| Comment Number: | 522418-02354 |
| Received: | 6/15/2006 2:01:44 PM |
| Organization: | XanGo Corporaton Independent Distributor |
| Commenter: | George Chiu |
| State: | CA |
| Subject: | Business Opportunity Rule |
| Title: | Notice of Proposed Rulemaking |
| CFR Citation: | 16 CFR Part 437 |
| No Attachments |
Comments:
I appreciate the FTC's concerns in protecting the consumer in regards to misrepresentation and fraudulent consumer practices by individuals and certain unscrupulous companies. However, your proposed rules will UNFAIRLY target people like myself, who are following current guidelines from legitimate direct sales companies such as XanGo Corp. I am a retired pharmacist who joined XanGo about one year ago, and currently is supplementing my retirement with a consistent residual income from XanGo. Not only am I thrilled about earning a part-time income by promoting this product, but I am more excited about helping others achieve good health and in most cases helping them get off prescription medications. XanGo has given me the opportunity to help others and that in itself is the greatest benefit of Network Marketing; because only by helping others to succeed will I succeed. This is the crux of good network marketing companies. By imposing new regulations that would hinder our methods, will no doubt reduce our chance of success significantly. Specifically, your proposed " 7Day Waiting Period", will give our prospects suspicion on our motives, force an impractical and uneccessary delays, not to mention the additional record nightmares to manage along with followup. You see, in our business spontaneity is one of our assets; i.e. if I meet a certain new prospect while in another city, I simply tell them about our product, the potential health benefits, and the business opportunity. If they are interested to join, they simply can give me their information, fill out an application, and become a member immediately. By imposing a 7 day wait, not only will I lose that person, but will have a lot of difficulty to followup with them. In all sales, if you give people time to "think about it", the odds are they will NOT proceed after the wait. This rule would effectively STOP our business in its tracks! Current policies by our company will give the prospect a 30 day trial of our product with a refund if not satisfied, and that is more than fair. This policy from XanGo has worked and has given people the chance to try our product and evaluate the opportunity with no negative consequences. Earning claims can be misrepresented by unscrupulous people, providing potentially inaccurate information, while legitimate companies will provide accurate information. So there is just too much room for lying and cheating. References: it will be almost impossible and tremendously impractical for anyone to generate 10 references if say, they were traveling in an out of town area. Again, this is highly impractical and an "Invasion of Privacy" for others to have them give out their personal information. Litigation Reports: lawsuits are an everyday thing in the U.S. and ALL major companies, good and bad, have had litigation. Not only is this a stupid rule, but it UNFAIRLY casts a shadow on any company, whether they have come out the winner or loser....the public does not need another "road block" when listening to ANY opportunity, such as our legitimate business--this is NOT RELEVANT, and can open up a "can of worms" again, to hinder our business. Any lawsuit is public record, for anyone to find out, anyways, so what is the point of this? Just another way to discourage people from consideration of trying our product and the business opportunity. In summary, your proposed regulations will hurt ALL GOOD COMPANIES, such as ours from helping others to start their own home-based business---the core of the American dream and the biggest tax base, the middle class of America. Network Marketing is growing and helping millions of people such as myself achieve that DREAM. I hope the FTC will realize that your proposals will snuff that dream for so many people and hurt good companies such as XanGo Corporation which already has very stringent guidelines for their distributors to follow. Sincerely, George Chiu