Have I discovered a pyramid scheme? What should I do?

[DWarrior]

[ QUOTE ]
get out immediately, clearly a cult

[/ QUOTE ]

fyp

[Ron_Mexico]

I realy do not believe that anyone will track you down to help you make money.

[DWarrior]

[ QUOTE ]
I realy do not believe that anyone will track you down to help you make money.

[/ QUOTE ]

I guess rb affiliates don't exist?

[PokerFox]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I realy do not believe that anyone will track you down to help you make money.

[/ QUOTE ]

I guess rb affiliates don't exist?

[/ QUOTE ]

Keep dreaming DWarrior, just don't come crying to us when you lost a bunch of $$ cause you got too greedy.

[DWarrior]

Don't wait for it, most I'll lose is $400, hardly worth crying over.

Anyway, brief trip report. They gave me all the info I was looking for and I will be evaluating it this week. The promises of mercs and million dollar homes for 10 hours a week have stopped. The stuff I asked for supposedly comes in the mail once you pay the $200, it's part of their starter package. I haven't paid them a dime yet and just asked to borrow it. I read some of the stuff during the meeting, found that their materials buy-back policy is (paraphrased) "if an IBO quits, their sponsor is required to buy back all the materials they purchased at a reasonable price", not sure what a reasonable price is, but it's crappy in 1 of 2 ways: either I'm forced to buy back all the materials IBOs I recruit purchase when they leave, or anything I purchase will only be bought with pennies on the dollar. The guy said I couldn't take the guide, but he emailed me the PDF version. It looks the same length and contents as the actual booklet, so I believe it's legit. I also saw him downloading it off their site in the references section (members-only)

Also, I'll be attending one of their conferences this saturday, I guess it'll be similar to the one in the Dateline program. This will be the first time I invest any money into Quixtar and the price is...$12. I'll write more about it if you guys are interested, but if they try to upsell me or anything, I'm gone (not buying any of their motivational tapes).

Another thing, the books they want their IBOs to read are all legit stuff, some of which I've read on my own before: Think and Grow Rich, RDPD, As A Man Thinketh, 7 habits, etc. So far they gave me a couple of their motivational CDs to listen to and one book, "Pro-Sumer Power" by Bill Quain, basically more about Amway/Quixtar stuff. It's pretty good, but nothing new to me, so I don't get too excited over that stuff and definitely won't be purchasing any of it.

[kfellmy]

Okay we are all poker players here. I am sure most of us are winning players and can tell when we are being bluffed. Not all the time we are correct, but most of the time we can sniff it out. Did it feel like a scam? Did the guy talk too slick (about vague ideas) and make you think it was a scam? Did the webpage seem like a scam? Then it's a scam. That was a variant of the "it's a duck" theme. But it works in this spot.

Here's a scam I pulled once: I used to gamble at pool. I was in a bar playing a guy (that I knew very well) and had to give him a spot for him to play. He lost three sets and said enough. So as my money man and I were looking around this super hot gal walks up to us and starts talking about pool and sex. This gal had the body to work at Hooters and the brains to match. So I went up to the bartender and got two club sodas with olives and ice. Looked like two martinis. I said "I am glad that is over and I can get down to some serious drinking," and with that I chugged them. By the time the glass came down from the second drink, the bimbo was running back over to the player I had just beaten. I got him for two more sets.

Now what the hell were we talking about again?

[Sniper]

DWarrior, Bills and others...

Quixtar is not a SCAM (per se)... it is a MLM program. It is Amway's Internet arm.

However, bottom line... the Average GROSS income for "active" Quixtar IBOs in 2005 was $115/month... (since there are a few at the top making significantly more than this, the MEAN is obviously lower).

For anyone actually trying to build this type of business, which is primarily recruiting other IBOs, the COSTS are pretty significant... and you are then OBLIGATED to spend time training the people that you recruit... more COSTS & TIME.

So basically, in order to simply reach the 50th percentile of all active distributors, where you will be Grossing less than $100/month, and have costs significantly higher than $100/month.... your NET will be negative [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

If you manage to perform better than 99.83% of all Quixtar IBOs (including those with already substantial long term businesses), you will have reached the Platinum level and your reward will be an Average GROSS income of roughly $47,000/YEAR, BEFORE factoring in SUBSTANTIAL COSTS and TIME in training, developing and educating your downline... not to mention your own costs in training & educating yourself (+ benefits) [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

You will at this point also be living this business at all times... and your reward is netting less than minimum wage. You will of course be dreaming of moving into the magic 0.01% of IBOs... and beyond...

You are also working against the fact that any intelligent person you might want in your downline, quickly equates Quixtar with Amway... and EVERYONE has already heard about Amway. They also started marketing Quixtar in 1999.

Do your due diligence!

[heater]

This is 100% Quixtar/Amway. I used to work there. No, I wasn't a distributor. I had an actual job at their headquarters in Ada at what has been renamed Alticor because they wanted to distance themselves from the Amway name.

Hendricks is the name of one of the heads of one of the nine or so main downlines in the company that go back decades with Amway. There is about a 0% chance that the guy you spoke to is actually "Frank Hendricks". He is just telling you that for now so that when you look at the site you will be that much more impressed. They do stuff like this all the time.

There is nothing illegal going on here. Quixtar/Amway sucks, though and there are a million better ways to make money without annoying the hell out of your friends and family. The products that you buy directly through Quixtar are way overpriced as well. They'll keep telling you that the PV/BV (points volume/bonus volume, I believe) more than makes it up for it, but believe me when I say that it isn't true. I know their compensation plan forwards and backwards.

[heater]

[ QUOTE ]
Don't wait for it, most I'll lose is $400, hardly worth crying over.

Anyway, brief trip report. They gave me all the info I was looking for and I will be evaluating it this week. The promises of mercs and million dollar homes for 10 hours a week have stopped. The stuff I asked for supposedly comes in the mail once you pay the $200, it's part of their starter package. I haven't paid them a dime yet and just asked to borrow it. I read some of the stuff during the meeting, found that their materials buy-back policy is (paraphrased) "if an IBO quits, their sponsor is required to buy back all the materials they purchased at a reasonable price", not sure what a reasonable price is, but it's crappy in 1 of 2 ways: either I'm forced to buy back all the materials IBOs I recruit purchase when they leave, or anything I purchase will only be bought with pennies on the dollar. The guy said I couldn't take the guide, but he emailed me the PDF version. It looks the same length and contents as the actual booklet, so I believe it's legit. I also saw him downloading it off their site in the references section (members-only)

Also, I'll be attending one of their conferences this saturday, I guess it'll be similar to the one in the Dateline program. This will be the first time I invest any money into Quixtar and the price is...$12. I'll write more about it if you guys are interested, but if they try to upsell me or anything, I'm gone (not buying any of their motivational tapes).

Another thing, the books they want their IBOs to read are all legit stuff, some of which I've read on my own before: Think and Grow Rich, RDPD, As A Man Thinketh, 7 habits, etc. So far they gave me a couple of their motivational CDs to listen to and one book, "Pro-Sumer Power" by Bill Quain, basically more about Amway/Quixtar stuff. It's pretty good, but nothing new to me, so I don't get too excited over that stuff and definitely won't be purchasing any of it.

[/ QUOTE ]

The top distributors in Quixtar make more money selling motivational materials and tickets to these massive seminars than they actually make through Quixtar itself. I'm talking about people like the Yagers who make six figures MONTHLY through Quixtar making more than that selling books and tapes on the side. The reason is that Quixtar never sees a dime of that money. This is a completely separate business that top distributors run. They actually run their own MLM's within the MLM. If somebody sells you a copy of Think and Grow Rich for $12, they purchased it for $11 from their upline who purchased it for $10 from their upline and so on and so forth. You need to reach Platinum status as a Quixtar distributor before your upline will even let you know that his is happening. The tape and CD business has been HUGE with these guys for decades.

Amway tried to put a stop to their distributors side businesses back in the '80s. They knew that their distributors were sucking their downlines dry selling them books and tapes and they wanted it to end. By then it was too late. They had let it go on too long and the top distributors were making too much money on the side. Every one of their top IBOs threatened to take their downlines elsewhere if they weren't allowed to continue selling books and tapes. Amway caved because they had to. The main reason that the Amway name went down the tubes really had nothing to do with Amway itself. It was distributors ripping people off with all of this other overpriced crap.

The DeVos' and VanAndel's don't really run their own company anymore. The distributors do. Publicly they all put on a happy face, but the truth is there is a lot of animosity there. They both need each other in order to maximize profits, though, so they just keep chugging along.

When you go to the conference, keep this in mind when you take a look at all of the books, tapes, CDs, DVDs, etc. being sold. It's amazing how much of this stuff these guys are able to push on people. Not one penny of what is sold there is actual Quixtar revenue. Ask some questions about this. I bet you'll get some pretty interesting responses. Also ask to see some hard numbers regarding Quixtar income. Go one or two levels upline and tell them you want to see checks for the last six months. They probably aren't very big.

[heater]

I just read that Dateline story and it looks like they cover the whole books/tapes/seminars thing pretty well. It looks like you already understand this part of the deal. Just keep it in mind because they will be trying to sell you as much of this stuff as possible.

If you decide not to get involved with the business, ask them about buying some SA8 and L.O.C. Those are a couple of products actually manufactured by Amway that are really, really good. They are definitely worth a try.