Amway/Quixtar

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A consumer lawyer we know has been fielding reports and complaints about Quixtar. To see what she has to say, check out Pyramids Belong in Egypt. Of course, Amway and Quixtar also have their defenders.

Barbara of Arlington, VA, writes:
I have paid $100 to be an Independent Business Owner for a group called Quixtar. This group is a subsidiary of ecommerce.com. Also, the same person that started Amway -- started this company as well.

You can imagine how the speal goes: you start out as an IBO -- get a handful of your friends involved and get them signed up. Once you get them signed up you then make a commission off of their sales. There are 3 ways to make commission -- by signing up Independent Business Owners (IBOs), by signing up Members or by getting clients.

I tried to be optimistic at first for the sake of my boyfriend. However, since this thing has started a lot of what was told to me is no longer true.

First the company used to have a hard copy of their catalog. Now everything is done by the internet --thereby alleviating the catalog (no paper trail that way). Also, upon signing up to be an IBO, I was told that I would get some paperwork that would help me start my business -- guess what no paperwork -- again everything is done through the internet.

I have already paid my money but have not really signed any contracts with them yet. The only thing i have done is registered through the internet upon giving my $100 fee. I clicked on some items that said I understood the conditions -- but have not signed anything -- does this legally bind me to anything.

J.Y. of Anderson, SC, writes:
I attended a meeting where this man told me and another guest of a corporation being formed that is setting up a virtual mall on the internet with a start-up date of 9/1/99.

He gave me two web addresses to go to for more info which was www.countdown 9199.com and e-zshopping.net/ with an I.D. word of Freedom and password of e-zshopping.

He also gave me copies of documents telling about purchasing from this virtual mall with a pin number. The cost of the kit is $160 but the documents said the price of the kit was $151. My questions are whether or not any of this is legit.

The opportunity is to be on the ground-floor, with an existing base of approx. 2 million members at launch date coupled with the experience and backing of top companies, the Devos, Van Andel families and the Amway Corp. The idea is to use the internet to purchase anything from this mall you could possibly even think of plus cars and groceries.

After you receive your $160 kit which is only sample products of Amway and order sheets and brochures to explain Amway Corp, you are supposed to contact as many people as you know and try to sell them the kit so they can become a Independent Business Owner and they in turn sign up as many people as they can, so on and so forth.

When you get your Indep. Bus. Owner's pin number, you give this pin number to all the people who signs up under you, and anyone else that signs up under your people is suppose to receive a percentage of the sales of merchandise purchased on this new virtual mall. They say if you sign up 6 people, the estimate amount of money they predict is $25,000/annually.

Can you give me advice about joining this new organization and is all this going to happen?

Our advice: Take the $160 and throw it out the window. Who knows? If it's windy enough, there's always a chance that it will blow back in, along with even more money that just happened to be blowing by. The chances of this happening are considerably better than your making $25,000 per year in a multi-level Internet marketing scheme.

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