Comment Number: 522418-06407
Received: 7/6/2006 9:41:06 AM
Organization:
Commenter: Ronald Trebec
State: OH
Subject: Business Opportunity Rule
Title: Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
CFR Citation: 16 CFR Part 437
No Attachments

Comments:

I have been an IBO with the Quixtar model for 6 years and with VMDirect for 4 months. The experience has been great. I have learned a great deal about people and business. Quixtar has been more than above board and helpful. I am finding the same to be true with VMDirect. There are several opportunity out there that are less than fair or forthright and should be monitored closely. This type of business allows every person the opportunity to experience the free enterprise system this country is based on. I believe network marketers should be held to providing adequet information to prosective new owners. If the business model is legitimate, they will be motivated to do this as a way to avoid wasting time with uninformed IBOs. We are compensated on how well we help others succeed. This disclosure should include realistic income potential at each level of success. I provide the company statements of income potential as well as my own findings at the levels I have achieved. The 7 day waiting period although it sounds good, would have significantly hurt my earnings in the beginning and I have seen similar losses to others who took that long to make a decision. In fact, many have wrongly decided to join solely because they invested so much time into the decision. They ultimately wasted their time and money. Today's readily available information makes researching your decision quick and complete. I would also submit that if the opportunity offered a 30 day money back "gaurantee", the waiting period would be an injustice to each prospect. The individual will learn more about the business from the inside, than in any external research or waiting period. If after 30 days of "insider" learning proves to be disappointing to them, they can get 100% of thier investment back. The money back guarantee would be a more more effective law than the waiting period. Regarding the providing of references: this would require some privacy violations. In addition, we all know that only positive references would be provided to prospects. Some less moral companies may even have "designated" references, designed to paint a get rich quick picture of the opportunity. This would be very misleading. Providing a litigation list to prospects would be fine as long as the FTC was willing to provide a document stating which were found to be unfounded or frivilous. I would also submit that if this was adopted for this industry, it should be required of all companies to thier customers, investors and prospective employees. All businesses have litigation records. It is just an unfortunate testimate of our culture. To date I have found both Quixtar and VMDirect to be exactly what they present and my income has been in line with thier claims. My recommendation would be to use the Quixtar model as the required method of business in this industry. They have a proven track record, and are large enough to have statistically significant information on what is effective and fair and what is not. Please feel free to contact me for further infomation