| Comment Number: | 522418-06508 |
| Received: | 7/6/2006 3:23:57 PM |
| Organization: | Fermion Group, Inc. |
| Commenter: | Philip Crawford |
| State: | WA |
| Subject: | Business Opportunity Rule |
| Title: | Notice of Proposed Rulemaking |
| CFR Citation: | 16 CFR Part 437 |
| No Attachments |
Comments:
I own a small home based business in Port Townsend, WA; we market through independent distributors who are also mostly home based businesses. The Federal Trade Commission proposed new Business Opportunity Rule R511993 on April 17 contains several harsh terms that are almost impossible for us to meet. For example, it requires that we provide to any prospective new distributor the contact information of our ten geographically closest representatives, and if we are unable to do this, we must provide our entire list of representaties nationally. Our software doesn't have the geocoding necessary to provide a selected list, so we would be oompelled to turn over our entire distributor list to anyone who asks. Most of our distributors are women who work from their homes. This is a huge problem if we have to turn their personal infomation over to anyone who fills out an application, particularly as the applicant might be a shill for a competitor, or even worse some crook who is building a list to do spamming or identify theft. The rule also requires a very complex process before we enroll a distributor that seems to have been copied from SEC regulations relating to offering unregistered securities. The FTC regulations are already quite stringent, since we cannot charge more than $500 for an initial distributor packet, and we are already required to make detailed disclosures. My own company only charges $100 for a distributor packet. However the new regulation would require, among other things, that we wait a week after discussing distributor applications before accepting their money. This is ridiculous! You can buy a $5,000 vacation without waiting a week; you can buy a $50,000 car without waiting a week, you can buy a $500,000 house without waiting a week to sign a contract. This regulation will have exactly the opposite effect from the intended results. It will shut down honest businesses like mine, while giving a perfect road map to the crooks and scammers, who can request distributor lists from every company like ours in the industry, quickly solict investments from thousands of small home based workers, and be off with the money before the FTC can do anything. Please reconsider!