He shouldn't have even offered one, not sure why you would ever do that. It's not like the guarantee would get more people to sign up, it's more just something that people (like the guy on the ripoff report) just see as free money, even though they went through the entire service already, and want to get back. It just seems kind of pointless.

rochel Wrote:As a result, I was on his mailing list and sometime last year got a promo email for a new online program to make people able to pass JLPT 1. I didn't want it but was curious about the cost, so clicked through on it, and was stunned to see that it was over $5000 USD!

I'm told that in the Middle Ages you could buy your way to Heaven.

kameden Wrote:He shouldn't have even offered one, not sure why you would ever do that. It's not like the guarantee would get more people to sign up, it's more just something that people (like the guy on the ripoff report) just see as free money, even though they went through the entire service already, and want to get back. It just seems kind of pointless.

It's well known that guarantees and refunds are rarely cashed in on. I believe it's around 50% of people entitled money actually ask for it back. But if someone offers a money back guarantee, I'd expect money back if I'm not satisfied the same way I expect a book that I pay for on amazon, and quickly, not in $100 increments.

My opinion:
I don't blame the Kenyan guy for anything.
But you must be really stupid to believe anything he says. Or said rather.
It beats me.
Stultorum infinitus est numerus.

yogert909 Wrote:I'd expect money back if I'm not satisfied the same way I expect a book that I pay for on amazon, and quickly, not in $100 increments.

What if he gave back all the money to a few users and went bankrupt thus screwing the remaining users, would that make you happy? It seems that he is making the best of a bad situation. The user on ripoff reports has not reported the monthly payments stopping so I would guess khatz is still making them.

I found AJATT extremely helpful. I never paid for anything though. I think khatz is/was a kid with good ideas, just a bit overenthusiastic. If Japan wasn't so xenophobic he could make a great politician haha

juniperpansy Wrote:What if he gave back all the money to a few users and went bankrupt thus screwing the remaining users, would that make you happy?

Well, technically, that would be the correct way to go about not meeting your contractual obligations. That is the purpose of bankruptcy as a legal concept.

But, of course, "fo shizzle" is not binding legal terminology that would lead to any contractual obligations. So, while guaranteeing people thousands of dollars back even though the service they bought was provided in full was a mistake by a young guy with no prior business experience, not giving that customer all his money back is a minor moral shortcoming. And it certainly doesn't amount to fraud, or any other kind of crime.

Hardly something that warrants the self righteous indignation some people are using as justification for delving into his personal life. Not unless you're morally perfect.

Let's put it this way: if you've ever downloaded a movie off the Piratebay, that's a bigger moral offense than balking at a "fo shizzle" money back guarantee.

juniperpansy Wrote:What if he gave back all the money to a few users and went bankrupt thus screwing the remaining users, would that make you happy? It seems that he is making the best of a bad situation. The user on ripoff reports has not reported the monthly payments stopping so I would guess khatz is still making them.

Of course that wouldn't be my ideal situation. I expect people to do what they say they are going to do, especially when I give them money. So a responsible business would keep the money in an account for a few years so they can make good on their promises. But in the real world, caveat emptor and I thought the fo shizzle guarantee sounded pretty shady to me. But that still doesn't make me think someone is looking for free money simply for asking that a promise be honored.

juniperpansy Wrote:What if he gave back all the money to a few users and went bankrupt thus screwing the remaining users, would that make you happy? It seems that he is making the best of a bad situation. The user on ripoff reports has not reported the monthly payments stopping so I would guess khatz is still making them.

I found AJATT extremely helpful. I never paid for anything though. I think khatz is/was a kid with good ideas, just a bit overenthusiastic. If Japan wasn't so xenophobic he could make a great politician haha

"Kid" is a pretty generous term for a 31 year-old man. And Khatz is far from bankrupt. He has plenty of money to pay people back immediately. Why he would choose not to might have more to do with his style of doing business.

JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:

juniperpansy Wrote:What if he gave back all the money to a few users and went bankrupt thus screwing the remaining users, would that make you happy? It seems that he is making the best of a bad situation. The user on ripoff reports has not reported the monthly payments stopping so I would guess khatz is still making them.

I found AJATT extremely helpful. I never paid for anything though. I think khatz is/was a kid with good ideas, just a bit overenthusiastic. If Japan wasn't so xenophobic he could make a great politician haha

"Kid" is a pretty generous term for a 31 year-old man. And Khatz is far from bankrupt. He has plenty of money to pay people back immediately. Why he would choose not to might have more to do with his style of doing business.

the flamewar begins

poblequadrat Wrote:the flamewar begins

That's "flaming?" I thought that was when I went out dressed like Freddy Mercury. I do look pretty great in tights, to be fair. So I don't see what's particularly inflammatory in the comment, but maybe I misunderstand what a "flamewar" is. Oh, you kids with your internet lingo.

JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:And Khatz is far from bankrupt.

Source?

JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:

poblequadrat Wrote:the flamewar begins

That's "flaming?" I thought that was when I went out dressed like Freddy Mercury. I do look pretty great in tights, to be fair. So I don't see what's particularly inflammatory in the comment, but maybe I misunderstand what a "flamewar" is. Oh, you kids with your internet lingo.

Yea I think we're doing pretty good. Not a flamewar in my eyes. This thread has contained differences in opinions, but I think we've been able to maintain an environment where cooler heads prevail when things get heated.

JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:And Khatz is far from bankrupt. He has plenty of money to pay people back immediately. Why he would choose not to might have more to do with his style of doing business.

well if this is his main income source and conservatively he's spending about 20-30万/month living in tokyo, then i could see him burning through all of those subscriptions in a few years time, easy... I imagine that like a ponzi scheme, after a while all the new money was either being spent immediately, or used to pay down the $100/month refunds.
Well it would only take a few years for that to snowball, and like Sholum mentioned, people are less likely to forget about a $2,500 lifetime silverspoon payment than $50 for a sentence pack. So you have more and more refunds requests coming in, and after a while all the new revenue is only paying down the interest, so to speak. This probably explains the ad that Rochel saw for $5,000... Khatz sees this going down the tubes and tries to squeeze out a few more checks from some of his most die-hard, buy-anything people before 夜逃げing.

then his wife leaves him for not being able to support her, he starts getting a little desperate for cash and looks online for someone, anyone that might need his services in web-design and translation, and here we are.

JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:

poblequadrat Wrote:the flamewar begins

That's "flaming?" I thought that was when I went out dressed like Freddy Mercury. I do look pretty great in tights, to be fair. So I don't see what's particularly inflammatory in the comment, but maybe I misunderstand what a "flamewar" is. Oh, you kids with your internet lingo.

Haha, nice one about Freddy!
I was being facetious but it looks like that's the point where the thread can degenerate into a typical AJATT or Benny Lewis thread. The truth is I don't care about Khatzumoto at all so I don't really have any business posting on this thread, so sorry.

It pays to be honest with people.

Whether it's okay to charge customers as much as $5,000 for your learning methods, well, people can decide for themselves. But not honoring your stated guarantee isn't right. Now, I've got nothing against Mr. Rogo-Manduli, and I've no interest in "doxxing" him, but I know he's got plenty of cash to pay back his customers, and it has nothing to do with his job or website. Don't ask how I know. Sometimes Tokyo's a small place for foreigners, especially high-profile ones.

Anyone who really wanted to know more could find it on the net. Even I'm getting a bit creeped by this whole business, so for now I'm out.

Looking at the products on the AJATT site and seeing a guide to becoming a Japanese translator, starting at $2,000 ($3,000 for the "Ultimate" edition), a mailing list of links to L2 media starting at $500 per year ($3,000 for a lifetime subscription), and a $500 guide to "making the monolingual transition", I can't help but wonder...is there anybody out there who has actually bought this stuff? I'd actually be curious to here the experiences had after shelling out that much and what level of interaction there was with Khatz in these products, and even if they're still being updated or functional.

So...does anyone think Khatz will actually resurface then? He might come back with a different site under a new alias, but I'm asking specifically about 'Khatz, the admin of AJATT'.

One more interesting thing to note, the last update AJATT saw removed the dates from all the posts. I wonder if this means Khatz had planned to walk away from AJATT, and this was a part of the mothballing process.

dtcamero Wrote:well if this is his main income source and conservatively he's spending about 20-30万/month living in tokyo, then i could see him burning through all of those subscriptions in a few years time, easy... I imagine that like a ponzi scheme, after a while all the new money was either being spent immediately, or used to pay down the $100/month refunds.

Yes. Like a Ponzi scheme, he spent his money. But, unlike a Ponzi scheme, he earned that money, by providing a service. So it's really nothing like a Ponzi scheme, and likening it to a Ponzi scheme is slander.

well ponzi schemes were not just mail-in pyramid schemes, usually they were investment firms that were in fact working offices.
they were just long on promises and smooth talk, and short on profit... which leads to the cash flow tendency that defines ponzi schemes.
it's not that they weren't earning money... they just didn't earn enough to fulfill their promises. it's the [smooth talk / broken promises] pattern that's really the defining characteristic behind a ponzi scheme.

also I'd like to add that invoking the term slander is quite unnecessarily pointed in its delivery, and i had been encouraged that this forum had this far been able to sustain civil discussion. Maybe we need a counter in the upper right telling everyone how many days it's been since someone flamed at someone else. every 50 days we get a piece of candy perhaps.

not to be a jerk but somehow they manage it perfectly fine over on chineseforums. something about japanese draws out a certain youtube-comments crowd apparently as opposed to chinese. not everyone obviously just a few.

[ファブリス]

My definition of civil discussion is to be chill... no need to start taking jabs at one another over word definitions.

dtcamero Wrote:(...) then his wife leaves him for not being able to support her

Ok now we are making conjectures and it's probably better to stop there. Let's stick to the AJATT site/blog please.

dtcamero Wrote:not to be a jerk but somehow they manage it perfectly fine over on chineseforums. something about japanese draws out a certain youtube-comments crowd apparently as opposed to chinese. not everyone obviously just a few.

It could just be that AJATT is kind of polarizing, so discussions about it are bound to be emotionally charged.

It could also be that younger folks (like teens) are drawn more to Japanese, thus lowering the maturity level of online discussions. Though from what I've seen, that doesn't seem to be an issue on this forum.

buonaparte Wrote:

rochel Wrote:As a result, I was on his mailing list and sometime last year got a promo email for a new online program to make people able to pass JLPT 1. I didn't want it but was curious about the cost, so clicked through on it, and was stunned to see that it was over $5000 USD!

I'm told that in the Middle Ages you could buy your way to Heaven.

Funny - when I heard this pricing structure, it reminded me of the tiers of Scientology. Enlightenment is expensive these days.

I for one have thoroughly enjoyed this thread. Khatz is the reason I'm proficient in an L2 and L3, so regardless of what's going down he's a legend in my book.

Regarding the divorce, that's not surprising. The immersion method really requires going into monk-mode for a long time, and the idea of doing that while in a relationship leads to a pretty obvious conclusion. How many consecutive days in a row can you tell your partner "let's just stay in and watch dramas in a language you don't understand" before the relationship explodes?

To be honest, I think posts about whether or not a thread should be closed and meta-discussions about how appropriate a thread is have a tendency to really make things more heated than they already were. Granted, this post could be interpreted as one of those--or, if you're being generous, perhaps a meta-discussion about meta-discussions; i.e., a meta-meta-discussion.

mattimus Wrote:I for one have thoroughly enjoyed this thread. Khatz is the reason I'm proficient in an L2 and L3, so regardless of what's going down he's a legend in my book.

Regarding the divorce, that's not surprising. The immersion method really requires going into monk-mode for a long time, and the idea of doing that while in a relationship leads to a pretty obvious conclusion. How many consecutive days in a row can you tell your partner "let's just stay in and watch dramas in a language you don't understand" before the relationship explodes?

Was he learning more languages after Japanese and Cantonese? Because according to him it takes 1.5 years to get fluent, and he started Cantonese much more than 1.5 years ago.