I was close to buying SEO Elite but than I checked a few of the testimonials and found a few of the top ten SERP examples were not in the top 300 anymore. I've seen a number of techniques work to get sudden jumps but it seems like Google catches on pretty quickly and top ten becomes history pretty quickly. Is this typical of SEO Elite
SEO Elite is just a link building tool, not a magical solution to top rankings. You still need to do your own research and analyze your site to optimize for the search engines. This is especially true since algorithms change constantly and your need to adapt accordingly. I personally would not use such tools, but for beginners it might be something good to learn the whole process with.