Hi there! Are you a complete idiot, n'er do well and/or slacker who dreams of laying around all day while the money just comes rolling in?

Well have I got an opportunity for you!

Hurry while the best areas are still available!

BUY IT NOW!

YOU KNOW THAT UNLESS YOU DO YOU'LL ALWAYS WONDER!

DON"T BE A WEENIE!

JUST IMAGINE: You'll be wildly popular, and the opposite sex will suddenly find you irresistable! You'll feel better about yourself, lose weight and even grow taller! You will amaze your friends and confound your enemies. And best of all you can finally tell that mean boss and disgruntled coworkers what you REALLY think of them and that job!

JUST DO IIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTTT!

Here's three more I'd be very curious to hear about from anyone here:

First is Kaire. They were an MLM that first brought colloidal silver and pycnogenal to my awareness. Again several years ago an enthusiastic friend who'd had a TON of credibility with just had to introduce me to them. Kaire wasn't unctuously pushy like say Landmark, but despite the surprisingly good quality of what they were selling it, and ample third-party documentation attesting to the quality of their products, it clearly was an MLM. The prices were so high that making a profit was difficult. And Kaire limited how one could market the product which to me always seemed self defeating since I thought the whole point of it was to sell as much product as possible. Getting others onto one's downline was always encouraged; although, I never personally encountered any covert or overt harassment or manipulation. Nor did my friend who was in it more deeply than I. Since then for whatever reason pycnogenol has become a standard at the local retail outlets, and colloidal silver via some alternative medicine catalogs I still get. Apparently Kaire wasn't able to squeeze any more profit out of its down line and sold the rights.

The second is Ecoquest or Eco Quest. After hearing about it I told a coworker who's considering it to hold off until I could check it out for him. They sell air purifiers--ionizers, ozone generators, electrostatic air filters and so on. Again according to my coworker they will not allow one to link to their site to increase sales credibility. You have to sell the product under a different name than they call it which seem particularly strange to me. They enourage you to get others to join, and they also want you to buy a significant amount of their product up front apparently. According to my coworker, a web searched revealed that the owner had some legal problems with a similar business that had a different name.

Phone cards was the last scheme I let my former best friend who had all that credibility drag me to thereby wasting a beautiful Saturday morning. They want you to attend an all-day event at a hotel conference room. The guys selling this stuff really know how to work a crowd, and they got many to run up to the podium for "free" phone cards that in retrospect were worthless until one charged them with their own credit card. Not surprisingly the whole thing culminated with a big push to buy buy buy a seller's phone card kit. There was also something about buying houses for little or nothing down, but it sounded so patently ridiculous. I asked my real estate agent about it, but he didn't seem to know or didn't care to comment. I really couldn't tell which. Without a bona fide real estate license and good credit, I cannot imagine how anyone could pull off such a scheme.

A few misc. dubious opportunities I've seen of late on television are DVD dispensors sort of like those red ones at McDonalds (which means probably no one else stands a chance with them now) and also "Global Link," a wireless internet system to set up in public places. The most hysterical aspects of their commercials were the man and woman with the sociopathic stare conspicuously ENUNCIATING certain WORDS in their SALES PITCH(sort of reminded me of Captain Kirk when he was in pain) throughout like "BE INDEPENDENT," and "BE YOUR OWN BOSS," and "CALL NOW."

It was so ridiculous, as if their product was so iffy that they had to use "mind power" to force us to buy it. Insofar as their NLP subtlety is concerned, I think a bull in a China shop would have had nothing on them.

I'd be curious if anyone has anything positive, negative or neutral to say about these companies/schemes.

CNFT

To whom it may concern:

A common strategy with questionable businesses is the name change.

I did a little digging, found out that EcoQuest was formerly Alpine.

I then found and/or was made aware of all of the following and subsequenlty sent it to my coworker:

CNFT

*************************************************************
*************************************************************

Consumer Affairs official website,

[consumeraffairs.com]

the television program "Dateline" aired a report that questioned the core technology of its EcoQuest purifiers. The NBC program noted that the Minnesota Supreme Court had ruled against the company a few years earlier in a case that charged Alpine with making false and misleading health claims for its products.

In an unusual twist, Alpine sued the Federal Trade Commission, claiming it was "harassing" the company. The FTC, in turn, sued Alpine and the company was fined $1.49 million on the health claims charges. The proceedings also unearthed evidence that Alpine owed a significant amount of back taxes to Minnesota and Tennessee.

Interestingly EcoQuest did not deny that it is an MLM or multi-level marketing system.

There's a vast amount of information about EcoQuest at this link, and most of it looks bad.



*************************************************************
*************************************************************


The Better Business Bureau of Tennessee,

[www.knoxville.bbb.org]

where EcoQuest is from, had eight complaints that people actually took the trouble to share with the BBB of TN. There could be others there and in other states that I didn't research. The BBB's entire report regarding EcoQuest in TN is available at the TN BBB link above. Minnesota's BBB had nothing to date regarding EcoQuest.

*************************************************************
*************************************************************

The Federal Trade Commission,

[search.ftc.gov]

has about four links each critical of EcoQuest and its previous name Alpine at the above link. The FTC considers it an MLM or multi-level marketing.

*************************************************************
*************************************************************

The cult research resource [culteducation.com] (an excellent site to research a group if someone recommends it to you)

I particularly like this site since it strictly sticks to the scientific definition of cults and cult-like organizations as opposed to certain evangelical Christian sites that have the misfortunate habit of labeling *anything* that they don't approve of as a "cult," being intellectually dishonest, and thereby losing credibility.

And so I trust Rickross.com to be accurate when it doesn't--yet--consider EcoQuest to be a cult or cult-like; however, Rickross.com does represent Alpine (EcoQuest now) as a multi-level marketing and/or pyramid scheme at the following link:

[www.culteducation.com]

And in general Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) is plagued with complaints, lawsuits and financial losses.

[www.culteducation.com]

It is most often the system itself and not the participants, which causes failure within many MLM schemes.

See [www.vandruff.com]

This research paper explains the inherent structural and marketing flaws that cause so many MLM participants to lose money.

Also see [www.mlmwatch.org]

This is a Web site that monitors such schemes.