| Comment Number: | 522418-02444 |
| Received: | 6/15/2006 9:00:40 PM |
| Organization: | |
| Commenter: | James Gallina |
| State: | IL |
| Subject: | Business Opportunity Rule |
| Title: | Notice of Proposed Rulemaking |
| CFR Citation: | 16 CFR Part 437 |
| No Attachments |
Comments:
Hello: My wife and I started our home-based business 10 months ago. We came to this business for the wonderful health benefits of the natural juice that we and our family received. While the health aspects are truly a blessing, the added and critical benefit for us personally, is that we are now Independent Distributors for this as a business as well. We are making much needed extra money which is helping us to offset schooling costs for our children and offset medical bills. This direct selling venture contributes significantly to our family finances and to our many friends and family members personal finances to whom we have introduced this to as well. For the first time in our lives we have something that we can call our own without having to be completely dependent on a company for income and security for our family. We have personally grown as business people, have gained personal and professional confidence in our community, we can now give more to charitable organizations, and have a sense that the "Ameican Dream" is actually available for us. While we can absolutely appreciate the FTC's Mission and for FTC’s consumer protection priorities, our concern for its impact on legitimate direct selling companies like the one we are involved with, XanGo. We do understand that there are fraudulent groups out there, but this particular rule unfairly targets legitimate direct selling businesses such as XanGo on the following points: · Seven-day waiting period: o Casts the direct selling plan in a negative light o Record keeping and administrative problems o Unnecessary delays o Impractical · Elimination of the $500 business threshold: o Forces the majority of direct selling companies to comply with other provisions of the proposed rule that are more appropriate for businesses requiring a greater investment than a direct selling sales kit · Litigation Reporting: o Unfair in that it does not distinguish between winning and losing lawsuits o Irrelevance of the reporting of almost all litigation regardless of the outcome · Earnings Claims: o Difficult to collect required data o Targeted “bad actors” will not provide accurate data, while legitimate companies will · References: o Impracticality of finding the “10 nearest existing sales people” o Privacy and safety issues o Possible corporate liability for ID theft Please understand our position and personal financial circumstances as you work on this ruling and the impact on those of us who are working hard and playing by the rules. Sincerely, Jim and Denise Gallina