24/12/2009. Interview with the admin of SantiVentures

BEWARE! THIS PROGRAM IS PAYING SELECTIVELY! PLEASE DO NOT INVEST!

Hi everybody! For the first update today I’d like to show you this recent interview I received from the admin of SantiVentures. That’s a long term HYI program with a number of investment plans all running for 150 business days offering interest rates of between 1.3%-2.8%. Just one of the plans returns your principal, but for a fuller explanation of how they all work then you can see my original review published here.

“1. Hi Vikor. Please introduce yourself to the readers of MNO and tell us if it’s your first online investment program and if you have any experience in this field.

Hi Paul and all the readers of MNO. My name is Vikor Pepler and I am the administrator, or as businessmen say, the CEO of SantiVentures online investment program. I am from Switzerland where I used to work as an executive assistant in one of the local banks in Bern. In 2002 I went self employed to try and make my way to financial independence. I have little experience in HYI programs but I suppose I am skillful enough to deal with this sort of thing.

2. Please tell us more about the investment plans offered by SantiVentures?. Do you think they will be sustainable in the long run? What payment processors do you use?

I can’t really do better than quote the following table:

Lite                           $15 – $800               1.30%
Standard               $800 – $2,500         1.60%
Professional         $2,500 – $10,000 2.30%
Premium            $10,000 – $25,000 2.80%

I am absolutely sure these plans are sustainable and I hope as an experienced investor one will agree with this. You already mentioned in your review that a member will get his initial deposit back upon maturity if he upgraded for a Lite plan. I’d love to offer the same for the other plans but I can’t. So why make promises which I have no responsibility, and can’t keep, right? However a member can make more than one individual Lite deposit. It will be allowed and so far a few members chose to opt for this choice. Long term investment presupposes compounding percent which is also available to our members.

At the present time SantiVentures accepts LibertyReserve, PerfectMoney, StrictPay and AlertPay payment gateways. We tried to combine both anonymous irreversible style systems with some of the verified e-currencies. Both our SP and AP accounts are fully verified so therefore (hopefully) SantiVentures is not going to get into payment difficulties.

3. Do you think that you might prevent a lot of potential investments and investors by having such expensive plans? If they were cheaper to join, wouldn’t that ultimately lead to more investors depositing more money?

I have a counter question. How can I measure an expensive plan? Ok, I can conduct a short comparison with a certain number of other programs. But I would rather not do that as there are too many short term investments out here. That’s a different level and we cannot compete with them. SantiVentures is aimed at those investors who prefer a stable and sustainable approach. It’s about waking up in the morning, grabbing a cup of coffee and taking care of the things you want, all without rushing to your laptop to check whether your withdrawal was processed or not as tomorrow the program might go down with the money you just put into.

Of course, if entry points would be lower, say $50 deposit under a 2.5% daily interest we would possibly have a much bigger flow of incoming active investors. But I wouldn’t like to have a member who entrusted his money to me knowing this is not something I can deliver.

I can’t guarantee this right now but it is planned to lower the entry deposits for each of the plans sometime in early 2010. In other words it might get a little cheaper to join so SantiVentures might get some extra benefits.

4. How secure is the program’s website? What measures have you taken to protect your self from malicious hacking attempts and DDoS attacks? Who is your hosting provider and how satisfied are you with their performance?

Honestly speaking no website is completely secure, do you agree? The purpose is to minimize the risk of any attempt of doing harm to your digital property.

a) We use only licensed software
b) We take care of installing updates in a timely manner
c) Backup’s twice a week which are then securely stored offline with very limited access only to me and our tech guy.
d) SantiVentures is hosted on a dedicated server with enhanced DDoS protection provided by DDoSWiz service.
e) I am not afraid of maintenance or problems involved with maintenance. It’s more comfortable to suffer a few hours of downtime while having your server properly updated than facing greater problems afterwards.

5. Tell us also about the script you are using. Is it licensed? How would you rate it from an admin’s point of view. Also, tell us why you are not using SSL encryption. Don’t you think it’s necessary?

SantiVentures is using a licensed Pro version of GoldCoders software just with some minor changes implemented by GoldCoders. It’s really hard to rate it in terms of functions or simplicity as I usually use it a few times a week for statistical and performance figures. But I have never heard of any trouble with that from our operator who makes use if it on a daily basis. So far so good.

6. What advertising strategy are you using to promote SantiVentures so far? How big a part have the members played in this? Are you satisfied with that level of support and do you think you could improve it?

Our members are playing almost 80% percent of our advertising structure. That’s just perfect. As it’s much more convenient to have a member who knows exactly about why and what he gives money for and we don’t need to force anybody to invest it. Say I had a nice bargain when buying an I-phone 30% off the regular price. My friend wouldn’t hesitate to go for the same bargain shortly as he knows it’s worthy. Word of mouth if I am correct.

We have an extended advertising budget for 2010 to increase traffic and PR. I personally would love to see more blogs like MNO taking part in promoting SantiVentures, interviews and reviews is a strong marketing technique which I think we all have to take advantage of.

7. What level of customer service and support do you provide? What is the most effective way to communicate with you if I have some questions? Tell us about your Live Chat feature as well. What hours can I expect to find you there each day?

You can contact our support via email or live chat. Joel is too busy now so the hours you can make use of the Live Chat are very limited. But we promise 2010 will be completely different. However those members who happened to turn to us for help will readily confirm the highly professional level of our support service.

8. I am also interested in your postal address. What would I find there if I called during business hours? Is it a “virtual” managed office for collecting mail or would I find a real working business staffed by SantiVentures employees? What about the fax number? If I sent a fax with private information how can I be sure about who is going to be seeing it at the other side?

First of all let me say that the address, PO and fax are 100% real and managed by real people. Any mail or fax has private status so you don’t really have to worry about security. If you would like to make sure of our company documents please request them through our mailing form. I can’t think of any reason why I should post legal copies of the company documents right on the website. At any rate this is very careless and silly. As far as I can see placing legal papers for public use becomes no more than a marketing strategy for many HYIP’s which at a certain rate reflects the way they care about the company privacy.

I won’t lie by saying we have a rented office in the central tower of the city with employees and secretaries all over the place with pleasant smiles and happy faces like “How may I help you today, Sir?”. All I can say we already have a small but strong legal basement in the first place and readiness to develop it especially in the upcoming year. We are also planning a dedicated phone line which is supposed to help people with general questions, not like “Please call back later or send us an email” type of service.

9. Many investors traditionally get extremely cautious around this time. Christmas often throws up a lot of scams from admins as well as a lot of Hit ‘n’ Runners from the investors. How do you intend to deal with both of those?

All I can say is that I prefer to stay away from scams at any time of the year. It’s not just a seasonal problem.

10. What can you tell us about the outside business interests of SantiVentures? What are you doing with investors money to generate such enormous profits? What evidence can you offer on that?

Mainly ForEx managed accounts. ForEx has really been the greatest breakthrough in the last years. It imposes risks but that’s the image of how the market theory has to function. I don’t trade members’ money myself, once in 3 months I pick up new traders and new trading strategy to reduce the draw down effect. Like 6 years ago I set a strong affiliate network in GRAWE insurance company which pays out nice commissions. That was my first successful venture that I haven’t given up till now. And lastly I came up with the idea of investing money in online booking systems. Hotels, tickets, car rental, whatever. Might be a surprise but if you took a closer look at turnover dynamics you would probably doubt if there ever was an economic downturn.

Our stats and reports will be available to public soon. Just let it some time.

11. And finally, if you had just one opportunity to address potential investors of SantiVentures and tell them why your program is better than the rest, what would you say?

It’s hypocrisy not to admit there are great investment programs over Internet. You will never be the best as there is always going to be someone else with some better skills in a particular field. SantiVentures has a very careful approach to planning. This means we all think twice, I always think twice before I go further. What else is SantiVentures is one of the truly stable programs. Those are supposed to be positive features.

Thanks for this opportunity to get interviewed on MNO. My sincere regards go to you, Paul, and your readers.”

Thanks a lot as well to Vikor and I’d also like to wish him and his members every success for the coming New Year.

That’s it for the moment guys but don’t stray too far as I’m not quite finished yet. I’m not expecting that much news today but I will be back in a couple of hours anyway with whatever news updates there are. I guess all the HYIP admins will be in bed early waiting for Santa Claus! So stay tuned for that and see you all then!