Consumer Protection

At Next Wave Marketing Strategies our mission is to offer a lifeline to drowning US consumers by matching up their online or phone request for financial assistance we received from one of our lead vendors with financial services firms in the business of offering the mortgage loan refinance help the consumer is looking for. We do not generate phone or online consumer help requests ourselves or service the requests and as such do not have a SAN#. We are a lead broker and for most of the last 7 years we have focused mainly on mortgage leads although at times we have brokered insurance, home business opportunity, education, or other lead types and recently have become involved in brokering leads as those are the 2 types of help being requested the most this year by consumers. We do not consider ourselves marketers for the most part (we market b2b but not b2c) or financial experts and do not market to consumers or service consumers in any of the industries we sell leads in or have any ownership in any such firms. We are lead brokers and we owe our success to our integrity, network, and data optimization technology.

It is our sincere hope that one of these solutions will be just what consumers need to avoid foreclosure, bankruptcy, divorce, or worse. As long as our clients and vendors are in abidance with our contracts, state and federal laws, and industry best practices then if a consumer's help request was matched by us with a firm interested in helping, then that lead should have been generated and then serviced in a responsible manner. While hoping for the best as far as the intentions of these financial services firms and lead generation firms, we protect consumers by preparing for the worst with our 5 step compliance process below.

1. We are very careful who we choose to do business with

2. We demand legal compliance with a stringent Buyer Agreement and Vendor Agreement that prohibits email spam or DNC violations, etc.

3. We offer education on compliance and best practices through our Aged Lead Blog and other correspondence

4. Our software validates all leads and only allows the most viable leads to pass inspection

5. We end relationships with any client or lead vendor who we find to be conducting business in an illegal manner or in a way not conducive with industry best practices as pertain to consumer intent and protection. Please let us know of any company engaged in mortgages that you know to be engaging in unscrupulous behavior and we will add them to our list of firms not to work with.

We are proud to maintain an A rating with the Better Business Bureau which is rare in the online lead arena especially considering that we have operated under one and only one company name for eight years now. During that time we have received:
0 complaints
0 government actions
0 instances of misleading advertising

Choosing to take the road less travelled (the high road) has not always made us the most money short term but it has ensured that we will be around long term and allows us to operate with a clear conscience.

To the best of our knowledge none of our lead generators, financial services firm clients, or us have ever broken any laws with leads that came through our leads marketplace. We go the extra mile in protecting consumers, lead vendors, and lead buyers and our commitment to upholding industry best practices has paid off in making us one of the most trusted and well regarded aged Internet lead aggregators.

We are proud to be setting the standard by which other lead aggregators aspire to and in our own little way helping to tame the Wild Wild West. We treat our lead vendors and lead clients the way we would like to be treated and as a result have extremely low turnover and an excellent reputation after 7 years in the lead industry as one of the ‘Good Guys’. A lot of our business is from referrals and we have a very high reorder rate with numerous clients having ordered weekly for anywhere from months to over a year. We are very good at what we do and happy to help those engaged in helping others. We have only ever had one credit card chargeback filed against us and it was 8 months after the sale and ridiculous and we won the dispute.

No consumer left behind is our motto and we work hard to see that consumers who are still waiting for the help they requested online weeks or months ago do not fall through the cracks due to ineffective lead follow up strategies in place at many of the financial services firms competing with our clients. We connect these prospects desperate for answers with financial services firms able to help and we help educate these firms on how to effectively reach these prospects and service them responsibly with our
Aged Leads Blog.

We are hoping to see our financial services clients offer better and better consumer financial solutions as time goes by either just to stay competitive or through the threat of increased federal, state, or industry guidelines if they do not. We believe by 2010 we should see more stringent guidelines concerning services which will hopefully weed out a lot of the bad apples and leave only those firms with a very strong consumer value proposition. Predatory lending has already been cracked down on and more regulation is probably on the way. We would hope that the laws of the land, industry watchdogs, or just basic human decency would prevent financial services companies from taking advantage of desperate consumers. There are over 10 million American consumers in immediate need of financial assistance and the only reason so many financial predators can continue to exist is because government, banks, and financial services industry have not come up with the best way to help all these people and because their is not enough enforcement of laws and industry best practices. We look forward to ridding the market of scammers not just because we do not wish to see anyone get cheated but also because the same kind of companies that would scam consumers will probably scam us too.

We have made best efforts to do whatever we can to ensure we offer a win win win win (to consumers, lead vendors, financial services firms, and in many cases the creditors also) solution by holding those buying our leads or selling us leads to the highest of standards. Unfortunately since we do not engage in any sales or marketing inhouse directly to consumers or own any b2c websites, we have little ability to influence the consumer experience or police the actions of our vendors and clients. We also are not able to know which consumers are trying to cheat the system. We believe in personal financial responsibility and would hope that only those with legitimate hardships would enter financial programs.

Bad things happen to good people and good companies and the present recession has hit both hard in the pocketbook. We hope our efforts will help not just a lot of down and out consumers get back on their feet but also help a lot of stuggling companies hang on in the hard hit mortgage industry.

As a lead broker all Next Wave can reasonably be expected to do is show our clients and vendors what we expect of them through our contracts and educational blog and hope they do the right thing and terminate our relationship with them if we find out they are not playing ball the way we require. Unfortunately we have no contact with consumers using the services of our financial services clientele and so we have no way to know how helpful their services are to consumers. We do not have any ownership in nor are we employees of any financial services firm offering solutions to consumers and our clients never share with us any of the fees they charge to their customers so we have no incentive to want them to overcharge clients. If anything, the extremely low cost per closed deal our clients achieve with our leads should allow them to charge very reasonable rates and still be profitable. While the irreputable firms charging consumers the most can afford to pay for $60 live transfers or $20-30 real time Internet leads that many of our competitors offer, it is our hope that by offering firms much more affordable lead solutions, Next Wave will enable more legitimate, better value firms that are more interested in helping consumers than making money at their expense to enter the arena.

Our clients do not share any information with us on program success. As all the financial services industries are very competitive now we would expect that our clients would have to offer a valuable service to get and keep customers. Just as we have no way to check whether consumers truly deserve help and are not just trying to game the system, we have no way to check on the quality of service our clients are providing to consumers and thus we are unable to vouch for consumers, vendors, or clients that we work with. All we can do is treat everyone right in our circle of influence and hope they pay it forward. We have not approved or reviewed the business practices of our clients. We are just in the business of matching up consumer help requests with those in the business of providing financial relief.

Consumers must ultimately exercise their own due diligence in deciding which company if any is right for their particular situation before signing up.As the consumer referrals we offer tend to be weeks to months from the time the consumer filled out an online request, this should result in a more informed consumer who has had ample opportunity to talk to numerous financial relief specialists and do his due diligence on the industry. There is definitely lots of information online to help a consumer know good firms from bad ones. We provide quite a few below.

We do have a very high reorder rate and so this is our only indication that our clients must be finding consumers to help. We figure if they were not providing a valuable service they would not be around long and we have had numerous clients keep ordering regularly for over a year so they must be doing something right. In any case, we would strongly advise consumers to do a lot of homework before committing to one financial services firm or another. Starting Consumer Credit Counseling Services is probably the best place to start.

We are encouraged by the huge amount of online consumer requests for help and by the plethora of government and bank loss mitigation programs being introduced but very concerned at the same time about the huge number of scammers apparently also starting to offer services. As a result we are proceeding very cautiously into this lead marketplace. Right now we are operating on the honor system assuming our buyers are abiding by industry best practices and state and federal laws but if we find any of our clients to be engaging in unethical behavior we may have to see if it would be feasible to begin reviewing a client's business practices before selling them leads. We are here to be part of the solution and align ourselves with like minded vendors and clients but if we find despite our best efforts and the numerous laws in place to protect consumers that there is still too high a chance that our clients will mistreat consumers, we be inclined to stop offering leads and move on to brokering other lead types. For now we will continue to be cautiously optimistic that there is a lot of need out there for a company like us to effect change.

There is still a huge industry need for better lead generation practices and better financial relief services. We look forward to the day when through improved self regulation by lead generators and by financial services firms and/or through improved industry, state, or federal regulation Next Wave can operate with the knowledge that there exists a strong consumer value proposition from filling out online requests and that we can operate an online lead brokerage business without the fear of somebody else getting us or others in trouble due to their reckless or intentional disregard of the law or industry best practices. The future of the online lead generation industry and the future of so many Americans suffering financial hardship may depend on it.

We hope to see more and more firms in the business of offering services switch to a performance based model where they get paid at the completion of their program a percentage of the money they are able to save the consumer instead of getting paid a percentage of the amount or a fixed fee regardless of whether they are able to provide any value to the consumer. A few firms have started operating in this manner and we hope this trend gains traction.

Please join us in our commitment to making the online lead industry a better place and one we can all safely and profitably remain in for years to come. We are here to help.

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