Australian Critics of Scientology
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[Public member]'s refund STILL unpaid

Louise Cook, Ed, Sun 27 Feb 2000


From: Ed <metasyn@aol.com>
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: Re: [Public member]'s refund STILL unpaid
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2000 10:28:01 -0500
Message-ID: <38B94281.E88B366F@aol.com>



Louise wrote:

> In 1996 [Public member] paid for the purif and then the Clear package.   The
> Clear package was about $10,600 Australian dollars and the cheque was made out
> to Malcolm Carr.  (NOT to the Church).  She bought the package because of Andrew
> McGowan's high pressure sales tactics and soon regretted the purchase.  She has
> four children and wanted the money for them instead.  She asked for a refund and
> in January 1999 came from Lismore to Canberra (a trip of approx 1500 kms) to
> spend a week completing the routing form so that she could get her money back.
> She returned to her home after being told that everything was OK and she would
> get the money soon.  Around the middle of last year she was contacted by Lara
> Meney at the org and told that yes she would receive the refund, but the org at
> present did not have the funds to cover it, she would get it as soon as possible
> however.  It is now 13 months since the completion of the routing form, and
> STILL NO REFUND.
> 
> Why did the cheque get made out to Mal Carr and not the org?  Is this normal?
> 
> Louise

        It certainly isn't standard by all of LRH's usual main
policies of Scn. The "church" would never want to allow individual
registrars or others to pocket the org's money.

        Perhaps in modern times, perhaps in Australia they have
special circumstances whereby senior management has issued orders by
which payments are money-laundered rather than being deposited into
the "church"'s bank accounts. This is probably not the case, however,
because if someone blew the whistle on such an arrangement it would be
very damaging.

        The Sea Org orgs have "tours" where reges travel out to the
boondocks and have events to "reg" people in places like Canberra for
services in Sydney or even atFlag in the US. These tours have always
had great potential for corruption, as you can imagine. I would
speculate that Malcolm Carr either was a Tours reg or impersonating
being one. 

        It may well be a policy (I'm speculating here) that Tours
reges have checks made out to them in person so that later on the org
(the higher org from which the Tours reg was sent, not the local org)
would be able, in a refund of advanced payment situation, to claim
that they didn't have this money because the Tours reg was a crook and
stole it. 

        But from what you are saying it sounds like they did receive
the money okay and it wasn't stolen by the reg. The next question is
what do they do.

        Their senior policy has to be to stall as long as possible.
They will say "sorry, your request got lost in someone's pending
basket" or some such. They will delay, delay, delay, until your friend
indicates a strong enough intention to act. Your friend needs to get
legal advice and get into action, strongly. Nothing will happen until
she does, and even then they will drag it out in every possible way.
She needs to be clear in her mind about leaving the "church" because
she will be regarded as an SP. 

        Within the "church" management has always pursued a policy of
sucking every possible penny from the field up to the top management
levels and ultimately to offshore banks. For your friend to get her
repayment, the actual payment of the money has to be approved in
several levels of OSA. The more urgent the threat, the more quickly
they move.

     Ed

(The public member got in touch with me, apparently the refund was eventually paid.)
[Scientology orgs in Australia: Canberra]