My Refund Demand

At approximately 2:00am on Saturday morning, as the Friday night chat in the lounge was winding down, I sat in the bar with a few of my new found friends. We could see the entrance to the bar from where we sat and observed Andrew Bell and another course participant, just outside the entrance of the bar, apparently having a heated discussion. The course participant (I shall refer to him as Pierre) caught my eye and signaled me over. I joined the discussion to find that Pierre was livid and was expressing his disappointment to Andrew Bell in no uncertain terms. He was also upset about the fact that Bell had told him not to correspond with me and other perceived "troublemakers". I voiced my opinion to Bell too and demanded that he refund my money in full, not only for the course but for all the other related expenses. Pierre demanded the same. Bell refused to comment and said that he would get back to us at a later date.

On November 20, 2001, I reiterated my demand for a refund, via email, to Andrew Bell. His response on December 10, 2001 is reproduced below, in its entirety, along with my reply. I have not sent him a reply via email; instead, I chose to post it here for all to see.

Andrew Bell's response is in brown while my reply to him is in green.

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Dear Mr Karia,

This late response to your email message dated 20/11/01 is due to having been ill in hospital.

I've always wanted to say this to you Mr. Bell, "I hope you get well soon!"

When attending an instructional course such as ours, it is vital to set aside all preconceived ideas and notions regarding the stammering condition and it's treatment, whilst being prepared to fully take onboard, without doubting the validity, the approach and methods employed by the course.

As late as the last day of the course you were saying that it is ok to have doubts about the course and that indeed it was natural to have such doubts. Also, you might want to check the verbiage on your site which directly contradicts the above statement.

I understand that you were not in agreement with the approach taken, or methods employed to treat stammering during the November 2001 course. This is despite our web site stating that the course takes a holistic approach, whilst involving tools, speech rules, plus instilling High Self Esteem and a High-Success mental attitude.

Mr. Bell, I traveled thousands of miles and spent thousands of dollars in the hope that you would cure my stuttering. I attended the course with an open mind (perhaps too open). I followed all your instructions regardless of how ridiculous they might have seemed. I don't know what gave you the impression that I was not in agreement with the approach taken or the methods employed by you. I do not recall discussing these issues with you.

The course does provide a cure, but whether an individual achieves the cure is determined by their open acceptance of the course's approach, and the personal acceptance, uptake and continual implementation of the course teachings and disciplines.

If that were true, how come the one course member that followed all your directions to the letter and with religious fervor remains uncured? I'm referring to the person who stood on your right and was the first person in the "U" formation in the class. Can anyone deny that he was a model student? I think not. Also, my conversations with him were limited to mundane pleasantries. I could not have affected his mental state, as is suggested by you within this email, since I did not discuss any aspects of the course with him at any time during my stay there. He was so disappointed on Friday evening, when he realized that he still had his stammer, that he cried like a baby. Did you know that Mr. Bell?

The Course Fee paid at the beginning of the course, is just that - the fee allowing you to attend the course.

So, let me see if I understand you correctly. The fee merely grants me the privilege of attending your Stammering Cured Course and in fact it has nothing to do with whether the course actually cures stammering or not? I should seriously consider starting my own stuttering cure course. This is wonderful. Cured or not, I get paid! Additionally, I get to blame a few of the erstwhile course participants for the failure of the course absolving me of all responsibility. Now why didn't I think of that? It's simply brilliant! Brilliant, I say!

During the course it is crucial that there are no emotional diversions regarding speech amongst attendees, otherwise the mental focus of their goal is lost, to the detriment of their confidence and fluency.

Hmmm! In that case, I suggest that you cure yourself of your own stuttering first before attempting to cure others. If there were any emotional diversions present within me, it was due to the fact that you stammer. To put things mildly, your obvious stuttering did not send warm and fuzzy confident feelings through me nor through any of the other participants.

Let's take this phrase: "I must cure my stammer before I impose my deep sharp voice on the rotten OPs." And again! Open your mouth wider this time Mr. Bell and can you manage a sharper voice?

Of equal importance to the physical speech instruction during the course, is the creation of a new Success Mental State, but unfortunately it's development was unable to flourish due to the negative influence which prevailed during the evenings from the Monday onwards. Many times during the course I stated that I cannot enforce anyone to implement the course teachings as only the individual can do so, but in decrying the course teachings to other course attendees you flagrantly and blatantly rejected the instruction of this Success Mental State. The stammering problems experienced by some people at the end of the November course, were due, not to any shortcomings of the course, but to this same negative influence. This created a 'negative expectancy' in the mind's of course members, which undermined my 'positive expectancy' teachings during the day, severely affecting the confidence of course members.

Success Mental State? Are you referring to the part where we were denigrating the OPs and disparaging the rest of the world? What do you know? I guess I'm not infallible after all. I missed getting a success mental state from that altogether. Darn it! Would you please consider having me take your course again so that you can indoctrinate me with some of that wonderful, positive success mental state? Oh, pretty please? Will ya?

Regarding my negative influence, the only time that I voiced my opinion about expecting a cure was when I was asked about it during dinner on Wednesday night. I answered the question with a question of my own. I asked if I was the only one who had noticed that you stammer. Not one person involved in that conversation disagreed with me regarding your stammer. If my pointing out the obvious truth brings about "negative expectancy" then I must put the onus of such an affect directly on you and your incurable stuttering, Mr. Bell. Honest expression is healthier than debilitating denial. You expect a level of deference that you have not earned and one that I cannot afford to give you.

If you recall the incident at the bar, on Wednesday night, while we were ordering our drinks, my soft-spoken, gentle roommate got very upset about the other patrons in the bar laughing at him. He cursed you out and stormed up to the room. You sent me up after him to ensure that he would not drop out of the course before you yourself went up to speak with him. He was all set to give you a piece of his mind that evening before departing for home. I'm the one who calmed him down. I'm the one who persuaded him to stay and complete the course. I'm the one who shed tears with him that evening. It would have been very easy for me to goad him to leave, if I had wanted to. On the very next day, he walked out in the middle of the class. Again, you sent me after him to check on him. Where do you get off telling me that I negatively influenced any of the course participants?

In light of this highly unusual circumstance, I have since told people who still had problems, that I will do everything possible to ensure they obtain confident fluency of speech. Should we be unable to achieve this through telephone calls, I will take them back for personal tuition with no further fee involved.

Confident fluency? You're out of the cure business are you? Finally gave up, eh?

On that fateful Friday evening, when it was apparent to some of us that no cure would be forthcoming, I helped my dejected roommate by imparting one of the fluency techniques that I've learned. With that technique, he was able to read a whole page, using a form of slow speech, from a novel that I had brought with me, without stuttering! And, I could understand every word that he read. This would not have been possible with vowel presses.

For the record I would point out that from the outset during the evenings of the course you did not attempt to implement the methods employed on the course. My feeling is that overall you had a negative attitude towards the course teachings and not only discussed these openly but prevailed upon other participants on the course by continually expressing your dissatisfaction with the teachings. My view is that had you channelled your energy into implementing the course teachings as opposed to undermining them then you may have achieved the desired result.

Oh, you're on record Mr. Bell. On record for the whole world to see how one mindless OP caused your course to fail and prevented 19 other people from being cured of their persistent stammer by undermining your forceful teachings. This course that you have been touting for 20 years now, as being the one and only in the entire world that cures stammering, has succumbed to the influence of a mere insignificant OP. But wait, that doesn't add up. You had influence over us for 10 hours a day and I had but 3 hours a day to mingle with the group and that too in slow vowel presses (it takes ages just to say "Goodnight, I'm going up to bed.") so how is it that I was able to influence them as you suggest? Pray tell, Mr. Bell. Hey that rhymed!

Also, you weren't around during the evenings except on Friday evening; so how do you form your conclusions ... for the record?

Yours sincerely,
Andrew R Bell