Tom Hess Music Corporation

Not to mention forced reading of certain no music books

Hello my friend, what a good catch, they were trying to conviced me to enroll but i´m a experience flamenco player, ´ve just wanted to know his course i was curious about his playing fast methond but as you mention all of these things, i can´t imagine myself paying for something we´ve already known, so thank you for your review i put his email as a spam great :)

I’ve been in Tom’s programs for 5 years. It has turned into a straight up cult.

Many of his long time and most successful students and even instructors are leaving. Tom Hess has a real retention problem on his hands and it’s due to his narcissism, hard sales tactics, and diminishing value over time. He doesn’t allow his students to read any books not recommended by him, he doesn’t allow his students to be friends with anyone who he says ‘competes’ with him...so any famous artist that has online lessons or live events and loads more success and credibility as a player and teacher...like Joe Satriani or Steve Vai, you are required to unfollow, unfriend immediately. Tom doesn’t have to spy on you to find this out because the most loyal butt lickers in the community will do it for him and call you out on the forum.

Any RAND is required reading as well. Tom bans anyone who disagrees with him or his philosophy’s. He targets the young, the inexperienced, those who are desperate for success, as well as foreigners who look up to the American dream and manipulates them by stroking their egos, giving them faint praise, but then humiliating them by highlighting their stupidity thus reminding them why they need him. He is a master manipulator and teaches you how to manipulate others.

He hasn’t no leadership skills whatsoever and it’s easy to see by the way he talks down to his students. He has a scarcity mindset rooted in fear which is why he is so afraid of his competitors. The group has to be closed for fear of others finding out he’s using and stealing their material and reselling it and passing it off as his own in events. I’m sure Tony Robins and many others could easily sue him for stealing and repackaging their material.

Tom has no new ideas...they are just repackaged ideas...and they certainly aren’t worth $200, $300 or even now $400 a month...none of his students know how to calculate an ROI to see if paying him $10,000 a year in events and programs cost is worth it. Some are struggling to get by living in their parents basement, yet making thousands a month from teaching because 60% of their income is obligated to THMC programs. It’s the worst economical decision ever...and they can’t see it. Half the reviews on his page are from people that have left or have been kicked out, but he gladly uses them to promote his business.

If you want to leave his program you have to write him an email explaining why, to which he’ll the. Make you post on the forum to be ridiculed and peer pressured to stay. He recordings you receive are outdated and filled wother rants by Hess demanding that they pay $3000 to buy a ticket right now to his event or they will never be allowed to come to another event again...ever. He makes up stories of offensives that others have done in order for the community to disavow them and not reach out and maintain friendships.

If you remain friends with that person...you are a traitor and banned. His own guitar teaching school failed last year when his best employee and former student left him. His school was already failing. He claims your success as his, and he blames you for your failures.

What a guy?! Bottom line...stay away from Tom Hess and any of his affiliates. He is not teaching anything new or different then others. But he will stretch out how long it takes you to learn it because you’re paying monthly.

His goal is to keep you for life and never advance you past an okay guitar player or teacher. Most people start to figure out his scam about 3 years in.

Many of his former members have left and formed a much better community...much like it was when THMC first started. I’m thinking about joining when I leave THMC for good this year.

This review was extremely helpful. It really gives an insight on how Tom is just a marketer and a scammer with no real value.

His playing is mediocre at best. From what I saw on you-tube, his focus is on technique and sounds too robot.

I basically agree with this review.

I took the correspondence lessons and what I got was a whole bunch of it was just guff. I don't doubt that, one on one, he is a great teacher.

Unfortunately, what you get is a set of three or four "lessons" every month (or three weeks, or whatever) that are generic.

Essentially, the movies are clips of him teaching someone else who might, if you are lucky, have a similar problem to yours.

Most often, the problem you have is not the one his pupil has and you are left scratching your head.

Often it vaguely relates to your problem but it deals with a completely different set of weaknesses (i.e. the actual pupils) rather than yours.

The advertising says that he deals with your specific problems. This is basically impossible to achieve because he has never seen me play. He has never seen what my picking hand is doing.

He has never seen whether I play with a lifted picking shoulder, for example (which is very bad, by the way, don't do it unless you like operations). He has never checked the tension in my fretting hand. If you seriously want to improve at guitar, get yourself a good one on one teacher with a proven track record.

Tom Hess is probably a fine example of that (if you can afford him) but I would steer clear of his correspondence lessons. Tom Hess is all about clever marketing.

You are one funny character dog!

Honest question: please explain the reasoning behind giving you a refund? did you pay $4k up front?

Or were they lessons you had already taken? Does his policy say "no refunds for any reason" or does his policy say, "here are the criteria for refund and you didn't meet them?" I'm really curious.

Honestly, I know it's harsh with your brother but you still took the lessons right?

So Lori, is your real name Tom Hess?

Thanks for posting this - I am sure you have helped a whole bunch of folk from getting snared by Hess. I have a similar background to you and was curious about the course but was put off by the marketing and the lack of transparency about the cost.

It is very similar to the marketing used for (universally useless) forex courses. Good luck with extricating yourself and your money from this guy.

Tom Hess lessons in one picture :

https://www.noelshack.com/2017-10-****888486-tomhess-compil.png

Don't let this scammer take your money!

I signed up for this a few years back. Was contacted by one of his assistants and was given some *** material I could find anywhere on the net.

Now I thought I was going to be taught by Hess, not some "Assistant" The whole program was a complete joke and he never replied to my emails. I quit within a couple weeks. Huge waste of money and time. His assistant asked me for a sample of playing, I sent him some scale runs because he never specified what he actually wanted?

I never got a response.. Just the usual snake oil salesman gimmicks.

Tom Hess is not even licensed to operate a business, much less to teach music. He’s a scammer through and through. I hope the Tom Hess Music Corporation goes down soon because this sort of dishonest enterprise shouldn't have any place in our society today.

Thank you as I was thinking about his program but before I buy anything because I am on disability and all I can do is music and write songs so I don't have money to waste, I need to know if its legit or not. I am 56 years old, people cannot believe when I do an open mic night etc.

and do am original it is actually mine they ask is that the new artist on the radio? I tell them no that is my song so that makes me feel good.

So I appreciate your post. Also in closing a lot of the information I read on his advertisement I already know.....take care anonymous

He's also a pretty average - to poor and very limited guitarist .

He only really knows about basic shred rock - generic '80s power rock .

Poor choice of teacher !

Dude I had a similar thing happen to me. I told him that I was moving and wanted to save money and would like to cancel for the time being (i also quit my day job).

And he completely blew up and told me i was making a huge mistake! Ranted on about me thinking "I know everything about the music industry" and that I "should never half *** things in life." It was quite insulting! After a couple more charges to my account, i kindly asked him to quit charging me and he finally did.

but godam what a ***. Guy needs to get off his high hoarse

Hi

How did you quit? How did you cancel the payments?

Can you send me the materials?

I was in Tom's EGTIC program for about a year and while there was some decent material there was also some horrible advice that looked more like filler then anything else.

First off he has two levels.

One for $147 which is basically useless. All you get is a couple monthly recordings and you don't even have access to the forum which by the way is not some secret formula or whatever he claims it to be. It's been a little while so I forget the exact claim. This is not in any stretch of the imagination worth $147 a month.

Don't waste your money!!!

So for $197 you get the forum included.It's simply a forum just like anywhere else but it's full of other teachers. As with any forum it's good to be able to bounce things off of other like minded people but it's not anything special by any means.

You also get a few additional recording a month. It's basically Tom talking about some kind of subject.

Again some material is good, useful info and some is just useless filler.

Now where the program really lacks is any kind of real mentoring. The only personal help you get from Tom is a thread on the forum where you can post your questions. If you are lucky he will answer your questions.

Many times though they never get answered. Then he does a monthly call where he takes a student and reviews their business with them. This sounds great but you won't get your turn for months down the line and then no follow up except for waiting many months again for your turn to finally come up again.

I've been in three other different guitar teacher training programs and are still in two of them but all three had teacher mentors that were there personally mentoring you through every step.

As many of these mentors would attest to I was contacting them almost every single day with questions and they all responded each and every time within 24 hrs. Two of these programs were a fraction of the cost of Tom's but leaps and bounds much better programs. Also some of Tom's sleasy tactics turned me off. He would get the teachers to put bad reviews on the competitions products, bombard other sites with promoting his products and just simply unethical business tactics.

Aside from coming to the conclusion that I was paying a good chunk of money for no results, Tom's way of doing business and using his teachers to do the dirty work convinced me to get out of there. I can't believe I actually stuck around for a whole year. Now while I was in EGTIC I also joined the correspondence lesons course. What correspondence?

There was none! Where I got at least a little value, maybe $20 a month worth as opposed to $200 that he charged, out of EGTIC the correspondence lessons were a complete joke. I would get a bunch of random lesson sheets on say scales for instance with absolutely no instruction at all. Great I have scales but how do I study them?

I'm paying for lessons not a resource of scales and chords. I also got a few videos like ones you would see on youtube, actually they were youtube videos and then a couple testimonial videos. Why would he send me testimonial videos if I'm already a student? Didn't make any sense at all.

Basically it looked like him or one of his workers spent about 5 minutes just picking some random stuff to send out. Nothing was even close to being tailored for me. It was a bunch of general ***! Worst waste of money I've ever spent.

I would have been far better off just using Youtube to teach myself. Total garbage! While a couple of his products are ok I ordered these books called The Beginning Guitarist Books level one and two which I was going to use with my students. Again complete garbage!

They were just songs that you would get from any note reading book like Aura Lee, Irish Song, Happy Birthday etc... but what was worse it there was no notes, it was all in tab and there was no recordings at all. So while he accuses everyone else of stealing from him it looks as though he just picked up a Mel bay or Hal Leonard reading book, tabbed out the parts and called it his own. At least add in some recordings or something to play along with.

What garbage! This just reinforces his whole way of doing business. The most hilarious part of all this is some of the other teachers were ranting and raving about these books. The only conclusion I could come up with is that they were so brainwashed by Tom that they were actually convinced that the books were great.

Anybody that has played for even 6 months could see these books were garbage! So overall Tom's approach it to do the least amount of work, go overboard with hype and way under deliver when he had your money. You want Tom's best stuff? Stick with the free stuff.

He uses this to bring you in although his articles are usually riddled with links and offers. If you have been thinking of trying out any of his programs I highly suggest to stay far away or you'll be very disappointed and a bit more broke at the same time. Don't waste your money!

Shop around and find a real program with a real mentor that actually cares about your success! The only thing Tom cares about is his wallet!!!

Signed up for Tom Hess's lessons even though I got a distinct "Car Salesman" vibe from him. He does provide a bit of value, but nothing great and definitely not worth the money.

His business model is that he has created a set of lessons and some software to automatically send these canned lessons to you. It doesn't matter if you tell him that you want to learn "X", he just puts you on the lesson plan that is closest on his software, so that he doesn't have to deal with you personally.

Just look for a local teacher to get a tailored lesson plan. This guy is a tool.

Tom is above all a businessman and marketeer. He uses psychology and marketing tricks to generate his business.

He is only secondarily a guitar teacher. He does provide some value so is not a total scam merchant but he definitely operates on the borderline.

The products he produces are mediocre at best. He relies on convincing his students that they are the best thing since sliced bread.

His students treat him like a religious guru and repeat his words and beliefs parrot fashion. Sample quote from his forum: "if Tom sold *** in a box I would buy it!" That quote is not actually far from the truth.

He is an incredibly manipulative individual and uses his status to influence people to do what he wants - mainly give him lots of money and agree with his extremely right wing political views.

So basically you weren't happy with the product and tried to get a refund. Did you follow the refund policy?

No, it seems like you went out of your way to try and extort and blackmail the company. Now you are upset because the company didn't cave in under pressure from you?

PS, I put that I was from Flag Az in the location line. Where is lisbon wisconson???

Shred on, Steve