosse, Ron Douglas, E. Brian Rose, Ben Littlefield, Ben Adkins, Colin Theriot, Mark Helton, Brian Anderson, Ryan McKinney) were his mentor at the Marketers Mansion.
We all spent time with him trying to help him grow his business.
I personally promoted Kevin not only to my list via a webinar, but also through my podcast (free of charge), and told several business associates about him (who ended up signing up with him – right Los).
Just last month I dropped everything when he came into town and showed him around Lubbock and offered to help him even more with his company.
And this is how he repaid me and everyone else who helped him for doing so.
No apology, no acceptance of the facts, and most of all not a single offer to help us or compensate us these errors.
I gotta assume that whole personal responsibility thing Garret White preaches didn’t sink in with Kevin.
Now don’t worry about me. We’ll be seeing Kevin in court and we’ll get every cent (plus some) back from him.
I’m writing this post to warn others and share my personal experience with Kevin O’Connor and his company.
If you choose to use him after seeing that he doesn’t stand behind his employees work, has zero quality control or checks to ensure work is being done correctly, and no matter how much proof you have of their mistakes, he will never admit when his team has made a mistake or compensate you in any fashion for those mistakes – go ahead.
If you want to host a webinar, podcast, or invite him to speak on stage after reading this, that’s your choice and speaks more to your core values than mine.
I just refuse to have people who have helped him in the past have their name associated with him or his company without knowing the facts about what he did to our eCom business and his unwillingness to stand behind his word and his employees mistakes.
I’m just thankful that we have the cash reserves to not only absorb this temporary loss and but also pursue every legal recourse against him.
In closing I’ll share with you one last thought. Sometimes in life things like this happen. People disappoint you, friendships end, and true colors are revealed. While you can’t control when or why that stuff happens, you can control your response to those situations.
I tried to resolve this in private, I gave Kevin every opportunity to make this right. It was only after he refused to do so, and I saw how huge of a disaster this could be for people who don’t have the same resources I do, that I knew I had to go public with this issue.
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This review was written by the CEO of Castleman Consulting LLC and represents his opinions and his opinions as CEO only. None of these statements should be considered factual without first doing your own research.
As a reminder this website is operating under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and is owned and operated by Castleman Ventures LLC, a publishing company based in the United States Of America.