Foreign exchange trading system, FFR, Worldwide Wealth Services Ltd,
Peter Thomson, Peter Thomson International plc
David Hughes, Nightingale Conant plc
Fielding Financial Formula seminars, Fielding Financial Family Ltd

FIELDING FINANCIAL ROBOT
Gill Fielding
Peter Thomson International plc
Worldwide Wealth Services Ltd
54 Kenilworth Road
Leamington Spa
Warwickshire
CV32 6JW
www.fieldingfinancialrobot.co.uk

- Extract from sales copy
- Review
- Your feedback

Extract from sales copy:

My name is Gill and for over 30 years I've been a ‘wealth creator’.

Yes, starting from very humble beginnings I became a multi-millionaire investing in land, property, shares, options and commodities as well as many successful businesses.

But now I've found…

Something so absolutely extraordinary it's become the pinnacle of my wealth creation strategy.

It's a new technology breakthrough which is allowing me and just a few other people 'in the know' to reap HUGE REWARDS trading on the currency Markets. It's mind-boggling at times.

Not only is…

The money I'm generating – passive! (I'm doing it from my own home while I go about my everyday life) but also the RETURNS I am achieving by far exceed any returns I've ever achieved from any other of my investments during my 30 years of wealth creation.

Perhaps you know…

The Foreign Exchange Market is gigantic. There are over 4 Trillion DOLLARS worth of currency traded every day - making it by far the single biggest market you can trade in.

Currency trading up to now has been the realm of the investment bankers with their huge IT infra-structure and their large staff of full time traders - watching the market for every move it makes.

For the average person in the street…
The big breakthrough has been via technology and the development of what are called: “Trading Robots”. Now in nano seconds these ‘Robots’ are able to make the thousands of calculations required to constantly trade massive volumes and keep up with the market.

That’s what so excited me and why I have teamed up with 3 brilliant technology experts to perfect…

The Fielding Financial Robot

Review:

On the Philosophy page of her web site at www.gillfielding.com, Gill Fielding says:

"My personal passion has always been to assist life choices for people by facilitating their own financial freedom: my mission is to ‘ignite the pilot light of financial possibility' for you."

The mission of Gill Fielding has changed somewhat, because a few years ago she said that her mission was to 'light the spark of financial intelligence" in people.

Sadly, when Gill Fielding promoted the discreditable Passive Investments property purchase scheme, her efforts to "light the spark of financial intelligence" in people led to disaster.

Here's what I said about Gill Fielding's promotion of Andy Shaw's Passive Investments in the September 2007 issue of BOW, when I rated Passive Investments at zero out of ten:

Gushing reviews

It's unfortunate that there are gushing reviews on the Internet from several life coach ladies, such as Nicola Cairncross, Gill Fielding, Judith Morgan and Maria Davies. All these ladies are professional people in their own sphere, and it's worrying that they don't mention the need to have independent advice from a qualified professional person on an investment which, for many people, will probably be one of the largest they make.

Neither do any of these ladies mention the need to have sufficient resources to tide you over hard times.

Nor do they mention any caveats about the mind-boggling £35,000 6-year advance fee. Instead, they just seem to say, "Andy's wonderful, so just pay him and let him get on with it".

...

This is what the Passive Investments web site says about Gill Fielding:

"We were persuaded by an acquaintance Gill Fielding, who has now become a very good friend, that our product IS superb but that we were not explaining it very well at all. We were not showing people the enormous benefits to them which we knew were there.

We were not making clear to people what a big deal this really was.

Gill offered to explain it to people for us at some Open Day Presentations, and didn't want to be paid to do this for us, she saw our product as a way of helping her on her mission; which is to 'light the spark of financial intelligence' in people.

She then paid us the compliment of becoming our Client, going on to present us as she saw us from both the view of a Client and a friend."

Gill Fielding is a Chartered Accountant, a qualified teacher and coach. She manages "The Wealth Club" through a company called The Wealth Company Ltd and "Very soon! Gill is in a well-known TV documentary on Channel 4." Nicola Cairncross's website reveals that this documentary is called The Secret Millionaire.

This is what Gill Fielding says on the website at www.certainshops.com:

"I became a Passive Client in early 2005. I bought my first property through them in July 2005 at £82,000, they spent just £2,000 doing it up and it was re-valued 6 months later at £110,000. At that time I drew out £23K and there has always been a tenant in the property. I am now eagerly awaiting property number two.

I really like what Passive Investments do for two reasons, firstly, I know from my own experience as a Chartered Accountant and as a presenter of financial information, that the basic type of properties they buy - i.e. the 1 and 2 bedroom flats and houses, over time produce the best return on my money both in terms of income yield and capital growth.

Secondly, I don't have to do anything!

This is brilliant for me as I am a busy person with my own business and a hectic family life, with a husband and 3 kids and I just don't have the time to build my property portfolio very quickly. So I am delighted to say that I've never even seen the property I've bought from Passive but of course I have seen the profit, so I can't wait for the next property to arrive!
Gill Fielding"

Normally, Chartered Accountants are very hot on advising their clients to do due diligence, on advising them to obtain independent professional advice, and on doing due diligence themselves. Indeed, these are basic elements of the "financial intelligence" which Gill Fielding says is her mission. On this occasion, it seems to have been somewhat overlooked: the due diligence of Gill Fielding did not extend to seeing the property before she bought it.

Passive Investments went into Creditors Voluntary Liquidation on 23rd December 2009 with an estimated total deficiency of £8.6 million, most of which (nearly £8 million) was "Portfolio agreement claims" i.e. the jaw-dropping advance fees of £35,000 for six years' service in advance which customers paid to Passive - and which of course resulted in a liability to provide these services for six years.

The fact that the liquidator has included these amounts as a liability appears to show that he agrees with my statement in my review of Passive Investments that the company's accounts were incorrect as they did not show its true financial position because they did not include this liability at all.

Let us turn now to the new Gill Fielding promotion - the Fielding Financial Robot.

The Gill Fielding Financial Robot seems to be promoted by some of the biggest names. It was promoted in August 2010 with an email from David Hughes to customers of the well-respected Nightingale Conant publishing company. Nightingale Conant describes itself as "World Leader in Personal Development Since 1960". David Hughes is Nightingale Conant's managing director.

In his email, David Hughes says that he has "finally taken the plunge myself by personally becoming a member of the Fielding Financial Robot" and then goes on to ask "How about you? Are you going to give it a go as well?"

If you do want to "give it a go" then you can click on the link given in David Hughes' email, which brings up a special version of the Gill Fielding Financial Robot website, with a long tracker number in the header. Tracker numbers are normally an indication that a commission link is embedded in the page if you go on to order, so that the source of the order gets a commission on the sale.

To buy the Gill Fielding Financial Robot, you pay £998 plus VAT (which you pay to Peter Thomson International plc) and thereafter £197 a month (which you pay to Worldwide Wealth Services Ltd).

Peter Thomson describes himself as "The UK's Leading Strategist On Business and Personal Growth" and he held four seminars with Gill Fielding in London in August 2010 to promote the Gill Fielding Financial Robot.

According to an interview she gave to the Times newspaper less than a year ago in November 2009, Gill Fielding said that she had started foreign exchange trading a month previously.

Less than a year later, this novice foreign exchange trader is inviting you to "trade automatically by mirroring the exact same parameters I've developed".

So why would you want to follow a novice trader like Gill Fielding?

Gill Fielding says it's because of the returns she's getting. She says that "the RETURNS I am achieving by far exceed any returns I've ever achieved from any other of my investments during my 30 years of wealth creation ... the rate of return I've experienced in some trading months of a massive 30% (that's 30% per MONTH). I know this sounds unbelievable - trust me the figures are true!"

And that's it. Gill Fielding doesn't give you any other figures about her own results at all, not even what her average monthly returns are.

In addition, the Gill Fielding Financial Robot offer comes with the longest Terms and Conditions I have ever seen for this type of offer, running to 19 pages when I printed them out.

There are, surprisingly, very few facts in the Gill Fielding Financial Robot sales material. But I had a very large number of questions - more than I've ever needed to ask about any other offer I've ever reviewed to date - so I wrote to Gill Fielding. I apologised to her for the extraordinary number of questions, explaining that they all arose because her sales letter for the Fielding Financial Robot contained very few facts but very big promises, and also because I found her sales material confusing and, in places, contradictory, so I need her clarification and explanations.

Here are the questions I sent to Gill Fielding and Peter Thompson:

1. It seems that Gill Fielding only started foreign exchange trading about a year ago in October 2009. As a novice trader, why does Gill Fielding believe that people should follow her trades?
   
   
2. I understand that the Gill Fielding Financial Robot system is based on a robot, called the Fielding Financial Robot, which automatically trades foreign exchange, based on mathematical principles.
   
   Robots have two big advantages. Firstly, they can watch the markets around the world 24 hours a day and assimilate massive quantities of data - both of which are things that you couldn't do yourself. Secondly, and perhaps even more importantly, robots don't have emotions. They have perfect self discipline to follow their programmed system, whereas a human may become fearful or panic when a trade is losing and close the trade sooner than dictated by the system they are supposed to be following, or experience a rush of excitement when a trade is winning so they hold on for longer than their system tells them to.
   
   However, it's only sensible to rely on a robot if it has been proven to deliver consistent profits. Can you show evidence of this?
   
   
3. he sales material says that the Gill Fielding Financial Robot was developed by "3 brilliant technology experts". Who are these experts? And are they simply computer experts or are they foreign exchange trading experts, too?
   
   The Gill Fielding Financial robot sounds very similar to the Midas robot created by Worldwide Wealth Services Ltd, the company to which people buying your robot pay their monthly £97. If it's the same one, then the Midas robot was developed by the following three individuals, according to the information on the website at www.midasrobot.co.uk:
   
   "Duane, a self-confessed geek who has not only been programming computers since the age of eleven but also happens to be a qualified computer engineer. And as if that wasn't gruelling enough, he's completed the Ironman Triathlon...TWICE!
   
   George, who according to his doctor should be pushing up daisies after an industrial accident, had to leave his Site Manager position of 10 years. He then turned to the internet dabbling in affiliate marketing before moving on to Forex.
   
   AND last but not least, James, whose experience of generating passive income through international Real Estate is so highly regarded that he's personally mentored over 330 property investors from all over the world. AND not only is he a sought after public speaker, he cooks a killer curry too!"
   
   So it sounds as if the 3 "brilliant technology experts" comprise one programmer (Duane), one person who "mov[ed] on to Forex" (George) and a third person who seems to be a property investor and public speaker (James).
   
   Is this right?
   
   And is data available of the robot's performance over these 10,000 hours of testing?
   
   
4. Initially, on reading the sales material for the Gill Fielding Financial Robot, I thought that, having developed this miraculous robot, these 3 "brilliant technology experts" then sold it to Gill Fielding, because it says that "What you get is access to my trading robot, which has undergone over 10,000 hours of back, forward and live testing".
   
   On re-reading, however, it seems to me that the robot doesn't actually belong to Gill Fielding at all. Instead, it seems that Gill Fielding has probably just acquired a licence to use this robot (and to sub-license it to her customers) and that what she was actually testing (when she lost her money three times according to the sales letter) was the settings to apply to this robot. Is this right?
   
   If so, please explain how, after only about a year of trading forex, Gill Fielding has become such an expert in judging world economic conditions and the markets that she is confident enough to market her skills. Normally, expertise like that takes years to build up even for full-time specialists who are immersed in the forex world, working for the investment banks etc with all their top resources, whereas Gill Fielding says that she is "just an ordinary wife and mum" and "The money I'm generating – passive! (I'm doing it from my own home while I go about my everyday life)" so it appears that she doesn'twork full-time and she doesn't monitor world economic conditions full time.
   
   
5. Oddly, Gill Fielding says that "Market conditions don't drive decisions, maths and logic do. So if a profit can be made the Robot is on to it." So, is Gill Fielding claiming that her Financial Robot delivers profits whatever the market conditions? If so, that is a mind-blowing claim which makes human intervention unnecessary. Indeed, the Terms and Conditions state that "Trades are done automatically and do not require human intervention whatsoever [sic]". Please explain how, logically, a mathematical system can deliver consistent profits in widely differing market conditions.
   
   According to my research, the foreign exchange market is enormously complex and difficult to predict.   The world's currency markets are like a giant melting pot which is constantly changing in response to economic factors, current events and market psychology.  All of these factors affect supply and demand, and it is supply and demand which make the prices of currencies move.
   
   So what you have to try to predict is supply and demand.  But who controls supply and demand?  The biggest banks account for over 50% of all transactions.   They trade both on behalf of their customers and also on their own account with speculative trading.  The rest of the market is made up in order of size of the following: the rest of the banks; companies obtaining foreign exchange for the purposes of paying for the goods and services they use in their trade; central banks; investment managers acting on behalf of institutional investors; hedge funds; and - last of all - retail forex brokers offering speculative trading to private individuals, such as people trading with the Gill Fielding Financial Robot.
   
   You can see from this that you could not gamble with any certainty on anything.  Let us take a hypothetical example of a rumour in the news that the next set of UK inflation figures are going to be worse than expected. Inflation normally means that the price of a currency goes down.  So could you safely bet that the pound would fall?
   
   The answer is "No", because the financial markets react not only to actual monetary flows but also to expectations of changes in monetary flows: this depends on how the main players (i.e. the big banks etc) react to the facts.  So what you have to do is to try to predict how the market will react to this rumour.  That is very difficult because the banks may have already taken account of this information in their purchases and sales of foreign currency - after all, they have the tremendous advantage of seeing their customer's accounts and seeing all their customers' foreign exchange purchases and sales, so they know about changes in demand and supply before you do.  Or the banks might have expected that the inflation figures were going to be worse than the latest rumour predicts them to be, which might send the pound up rather than down. Furthermore, the banks may hold the view that other economic factors would apply to tend to push sterling up.  And, on top of all this, if you are trading a pair of currencies, you have to consider any independent or related factors which could affect the other currency of your pair.
   
   Foreign exchange markets are not only influenced by economic and political conditions, either.  They also very often move in cyclical trends, long-term and short-term.  This is an enormously complicated area which the specialists study.
   
   In the light of all these factors which influence it, how can the Gill Fielding Financial Robot be a magic formula to crack the foreign currency market?
   
   
6. Whereas the Gill Fielding Financial Robot sales letter states that "Market conditions don't drive decisions, maths and logic do. So if a profit can be made the Robot is on to it" and the Terms and Conditions state that "Trades are done automatically and do not require human intervention whatsoever [sic]", it seems to me that the sales letter effectively says that human intervention is required and that, moreover, this human intervention is the critical factor which determines whether you make profits or losses. There are three reasons why I say this:
   
   Firstly, because it seems that what Gill Fielding was doing when she lost your money three times was that she was trying to come up with the best parameters to apply to the robot. That's human intervention.
   
   Secondly, Gill Fielding is selling her Financial Robot system on the basis that in order to achieve the same results as herself, purchasers can set the same parameters that she sets. That's human intervention.
   
   Thirdly, Gill Fielding says in her sales letter that "Whenever I change my personal settings (as a result of what's happening in the world) then I email you with the new settings so you can make the same change straightaway - isn't that just perfect?" Human intervention, again.
   
   Therefore, please clarify whether your position is that market conditions do or do not drive decisions, and whether human intervention is or is not required to operate the Fielding Financial Robot.
   
   
7. Gill Fielding seems to have made an important logical error in her sales material. She says "let's say you get the rate of return I've experienced in some trading months of a massive 30% (that's 30% per MONTH)". Then Gill Fielding makes the wild, illogical leap to a figure of over a million pounds (£1,279,647) based on an initial stake of £25,000 and a return of 30% EVERY SINGLE MONTH for 16 months. Please explain Gill Fielding's justification for quoting a figure based on an ongoing consistent return of 30% which, by her own admission, she has only achieved herrself in "some trading months".
   
   The top foreign exchange traders consistently make about 10-20%. Do they know about the Gill Fielding Financial Robot? Perhaps she should tell them.
   
   
8. Gill Fielding then goes on to give figures for her Financial Robot with a lower initial investment of £5,000 and a lower (but still consistent, month by month, every single month) 10% profit rate, and she quotes the sums achieved of £15,692 in 12 months, £42,249 in 24 months, and £154,563 in 36 months. Please explain how these figures can be realistic, because surely it's in the nature of financial trading that you make profits in some months and losses in others? Or are these astonishingly consistent results from the Gill Fielding Financial Robot based on the results of one of her friends, since she says that "One of my friends has been trading exactly this way"? If so, can you provide evidence of this?
   
   
9. Gill Fielding says that people can get started with her Financial robot system with a starting bank as low as £1,000. Please explain how this can be realistic.
   
   My understanding is that, because typical levels of consistent returns are not high and because it is prudent to risk only about 3% of your bank on any one trade and because you also have to factor in the broker's charges, you will only make a decent profit if you bet with a substantial sum, and the normal minimum recommended sum is £10,000. 
   
   
10. I stated above that "it's in the nature of financial trading that you make profits in some months and losses in others". In other words, it's risky. It appears, however, that Gill Fielding doesn't think it's risky at all, because the sales letter for her Financial Robot doesn't mention one word about risk or losses. Instead, Gill Fielding uses phrases like "It's a new technology breakthrough which is allowing me and just a few other people 'in the know' to reap HUGE REWARDS ... So if a profit can be made the robot is on to it ... your £25,000 grows to over £1 million ... £5,000 becomes £15,692 ... you truly become financially free ... the ultimate way to create your own passive income stream ...The Fielding Financial Robot is the best way I can think of to secure your financial future ... the great thing about the Fielding Financial Robot is it can provide you with a monthly income or with a vehicle for capital growth ... what I would suggest however is you take out as little as possible so you leave it to compound going forward and then the returns can truly become massive in the medium term (2 to 3 years) providing you and your family with financial freedom forever ... I've made it as easy as possible for you to achieve the same extraordinary financial results I'm achieving .. you have nothing to lose and so much to look forward to".
    
    Is it correct that Gill Fielding believes that financial trading is risk-free? If so, please explain why, since I'm not aware of any other financial trader who agrees with this
    
    
11. Again on the subject of risk, why does Gill Fielding advise people using her Financial Robot to "take out as little as possible so you leave it to compound going forward and then the returns can truly become massive in the medium term"? Good risk management surely demands that profits be taken regularly, because otherwise you continually have all your money riding on current movements of the market, so you could lose it all with just one unexpected event.
    
    
12. Sadly, the small print on the Gill Fielding Financial Robot website states the exact opposite of the sales letter regarding risk. The small print says: "U.S. Government Required Disclaimer - Commodity Futures Trading Commission Futures and Options trading has large potential rewards, but also large potential risk. You must be aware of the risks and be willing to accept them .... Don't trade with money you can't afford to lose. ... Your actual trading may result in losses as no trading system is guaranteed."
    
    So, which is it - "large potential risk" as per the small print or "you have nothing to lose" as per Gill Fielding's sales letter?
    
    
13. Sadly, too, the small print effectively says that Gill Fielding's income projections for her Fielding Financial Robot mean nothing. The small print says "No representation is being made that any account will or is likely to achieve profits or losses similar to those discussed on this web site".
    
    So why does the Gill Fielding Financial Robot sales letter give income projections of achieving over £1 million in 16 months with starting capital of £25,000 and income projections of £15,562 in 12 months with a starting capital of £5,000 if this doesn't mean anything? Am I missing something here?
    
    
14. Why is there a U.S. Government Required Disclaimer at the foot of the Gill Fielding Financial Robot sales page? Surely, the site is a dot co dot uk site (www.fieldingfinancialrobot.co.uk), and it's expressed in pounds sterling, so why isn't the disclaimer for the UK?
    
    Obviously, British users might naturally think that this disclaimer does not apply to them. So, does Gill Fielding believe that it applies to them, or is it something which she believes applies only to the US visitors to the site, who I would have thought would be a minority?
    
    Surely the normal procedure would have been to have had a UK disclaimer on the dot co dot uk site, and to have set up a mirror dot com site in dollars for the US market? Can you please enlighten me on this?
    
    
15. The whole of the sales material for the Gill Fielding Financial Robot is based on people using the system being able to "get exactly the same results I'm getting with my investments".
    
    But there's a big problem here, because Gill Fielding only gives one solitary piece of information about her own trading results with the Gill Fielding Financial Robot. All she says about her own trading results is that "in some trading months" she achieved a return of 30%.
    
    That one piece of information is really no use at all, because any trading system can sometimes deliver good profits.
    
    A good trading system will consistently deliver profits - not high profits, but consistent profits.
    
    So, what people thinking of buying the Gill Fielding Financial Robot system need to know is this: what profits has Gill Fielding achieved over the year or so that she has been using this system?
    
    And is Gill Fielding prepared to provide evidence of this, in the form of her broker accounts for this period?
    
    
16. It would also be useful to have details of the results achieved with the Gill Fielding Financial Robot by David Hughes, the managing director of Nightingale Conant. In his marketing email for the Gill Fielding Financial Robot in August 2010 David Hughes told his Nightingale Conant customers that he had "finally taken the plunge myself by personally becoming a member of the Fielding Financial Robot" and he provided a link (which looks like a commission-bearing link) so that his customers could sign up, too.
    
    
17. Perhaps details of the results achieved with the Gill Fielding Financial Robot by Peter Thomson, whose company Peter Thomson International plc receives the initial payment of £998 plus VAT, could be provided, too? I understand that Gill Fielding ran four seminars with Peter Thomson in London in August 2010 for people interested in the Gill Fielding Financial Robot.
    
    
18. I scanned through the Terms and Conditions on the website for the Gill Fielding Financial Robot, which are the longest Terms and Conditions I've seen for an offer of this type. Many of the terms appear to be in favour of the publisher, Worldwide Wealth Services Ltd. One particular term which caught my attention is the Entire Agreement clause contained in paragraphs 15.1 and 15.2 of your Business Terms and Conditions agreement.
    
    Although defended by lawyers as being in the interests of both parties because it brings legal certainty to exactly what is being promised by the vendor, unfortunately this innocuous-appearing clause often catches out members of the public because they often don't have any idea what it means. So they don't know that it's a bombshell which blows to legal smithereens all the other claims and representations (whether written or verbal) which the vendor made. With an Entire Agreement clause, all that counts legally is what's written in the agreement.
    
    Gill Fielding's written agreement doesn't say anything about people earning over £1 million in 16 months. In fact, it doesn't say anything about people earning anything at all.
    
    Don't you think that this is a bit unfair, because of course the only reason people buy the Gill Fielding Financial Robot system is because of the risk-free wealth representations which Gill Fielding makes in her sales letter?
    
    The Office of Fair Trading thinks that Entire Agreement clauses are unfair. In their document "Unfair contract terms guidance - Guidance for the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999" published September 2008, ref OFT311 they say as follows:
    
    14.1.3 Consumers commonly and naturally rely on what is said to them when they are entering a contract. If they can be induced to part with money by claims and promises, and the seller can then simply disclaim responsibility by using an entire agreement clause, the scope for bad faith is clear. Even if such a term is not deliberately abused, it weakens the seller's incentive to take care in what he says, and to ensure that his employees and agents do so.
    
    14.1.4 Such terms are often defended on the grounds that they achieve 'certainty' as to what statements bind the parties. But they do so only at the unacceptable price of excluding the consumer's right to redress for misrepresentation and breach of obligation (see Groups 1 and 2 on unfair exclusion clauses).
    
    Perhaps Gill Fielding would contend that people signing her agreement to buy the Gill Fielding Financial Robot are doing so in the capacity of business people rather than as consumers, so that consumer protection legislation such as the above doesn't apply. However, I doubt that such a contention would succeed, in view of the circumstances that her Gill Fielding Financial Robot marketing material seems to me to be aimed at people who have never done any financial trading before, and who can sign her agreement on a whim with a few clicks of the mouse.
    
    Also, Gill Fielding is known chiefly as someone who gives money management advice to the public, rather than to business people.
    
    Moreover, Gill Fielding's sales letter repeatedly talks about "investment", how much money people want to "invest" and "my own personal investing". That sounds to me like language for consumers. The word "business" (or any derivative of it) only appears once in Gill Fielding's sales letter, which is where she says "Yes, starting from very humble beginnings I became a multi-millionaire investing in land, property, shares, options and commodities as well as many successful businesses".
    
    
19. I also noticed with some astonishment that the agreement for the Gill Fielding Financial Robot states in capitals that "ALL PARTIES TO THIS AGREEMENT ARE GIVING UP THE RIGHT TO SUE EACH OTHER IN COURT, INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO A TRIAL BY JURY" and the agreement goes on to state that the arbitrator is the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. Please correct me if I am wrong, but under section 91 of the Arbitration Act 1996, a compulsory arbitration clause is automatically unfair if it relates to claims of £5,000 or less, with the result that such a clause is both legally ineffective and open to regulatory action. Moreover, in its "Unfair contract terms guidance - Guidance for the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999" the Office of Fair Trading states that "If an arbitration clause is to be used, it should be free from the element of compulsion, Such a clause can, for example, make clear that consumers (or both parties) have a free choice as to whether to go to arbitration or not."
    
    So it seems to me that any purchaser of the Gill Fielding Financial Robot who wanted to sue Gill Fielding or Peter Thomson (not that I'm suggesting anyone should or would) could do so if they wanted to. Would you like to comment on this point?
    
    
20. It's good that there is a no-quibble 30-day money back guarantee for the Gill Fielding Financial Robot. This certainly gives people the chance to become familiar with your system and find out if they are happy operating it. But is this really long enough for people to properly test that it works to deliver consistent profits, bearing in mind that Gill Fielding says that she herself had "some months" which delivered a 30% profit, and on three other occasions she lost hermoney?
    
    
21. Finally, I would like to ask the involvement of Gill Fielding in promoting Andy Shaw's Passive Investments, since this has been bothering me for some time.
    
    I looked at the Liquidator's Statement of Affairs, with its long list of creditors totalling £8.6 million, most of which (nearly £8 million) was "Portfolio agreement claims" i.e. the company's astonishing advance fee of £35,000 for six years' service in advance. What surprised me is that I couldn't find the name of Gill Fielding on the list of creditors, because the Passive Investments website said that Gill Fielding had become a client of theirs, and there was also a statement from Gill Fielding on the website at www.certainshops.com that Gill Fielding had bought one property through Passive and that she was "eagerly awaiting property number two".
    
    Obviously, it can't be the case that Gill Fielding was advising other people to pay this advance fee when she herself had paid nothing because she received a freebie. Please explain?
    

    I have a residual worry that some people may have been encouraged to join Passive Investments because Gill Fielding supported it, particularly bearing in mind that she markets herself as a Chartered Account and as an investment guru and she says that "my approach to investment has always been cautious", and particularly bearing in mind that Passive seemed to me to be aimed at unsophisticated investors.
    
    Of course, it would not be "cautious" at all to fail to warn people against paying an advance fee of £35,000 without a rock-solid guarantee backed up either by insurance or a certified cash deposit. So, did Gill Fielding warn them?

    Also, did Gill Fielding advise people to obtain their own independent valuation to ensure that the properties proposed to them by Passive Investments were indeed at discounted prices as they claimed?

    I assume that Gill Fielding did carry out a basic analysis of the Passive Investment scheme. However, it puzzles me that Gill Fielding evidently came to a very different conclusion to my own, since in my review of it in September 2007 I rated it zero out of ten, not only because of the astonishing six year advance fee, but also because it was a very finely-balanced scheme which had no margin for error either on the capital side or the income side so that if any of the variables did not perform to order - as is likely in real life - the scheme wouldn't work. Can Gill Fielding throw any light on her analysis of the Passive Investments scheme?

I'll determine the rating for this review of the Gill Fielding Financial Robot when I have replies to these questions.

I faxed copies of these questions to both Gill Fielding and Peter Thomson. The next day I received a phone call from Peter Thomson to say that he would be replying in detail, on behalf of himself and also Gill Fielding, and that any errors in the sales material would be corrected. He also said that he himself has been achieving "good results" with the robot over the 7 months he has been using it.

Meanwhile, at a series of seminars around the country in November and December 2010, Gill Fielding and Peter Thomson will explain the Gill Fielding Financial Formula - Gill's "7-point action plan which gives you control of your finances" and which includes a demonstration of the Fielding Financial Robot - "the single most important wealth creation tool I've ever come across ... this tool generates massive income ... and the great thing is - all you do is copy what I am doing - how easy-peasy is that?".

I have now received the following reply from Peter Thomson:

Dear Marian

We have now had the chance to look through your letter with regards to the Fielding Financial Robot. A number of your points we had recognised ourselves and acted upon before we received your letter other points are best explained by giving you an overview of the Fielding Forex Robot.

The Fielding Financial Robot uses the Forex trading platform developed by World Wide Wealth Services for its technically minded customer base. In conjunction with WWS we have developed a user friendly customer interface with a serviced help desk and a comprehensive training package of DVD’s CD’s user manuals and live training events to service our less technicaly minded customer base. In total the Fielding Financial Robot.

The training materials teach our customers the Risk/Reward strategies which Gill has developed for the trading Robot. Depending on the Risk/Reward strategies the customer wishes to use, they input a series of settings. The robot then automatically trades using these settings. If the customer wishes to change their Risk/Reward strategy for what ever reason they change the settings and the robot will then trade automatically under these new parameters. Some customers never change the settings and some customers like to test these settings for themselves.

There is no magic formula to Forex trading, what the FFR does is give individuals a simple way to trade on the foreign exchange market and teaches them how to manage their risk and reward ratio’s.

We have totally revamped our terms and conditions since you last looked at our sales page and I hope it now addresses many of your issues. The other overall point which we have also addressed is that we no longer show any projected figures just historical figures.

Please do have a look at the website to see the changes we've made

Happy Christmas
Peter

Peter Thomson
Peter Thomson International plc
P O Box 4444 Royal Leamington Spa
Warwickshire United Kingdom CV32 6ZD
Tel: +44 (0) 1926 339901 Fax: +44 (0) 1926 339139
Web: http://www.peterthomson.com

Peter Thomson's reply and the re-vamped Gill Fielding Financial Robot sales letter addresses some of the points raised in my questions, but not enough for me to rate this offer higher than zero out of ten.

The fact remains that financial trading is high risk and Gill Fielding's sales letter does not bring this point home because it talks repeatedly about making money with the Gill Fielding Financial Robot. Neither does it bring home the point about needing to have a bank of at least £10,000 which you are prepared to lose, and only putting 2% to 3% of this bank on each trade. Indeed, the sales letter says that you can "invest ... as little as £1,000". That is fatuous, because you'd only be putting £20 or £30 on each trade, and you'd have no hope of making a profit.

The Gill Fielding Financial Robot sales letter also repeatedly talks about "investing" whereas in fact it is not investing at all - it's trading. I would have expected a chartered accountant to know the difference.

I regard the disclaimer at the foot of the Gill Fielding Financial Robot sales letter - "Any form of trading has inherent risks" - as woefully inadequate. I think it should say something like "Financial trading is high risk and you should only trade with money that you are prepared to lose".

On the face of it, it sounds like a recipe for disaster for a novice trader like Gill Fielding to be recommending to other novice traders the settings to be used for a robot.

It appears, however, that people buying the Gill Fielding Financial Robot are not told what to trade, so presumably they have to work it out for themselves, because this is what the Terms and Conditions say (with my emphases):

11.2. The Programme is an educational product only and nothing contained in the Programme constitutes financial advice in any way. Specifically, we are not giving you investment advice or recommending that you invest in any particular investments. Please also note that the examples used in the Programme take no account of personal taxation charges. We do not warrant that the Programme will be fit for your intended use and you should undertake your own evaluation exercise before you choose to rely on the contents of the Programme.

(Note that you need to be quite eagle-eyed to spot the link to the Terms and Conditions because it is in very small print on a black background below the white background of the letter - I missed seeing it at first.)

The Terms and Conditions for the Gill Fielding Financial Robot still contain an Entire Agreement clause. Perhaps this seeks to protect the company from any purchaser complaining that they relied on assurances given by Gill Fielding and Peter Thomson during the seminars. However, the verdict of Trading Standards is that such terms are unfair to consumers, which would lead to their being legally ineffective under the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999.

Finally, we have the conundrum of why Gill Fielding is selling her Financial Robot at all. "Passive income" appears to be her mantra. Under the heading “So why is PASSIVE INCOME so important?” she tells us that:

"That’s what the Fielding Financial Robot is all about.

It gives me:

What I consider to be “The ultimate way to create my own passive income stream”. It is working away whether i am awake, asleep, picking up the kids, spending time with friends and doing the things I love to do."

Gill Fielding seems to have forgotten about the time she has to spend giving both sales seminars and live training seminars, updates, email customer support and newsletters with her "current thoughts and ideas on the state of the financial markets".

If Gill Fielding is really so keen on passive income, I can't understand why she isn't simply keeping her system with the robot to herself to make a fortune from trading with a steadily increasing bank.

My evaluation exercise results in a rating of zero out of ten.

Although there is a 30-day money back guarantee with the Gill Fielding Financial Robot offer, which is an advantage, I don't think that's long enough for purchasers to get to grips with the system and give it a proper testing. Normally, with a financial trading system, you'd want to see at least six months of the blow-by-blow results, and that's not been offered here.

Rating:

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BOW Notice: A critical review which raises hard-hitting questions means that in our opinion the business model or the investment model has flaws and/or we have found inadequate evidence to back up claims about earnings, sales, profits etc. It doesn't mean this evidence does not exist and it doesn't mean that the promoters are unprofessional or dishonest. Questions arising are normally contained within the body of the review, and readers who are interested should contact the company with these questions and/or questions of their own.

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Feedback 28th November 2010 from Graham:

Hi BOW,

I bought the Gill Fielding Financial Robot on the link from Nightingale Conant. I was very optimistic and fell for the Gill Fielding sell.

I would like to make it clear having just read the review of the Gill Fielding Financial Robot that as soon as the robot is downloaded onto your computer you have to pay £197 plus VAT, which is about £ 231.

This is non refundable even if you don't use it. I myself didn't use it.

Once I had the facts of the course, which you can watch on DVD or listen to on CD, I did the most basic arithmetic and realised that I would almost certainly make a loss on the £1000 per month stake that I was prepared to start at.

Gill Fielding recommended setting the robot profit to 10% and said to expect to lose money for 3 out of 12 months' trading. She recommended setting this loss on the robot controls to 50% of your monthly stake.

Taking this into account and brokers fees both in and out of the currency trading and the forex brokers, not withstanding the £231 fee for leasing the robot and the initial £997 fee for the course, I worked out I would have lost about five hundred pounds in the first year alone ... and that was if things went well.

The Midas Robot from World Wide Wealth Services costs half what is being charged for it here and offers a 30 day money back guarantee. So the story of Gill Fielding commisioning this robot especially for her seems somewhat unlikely.

It seemed to me that the maths didn't add up to a profit for any one other than Gill Fielding and partners, so I asked for a refund.

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