Complaints

This profile includes complaints for Academia S8 LLC's headquarters and its corporate-owned locations. To view all corporate locations, see Find Local Branches.

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  Academia S8 LLC

  1209 Mountain Road Pl NE Albuquerque, NM 87110

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  Academia S8 LLC

  2201 Menaul Blvd NE Ste A Albuquerque, NM 87107-1711

The complaint text that is displayed might not represent all complaints filed with BBB. Some consumers may elect to not publish the details of their complaints, some complaints may not meet BBB's standards for publication, or BBB may display a portion of complaints when a high volume is received for a particular business.

• Initial Complaint

  Date:09/02/2026

  Type:Product Issues
  Status:

  AnsweredMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  On August 6, 2025, I paid Academia S8 LLC REMOVED) $5,000 for a real estate mentorship program, including access to the "S8Tracker" software, described in the signed contract (Section 2.1b) as "an exclusive tool." The program's guarantee (Section 5.1/5.2) promises a refund if the client actively applies the strategies taught but does not acquire a property.I applied the program's methodology and documented my property analysis and outreach efforts, then requested a refund under the guarantee. The business denied the refund, disputing the sufficiency of my documented effort.Separately, I found that the S8Tracker software is not exclusive: it closely replicates, in navigation menu, layout, and structure, an existing US product called "Section 8 Pro" by REMOVED, publicly documented since December 2023 well before S8Tracker's mid-2025 launch. This directly contradicts the contract's written claim that the software is exclusive.The business also advertises its refund guarantee on Instagram as "100% devuelto. Por contrato. Sin letra chica" (100% refunded, by contract, no fine print), omitting the conditions it later invoked to deny my refund.I raised both issues directly with the business by email, including side-by-side screenshots comparing the two software platforms. The business has not addressed these points and has not processed the refund.I am requesting a full refund of the $5,000 paid, given the misrepresentation of the software's exclusivity in the written contract and the discrepancy between the advertised guarantee and the conditions later imposed.Note: I have the signed contract and supporting screenshots (software comparison and Instagram advertising) ready to submit, but the upload feature returned a repeated error on this form. I'm happy to send these documents by email as soon as a case number is assigned.

  Business Response

  Date: 10/15/2026

  RESPONSE OF ACADEMIA S8 LLC TO BBB COMPLAINT ID REMOVED

  Submitted by: REMOVED, Managing Member, Academia S8 LLC

  Attachments: Exhibit A (signed Mentorship Agreement, with the relevant clauses highlighted and an English extract), Exhibit B (the business's four written responses to the complainant: August 24, September 1, and two further responses in late September 2026), Exhibit C (record and timeline, including the complainant's own statements in her BBB submission), Exhibit D (the business's public Refund and Guarantee Policy as published on its website).

  SUMMARY

  Academia S8 LLC declines the refund request. The reasons are documented in the contract the complainant signed and in the complainant's own words, and they are set out in full below.

  1. The complainant purchased a twelve-month mentorship program on August 6, 2025. Every component listed in the contract was delivered for the full twelve months: the training modules, the tools and templates, the S8Tracker software, direct access to the mentor, and the contact network. The complainant does not allege that any item was not delivered. By her own account she completed the course and used the software for more than eight months.

  2. The guarantee she invokes is conditional, and the conditions are in the body of the contract she signed and now quotes by clause number: Clause 3.3 ("Evidence of Effort"), Clause 5.1 and Clause 5.2. They require active, consistent and documented implementation of the strategies taught: property analysis, contact with agents and lenders, financing attempts, and offers submitted.

  3. In twelve months the complainant did not submit a single purchase offer. She confirms this in the document she filed with BBB: "I didn't end up signing any offers", which she describes as "a decision based on judgment". She did not contact a single lender, including the three she identified by name in her own analysis. She did not sign a representation agreement with a single agent, including the one the business referred to her. She closed her two investment entities in December 2025, four months into the program. By her own account she stopped using the software on April 20, 2026, with more than three months of the program remaining.

  4. The software and advertising arguments appeared only after the refund was denied under the contract, and neither changes the analysis. "Exclusive" in Clause 2.1(b) describes a tool reserved for program students under Clauses 7 and 8 of the same contract. It is not a representation that no other software exists in the world. The Instagram posts the complainant herself filed say "by contract" and invite the viewer to request the full document. The conditions are not fine print. They are the contract.

  5. The complainant filed this complaint on September 1, 2026, the same day the business formally proposed three neutral mediators under Clause 11 of the contract, and did not disclose it while writing to the business the following day to choose one of those mediators. She has since declined binding arbitration, which would have decided this dispute one way or the other, and has announced further filings in other forums.

  The business addressed every one of these points in writing, directly to the complainant, on August 24 and September 1, 2026, and twice more in late September 2026 (Exhibit B). The statement in the complaint that the business "has not addressed these points" is not accurate.

  The detailed response follows.

  PART I. WHAT WAS PURCHASED AND WHAT WAS DELIVERED

  On August 6, 2025 the complainant signed, through DocuSign, a REMOVEDMentorship Agreement with Academia S8 LLC for a one-time fee of USD REMOVED(Exhibit A). Clause 2.1 lists the services: (a) unlimited access to twelve training modules; (b) tools and templates, including access to the S8Tracker software; (c) personalized assistance through direct messages with the mentor, "focused on resolving blockages and making decisions during the analysis and acquisition process"; and (d) access to a network of contractors, inspectors, agents, property managers and recommended lenders, plus a private community. Clause 2.2 provides that the services continue until the client acquires her first five properties.

  All of it was delivered, for the full twelve months and beyond. The complainant's own submission confirms the essentials: she saw a live demonstration of the software before signing ("REMOVEDshowed me the S8 Tracker on the call before I signed the contract, and that convinced me"), she finished the modules ("after finishing the modules"), she submitted questions to the mentor and received answers (September 24, 2025 and after), she received the mentor's property suggestions and voice notes (April 29 and May 11, 2026), and she used the software until April 20, 2026. Nowhere in the complaint or in its seven-page supporting document does the complainant claim that any component of Clause 2.1 was withheld from her.

  This is therefore not a dispute about what was delivered. It is a dispute about whether the complainant qualifies for a conditional guarantee. She does not, and the record shows why.

  PART II. WHAT THE GUARANTEE ACTUALLY SAYS

  The complainant describes the guarantee as a promise of "a refund if the client actively applies the strategies taught but does not acquire a property". That description is correct, and the operative words are the ones she skips over: "actively applies the strategies taught". The contract defines what that means, in three clauses that appear in the body of the document in the same type size as everything else:

  Clause 3.1 (Active Participation): the client commits to study the modules, apply the strategies taught and use the tools available.

  Clause 3.2 (Implementation and Record-keeping): the client must apply what she learns in practice and keep a detailed record of all activities related to purchasing properties, "including property visits conducted by real estate agents, communications with them, exploration and application of financing options, submission of offers, steps linked to the process, and progress on key tasks such as the legal and administrative structure".

  Clause 3.3 (Evidence of Effort): "To be considered eligible for a possible refund, the Client must demonstrate clearly and with documentation that she has actively applied the content received and executed the strategies proposed during the mentorship. This includes, but is not limited to: property analyses, contact with agents or lenders, offers made and any relevant action within the process. Refund requests will not be evaluated if the Client has not demonstrated real implementation or if she interrupted her participation without valid justification."

  Clause 5.1 then establishes the guarantee: if, "having actively applied the strategies taught", the client does not acquire at least one property during the mentorship period, she may request a review of her case, which allows for either (i) an extension of the mentorship at no additional cost, or (ii) a refund, subject to the conditions of the Agreement. Clause 5.2 sets the conditions for a refund: (a) demonstrate that she implemented the strategies taught "consistently, completely and diligently", and (b) present documentation supporting her actions, "such as property analyses, communications with agents, offers made, financing attempts, among others". The Exclusions paragraph that follows states that no refund will be granted if the client lacks the minimum resources to invest "or has not applied what she learned".

  Every one of these clauses was in the document the complainant signed with her identification number on August 6, 2025. She has quoted this same contract by clause number in every communication since August 2026 and in the complaint itself. There is no condition the business has invoked that was not on pages two and three of her own contract on the day she signed it.

  PART III. THE RECORD: TWELVE MONTHS, ZERO OFFERS

  The business reviewed the complainant's refund request in full, twice, in writing, against her own documentation. Clause 3.3 would have allowed the business not to evaluate a request unsupported by real implementation. The business evaluated it anyway. This is what the record shows.

  1. Offers. In twelve months the complainant did not submit a single purchase offer on any property, whether found by her or suggested by the mentor. This is not the business's characterization. It is her own statement to BBB: "I didn't end up signing any offers", followed by "the decision not to continue was precisely that: a decision based on judgment". The guarantee in Clause 5.1 exists for a client who executes the process and does not succeed. It does not exist for a client who decides, on her own judgment, not to execute it.

  2. Lenders. The complainant did not contact a single lender in twelve months. Not the three national DSCR lenders she identified by name in her own written analysis of May 9, 2026, which stated that confirming their terms was "a quick call". Not the four additional lenders she later identified herself, in writing, with loan minimums within her price range. No pre-approval was requested, no financing letter was sought, no application was started. The complainant's central explanation for not making offers is financing. A financing barrier that was never tested with a single lender is not a documented barrier. It is an assumption.

  3. Agents. The complainant did not sign a representation agreement with any real estate agent in twelve months, including the agent the mentor referred to her in March 2026.

  4. Legal structure. The complainant closed her two existing investment entities in December 2025, in the fourth month of the program, and decided not to open another until she had "a concrete deal", which is the reverse of the sequence the program teaches.

  5. The most advanced deal of the year. The property the complainant herself described as her most advanced opportunity was seller-financed. There was no lender involved. The owner held the property free of a mortgage and the structure she drafted called for a down payment of ten to twelve thousand dollars, within the capital she declared she had set aside to invest. Her documented contact with that seller consists of two text messages and two phone calls of nine seconds and two seconds, between May 18 and May 22, 2026. The property remained listed for more than three weeks after her last contact and was withdrawn on June 15. Her own written plan for that property listed four further ways to reach the seller: the listing contact form, the trust's attorney identified by name and address, an open house on June 1, and a bilingual agent with a message already drafted. None of the four was used.

  6. The second property. On another property her own analysis recommended an offer of twenty-eight to thirty thousand dollars with an inspection contingency and the hiring of an inspector. An inspection contingency exists precisely for the scenario she describes: the offer is made, the inspection is performed, and if the structural concern is real the buyer withdraws without risk. There was no inspection and no offer.

  7. The software. By her own account, April 20, 2026 "was the last time I used the software". The program ran until August 6, 2026. She stopped using the program's primary analysis tool with more than three months of the mentorship remaining. Clause 3.3 excludes from evaluation a client who "interrupted her participation without valid justification". This is that.

  8. The "two hundred properties". The complainant presents the analysis of roughly two hundred properties over twelve months as evidence of exceptional effort. That is one property every two days. Analyzing listings is where the method begins, not where it ends. Clause 3.3 lists what follows: contact with agents or lenders, and offers made. The complainant stopped at the first item on the list.

  9. The one third-party interaction submitted to BBB. The only exchange with a seller, agent or lender that the complainant has filed in this proceeding is a REMOVEDMarketplace chat dated May 11, 2026. In it she asks a seller for the address, the loan term and the rate. The seller answers that the loan is thirty years at twelve to thirteen percent. She replies "Thanks". That is the complete exchange. There is no counteroffer, no attempt to negotiate the rate, no proposal to increase the down payment in exchange for better terms, no negotiation of price, term or monthly payment. That same day the mentor had sent her a voice note explaining, on a comparable listing, exactly how published seller-financing terms are negotiated: a lower rate in exchange for a larger down payment. None of it was applied, to that conversation or to any other.

  10. Financing or capital. The complainant's explanations resolve into one of two possibilities, and both lead to the same place. If she had the capital she declared, then her most advanced deal required no lender at all and nothing prevented an offer with the down payment she herself defined. If she did not have the capital to operate in the price range where the program's financing works, which she acknowledged in writing in March 2026 when she stated that most lenders do not lend below seventy-five thousand dollars and chose to focus on lower-priced properties anyway, then the Exclusions paragraph of the contract applies on its own terms. In either reading, the request falls outside the guarantee.

  None of the facts in this Part has been disputed by the complainant in six weeks of correspondence. What she has disputed is whether they should matter. The contract she signed says they do.

  PART IV. THE SOFTWARE

  The complainant raises three arguments about the S8Tracker software. All three appeared for the first time after her refund request had been evaluated and declined under Clause 5.2. None of them was a condition of the guarantee, and none of them explains why no offer was submitted in twelve months.

  1. "Exclusive". Clause 2.1(b) describes the S8Tracker as "an exclusive tool that allows the Client to keep full control of her analyses". It appears in the list of tools and templates the program provides. The same contract defines, in Clauses 7 and 8, exactly what that exclusivity means: all content, materials, tools and resources are the exclusive property of the Mentor, are delivered for the client's "personal and exclusive use", and may not be resold, sublicensed, shared or used to benefit third parties. "Exclusive" means access reserved for students of the program. Nowhere does the contract represent that no other real estate analysis software exists anywhere in the market, and the complainant's reading would turn a one-line description of a program tool into a warranty about the entire software industry. The business makes no statement here about any third party or its products. Two tools built for the same niche that share a menu, a property sheet and a county panel are no more the same product than two listing portals that both have a search bar, filters and a property page.

  The complainant also saw the software demonstrated live before she signed, and states that this is what convinced her. She bought what she saw. She then used it for more than eight months. Clause 13 provides that the signed Agreement is the entire agreement between the parties. The complainant's refund request of August 2026 did not mention exclusivity. The comparison screenshots appeared after the refund was declined, as a substitute for the explanations that had not held.

  2. Support questions. The complainant cites three messages (September 24, 2025; April 18 and April 20, 2026) about data refresh and the behavior of one filter. These were support questions. They were answered at the time, with the instruction every student receives from the first module onward: the software is a screening tool, and every listing must be verified before acting on it. The complainant continued to use the software for seven months after the first of those messages. The business notes, as she concedes, that the mentor's answer in September 2025 explained the data refresh cycle and the need to confirm all data. A support question about a filter is not a defect in the mentorship, and none of these messages has any connection to the absence of offers, lender contact or agent representation over twelve months.

  3. The guarantee does not depend on the software. Even if every observation the complainant makes about the software were accepted at face value, the conditions in Clauses 3.3, 5.1 and 5.2 concern her execution of the strategies taught, not the software. The result would be identical.

  PART V. THE ADVERTISING

  The complainant argues that the business advertises the guarantee on Instagram as "100% refunded. By contract. No fine print" while "omitting the conditions it later invoked". The posts she filed as evidence answer her own argument. The screenshots on page five of her submission read, in full:

  "If in 12 months working together you don't buy or rent your first one, I refund 100% of your investment in us."

  "And if in 12 months you don't buy your first property, I refund 100% of your investment, or we keep working together until you achieve it. By contract. Reply 'DOC' and I'll send you the complete detail."

  "In 12 months without a purchase: 100% refunded. By contract. No fine print."

  Three things follow. First, "by contract" names the governing document, and that document is the one the complainant signed and quotes by clause number. Second, the post itself invites the viewer to request the complete document before buying. Third, "working together" is the premise of every one of these posts. The guarantee was never advertised as a refund for not buying while not executing.

  "No fine print" is accurate. The conditions are not fine print. They are Clauses 3 and 5, in the body of the contract, in the same type size as the price, signed with the complainant's identification number. They are also published openly on the business's website, in its Refund and Guarantee Policy, which lists the conditions, the documentation required and the exclusions for anyone to read before purchasing (Exhibit D). No different standard is applied to the complainant than the one communicated to the public: the public one refers to the contract, and the contract is the one she signed.

  PART VI. THE ALTERNATIVE OFFERED AND DECLINED

  Clause 5.1 provides two alternatives upon review: continuation of the mentorship at no additional cost, or a refund subject to the conditions. The business offered the complainant the continuation in writing. She declined it twice and demanded cash only. The offer was not conditioned on any price range: both of the program's financing routes remained available to her, including the seller-financed route at the capital level she herself defined. The complainant has at every stage preferred a refund for not executing over the opportunity to execute with the mentor's direct support.

  PART VII. HOW THIS COMPLAINT WAS FILED

  Clause 11 of the Agreement requires the parties first to seek a solution through direct, good-faith negotiation and, failing that, to submit the dispute to formal mediation before a neutral chosen by mutual agreement. The record of how the complainant handled that clause is relevant to how this complaint should be read.

  On August 24, 2026 the business answered the complainant's refund request point by point and invited her to propose two or three neutral mediators under Clause 11. She did not respond to that invitation. On August 26 she instead sent an ultimatum: five business days to pay USD REMOVEDor she would pursue consumer agencies and a public review. No five-day deadline exists anywhere in the contract.

  On September 1, 2026 the business sent its complete written position and proposed three named mediators. That same day, without notice to the business, the complainant filed this complaint. On September 2 she wrote to the business choosing one of the three mediators "so that the process can continue", without a word about the complaint she had filed the day before. The business learned of this proceeding from BBB, not from her. She then contacted the mediator's office on her own, without the business present, and negotiated a reduced hourly rate.

  On September 26, REMOVEDwriting the business's proposal to submit the dispute to binding arbitration, the one mechanism that would have produced a decision binding on both parties in either direction, and announced that she would also file with a federal agency, two online platforms and state authorities. The business has accepted the mediator the complainant chose as the neutral under Clause 11 and has asked that the mediation be held in abeyance while this proceeding, which she opened first, runs its course: one forum at a time, with the same contract and the same facts in each.

  The complaint also states that the business "has not addressed these points". The business addressed them in four written responses, each one point by point: on August 24, on September 1, and twice more in late September 2026, the last two after this complaint had been filed. They are attached as Exhibit B. The complainant had all four before this complaint reached its final notice.

  Two further notes for the record. First, the complainant's request in her supporting document for "compensation for the harm caused" has no basis in the Agreement; Clause 9 provides that investment decisions and their consequences are the client's own. Second, the screenshots of the program's software and materials that the complainant has distributed to third parties in support of her claim are covered by the confidentiality and intellectual property provisions of Clauses 7 and 8, which she signed. The business notes this for the record and reserves its rights.

  PART VIII. CONTEXT

  Academia S8 LLC has operated its mentorship program since 2022 and has served more than six hundred students. The program is educational and consultative. The mentor reviews, guides and recommends. The student makes the calls, signs with the agent, applies to the lender and submits the offer, as Clause 2.1(c) and Clause 9 of the Agreement set out. Students who executed those steps during the same period, with the same program, the same software and the same contact network, closed purchases. The difference between their outcome and the complainant's is not the tool, the advertising or the contract. It is that they made offers and she made none.

  RESOLUTION

  The refund is declined. The complainant did not meet the conditions of Clause 3.3, Clause 5.1 and Clause 5.2 of the Agreement she signed, and her request falls within the Exclusions paragraph of Clause 5. The business delivered every service it contracted to deliver, reviewed the request twice in writing, offered the continuation alternative provided by the contract, opened the dispute-resolution process the contract requires, and has answered every allegation in this complaint. The business considers the matter addressed under the terms of the Agreement and regards its position as final.

  REMOVED

  Managing Member

  Academia S8 LLC