QuickStart, Inc.

My husband and I were referred to QuickStart for help with starting up our business. We already had a business plan in place, and were in contact with 2 banks at the time of the first contact with Quickstart. They were going to "tweak" our business plan and help us get funding and guide us the whole way. The initial estimate was between $3-4000. We gave them the $2000 down payment and went forward. It took them almost 2 months to finish this business plan, which I already had and submitted to them. They didn't even change my cover design and used most of it word for word. They got their information from us via email and continued to add the time used to our constantly increasing account. I never knew if they actually worked on my plan or not. They would just add 30 minutes or an hour or whatever at $180/hour. During this time, we were already working with a bank and had essentially started the SBA process without the help of Quickstart and told them to stop working on our plan since we had been accepted by this bank. Our bill rose to over $5000 additional fees. We were NEVER hand-delivered a "final" edition of our business plan and WE were the ones that approached and were accepted by the final bank. NOT ONCE did QuickStart visit our business. If I were helping a business get started, like they propose, I would DEFINITELY visit the business I was working with to actually KNOW what they do! By doing this they would've eliminated a TON of unnecessary emailing time!!
We were very disappointed with them, and struggle with the fact that they make themselves appear to help new businesses when they over charge so much! Small businesses struggle as it is..........they eventually took us to small claims and won. I don't know how, with all of the documentation that I had, but somehow they won over this commissioner. AND, the owner of this business is in a lot of trouble owing back taxes, etc......