Searchers Beware: Dishonest Buy-Side Advisor - Reposting

Hi all, I wanted to share an unfortunate experience and encourage all in the community to avoid my mistake. I engaged a buy-side advisor about a year ago. The services were pitched as follows: give us a small deposit ($4K) upfront, and we'll source deals on your behalf. If we find you a winner, you pay a reasonable finder's fee. If we fail to source a winner, you'll be refunded your $4k. Sounds great to me...I executed the contract, but the firm's performance was quite lackluster. I received ~15 emails of potential companies to meet with, 12 of which were far outside of my mandate. Of the 3 owner meetings I joined, they either had little to no interest in selling or were not within my target range. The year engagement came to a close this past September. I reached out regarding my refund. After a few weeks of emails back and forth, the founder informed me that the $4k would simply be 'credited back' to cover a future finder's fee if this firm acted as a buy-side broker for me in the future, per the tricky wording in the contract. This was disingenuous and not at all what was discussed, both in calls and in email content shared at the beginning of our engagement. I've spoken with several folks in the Search community who had similar experiences of grand promises with little to no progress with this group, so I'm certainly not alone, unfortunately. I'll admit: I am at fault for not reading every word diligently in the contract, so that's a lesson learned on my end. I was contacted by this firm after my first post via email, threatening arbitration due to my post. I deleted that post, but I still feel it's important to share a word of warning for the whole community so that others aren't taken advantage of. Please DM me if you'd like more information about the group and its founder. I'm sure there are incredible buy-side advisors and firms out there, but there are some that aim only to take advantage of folks.