Straight up, no B.S. – for Ruben

here is the deal, straight out no bull shit

It is a pyramid scheme!

However you want to judge that statement is totally up to you.

Technically a pyramid scheme by itself is illegal in the US, but the way companies get around that legality, is by selling a product or service and by using the term “bonus” instead of recruitment commission with the scheme. (smart thinking huh)

There are a lot of comapanies that do this, and this is one of them.  So that means, it is all about recruitment, more than any thing else.

There are a few things you should know before buying your first position.

Yes, you read it right, “buying your first position”, because you need to cough up $500.00 just to get into the scheme.  They would tell you that you would have to think like a business man, and like any other business, you would have to dish out some sort of capital or colateral and this registration fee is just that.  It is at least way cheaper than paying for an actual telecom company’s franchise fee. (see how easy they can twist that to make some kind of sense)

I got into this because the residual income looked realistic (at that time). Then I realized that the residual income from your customer’s monthly bill does not kick in till you make some sort of amount, minus all the processing fees, so you would probably end up with around $13.00 in your first year from your residual income.  The calculations they show you at the presentation looked simple enough, but try calculating it yourself, it may not be as what you would expect, not to mention the “points” system which makes calculations even more complicated.  But if you have tremendous recruitment skills then the sky is the limit, so they say 😉

The most promising product I saw in my first encounter with this company was the wireless or cell phone affiliates. My thought was, since almost everybody walks around with cell phones, maybe there is really a market for this.  Now, unlike other affiliate programs, the company does not pay out cash upon sale. (quite frankly, if you can find an affiliate program that pays out cash on sale would be better) They somehow calculate your customer’s monthly bill with an “x”% add it up, and again, minus all their processing fees, then and only then will you end up with some kind of residual income which stops after your customer’s 2 yr contract with the wireless carrier. That is right, you loose these cell phone customers of yours after their 2 year contract expire.(contrary to the presentation they show you) That means you get nothing once their contract is up.  You would either have to have them switch to a different wireless provider or have them extend their contract through you.

Most wireless customers very seldom like to switch wireless carriers.  Usually  they would only like to upgrade their phones and keep their existing plan, since the latest plans usually cost more. The company does not give you that option, once the customer extends their contract through you, that means less discount on the customer for a new phone and a new service plan which ends up  having your customer pay more than what they used to. In short,  you just screwed your customer just so you could make pennies out of their monthly bill.

Personally, I just don’t like treating my customers that way, so I just help them deal with their wireless service provider direct and get the most discount possible.

The presentation they will show you is quite convincing but a bit miss leading.  It will say that you get your residual income as long as your customers continues to use the service, month after month, year after year, but apparently that only applies to the actual VoIP product and land line and DOES not apply on the cell phones and satellite TV.

You should also expect some expenses, these expenses may be small but they surely add up if you don’t have a plan before getting into the scheme.

There is that annual fee of $150. This fee is for maintaining your position and customers. Just think of it as a commemoration of the $500 you dished out on your first day on the job 😉

There are the quarterly conventions which may cost you around $500 – $1000 for registration, hotel, food and travel.  These are mostly motivational speeches from well trained sales people, and they are good at what they do.  They could tell you to jump over a bridge and you might not even doubt them, that’s how good they are.

There are also the magazines, dvds and websites that they sell that is supposed to help you in recruiting, which can run from $100 – $300 depending on how much you go through them monthly.  Again, the magazines and dvds are more to serve as inspirational or motivation tools to keep you going since you have to handle a lot, and I mean a whole lot of rejections in this field.  They are quite entertaining and educational, but will it help your recruitment skills? that might be a different story.  The website needs a lot of tweaking. They are expensive and very confusing. Fancy, but confusing.  A customer would have to at least go through a minimum of 5 click just to buy the product.

I tried to make it simpler of the customer and built my own website which cost me 1/4th of what they were charging but they warned me about it and told me to take it down within 24hrs or I loose all my customers and commissions. (which might not have worth much come to think of it)

And then there are the weekly meetings, which usually goes for around $20.00 plus your time and gas, depending on the location.  These meetings are like the church mass on sundays,  you could practically memorize the whole ritual once you have gone for a about a couple of months. Even the jokes are scripted.  This is also where you could bring your prospect to be grilled by the pros.  I have seen how they grill prospects,  they put them in the spot, smash some kind of sense in them and make them bleed that $500.00.  If your prospects are your friends, they might stay away from you for quite some time 😀 at least you get your a recruit 😛

The company’s products and service are useful if not a necessity, because if you think about it, who walks around without a cell phone anymore, and almost every home has a phone of some sort. This scheme can either make you lots of money or loose a lot if you let it, if you really get into it all.  This scheme is very limiting in the ways you could advertise. Anything you can think of like posters, banners, kiosks at the mall, websites that you don’t pay them for are subject for approval by the company.

So, for “kabayang” Ruben, if you think this is worth spending your retirement money and time on, then I’ll send you my contact info so we could talk some more. 😀

Hopefully the people that told you about this company that you call “friends” did tell you about all these technicalities.

This has no intention to encourage or to discourage readers to sign up with the “company”.  My only intention is to show what is under the hood.  To give you a better look of what you are getting into.

The “company” is legit (at least for what I can tell, they even got Trump to endorse it) and people claim they are making money out of it.  I only give you my 2cents worth so you could see if you could.