Euroevents and Travel, LLC

Do you have any documentation?

Pochacco, you might try contacting the Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts branch near you (look it up at http://www.starvingartistslaw.com/) and talking with them.

Those emails may be sufficient. If you feel up to sharing those, please forward copies to me at [email protected] . If you have to cut and paste those, please keep the header information in what you select.

Hmm, it rather sounds like the plagiarism thing was an attempt to scare you off pursuing payment--very slimy.

Vedy vedy interesting...

VERY interesting. I, too did some work for Jeni Larson. I had e-mailed over an agreement which she never faxed back - in its absence I (stupidly) decided to do the work anyway, which only added up to about $6 or so since it was a very small chunk of web copy paid at $0.05/word. (This was before I started charging what I'm worth for web copy!)

After hearing nothing for months, despite repeated follow-up e-mails, I have essentially dropped the topic since it's only $6, but am irritated to know that other writers have been preyed upon by these people.

I've actually heard of these people!!

I don't have any experience writing with them, but I did "apply" to be a wedding planner because they were looking for people in Europe who were bilingual. It seemed like an opportunity for a semi-steady job, which was better than nothing.

Their application was super, super weird, and I actually had to take a personality test to ensure I wasn't too domineering or too passive, or whatever.

When they didn't get back to me, I didn't really care because another job fell into my lap. Then, right after I registered here, actually, they sent me an email asking me to pay for a roundtrip flight to Colorado where they could "train" me to become a wedding planner. They seemed really fishy to me. Also, even after filling out an extremely intrusive application, they sent a list detailing the type of people they were not interested in working with.

It kind of reminded me of the "noble" scams -- kind of like the fools running the cheatingresearch.com website.

Of course this is my experience with a completely different facet of their operation. After seeing how they conduct business, though, I wouldn't agree to write for them.

Sorry that happened to both of you!!

Jim McCotter & Roland Ripamonti

To everyone who reads this:

A new blog has been set up on Jim McCotter and there is a section on Roland Ripamonti...we want information posted about who these guys are and how they treat people...so that those in the future can be warned of their conduct. It is a brand new site.

Please go there and post your experiences and tell anyone else you can think of who has dealt with these people to go to the blog and post their experiences. This is VERY IMPORTANT...we want to find as many people as possible who have been effected by these people so others don't have to receive the same treatment. Here is a link to the blog site...copy and past into your browser if it does not jump to the link.

http://jimmccotter.wordpress.com

Thanks.

Steer clear of Euroevents and Travel, LLC

Hello everyone, I know Jeni Larson very well and while she does not want to post any details to avoid legal action she is certain Roland Ripamonti and his family would pursue, I do want to share a few things I know were going on. The Ripamonti’s are horrid people. For the few months she worked for them, Roland was incredibly abusive and controlling, including even bugging her computer and personal laptop and making absurd requests, monitoring her every move. She was requested to forge documents and lied to repeatedly. Even before she left, her email was taken over by Roland and her password changed so he could read all emails first and relay them to her. The hours he expected of her were insane, giving her out-of-office duties that involved an hour long drive, and then calling her into his office for these freaky “intervention like meetings” where he insisted that stay an extra hour at the end of the day to make the time up that she was out of the office running his errands!!!!! He even told her he wanted to see her medical finance records after she was sick and in the hospital because he thought it was his business to know. He would tell her to send an email, word for word, and then ridicule her because it wasn’t what he wanted. When she left, he had still not paid her everything he owed her and no matter how much she called or emailed, she did not receive a single word. He would make weird comments to her to put her down- telling her things like, “you don’t communicate like most normal people” and then smile at her like a creepy pedophile and say that was the reason he needed “to monitor all her emails.” This included personal emails folks!
He had her working on some marketing project for his Maverick Jets. She spent days on the project. A day after she presented it to him, she walked in on he and his son on a conference call with Jim Cotter and heard Roland taking credit for all her work- details and all, as though he’d slaved over it for days.
For anyone who is interested in being one of their “wedding coordinators” after coming across his ridiculous mind-interrogating monster.com applications: Jeni had referred me for this job the first week she worked for him and after speaking with him for 20 minutes on the phone, I was so creeped out, I told her there was no way I was working for these people. I told her to run.
She later told me that Roland and his sister (sorry, I don’t know her name- just remember that she was from italy too and now lives in Colorado near her brother) would tell people they were hired, then insist they pay their own way (flight, lodging, food, etc) for “training” and all along, already knowing they had no intention of making them a coordinator. Instead, they would let them come from wherever, put them through “training” which consisted of parking them at a computer at the sister’s house and doing work for free. Then send them home and tell them they have such and such location for their coordinating and can get started on doing the research for that area. Research meant creating databases of wedding locations, etc- at least 8 months of work for free! If they insisted on getting paid, they were offered around $8 US dollars for every 50 locations/professionals, etc they put into the database. Obvously, no one would stay for longer than a few weeks once they realized they were making 20 dollars a week for full-time work and they’d quit leaving roland with a few free additions to his database and an easy out for not having to hire them.
She also later found out that he had formerly hired personal assistants- all had left without a word. He pinned it to being unable to find good help, but it was obvious that it was due to his abusive and unstable behavior.
This is just a fraction of the things I remember were going on while she was working there. You can bet if I remember more, I’ll be back to post, but I think you get the idea.
Charles

wedding planners??

Hi, I am deeply concerned by your messages about Eurotravel. I was just about to sign a contract with this company to plan my wedding in Portugal. Yours is the only place I have found anything negative about the company. Are they not trustworthy in planning a wedding? Please respond asap. I'm freaking out a bit. Thanks!

Response to euro events and travel comments

Congratulations on your wedding! Based on my own personal experience with euro events, I cannot recommend them. There are plenty of wedding planners that can offer you a wonderful wedding experience with plenty of positive references.

As for the writers I left unattended with my quick departure- my deepest apologies. I was mr rippamonti's employee for an extremely short period (it did not take me more than a few weeks to realize this was not the company for me) and when I was given the chance to depart unexpectedly sooner than my notice, I of course took it. I had assumed roland (co-owner of euro events / world weddings with his sister) would inform everyone that I had left but later learned this was not the case.

If any writers are still unpaid from euro events, know that the emails we exchanged can be used as legitimate contracts for collection.

Jen

Amalia, congrats on your wedding!
I recently applied to be a wedding coordinator with Euroevents for Portugal and after completing their very odd personality test I was scheduled for a phone interview with the Italian manager in Milan. I already had my doubts because they sent a fact sheet stating I would need to pay my own expenses for training, be paid as a freelancer (commission only), agree to not have any other job and to sign an agreement to NEVER compete. When I called at the appointed time (6am my time!) he was on another call on his cell and asked me to call back in 15 min. I asked if there was a landline I could call since calling a cell in EU is very expensive and he said no. When I rang him back I requested to re schedule for a time when he might not be occupied he advised me the only time he had available was while "travelling". I told him I was not prepared to have an interview with him under these conditions and before I could say another word he told me it was not my place to tell him how much attention he could give while driving, that if I was given an appointed time to call I should not complain about where I'm calling to (there was wind noise and sound quality was poor) and then he said they were no longer interested. Point is, after reading these posts, it explains a lot. They want freelancers but expect them to work like their own personal peons.
Anywho, some interesting info you should know about the Portugal section of their site: the hotel names are not the hotel's real names eg the "Castle Hotel" is the Belmonte Palace, "Grandiose Palace" is Lapa Palace just to name a couple which begs the question - why don't they use the right name?? If you are still looking or need assistance with your wedding I can recommend a local company -The Wedding Company.pt - run by 2 very hardworking clever ladies that will no doubt service your every need.
Best of luck to you!

Good to hear your experiences...

It was really great find your experiences about the EuroEvents and Travel...I have just been selected and contacted to make a phone interview with the Italian Manager Luca Viscardi (if anyone is interested I can give you his phone number obviously a cell phone!!!) and after hearing of your stories I will drop this job straightaway...
To be honest the fact that there is no contact number on their web site and no address of their office sounded a bit funny and even the emails Luca Viscardi sent directly to my address did not have any contact number...Dodgy people!!!Luckily there are forum like this to help out...