| Comment Number: | 522418-05580 |
| Received: | 7/2/2006 9:47:58 AM |
| Organization: | |
| Commenter: | Thomas Scott |
| State: | FL |
| Subject: | Business Opportunity Rule |
| Title: | Notice of Proposed Rulemaking |
| CFR Citation: | 16 CFR Part 437 |
| No Attachments |
Comments:
I could not read the entire rule due to time contraints. My experience is with regard to Amway in the 1990's... a multi-level or pyramid type marketing plan. We were given continuous promotion of the large sums of money available to be made if we worked hard enough. 5 years and $50,000 later (in losses), we realized the percentage of people that make even minimum wage income is miniscule... maybe 1 in 1000. I'd have better spent my time working at the 7-11 as a clerk... or certainly taking some overtime shifts, since I am a pharmacist and was earning over $30 per hour at that time. My wife and I spent probably 1000 hours a year of our time as well... that's another $30k+ a year worth of my time lost. We were told to recruit new distriburtors since that was were the money was... millions could be made, we were told and shown by the lifestyles of the diamond distributors. Retail sales of product was mentioned, (if someone doesn't want to be a distributor, leave them a catalog or ask your family) but the retail sales rule was never enforced. After 5 years, I'm embarrassed to admit that I took so long to realize that 70-90% of the income made by higher level distribors was from the sale of business support materials, aka "tools". We were told purchase of these was "voluntary", but if you wanted to be part of the group, it was not. Pressure to purchase books, tapes and seminar tickets and packages (including hotel) was very high. The business end and profitiability of the tools business was kept top secret, but not hard to figure out if one is interested in seeing it and paying attention. Here's a real good insight of the types of things that went on... and from what I read, are still giong on today... http://www.amquix.info/probst/index.html... Any rules that disclose more information to the potential recruit and provide a real world accounting and description what's going on would be a good thing and I would support it. Thank's for reading and considering my comments.