| Comment Number: | 522418-04550 |
| Received: | 6/27/2006 11:44:52 AM |
| Organization: | PSmith Enterprises/Quixtar |
| Commenter: | Philip Smith |
| State: | IN |
| Subject: | Business Opportunity Rule |
| Title: | Notice of Proposed Rulemaking |
| CFR Citation: | 16 CFR Part 437 |
| No Attachments |
Comments:
I applaud your efforts to eliminate the sleazy, get-rich-quick scam artists. They do everyone a great disservice. I do have some opportunities for improving this proposal, which I offer below. 1) Re: 7 day wait - Eliminate the 7 day wait requirement. Decisions are made everyday throughout the business world without this requirement. It is illogical to think that any business would require a waiting period. It is insulting to the decision maker - and to the potential partner. With Quixtar, for example, one can get his money back for 180 days. That is much better than 7 days. 2) Re: List of 10 References - Eliminate this requirement, or alter it to perhaps 3, which could all be in one's support team. There are 2 reasons for this: a) Again, decisions are made every day throughout the business world with somewhere between 0 to 3 references provided and/or checked. 3 is plenty. b) The reason it needs to be from one's support team is that eliminates the risk of me doing the work, and someone else getting the benefit. No one on my support team would sabotage me, while anyone else might for their own personal benefit. 3) Re: the list of lawsuits - Eliminate this requirement. a) Again, all over the United States, millions of business decisions are made on a daily basis which do not include this type of information. Can you imagine if we required Wal-Mart to hand each person who walks up to one of their cash registers a list of all lawsuits filed against them before the customer is allowed to check out? What about a Ford dealership? How about a hospital or a physician? These are all ridiculous scenarios, and so is this requirement. b) Just because someone has been sued does not mean they are guilty! As a matter of fact, even when people settle out of court, it is often the most cost-effective solution even if they know they would win in the long-run. A legal claim against someone is totally meaningless. 4) Re: Separate Disclosure for each Income Claim - Revise it to "One Clearly Stated Disclosure of the Actual Incomes Earned". Income examples are pretty meaningless. What I want to know is what ACTUALLY happened? 5) Re: Personal Financial Documents - Eliminate this requirement, for two reasons. a) Actual income disclosure is already covered in point #4 above. That is what is pertinent to the conversation. b) Any given individual at any given time might have assorted and sundry reasons that their personal income situation is either very good or is not very good. Those could include things such as: i) I've been in business for less than 5 years - most small businesses do not break even before that point. ii) My personal finances were a wreck when I went into business, so I'm still digging myself out. iii) I've had medical problems since I started, which have kept me from being particularly productive and/or have made my personal financial condition worse. There are probably dozens of other potential factors. If #5 is not eliminated, it should at least be revised to state that the personal financial documents of the person referenced in the income statements be provided. That way, if I am just getting started, when I'm obviously not making a lot of money (because I'm in business, not a get rich quick scheme), I'm not going to reference my income. Any more than I am going to ask my candidate what his current income is where he works. As a note, I also do not share this type of information when interviewing for a job, nor do I ask for it when interviewing someone else. It is really irrelevant to the task at hand, which is to figure out if there are any win-win scenarios here which would lead us to want to work together. Thank you for your time and consideration. Respectfully Submitted, Philip Smith