By ex Scientologists.Wonder if this would work with any of the groups we deal with?
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jeta/spb/spb-faq.html"Is it dangerous to ask my money back?
Not that we know of. We do know however of cases where the cult tried to intimidate people, by telephone mostly. Like "You will lose your Bridge to Total Freedom forever if you go on with this" or "You are connected to a suppressive person. You don't want to become a SP yourself, now do you?".
So..., there's nothing to worry about really: the CoS doesn't offer the "Bridge" at all, and a "SP declare" by a cult that tries to get everything you own is in reality your ticket to, ahem, (total) freedom.
3. What kind of money can I get back?
That's not total clear(tm) yet. Sofar it was quite easy though to obtain money that was
made as an advanced payment,
stolen (yes, this does happen in 'orgs'),
paid for e-meters,
paid for unfinished services,
paid for services that went bad and got requested back by registered mail within three months after delivery.
"Donations" to the International Association of Scientologists (IAS) is a problem we were not able to solve yet.
4. OK, what must I do to "get the show on the road"?
Let's assume you've done an advanced payment:
Click here to download the draft advanced payment letter. The letter is in plain-text format, you can copy and paste the text into a text-editor of your choice.
Type your data (name, address, accountnumber etc.) in the places marked with square brackets [ ] .
Give the "org", or whatever Scientology entity you're addressing, 14 days to come up with the money in case it's located in the country you live in, or 21 days if it's located in another country.
Print the letter, sign it, make four copies.
Send the letter by registered mail with "signing for received" by the addressee, don't through away the voucher of the postoffice.
Send a copy of the letter by normal mail.
If you've a fax available, fax the letter.
If you have e-mail, e-mail it.
Put 3 copies + the voucher in a map.
Wait and enjoy the next 14 or 21 days, during which time you can be sure that the "org" will be "enturbulated".
5. What to do if the "church" doesn't respond?
Send it another letter, after 14 or 21 days, stating that you will hand over the matter to a collecting agency within a week without warning. Include a copy of the first letter and charge them the costs you made sofar.
Always send your letters to the Scientology entity itself while addressing the Director of Special Affairs (DSA) and the person in charge of the Scn-entity.
6. What to do if the church sends me a waiver, do I have to sign it?
No, you don't have to sign the waiver if the payback is about items mentioned in question 3.
You can sign it however in case you don't have other (money) claims with other Scientology entities, or if you don't wish to get other kinds of money back. Generally speaking, signing does speed up the "running" payback process, though.
The waiver usually contains the statement that you accept to not practice Scientology anymore, anywhere. Although this statement most likely can not be enforced by law ("freedom of religion"), we advice people who want to continue with Scientology, in for example the "Freezone", to remove the statement from the waiver before you sign it.
7. How much time, overall, will all this take?
Four to six weeks within your country, six to eight weeks outside your country. That is, if the Scientology entity doesn't want to take the risk of being sued by a (your) collecting agency. Which has been the case in all of the hundreds of paybacks we dealt with sofar. Nevertheless..., you must be prepared to contact a collecting agency and pay it, in advance mostly, its costs. Costs which you can claim back from the Scientology entity.
9. Is the SPB the only organization around that can assist me?
Certainly not. We know of many others that can help you too. For instance in Denmark there is a guy called Robert Dam who already helped out a lot of people. In the US we know a lady called Valery.
Everone who wants to help and wishes to be mentioned here... please let us know.
10. Do you charge money for your work?
Not really. We do have expenses, of course. That's why we ask you to voluntary donate 10% of the amount you get back. This is not a very good business strategy, we know. We only received appr. 1000 euro in total over the last year while more than 1,000,000 euro was paid back. Which was just enough to keep the service up and running (website, computer, printing, stamps, phone, etc.).
There's no-one who makes a living out of this, and we want to keep it that way. We like to thank the people here who did support us, it's much appreciated.
11. Will the SPB still exist next year?
We have no intention to stop with it for as long as the cult is separating people from their money. Actually on the 17th of October 2005 we will celebrate our first year of existence.
12. Who are the people behind the SPB?
The SPB is an "alliance" of ex-churchies, critics, freezoners and ronsorgers. We are (mostly) located in The Netherlands and can be reached at scientologypayback@yahoo.com"
