I have been self employed for over 20 years now. I started in the entertainment industry and I am still involved in it earning a reasonable income. I dont have a pension of any sort so I was looking for an alternative, something I could build up over a period of time into retirement. I thought I had found it when I listened to Talk Sport on the radio. An excellent business oppurtunity I heard, estimated earnings of 50K, I thought, that sounds greeat and contacted the company invloved. National Legal Services, a will drafting company then sent me through some information, very professional looking and cetainly impressed me. I had to raise £7500+ VAT to buy into the buinsess and did what I have always never done, put the house as collateral to raise the money. (thats how certain I was that I could do this) I went for interview and was told it was easy enough to make 50K + per annum. I went ahead and bought into it. According to the literature you recieve leads some of which will turn into sales so I thought, yes I can do this.... According to the guy I saw,he stated that there were leadsand again I thought ok, thats great. It was an intense 2 day training course culminating in a test, you had to achive 80% in to pet a pass. I must admit I just got the 80%, but a pass is a pass isnt it. Since then I have tried to market the musiness unsuccesfully. We were told that we would have a CDROM with all the advertising on it, we could either have it printed out, or get a professional company to print it up for us. But wait, the CDROM was no longer available....Advertising costs were quite high and I had very little money left for this now. My other business is quite profitable so I decided to offset my proftis with the loss from my new NLS business. I saw the Inland Revenue wo said I could only use certain aspects of the business to write off losses, training for one. I then contacted NLS to get figures but wait again....Evading tactics.....and I could not get a figure out of them. By now, totally dissalutioned with NLS I decided to not waste anymore time or money. In the original contract with them we had to offer them a BUY BACK first before putting it on the open market. I contacted them. 30 days later I get a letter back stating that I need to consult my accountant and based on turnover they will then consider a buy back amount, this is despite them being well aware that I have not traded so therefore have nil turnover. I am npw very unhappy with NLS, as are many other of the people that were on our training course. I am now placing the business opportunity on EBAY in the hopes that I can at least raise some moneies back from this. I have also contacted NLS and told them they can bid for it along with anoyone else should they wish to. The moral of the story is If anything seems a little too good to be true...It certainly will be, there are many good franchise and business oppurtunities out there but not all of them are what they seem, NO ONE gooes around saying 'bad oranges for sale' if you catch my drift.