| Comment Number: | 522418-05569 |
| Received: | 7/2/2006 4:15:21 AM |
| Organization: | M2CGlobal |
| Commenter: | Douglas Eide |
| State: | TX |
| Subject: | Business Opportunity Rule |
| Title: | Notice of Proposed Rulemaking |
| CFR Citation: | 16 CFR Part 437 |
| No Attachments |
Comments:
Dear FTC Decision Makers, I can not support your new proposed rules concerning business opportunities. While I can understand that you wish to make it harder for businesses to make fraudulent claims, you will unfairly catch legitimate businesses using the proposed new rules and make it unreasonable to recruit new distributors. HISTORY: I have been selling various products for many years. This has helped my family survive economically and without this extra income my family would have suffered dramatically. These sales have also helped me to become more outgoing and a better overall American citizen, as I have contributed to the country and the economy. FAIRNESS: The proposed seven day waiting period is unfair and casts all direct selling plans in a negative manner, to the point that many will not even consider any to be a valid manner of conducting sales. Also, the record keeping and administrative requirements will cause unnecessary delays and excessive record keeping requirements for home businesses, which already have burdensome requirements. These are unfair and should not be implemented. LITIGATION REPORTING: I must say that your new requirements on litigation reporting are extremely unfair, since it does not distinguish between winning and losing lawsuits and settlements without an admission of liability. This automatically portrays a taint on the direct sales business. Do other sales organizations have to make such a report of litigation to their potential sales force? Of course not. REFERENCES: Since most direct sales companies do not have geographical sales areas, it would be very difficult for the distributor to know, let alone comply, with the 10 nearest distributors proposed rules. It is just impractical. It would not be reasonable to expect all distributors to constantly update such a list, even if a company was continually updating their database based upon geographical areas… But more importantly, I want to make the sale and recruit the new distributor, so I do not want my prospects to get a list from me, as to alternative sales people, since they are my competitors for the sale or the recruit! You would not impose such rules on other types of sales forces. PRIVACY: Also disclosing 10 distributors’ personal details would certainly violate the spirit if not the laws concerning privacy. If a distributor provides a potential customer or a potential recruit with their personal info, that is okay, but I don’t want other distributors to be disclosing my information to anyone, especially potential criminals, where I have no choice is the disclosure of my information. Would you want your adult children’s info disclosed without their knowledge to just anyone? No, it doesn’t pass common sense. SUMMARY: While I appreciate your goal of reigning in fraudulent programs, your proposed rules would unfairly catch legitimate direct selling businesses in its scope and cripple my legitimate business efforts in a very serious manner. Respectfully, Douglas Eide,