In the spirit of Christmas, since its the end of 2012 and my blog is receiving 1000 visits per day right now, I have decided to create a blog post that will be intended only for positive reviews of WorldVentures, from people who are having a positive experience, for at least one year with the company or more (no beginners in 'honey-moon stage please).
Moving into a new year, I want to make this blog an open forum which will contain equally all points of view on WorldVentures. I personally had a negative experience which I write about in the very popular article 'An honest revealing WorldVentures Review from an insider: Ex WorldVentures Leader' and I left the company a couple of years ago.
However judging from all the comments I have received on this blog the past one and a half year that it has been online, there are people who have exactly the same opinion and experience as me with the company and others who feel they have received only benefits.
So please feel free to post below in the comment area of this article your positive review about WorldVentures, ONLY if you have been with the company for more than a year. Please include all the benefits you have received, if you have earned an income and why you are still with the company.
I will approve ALL positive reviews posted on the blog, as I usually do with all the other articles.
I would like this blog to turn an forum about WorldVentures, containing reviews from all kinds of people and nationalities, so that anyone who visits the blog to decide if they want to join, can make a calculated decision.
Looking forward to receiving your reviews in the comments area below.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Sunday, August 19, 2012
An Investigative WorldVentures Review by New York Observer
I recently came across this article in the New York Observer titled 'Do the Hustle! Can WorldVentures Use Pyramid Power to Become the New Amway?', by journalist Adrianne Jeffries, who although is preoccupied by MLM as most journalists who go to a presentation are, has gone into great lengths to talk to people who have left the company and do an investigation on some of the not so ethical and honest things going on with WorldVentures.
Names and lawsuits mentioned towards the end of the article really make sense to me as I have been with the company for quite a while, attended the Las Vegas conventions, met all the leaders and had suspicions for all of the things mentioned, but didn't have a confirmation.
You can read the full article as it was originally posted here: http://observer.com/2012/08/do-the-hustle-can-worldventures-use-pyramid-power-to-become-the-new-amway/4/
Below I copy, paste the exact article, worth reading till the end. You can form your own opinions...
Hey, you there. You look pretty smart—you’re reading The Observer, after all. What would you say if I told you there are ordinary New Yorkers out there making more money in a year than you’ll make in a decade? I’m not talking about bankers and movie stars. Heck, I used to be a waiter for 20 years—now look at me. You must have noticed how shiny my shoes are. Want to work for yourself? Go on vacation every month? Retire at the age of 29, then retire your mother? You didn’t wake up this morning planning to start a new life, but opportunity just knocked—you don’t want it to move to the next door. Did I mention you get a free BMW?
On an evening in June, in a nondescript, white-walled room in Williamsburg, a small crowd of sundry millennials in folding chairs listened to a variation of the above script. The opportunity knocking was WorldVentures, a six-year-old company based in Texas with a sales force of tens of thousands in 21 countries that pulled in $91 million in revenue last year. WorldVentures is ostensibly a travel club that grants members access to discounted vacations, but its sales reps are selling more than cheap hotel stays. In fact, they seem to expend most of their energy shilling for WorldVentures itself.
The pitch hinges on a video of average-looking people partying in exotic locations, followed by a stream of babbling from semi-suave pitchmen who claim to be making thousands, tens of thousands, more than a million a year, working for themselves. There’s a jumble in the middle of the presentation about “left and right teams”—a reference to WorldVentures’ complicated, pyramid-shaped payout system—but the main point is that you can “make a living by living,” if you act right now.
Pete Eggers, a tall, blond 29-year-old from Iowa, paced in front of the little room and down the aisle. He’d flown in to star in the massive WorldVentures training convention scheduled for Queens the next day. The small crowd seemed unnaturally jazzed, cheering and whooping like an MTV studio audience and guffawing at all the cheesy jokes. Such “biz op meetings” are customarily filled with plants, one former WorldVentures pitchman told The Observer. Indeed, it seemed as if about two-thirds of attendees were already in the fold, surrounding a half-dozen or so obvious new recruits.
“You know what mailbox money is?” Mr. Eggers asked them. “It’s money you get in your mailbox. I open my mailbox and I get usually a check for usually $5,000. Then I walk inside, and then I take a nap.”
Like Amway and many other direct-selling schemes, WorldVentures compensates its reps for sales made by people they recruit. It’s called multilevel marketing, or MLM, and it’s the legally sanctioned cousin to the pyramid scheme. You can sign up to get access to WorldVentures’ discounted trips, which are of arguable value, for a $199.99 sign-up fee on top of $26.99 a month. But wait—if you recruit just four people, your monthly fees are waived.
“Direct selling is the best-kept secret in the business world,” said Mr. Eggers, claiming to paraphrase Warren Buffett. Join WorldVentures as an “independent representative” for a $99.95 sign-up fee and $10.99 a month, and you’ll have the opportunity to make residual income through WorldVentures’ elaborate, cross-pollinating compensation plan.
WorldVentures says it pays out up to 65 percent of its sales revenue in compensation. There’s a direct commission, a weekly sales bonus and a monthly residual commission. Reps get paid a $20 commission for selling a basic membership to the travel club. But the easiest way to earn “mailbox money” is to recruit new reps.
The rapid-fire pitch made The Observer’s head feel fuzzy, so we sat down with the company’s 26-page compensation plan. WorldVentures has a virtually inscrutable payout schedule comprising seven ranks and two pyramid-shaped hierarchies. The first pyramid is called the “lineage.” You sit at the top and everyone you’ve personally recruited is added directly below you, and everyone they’ve recruited is below them, and so on. Lineage is factored into rank, which is factored into compensation. The second pyramid is the “binary organization.” Here the pyramid spreads out by twos—the top spot sits directly above a left and a right spot, each of which sits above its own pairs, and so on. You can then earn bonuses based on sales made by the binary organization, which is comprised of the reps you recruit, and the reps they recruit.
In order to start earning monthly commissions, a rep must be “30/30,” which means having 30 actively-involved customers and/or reps on each side of his or her binary organization. Reps who achieve this can earn up to $500 a month. The next level is 90/90, which can earn up to $2,000 a month. The top level, International Marketing Director, must have at least 3,000 people in his or her lineage, and must continue to average $56,250 in income in the three preceding months in order to maintain that rank. The list of requirements for each rank goes on for pages, with various exceptions and stipulations.
But multiple lawsuits have alleged that WorldVentures frequently bends its own rules in order to favor a small, elite group. According to one ongoing lawsuit, the top three spots onthe pyramid, which earn the most residual income, are owned by the two WorldVentures founders. The lawsuits claim that lucrative spots are given out as rewards to recruit “MLM superstars” like Matt Morris, author of The Unemployed Millionaire and founder of the distance learning MLM Success University.
The WorldVentures presentation in Williamsburg closed with nine reps who went up to the front of the room and described how they’d lifted themselves out of poverty, as if rising from their wheelchairs after a gulp of snake oil. “My name is Jay, I’m from Brooklyn. Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. At first I thought it was a scam—I was doing scams, I thought it was a scam,” said one young man who claimed to be making mailbox money and driving a WorldVentures BMW. “When I saw that all I had to do was pop in a DVD and make money, I said ‘let’s do it.’”
WorldVentures reps do have the ability to earn residual income, get credit toward a BMW lease, and even a home bonus; but it’s much harder than the company makes it sound. MLM is a grind. When reps fail to make money, they’re taught to blame themselves. Reps are also heavily encouraged to spend their own money on WorldVentures’ myriad training events, which can range from $29 to hundreds of dollars to attend. WorldVentures has a tendency to sue its former employees who move to competing MLMs or speak negatively about the company, squashing public dissent; Google results for “is WorldVentures a scam” are overwhelmed with pro-WorldVentures websites and videos created by reps to give the appearance of legitimacy. “The reality is, it’s impossible for someone to realize the dreams that they’re pitching,” said one former high-level WorldVentures employee who asked not to be named. “The only people actually making money are the people the founders are manipulating the compensation plan for.”
Training events are among the key techniques by which the MLM industry keeps its sellers motivated. At WorldVentures, company executives work hard to maintain the image of a fun-loving, globetrotting family. Flawlessly-produced recruitment videos show people drinking, dancing, and playing in the sand in various vacation destinations. “You should be here! You should be here!” they chant at the camera. Reps are encouraged to go on DreamTrips, vacations that turn into pilgrimages to Las Vegas or Cancun that include company pep rallies and one-on-one dinners with higher-ups. WorldVenturesTV has uploaded 113 videos to YouTube taken on vacations and at company conventions like Millionaire Bootcamp 2012 and WorldVentures UNITED! 2012.
Wayne Nugent is the co-founder and “Chief Visionary Officer” of WorldVentures. “Ernst & Young is the second-largest audit company in the world. They gave us the Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2010,” Mr. Eggers told us. Actually, Mr. Nugent and his co-founder Mike Azcue were two of 38 entrepreneurs nominated in the Southwest Area – North region, which includes North Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma. Before starting WorldVentures, the two worked together at GT Trends, another travel-based MLM with a less-than-stellar reputation. “After a short involvement, they disagreed with the business methods practiced by GTT and both men voluntarily resigned,” according to a WorldVentures-owned website. In 2011, they both admitted to willfully evading taxes from 2004 to 2007: Mr. Azcue owed $18,340, and Mr. Nugent owed $60,712.
Smooth-faced, tanned, and broad-shouldered, Mr. Nugent appeared on stage in Las Vegas for WorldVentures UNITED! 2012, dressed in a pink suit jacket with his black hair in an Elvis puff. He improvises his speeches. “There’s a real world, but there’s our world,” he riffed in the closing of his keynote to the WorldVentures faithful. “And that’s a world I get excited about my little girl being born into. And I get excited when we travel around the country! And I get excited when we’re traveling around the world, and there’s these WorldVentures babies! And we’re getting together. That’s what I’m seeing and feeling. Why? Because that’s what I’m experiencing in real life. It’s happening right now. And if you’re right here at the beginning, maybe you’re not seeing that all now. But it’s there and it’s good.”
The rambling speech earned a roaring, standing ovation from a crowd of more than 4,000, most of whom paid $199 to attend. Mr. Nugent apologized for skipping the afterparty, and ran offstage to catch a flight.
In their time with WorldVentures, Los Angeles couple Roger Yack and his wife Sabine drank “little sips of the Koolaid,” Mr. Yack said. They estimate they spent about $30,000 on conventions like UNITED! and other “training” events before they stopped working and were dismissed by the company. “I believe that the line is that people that attend those trainings earn five times more than people that don’t,” Mr. Yack said. “Those 1,000 people spend $298 just to hype and ‘rah, rah!’ like crazy. What WorldVentures was really good at was creating a culture.”
WorldVentures’ training director, Marc Acetta, is known for dressing up in costumes—dealing out cards and sipping whiskey as a character he calls The Gambler, or muzzling a woman’s breasts as Jim Carrey’s character from The Mask in a performance enhanced by a strobe light and cheap pyrotechnics. “You want to get in my business?” he asks an actor. “It’s a travel business. You’ll make a shitload of money. Want to do it?” When the man hesitates, Mr. Acetta spritzes him with a water gun. “Sit down, John. You don’t qualify.” Even one WorldVentures detractor described Mr. Acetta, despite his dopey stage antics, as “brilliant.”
“It’s basically the most expensive high school pep rally you’ll ever see,” said Steve Hilger, an attorney representing a former WorldVentures high earner, Randy Ostram. Mr. Ostram is involved in a lawsuit against WorldVentures in Louisiana. His claims include that WorldVentures allowed a pair of reps, Eric Allen and Chris Dorgeat, to swap people in and out of lucrative places in the upper echelons of the pyramid. The pair also created a “straw man” position for Mr. Dorgeat in the name of his brother, Mathieu, in order to reap the benefits of having two spots, the lawsuit says. Later, Chris Dorgeat placed one of his personal recruits, James Lee, into “Mathieu’s” spot, according to the suit.
Although claims in multiple lawsuits allege that WorldVentures promotes its top reps even when sales goals aren’t met, the company positions itself as a meritocracy. Boosterism is central to the MLM ethos. WorldVentures biz op meetings are “invite-only,” which confers a sense of magic and mystery and filters out any uninvested strangers who might break the spell. “You get paid what you’re worth,” Mr. Eggers told prospective WorldVenturers. “If you’re lazy, you get paid nothing. If you work hard, you get paid a lot.”
The sparkling pitchmen of WorldVentures alternately empower and undermine their flocks. There is no limit to the fun you can have! The riches you can reap! Those who are skeptical are “negative;” those who drop out are “losers.” Sadly, there are a lot of negative losers out there. According to WorldVentures’ own income disclosure statement, an unaudited document that the company puts out as a show of good faith and a hedge against regulators, 73.7 percent of reps fail to earn a commission and only .102 percent earn a yearly income above the poverty level. The average rep earns $325 in a year. That doesn’t account for the price of joining or the cost of training events.
Ninety-nine percent of WorldVentures reps lose money, according to an independent study by Dr. Jon M. Taylor, an anti-MLM crusader based in Utah, one of the MLM industry’s biggest hubs. That figure is in line with the 500-some MLM companies he’s scrutinized, largely depending on data provided by the companies themselves. “A good MLM is really an oxymoron,” he told The Observer.
There are people who make a living from WorldVentures, although perhaps not as many as claim to do so. The need to recruit more sellers provides a built-in incentive to inflate one’s own success, and “there’s a lot of self-deception going on,” Dr. Taylor said. He surveyed reps who lobbied for a federal rule change that favored MLMs. “Even though they thought they were making money, if you asked them directly, ‘if you took the money you paid to the company, and subtracted what you paid to the company in products or services, which would be greater’? Most of them didn’t even know.”
A lawsuit filed by one of WorldVentures’ minority co-founders, Robert Oblon, alleges that some top reps were paying the fees for some of their downline recruits themselves in order to maintain a high rank and appearance of success. According to the lawsuit, WorldVentures propped up one of its star couples, Dave and Yvette Ulloa, by “grandfathering” them into the highest rank in the company even though they hadn’t earned it. Jennifer Taylor, the WorldVentures employee who was responsible for making the rank changes in the company’s MLM payroll software, iMatrix, said in a sworn statement that she personally made that change and others like it at the request of WorldVentures executives. It was then announced at a WorldVentures convention that the Ulloas had achieved the rank of International Marketing Director, Ms. Taylor said, for the benefit of impressive entry-level reps: “It would be important because it gives them the image that these ranks are attainable in the natural sense of attaining them. So, you know, they wanted it to appear to a new person in the business that this could be you. You can achieve this rank and make this money.”
WorldVentures maintains it is not a pyramid scheme. Because it sells a product—vacations—it stays within the law. “We pay commissions to our Representatives for selling our DreamTrips Membership products,” a representative for WorldVentures said in an email. “There’s no compensation whatsoever tied to Rep recruitment. But if they recruit additional Representatives, they can earn bonuses and commissions off the retail sales made by those Reps.”
The Federal Trade Commission draws a distinction between MLM schemes and pyramid schemes, and actually lightened proposed regulation on MLMs in 2008 after fierce lobbying by the industry. Still, the FTC warns, “It’s best not to get involved in plans where the money you make is based primarily on the number of distributors you recruit and your sales to them, rather than on your sales to people outside the plan who intend to use the products.” A federal database shows 25 bankruptcies in which an individual or couple was a WorldVentures rep.
So far, WorldVentures has kept out of trouble with attorneys general, shamed or litigated former reps into silence, and successfully parlayed its rating from the Better Business Bureau up to a C. But the two most damning lawsuits from former reps may soon be joined by a third. Jeffrey Ostrove, a former WorldVentures rep who was involved for seven months, is preparing a class action suit against the company. More than 200 people have signed on, he said. “This is really ethically wrong, it’s morally wrong,” he told The Observer. “It’s taking advantage financially of people without them knowing about it.”
Names and lawsuits mentioned towards the end of the article really make sense to me as I have been with the company for quite a while, attended the Las Vegas conventions, met all the leaders and had suspicions for all of the things mentioned, but didn't have a confirmation.
You can read the full article as it was originally posted here: http://observer.com/2012/08/do-the-hustle-can-worldventures-use-pyramid-power-to-become-the-new-amway/4/
Below I copy, paste the exact article, worth reading till the end. You can form your own opinions...
Hey, you there. You look pretty smart—you’re reading The Observer, after all. What would you say if I told you there are ordinary New Yorkers out there making more money in a year than you’ll make in a decade? I’m not talking about bankers and movie stars. Heck, I used to be a waiter for 20 years—now look at me. You must have noticed how shiny my shoes are. Want to work for yourself? Go on vacation every month? Retire at the age of 29, then retire your mother? You didn’t wake up this morning planning to start a new life, but opportunity just knocked—you don’t want it to move to the next door. Did I mention you get a free BMW?
On an evening in June, in a nondescript, white-walled room in Williamsburg, a small crowd of sundry millennials in folding chairs listened to a variation of the above script. The opportunity knocking was WorldVentures, a six-year-old company based in Texas with a sales force of tens of thousands in 21 countries that pulled in $91 million in revenue last year. WorldVentures is ostensibly a travel club that grants members access to discounted vacations, but its sales reps are selling more than cheap hotel stays. In fact, they seem to expend most of their energy shilling for WorldVentures itself.
The pitch hinges on a video of average-looking people partying in exotic locations, followed by a stream of babbling from semi-suave pitchmen who claim to be making thousands, tens of thousands, more than a million a year, working for themselves. There’s a jumble in the middle of the presentation about “left and right teams”—a reference to WorldVentures’ complicated, pyramid-shaped payout system—but the main point is that you can “make a living by living,” if you act right now.
Pete Eggers, a tall, blond 29-year-old from Iowa, paced in front of the little room and down the aisle. He’d flown in to star in the massive WorldVentures training convention scheduled for Queens the next day. The small crowd seemed unnaturally jazzed, cheering and whooping like an MTV studio audience and guffawing at all the cheesy jokes. Such “biz op meetings” are customarily filled with plants, one former WorldVentures pitchman told The Observer. Indeed, it seemed as if about two-thirds of attendees were already in the fold, surrounding a half-dozen or so obvious new recruits.
“You know what mailbox money is?” Mr. Eggers asked them. “It’s money you get in your mailbox. I open my mailbox and I get usually a check for usually $5,000. Then I walk inside, and then I take a nap.”
Like Amway and many other direct-selling schemes, WorldVentures compensates its reps for sales made by people they recruit. It’s called multilevel marketing, or MLM, and it’s the legally sanctioned cousin to the pyramid scheme. You can sign up to get access to WorldVentures’ discounted trips, which are of arguable value, for a $199.99 sign-up fee on top of $26.99 a month. But wait—if you recruit just four people, your monthly fees are waived.
“Direct selling is the best-kept secret in the business world,” said Mr. Eggers, claiming to paraphrase Warren Buffett. Join WorldVentures as an “independent representative” for a $99.95 sign-up fee and $10.99 a month, and you’ll have the opportunity to make residual income through WorldVentures’ elaborate, cross-pollinating compensation plan.
WorldVentures says it pays out up to 65 percent of its sales revenue in compensation. There’s a direct commission, a weekly sales bonus and a monthly residual commission. Reps get paid a $20 commission for selling a basic membership to the travel club. But the easiest way to earn “mailbox money” is to recruit new reps.
The rapid-fire pitch made The Observer’s head feel fuzzy, so we sat down with the company’s 26-page compensation plan. WorldVentures has a virtually inscrutable payout schedule comprising seven ranks and two pyramid-shaped hierarchies. The first pyramid is called the “lineage.” You sit at the top and everyone you’ve personally recruited is added directly below you, and everyone they’ve recruited is below them, and so on. Lineage is factored into rank, which is factored into compensation. The second pyramid is the “binary organization.” Here the pyramid spreads out by twos—the top spot sits directly above a left and a right spot, each of which sits above its own pairs, and so on. You can then earn bonuses based on sales made by the binary organization, which is comprised of the reps you recruit, and the reps they recruit.
In order to start earning monthly commissions, a rep must be “30/30,” which means having 30 actively-involved customers and/or reps on each side of his or her binary organization. Reps who achieve this can earn up to $500 a month. The next level is 90/90, which can earn up to $2,000 a month. The top level, International Marketing Director, must have at least 3,000 people in his or her lineage, and must continue to average $56,250 in income in the three preceding months in order to maintain that rank. The list of requirements for each rank goes on for pages, with various exceptions and stipulations.
But multiple lawsuits have alleged that WorldVentures frequently bends its own rules in order to favor a small, elite group. According to one ongoing lawsuit, the top three spots onthe pyramid, which earn the most residual income, are owned by the two WorldVentures founders. The lawsuits claim that lucrative spots are given out as rewards to recruit “MLM superstars” like Matt Morris, author of The Unemployed Millionaire and founder of the distance learning MLM Success University.
The WorldVentures presentation in Williamsburg closed with nine reps who went up to the front of the room and described how they’d lifted themselves out of poverty, as if rising from their wheelchairs after a gulp of snake oil. “My name is Jay, I’m from Brooklyn. Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. At first I thought it was a scam—I was doing scams, I thought it was a scam,” said one young man who claimed to be making mailbox money and driving a WorldVentures BMW. “When I saw that all I had to do was pop in a DVD and make money, I said ‘let’s do it.’”
WorldVentures reps do have the ability to earn residual income, get credit toward a BMW lease, and even a home bonus; but it’s much harder than the company makes it sound. MLM is a grind. When reps fail to make money, they’re taught to blame themselves. Reps are also heavily encouraged to spend their own money on WorldVentures’ myriad training events, which can range from $29 to hundreds of dollars to attend. WorldVentures has a tendency to sue its former employees who move to competing MLMs or speak negatively about the company, squashing public dissent; Google results for “is WorldVentures a scam” are overwhelmed with pro-WorldVentures websites and videos created by reps to give the appearance of legitimacy. “The reality is, it’s impossible for someone to realize the dreams that they’re pitching,” said one former high-level WorldVentures employee who asked not to be named. “The only people actually making money are the people the founders are manipulating the compensation plan for.”
Training events are among the key techniques by which the MLM industry keeps its sellers motivated. At WorldVentures, company executives work hard to maintain the image of a fun-loving, globetrotting family. Flawlessly-produced recruitment videos show people drinking, dancing, and playing in the sand in various vacation destinations. “You should be here! You should be here!” they chant at the camera. Reps are encouraged to go on DreamTrips, vacations that turn into pilgrimages to Las Vegas or Cancun that include company pep rallies and one-on-one dinners with higher-ups. WorldVenturesTV has uploaded 113 videos to YouTube taken on vacations and at company conventions like Millionaire Bootcamp 2012 and WorldVentures UNITED! 2012.
Wayne Nugent is the co-founder and “Chief Visionary Officer” of WorldVentures. “Ernst & Young is the second-largest audit company in the world. They gave us the Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2010,” Mr. Eggers told us. Actually, Mr. Nugent and his co-founder Mike Azcue were two of 38 entrepreneurs nominated in the Southwest Area – North region, which includes North Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma. Before starting WorldVentures, the two worked together at GT Trends, another travel-based MLM with a less-than-stellar reputation. “After a short involvement, they disagreed with the business methods practiced by GTT and both men voluntarily resigned,” according to a WorldVentures-owned website. In 2011, they both admitted to willfully evading taxes from 2004 to 2007: Mr. Azcue owed $18,340, and Mr. Nugent owed $60,712.
Smooth-faced, tanned, and broad-shouldered, Mr. Nugent appeared on stage in Las Vegas for WorldVentures UNITED! 2012, dressed in a pink suit jacket with his black hair in an Elvis puff. He improvises his speeches. “There’s a real world, but there’s our world,” he riffed in the closing of his keynote to the WorldVentures faithful. “And that’s a world I get excited about my little girl being born into. And I get excited when we travel around the country! And I get excited when we’re traveling around the world, and there’s these WorldVentures babies! And we’re getting together. That’s what I’m seeing and feeling. Why? Because that’s what I’m experiencing in real life. It’s happening right now. And if you’re right here at the beginning, maybe you’re not seeing that all now. But it’s there and it’s good.”
The rambling speech earned a roaring, standing ovation from a crowd of more than 4,000, most of whom paid $199 to attend. Mr. Nugent apologized for skipping the afterparty, and ran offstage to catch a flight.
In their time with WorldVentures, Los Angeles couple Roger Yack and his wife Sabine drank “little sips of the Koolaid,” Mr. Yack said. They estimate they spent about $30,000 on conventions like UNITED! and other “training” events before they stopped working and were dismissed by the company. “I believe that the line is that people that attend those trainings earn five times more than people that don’t,” Mr. Yack said. “Those 1,000 people spend $298 just to hype and ‘rah, rah!’ like crazy. What WorldVentures was really good at was creating a culture.”
WorldVentures’ training director, Marc Acetta, is known for dressing up in costumes—dealing out cards and sipping whiskey as a character he calls The Gambler, or muzzling a woman’s breasts as Jim Carrey’s character from The Mask in a performance enhanced by a strobe light and cheap pyrotechnics. “You want to get in my business?” he asks an actor. “It’s a travel business. You’ll make a shitload of money. Want to do it?” When the man hesitates, Mr. Acetta spritzes him with a water gun. “Sit down, John. You don’t qualify.” Even one WorldVentures detractor described Mr. Acetta, despite his dopey stage antics, as “brilliant.”
“It’s basically the most expensive high school pep rally you’ll ever see,” said Steve Hilger, an attorney representing a former WorldVentures high earner, Randy Ostram. Mr. Ostram is involved in a lawsuit against WorldVentures in Louisiana. His claims include that WorldVentures allowed a pair of reps, Eric Allen and Chris Dorgeat, to swap people in and out of lucrative places in the upper echelons of the pyramid. The pair also created a “straw man” position for Mr. Dorgeat in the name of his brother, Mathieu, in order to reap the benefits of having two spots, the lawsuit says. Later, Chris Dorgeat placed one of his personal recruits, James Lee, into “Mathieu’s” spot, according to the suit.
Although claims in multiple lawsuits allege that WorldVentures promotes its top reps even when sales goals aren’t met, the company positions itself as a meritocracy. Boosterism is central to the MLM ethos. WorldVentures biz op meetings are “invite-only,” which confers a sense of magic and mystery and filters out any uninvested strangers who might break the spell. “You get paid what you’re worth,” Mr. Eggers told prospective WorldVenturers. “If you’re lazy, you get paid nothing. If you work hard, you get paid a lot.”
The sparkling pitchmen of WorldVentures alternately empower and undermine their flocks. There is no limit to the fun you can have! The riches you can reap! Those who are skeptical are “negative;” those who drop out are “losers.” Sadly, there are a lot of negative losers out there. According to WorldVentures’ own income disclosure statement, an unaudited document that the company puts out as a show of good faith and a hedge against regulators, 73.7 percent of reps fail to earn a commission and only .102 percent earn a yearly income above the poverty level. The average rep earns $325 in a year. That doesn’t account for the price of joining or the cost of training events.
Ninety-nine percent of WorldVentures reps lose money, according to an independent study by Dr. Jon M. Taylor, an anti-MLM crusader based in Utah, one of the MLM industry’s biggest hubs. That figure is in line with the 500-some MLM companies he’s scrutinized, largely depending on data provided by the companies themselves. “A good MLM is really an oxymoron,” he told The Observer.
There are people who make a living from WorldVentures, although perhaps not as many as claim to do so. The need to recruit more sellers provides a built-in incentive to inflate one’s own success, and “there’s a lot of self-deception going on,” Dr. Taylor said. He surveyed reps who lobbied for a federal rule change that favored MLMs. “Even though they thought they were making money, if you asked them directly, ‘if you took the money you paid to the company, and subtracted what you paid to the company in products or services, which would be greater’? Most of them didn’t even know.”
A lawsuit filed by one of WorldVentures’ minority co-founders, Robert Oblon, alleges that some top reps were paying the fees for some of their downline recruits themselves in order to maintain a high rank and appearance of success. According to the lawsuit, WorldVentures propped up one of its star couples, Dave and Yvette Ulloa, by “grandfathering” them into the highest rank in the company even though they hadn’t earned it. Jennifer Taylor, the WorldVentures employee who was responsible for making the rank changes in the company’s MLM payroll software, iMatrix, said in a sworn statement that she personally made that change and others like it at the request of WorldVentures executives. It was then announced at a WorldVentures convention that the Ulloas had achieved the rank of International Marketing Director, Ms. Taylor said, for the benefit of impressive entry-level reps: “It would be important because it gives them the image that these ranks are attainable in the natural sense of attaining them. So, you know, they wanted it to appear to a new person in the business that this could be you. You can achieve this rank and make this money.”
WorldVentures maintains it is not a pyramid scheme. Because it sells a product—vacations—it stays within the law. “We pay commissions to our Representatives for selling our DreamTrips Membership products,” a representative for WorldVentures said in an email. “There’s no compensation whatsoever tied to Rep recruitment. But if they recruit additional Representatives, they can earn bonuses and commissions off the retail sales made by those Reps.”
The Federal Trade Commission draws a distinction between MLM schemes and pyramid schemes, and actually lightened proposed regulation on MLMs in 2008 after fierce lobbying by the industry. Still, the FTC warns, “It’s best not to get involved in plans where the money you make is based primarily on the number of distributors you recruit and your sales to them, rather than on your sales to people outside the plan who intend to use the products.” A federal database shows 25 bankruptcies in which an individual or couple was a WorldVentures rep.
So far, WorldVentures has kept out of trouble with attorneys general, shamed or litigated former reps into silence, and successfully parlayed its rating from the Better Business Bureau up to a C. But the two most damning lawsuits from former reps may soon be joined by a third. Jeffrey Ostrove, a former WorldVentures rep who was involved for seven months, is preparing a class action suit against the company. More than 200 people have signed on, he said. “This is really ethically wrong, it’s morally wrong,” he told The Observer. “It’s taking advantage financially of people without them knowing about it.”
Monday, March 12, 2012
Legal Lawsuit Against Worldventures - An ex-Leader taking a stance for Ethics and Integrity!
I am re-posting this article from the 'comment's' section of my previous blog post, because I find the info true and representative to what I have being through. More voices should be heard and people should know the truth about this company! Read on:
To the best of my knowledge “making a living” means that one earns an income enough so, that it would cover his monthly expenses, food , home car and health. The current average salary in my country of Israel is about 2000 USD a month which most people would consider enough to get by. So making an “average” living by these standards would amount ”to make a living”. This amount is below that of the USA which is where Worldventures originated and is based in Plano, Texas. Just in case you are impatient because you received a 27 second phone call from a “close friend” who you haven’t spoken in ten years who wants to “catch up and has to meet you in person but doesn’t have enough time to even tell you what it’s about because he’s in a hurry” –(if possible at 8pm – where this friend forgets to tell you are actually attending a travel party along with 200 others……..
Now that you’ve arrived at the meeting;
Were you buy any chance told that you are going to get a BMW M-5 and the home of your dreams just by reaching a certain result…WOW that sound great. (If you reach this status you will be among the less than 46 people in the world amongst over 100,000 reps who have achieved this status. So, ok you are not expecting the BMW M-5 or that free home but just want to “make a living”.
Wow so the company allows its successful members to perform under false pretense and in countries WV has no license. HMM.
But wait …we can’t use the money (720 USD membership)for a vacation, that is the money money we pay to “make a living”(and for the right to sell WV. Now if you recall, there are about 2700 members in Israel of which 2000 are paying so they certainly aren’t earning a living. Now we have the remaining 700 reps… now someone has got to be making money…right? Well some news for 675 out of 700 them who a least aren't paying membership … you are saving 720 USD, however, are spending an average between time and personal expenses (are we reimbursed for that?) that equals to a minimum of 400 USD a month, between gasoline, phone calls, food, and your own time. So wait, I’m am spending about 400 USD running around (my time is worth money and gas, food) to make an average of 684 USD A YEAR. So of the 675 people who are not PAYING for membership, lets’ do the numbers:
Annual earning -Monthly outlay= income (“make a living”). But wait I spent about 5000 dollars over the year and earned an average of 684 USD . 684-5000= -4314. I’m out over 4000 Dollars. But wait the top earners among these 675 members who earn $5074 a year people are spending about 5000 USD a year to work at this goal of “earning a living”. Remember, none of these 675 people have earned more than 5000 USD (?????). Let’s do some math here once again with all the time and personal financial layout you are making along with the other 2675 reps, the top earner are making 5000 dollars a year. But let’s not forget that they are laying out about 5000 dollars a year. If my math is correct
5000 USD ( the best annual income for a rep)-5000 US (personal expenses)= 0.
Wait does that mean 99.01 percent of all people at WORLDVENTURES are netting annually (a whole year) 0 (ZERO). YES. Does netting 0 constitute “earning a living”.
In case you are wondering of what about those other people who are “making a living” 13 out of the remaining 25 earn an average of $4802 dollars a year. And if they are spending 400 USD a month overhead they are just about breaking it even. Looks like that means you have a great chance a making it.
In other words 2687 out of 2700 are at best breaking even. The reality is that these 2687 members are paying for the lavish lifestyles of a few people and Worldventures personel.
Have you ever noticed the income disclosure statement. Read it:
http://www.worldventures.info/pdfs/incomedisclosure.pdf
YES THAT IS THE PAPER WHICH WAS FLASHED AT YOU FOR ABOUT 1 SECOND AT THE MEETING YOUR FRIEND INVITED YOU TO.while they show you the BMW and house for about 10 seconds- and of course the contract which you were never shown at all.
You PAY CASH to recruit people, and make it back from the cash of your recruits. Logically, someone has to lose money for you to get paid.
Nevertheless, the presentation will normally show you only "loss leader" trips which are used to lure you into the company.(how convenient)
The problem with most trips they offer is and pay attention they are always for a SPECIFIC HOTEL ON SPECIFIC DATES.
The company promises you that their trip to that specific hotel on those dates are the cheapest. But think about this when you look for a trip; what's REALLY important?
Well for me the following:
Do the dates of the package deal suite your needs; maybe the date don’t apply?
Just for the sport WV had a trip that was 300USD PER PERSON on specific date. It was a nice hotel with half board. I went online and found a nicer hotel right next door (that flexibility in terms of dates and was quoted at 400 USD or 100 USD more than the WV trip. When I mentioned that to a WV member their response was “you see ..100 dollars less”. Of course when WV stated the discount you are saving it shown in the form of two people so in this case it would be 200 USD less than my hotel and 200 less than the best online price for their hotel. Then I go to the punch line and said MY PRICE was PER COUPLE. So my hotel which is nicer and has flexibility with the date cost 400 USD while the Worldventures dreamtrip was 600 USD. The rep not knowing what to reply stated “that my comparison is apples and oranges”. Of course in the presentation the Reps, forget to tell people that flights aren't included and the cancelation fees apply and of course that the trip they are showing are the few loss leaders.
I was surprised that a company that highly valued its people could put out a CD and allowed their own customers to be called “SUCKERS”. I’ve decided to expand my research a found that there are currently 260,000 people in Plano Texas , where Worldventures is located. That amounts to about 100,000 families or household. If we were to put the entire city into Worldventures plan , how many families would be “make a living” i.e. at least $21,000 a year?
Here are the numbers:
Over 99000 families= would be earning nothing or losing money.
580 families= would be earning about $4800 dollars a year.
320 families = would be earning about 21,000 a year . (Sorry no car allowance or health benefits.)
100 families – would earn on $59,000+ dollars a year (of those only 47 get the car not free of course just reimbursed)at 16 get the home.
You’d better be amongst those100 families or you’re in trouble.
I would also like to point out the following:
The car and dream bonus are given to people who are a handful that earn a six figure incomes with WV. So the car and home incentive though still of value regardless will make little difference to an individual who earns these sums of money. But who are these individuals? Did they just walk off the street and become successful. A footnote that you may not be aware of is when WV started amongst the people involved were divided into two groups. There were those tagged as employees and those who were given a WV representative "GOLDEN ACCOUNT". These individuals had the opportunity to work with WV as an employee or be set up to reach an IMD level (which they all have). These individuals are the ones who lecture you today and wear gold rings, yet many of them never did nearly what others have to do to reach this. Why? Because at its initial stages WV did all the advertising for these individuals allowing them and assuring them to reach NMD (National Marketing Director)and it's a no brainer to reach IMD thereafter. So despite my article above no matter where you are on tree or pyramid, you are basically stemming from these individuals who in fact are WV employees but EARNING THEIR SALARY AS REPRESENTATIVES. This ALLOWS WV to play on both sides of the map both as a company and as representatives. It also allows them to pay for employees through your money.
I am trying to put together a class action law suit and have 137 people who joined and feel they were cheated and manipulated. There are many accounts on which to sue the company.
I recently did another study and came to the following conclusion: the company is not supplying enough trip/room so that each member can take apply for trip a year. This fact alone should0 raise eyebrows.
In case you were wondering I was booted it merely for asking to many questions although the official response of the company was “something they made up” as they had nothing to pin me on. If you have ever watched the incredible movie Philadelphia with Tom Hanks who was let go because he had AIDS although the company dismissed this as the reason, that is about how I was let go. Doing nothing wrong except for being a responsible individual.
This is for all the Israeli members and members
worldwide regarding the information normally withheld to those who join
Worldventures. This brief report will explain to you what the real
interpretation of “making a living” means.
To the best of my knowledge “making a living” means that one earns an income enough so, that it would cover his monthly expenses, food , home car and health. The current average salary in my country of Israel is about 2000 USD a month which most people would consider enough to get by. So making an “average” living by these standards would amount ”to make a living”. This amount is below that of the USA which is where Worldventures originated and is based in Plano, Texas. Just in case you are impatient because you received a 27 second phone call from a “close friend” who you haven’t spoken in ten years who wants to “catch up and has to meet you in person but doesn’t have enough time to even tell you what it’s about because he’s in a hurry” –(if possible at 8pm – where this friend forgets to tell you are actually attending a travel party along with 200 others……..
Now that you’ve arrived at the meeting;
Were you buy any chance told that you are going to get a BMW M-5 and the home of your dreams just by reaching a certain result…WOW that sound great. (If you reach this status you will be among the less than 46 people in the world amongst over 100,000 reps who have achieved this status. So, ok you are not expecting the BMW M-5 or that free home but just want to “make a living”.
Ok- So let’s get the numbers straight- Let’s do an
analysis regarding the members and see who are actually “making a living”.
There are currently about 2700 reps in Israel.
The minimum salary in Israel is about 1000 USD a month or 12000 USD a year, while the median income is 2000 USD a month. Remember there are about 2700 reps in Israel. At best OVER 2000 of these people are paying members of just 60 dollars a month or at least 720 USD a year. Wait, are these people “making a living”. I sure hope they have another job. These people are paying WV 720 dollars a year. HMM….. I thought we were “making a living” as reps with this company. OK, so 2000 people are not only making a dime but PAYING the company. That money that they are paying, 720 USD could go to a nice vacation. HMMM. Let’s not all forget that we are not reps of the company but independent rep, so that the company has no liability in case any of us performing independent illegal activities or we intentionally misinform ,lie or threaten one of it’s members. The company does not cover you for anything, and can arbitrarily take ones income at any time or date as they see fit. As for the writer of this blog who chose to leave many other including myself had their account arbitrarily closed by WV. So for those of you who amongst the few people actually making money, the company has the discretion to take this away or shut you down without notice. Yes even Mr. Little.
The minimum salary in Israel is about 1000 USD a month or 12000 USD a year, while the median income is 2000 USD a month. Remember there are about 2700 reps in Israel. At best OVER 2000 of these people are paying members of just 60 dollars a month or at least 720 USD a year. Wait, are these people “making a living”. I sure hope they have another job. These people are paying WV 720 dollars a year. HMM….. I thought we were “making a living” as reps with this company. OK, so 2000 people are not only making a dime but PAYING the company. That money that they are paying, 720 USD could go to a nice vacation. HMMM. Let’s not all forget that we are not reps of the company but independent rep, so that the company has no liability in case any of us performing independent illegal activities or we intentionally misinform ,lie or threaten one of it’s members. The company does not cover you for anything, and can arbitrarily take ones income at any time or date as they see fit. As for the writer of this blog who chose to leave many other including myself had their account arbitrarily closed by WV. So for those of you who amongst the few people actually making money, the company has the discretion to take this away or shut you down without notice. Yes even Mr. Little.
All this should be no surprise as each and every
individual was “given” and acknowledged the 25 page contract he signed when
they became a rep. Wait, what contract! I didn’t sign any contract. Of course
you didn’t. Your independent rep agreed to the contract on your behalf when you
registered. Of course the company can’t be responsible for an independent reps
non-disclosure of an actual contract. HMM. I wonder why they never showed me
the contract which in any court would be deemed unconscionable. But wait I went
to a momentum (of which I had to pay for) where AN EMPLOYEE or even the CEO or
the CVO (right they have a visionary officer) of the company who told me all
this misleading information that was given to me. HMM-. Yes I will record that
info and use it in court.
Better make it to Dallas Texas (conveniently located near WV offices) and 5900 miles or many mile away from the majority of WV members to take legal action. But I would hold out using all that recorded information in court as the contract clearly states that officers of the company are liable for signed documents and nothing they say. Shucks. Wow, so they can teach me how to deceive other individuals and then not be liable at all because I am an independent rep. What if I get sued from? WV will provide you with an attorney which will kindly tell you that you are on your own.
Better make it to Dallas Texas (conveniently located near WV offices) and 5900 miles or many mile away from the majority of WV members to take legal action. But I would hold out using all that recorded information in court as the contract clearly states that officers of the company are liable for signed documents and nothing they say. Shucks. Wow, so they can teach me how to deceive other individuals and then not be liable at all because I am an independent rep. What if I get sued from? WV will provide you with an attorney which will kindly tell you that you are on your own.
Last year at the Cyprus convention a rep that had
reached Director status, stated in front of hundreds of people that he signed
up to the company under false information.
You should have seen the expressions on all the employees of WV biting their nail (yet clapping their hands congratulating the member praying that no one had paid attention).
And moments earlier Mr. Mark Accetta told us that we have permission to record this. If you wish to see these recording I will be more than happy to forward them. Hey Wayne, Mike, Kyle, Mark you’re all present on the video.
You should have seen the expressions on all the employees of WV biting their nail (yet clapping their hands congratulating the member praying that no one had paid attention).
And moments earlier Mr. Mark Accetta told us that we have permission to record this. If you wish to see these recording I will be more than happy to forward them. Hey Wayne, Mike, Kyle, Mark you’re all present on the video.
Wow so the company allows its successful members to perform under false pretense and in countries WV has no license. HMM.
But wait …we can’t use the money (720 USD membership)for a vacation, that is the money money we pay to “make a living”(and for the right to sell WV. Now if you recall, there are about 2700 members in Israel of which 2000 are paying so they certainly aren’t earning a living. Now we have the remaining 700 reps… now someone has got to be making money…right? Well some news for 675 out of 700 them who a least aren't paying membership … you are saving 720 USD, however, are spending an average between time and personal expenses (are we reimbursed for that?) that equals to a minimum of 400 USD a month, between gasoline, phone calls, food, and your own time. So wait, I’m am spending about 400 USD running around (my time is worth money and gas, food) to make an average of 684 USD A YEAR. So of the 675 people who are not PAYING for membership, lets’ do the numbers:
Annual earning -Monthly outlay= income (“make a living”). But wait I spent about 5000 dollars over the year and earned an average of 684 USD . 684-5000= -4314. I’m out over 4000 Dollars. But wait the top earners among these 675 members who earn $5074 a year people are spending about 5000 USD a year to work at this goal of “earning a living”. Remember, none of these 675 people have earned more than 5000 USD (?????). Let’s do some math here once again with all the time and personal financial layout you are making along with the other 2675 reps, the top earner are making 5000 dollars a year. But let’s not forget that they are laying out about 5000 dollars a year. If my math is correct
5000 USD ( the best annual income for a rep)-5000 US (personal expenses)= 0.
Wait does that mean 99.01 percent of all people at WORLDVENTURES are netting annually (a whole year) 0 (ZERO). YES. Does netting 0 constitute “earning a living”.
In case you are wondering of what about those other people who are “making a living” 13 out of the remaining 25 earn an average of $4802 dollars a year. And if they are spending 400 USD a month overhead they are just about breaking it even. Looks like that means you have a great chance a making it.
In other words 2687 out of 2700 are at best breaking even. The reality is that these 2687 members are paying for the lavish lifestyles of a few people and Worldventures personel.
Have you ever noticed the income disclosure statement. Read it:
http://www.worldventures.info/pdfs/incomedisclosure.pdf
YES THAT IS THE PAPER WHICH WAS FLASHED AT YOU FOR ABOUT 1 SECOND AT THE MEETING YOUR FRIEND INVITED YOU TO.while they show you the BMW and house for about 10 seconds- and of course the contract which you were never shown at all.
You PAY CASH to recruit people, and make it back from the cash of your recruits. Logically, someone has to lose money for you to get paid.
However, as they do offer actual vacations and travel
services, so there is not a crime.
One could argue that your money also paid for your access to their exclusive vacation deals, (which are on specific dates in which you pay huge penalties for canceling and never include airfare.) The packages which I was told about included a 33 dollar for a 5 day cruise, which I have never gone on because the ones I saw somehow cost 733 dollars for the same period.
One could argue that your money also paid for your access to their exclusive vacation deals, (which are on specific dates in which you pay huge penalties for canceling and never include airfare.) The packages which I was told about included a 33 dollar for a 5 day cruise, which I have never gone on because the ones I saw somehow cost 733 dollars for the same period.
Nevertheless, the presentation will normally show you only "loss leader" trips which are used to lure you into the company.(how convenient)
The problem with most trips they offer is and pay attention they are always for a SPECIFIC HOTEL ON SPECIFIC DATES.
The company promises you that their trip to that specific hotel on those dates are the cheapest. But think about this when you look for a trip; what's REALLY important?
Well for me the following:
Do the dates of the package deal suite your needs; maybe the date don’t apply?
Is the location is right?
Is it the price really a good deal?
So say they offer a trip to Miami 3 days and 2 night
to for $200 4 star hotel)on a specific dates, say February 22-24 (but I live in
Seattle and the flight alone is $600 dollars extra-and there is even a special
for $700 that includes a 5 star hotel 3 day/2 nights to Miami -tough!). All
they are guaranteeing you is that for those three days, with the specific room
at the specific hotel at their price cannot be beaten. Does that mean the hotel
next door which may be nicer and has a better deal. Quite possible, yet that
makes no difference to WV. The only guarantee that you are getting are for the
trip dates. So even if you can go to the WV hotel from February 25-28 for say
$179 it make NO DIFFERECENCE. A common term used if you were to raise that
issue to a WV representative is that “IT APPLES AND ORANGES”.
Just for the sport WV had a trip that was 300USD PER PERSON on specific date. It was a nice hotel with half board. I went online and found a nicer hotel right next door (that flexibility in terms of dates and was quoted at 400 USD or 100 USD more than the WV trip. When I mentioned that to a WV member their response was “you see ..100 dollars less”. Of course when WV stated the discount you are saving it shown in the form of two people so in this case it would be 200 USD less than my hotel and 200 less than the best online price for their hotel. Then I go to the punch line and said MY PRICE was PER COUPLE. So my hotel which is nicer and has flexibility with the date cost 400 USD while the Worldventures dreamtrip was 600 USD. The rep not knowing what to reply stated “that my comparison is apples and oranges”. Of course in the presentation the Reps, forget to tell people that flights aren't included and the cancelation fees apply and of course that the trip they are showing are the few loss leaders.
And realistically, if you can sucker in enough of your
friends, you actually can profit. So long as the there is a lower rung on the
ladder to pay for your mistake.
They don't lie to you. They just hide the truth in pretty words and motivational hotel "pep rallies." Most of the attendees are still buying into it themselves, so they come across as very sincere and enthused. but if you notice, none of them are really making money. Hmm.
Don’t be fooled, most of these people are faking smiles to make their money back, even hoping your money will recoup their losses. My advice- don’t get up in arms, this thing is huge and there's nothing you can do. Just look out for yourself and your loved ones.
http://www.worldventures.info/pdfs/incomedisclosure.pdf
They don't lie to you. They just hide the truth in pretty words and motivational hotel "pep rallies." Most of the attendees are still buying into it themselves, so they come across as very sincere and enthused. but if you notice, none of them are really making money. Hmm.
Don’t be fooled, most of these people are faking smiles to make their money back, even hoping your money will recoup their losses. My advice- don’t get up in arms, this thing is huge and there's nothing you can do. Just look out for yourself and your loved ones.
http://www.worldventures.info/pdfs/incomedisclosure.pdf
I was surprised that a company that highly valued its people could put out a CD and allowed their own customers to be called “SUCKERS”. I’ve decided to expand my research a found that there are currently 260,000 people in Plano Texas , where Worldventures is located. That amounts to about 100,000 families or household. If we were to put the entire city into Worldventures plan , how many families would be “make a living” i.e. at least $21,000 a year?
Here are the numbers:
Over 99000 families= would be earning nothing or losing money.
580 families= would be earning about $4800 dollars a year.
320 families = would be earning about 21,000 a year . (Sorry no car allowance or health benefits.)
100 families – would earn on $59,000+ dollars a year (of those only 47 get the car not free of course just reimbursed)at 16 get the home.
You’d better be amongst those100 families or you’re in trouble.
FOR ALL THOSE INTERESTED IN THE INFO POSTED IN THIS
ARTICLE ARTICLE YOU ARE WELCOME TO EMAIL me at
worldventuresripoff@gmail.com
My name is Alan.
My name is Alan.
From experience over 80 percent of those that left the
business opportunity also left the product. The majority of others who do stay
on are due to social pressures mainly because it is their close friends or
family that have signed them up and are LIKELY TO BE ONE OF THOSE “FOUR”
SIGNUPS.
I would also like to point out the following:
The car and dream bonus are given to people who are a handful that earn a six figure incomes with WV. So the car and home incentive though still of value regardless will make little difference to an individual who earns these sums of money. But who are these individuals? Did they just walk off the street and become successful. A footnote that you may not be aware of is when WV started amongst the people involved were divided into two groups. There were those tagged as employees and those who were given a WV representative "GOLDEN ACCOUNT". These individuals had the opportunity to work with WV as an employee or be set up to reach an IMD level (which they all have). These individuals are the ones who lecture you today and wear gold rings, yet many of them never did nearly what others have to do to reach this. Why? Because at its initial stages WV did all the advertising for these individuals allowing them and assuring them to reach NMD (National Marketing Director)and it's a no brainer to reach IMD thereafter. So despite my article above no matter where you are on tree or pyramid, you are basically stemming from these individuals who in fact are WV employees but EARNING THEIR SALARY AS REPRESENTATIVES. This ALLOWS WV to play on both sides of the map both as a company and as representatives. It also allows them to pay for employees through your money.
THINK ABOUT THIS FOR A MOMENT; can you request from WV
to sign up directly for membership? NO.
These individuals are basically WV employees in disguise yet they tell you that you are not working hard enough. So they are getting paid for the work which the company did FOR them and then these IMDs are telling you that you need to stay active, keep working at your goal (and paying money for this) , while it's costing them nothing. The travel dollars plus bonus money to attend SPECIAL meetings for NMD and IMD is all inclusive. So THESE PEOPLE are NOT PAYING for anything. IMDs’ - gets the car, house , travel dollars , business meeting dollars and that's not all. Wait what else could the people possibly getting . MORE MONEY? MORE MONEY, BUT HOW? Well in case you needed to know IMD's and NMD's are being PAID by the company to speak in front of crowds at these meetings in addition to everything. So the fact it that the percentage of "off the block" individuals who succeed are LESS than what eh “income disclosure statement purports.
These individuals are basically WV employees in disguise yet they tell you that you are not working hard enough. So they are getting paid for the work which the company did FOR them and then these IMDs are telling you that you need to stay active, keep working at your goal (and paying money for this) , while it's costing them nothing. The travel dollars plus bonus money to attend SPECIAL meetings for NMD and IMD is all inclusive. So THESE PEOPLE are NOT PAYING for anything. IMDs’ - gets the car, house , travel dollars , business meeting dollars and that's not all. Wait what else could the people possibly getting . MORE MONEY? MORE MONEY, BUT HOW? Well in case you needed to know IMD's and NMD's are being PAID by the company to speak in front of crowds at these meetings in addition to everything. So the fact it that the percentage of "off the block" individuals who succeed are LESS than what eh “income disclosure statement purports.
I am an intelligent person but it hurts me to see how
many of my friends remain in a brainwash status and buy into this. Well I can't
blame them as I did myself. The term business opportunity is used in such a
distorted manner that it leaves me baffled. If the product is so good
regardless of business plan then people would be signing up regardless of the
product itself. Additionally, even if they did sign for both the business plan
and the membership, they would retain their membership despite paying
membership.
Have you ever seen a presentation which offers you the business presentation prior to the product.
If there are so many confident people out there and the company is so confident with it’s product ther should be a money back guarantee? Money back guarantee!
With WV you are lucky to get your money back regardless of time frame .
But, seriously, it is hard for me to blame most of the people who sign up. I would term what is being done is taking advantage of your personal life, social network, values , morals and of course money.
I recall when I first started I was coming up with creative ways and succeeding at this while only doing this part time, but I felt that shortly afterwards what I was doing to my friends is exactly what the company’s master plan is; getting people into a sudden frenzy to get their friends to sign up.
Have you ever seen a presentation which offers you the business presentation prior to the product.
If there are so many confident people out there and the company is so confident with it’s product ther should be a money back guarantee? Money back guarantee!
With WV you are lucky to get your money back regardless of time frame .
But, seriously, it is hard for me to blame most of the people who sign up. I would term what is being done is taking advantage of your personal life, social network, values , morals and of course money.
I recall when I first started I was coming up with creative ways and succeeding at this while only doing this part time, but I felt that shortly afterwards what I was doing to my friends is exactly what the company’s master plan is; getting people into a sudden frenzy to get their friends to sign up.
Most reps have no tools on how to do it. The kept
asking me to sign up their friend AWARE that I was using every marketing tactic
out the. My signup rate was 75 percent of people I approached, compared to less
than 10 percent on average. Taking that into consideration the level of success
by those who don't know what to do and with no experience stand no chance.
THINK about this for a moment if any opportunity is really that great even if
you got the facts partially straight most people would buy into it if there was
logic. The are many product you can say this about although ARGUEMENT CAN BE
MADE EITHER WAY BUT if your local gas station was offering you 50 cent of every
Gallon so long as you pay 5 dollars a month membership fee it would obviously
pay for those filling up 20 gallons a month (less than a fill up). Would
calling up your friend and telling him about it be so problematic and telling
him about this? NO! Would he sign up? Chances are likely. So why does WV need
to operate this way. Because obviously most people would NOT sign up but for
this social pressured meeting. Therefore all the training has little effect on
the individual and is an additional asset for the company.
I am trying to put together a class action law suit and have 137 people who joined and feel they were cheated and manipulated. There are many accounts on which to sue the company.
I recently did another study and came to the following conclusion: the company is not supplying enough trip/room so that each member can take apply for trip a year. This fact alone should0 raise eyebrows.
In case you were wondering I was booted it merely for asking to many questions although the official response of the company was “something they made up” as they had nothing to pin me on. If you have ever watched the incredible movie Philadelphia with Tom Hanks who was let go because he had AIDS although the company dismissed this as the reason, that is about how I was let go. Doing nothing wrong except for being a responsible individual.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
An honest revealing WorldVentures Review from an insider: Ex WorldVentures Leader
If you have just been given a WorldVentures presentation by an enthusiastic friend and you are wondering whether you should go for it or if you are already a member and after the initial excitement you are left wondering if you made the right decision because you have just found out things that have not been revealed to you in the beginning, read the information contained here as it might possibly save you a lot of time, troubles and hurdles that you don’t need to get into.
My goal here is not to make you hold back from joining or promoting the company, but to give you an honest and ‘behind the doors’ review, so that you might avoid the pain, humiliation, betrayal and loss that I went through, wasting a precious 1.5 year of my life and ruining my previous business, my reputation and some friendships to follow a fake dream that was sold to me wrapped in golden ribbons.
Because you see, WorldVentures is pretty good at one thing: selling a dream. All the marketing, the spectacular videos of the ‘Dreamlife’, the photographs of dream locations with people holding the ‘You should be here’ sign (reps, becoming mascots of the company on social media to sell memberships) the smiling over-confident presenters who seem to be ‘gurus’ of personal development, wealth building and creating a 'Dreamlife' – I know because I was one of them – all of these have a goal to make you believe that this is the company that will indeed, easily and effortlessly make all your dreams come true!… and don’t get me wrong, some of those people you meet at the presentations are indeed amazing individuals who just bought into this dream like I did for a while, until I realized that this digging for gold had turned me into a restless unethical lair and an abuser of people’s good will and trust..
So here is how I became Marketing Director in WorldVentures (second level of income, earning around 5000 US per month) and then decided to give it all up, as this company insulted my values, my ethics and my integrity as an individual.
I was lured in after I met one of the top leaders of the company at a independent online marketing event. He seemed to live the life that most people can only dream of with money and time freedom and loads of vacations around the world as it was revealed to me on his Facebook profile. He talked about his 'travel club’ making it sound like he a magical travel agency which makes dreams come true and claiming that he made millions in 4 years of starting this 'Worldventures travel business'. So I was inclined to find out more….
At the presentation that I attended I got impressed and excited - I was at a strange point in my life and what they presented seemed to offer solutions to all my problems (it is designed that way, as I found out later, I had the profile of the 'ideal prospect' - vulnerable and looking for something new). I trusted the person who invited me and the people who were there, because they were amazing at giving presentations and convincing that indeed they did live a lifestyle of time and money freedom that we all dream of, so I jumped right in.
I decided that I was going to make it work, I was going to break all the records, get all the bonuses and create my desired residual income very soon. I pioneered in my market presenting this new concept, bringing in hundreds of excited people with me! In 6 months I was already a Director and on the top 0.03% of the income earners of the company (according to the official Income Disclosure Statement) and moving fast to the second level of Marketing Director. It was at that stage that it struck to me that things were not so good at it seemed.... It wasn’t easy, I had given up everything for this company and believed in it with all my soul and after I started earning my first cheque of ‘residual income’ I truly thought I had found freedom! But that is when the problems began, as I started seeing more clearly….
WorldVentures Dreamtrips : What they say at the presentations about the ‘product’ and what you actually get.
At the well crafted presentations, they tell you that the company is buying ‘in bulk’ and you are getting Dream Vacations at wholesale (ie lower) prices. That’s the first lie. After I enrolled all the elite of people I knew in my market, many close friends, business owners and marketers (I got really excited and people who trusted me believed in whatever I told them about WorldVentures) we all started finding out, that the vacations offered were not really discounted at all and were not happening so often as promised either.
Out of 50 'Dreamtrips' offered there was the odd 69$ vacation which they sell so strongly at presentations, but that sells out within 2-3 hours of announcing it and they just put it in the Dreamtrips list for the show! We were basically telling people to pay an enrollment fee of 200 US dollars and then another 700 USD per year, to belong in a ‘discount travel club’ which offered no discount at all, proven and documented by our research!
As my team was growing bigger and bigger and I was running from presentation to presentation, from training to training, I started receiving tens of upset phonecalls and e-mails every day from people who had done their research online or by calling the hotels as normal customers and had clear straightforward evidence that the ‘Dreamtrips’ did not offer any discount at all while most of the times, they are priced higher than the prices you can get online if you are expert enough in internet searches!!! I wasn't able to sleep well at night, my life began to look like a nightmare.
I initially began informing and forwarding the information found to my sponsor which is within the top 20 leaders of the company and the answer I kept getting was that me and the people sending these e-mails had negative mindset and that I should work on my mindset in this business, focus on selling, that they people buy because of me and because they want to start a business, not because of the Dreamtrips and a lot of ‘personal development’ bullshit, no discussions about the Dreamtrips prices, with the only occasional excuse that the company is new and it is still building relationships with the hotels! I started getting frustrated and confused at the same time.... I didn't get it: When I sell something I want to give true VALUE to people on what they are buying, I believe in ‘under promise and over deliver’ and what was WorldVentures making me do? Amazing presentations where we ‘over promised’ and then severely ‘under delivered’ – not to strangers, but to our friends and family...
At some stage around my 8th month I was getting so many angry e-mails and phonecalls daily from people I had enrolled or people that my team had enrolled and my leader was acting so totally irresponsible and ignoring me that I decided to start forwarding some e-mails to the support team and the Dreamtrips management team to get some straightforward answers. Remember, the e-mails included EVIDENCE that the Dreamtrips were not discounted at all as promised at the presentations with links to websites or info that people from my team (Dreamtrips customers and reps) had gotten directly from the hotels.
And that was the first huge slap in the face: BLACKMAIL.
I actually got an e-mail from the headquarters that nor me or my team are allowed to call hotels as normal customers to double check prices with those offered on the Dreamtrips and that was a breach of rules and regulations and if I continued my research. They also made it clear that if I send any more e-mails to the very busy Dreamtrips team about the complains I was getting from my team on Dreamtrips prices and evidence with links from websites, I would be TERMINATED. Yes, that would be a reason for TERMINATION!!!! I was in total SHOCK! By that time I had spend 8 full months promoting the WorldVentures concept passionately I had almost reached Marketing Director level. My residual was increasing, but I wasn’t feeling well. I had just been Blackmailed for getting ‘fired’ because I wanted to be true and ethical to the people I enrolled. I badly wanted to give them the value I promised at the presentations, I wanted to give constructive feedback to the company to improve because I thought they didn't know what was happening with Dreamtrips prices, but I was clearly ‘ordered’ to stop giving them ANY feedback on their product! I was in denial, I didn't know what to do, I had already build a big team that I had a responsibility towards....
Then other things started becoming clear one by one:
1 The Big LIE that ‘You will have your own Business on the side’ – it is so unethical that they sell this ‘own your own side business’ concept at the presentations so strongly, that it makes me want to be sick. Being a WorldVentures rep you are not a Business Owner – you are an employee, maybe a highly paid one if you get to be in the top 0.01% and reach IMD, but an employee who can be kicked out of the door and fired at any time. During my time with WorldVentures and after my initial shock when I was blackmailed with termination because I send them EVIDENCE that 95% of the Dreamtrips were not discounted, I experienced the termination of their top UK Leader and their No1 USA Earner, both of which had build huge teams for the company, teams which of course remained with WorldVentures after the leaders termination (and hence, Worldventures saved their big fat salaries and also kept their teams or whatever was left of them!)
I saw those people working hard to bring into the company thousands of people, train new leaders and support the concept passionately, just to be terminated like normal employees, because of supposedly breaking ‘rules and regulations’, which by the way, is never revealed to the other members openly what the actual 'breaking of the rules' by those leaders entailed. You see, the WorldVentures rules and regulations are crafted in such way, that the owners of the company can wake up one day, ‘fire’ you from being a leader’ take all your team, never pay you again and they don’t even have to give you a reason! Its true, read the rules carefully and you will see what I mean. They can just decide that they didn’t like something about your behavior and just like that, poof! You’re gone!
2 ‘We want sheep and mascots’ mentality – WorldVentures does not really want you to have an opinion (hence you are a simple employee like in any other company). What they are looking for and what they are creating in their trainings is opinion-less sheep that the company turns into brainless brainwashed mascots. These mascots are reps who pay for Dreamtrip after Dreamtrip to promote the company by taking photos with the logos and slogans and post it on their profiles (note: if you are already a member, notice that 90% of the people who go to all the Dreamtrips are leaders who go there just to promote the concept and not actual members who pay to use the 'product'), thus building the WV brand with the illusion that they are actually building their own business (whereas they are just normal employees)
3 The Lie of long term Residual Income while offering a non sustainable product with no value. I have experienced firsthand how the top leaders have to work to maintain their status and trust me, that is not freedom! The top 20 leaders and income earners of the company that I personally met at various trainings and presentations, are constantly on the road giving presentations and trainings, have barely bought a house and a car, all the vacations you see them posing are at work because this is where they spend time ‘bonding’ with their team (and they actually have to use those travel dollars) and nobody knows what they are really earning, due to the ever collapsing team. You see, as WorldVentures product offers no true savings, most people drop out within 1 to 3 months. On a rare occasion, someone will stick around to pay membership until the 6th month maximum. After that they are long gone and you have to bring in new people. Since there is no actual physical product that people like and re-order, dropout rate in WorldVentures is so high, that you can have 5000 members in one month and 5 months after you have 500 unsatisfied complaining ones left (I have seen many leaders experience that too, it is common reality in this company).
4 Additional Costs for Trainings/Marketing Tools/Going to Dreamtrips profiting WorldVentures:
Not only you have to pay for Dreamtrips membership for trips which are priced the same or even higher than if you booked the exact same trip online or better through your travel agent who would take care of your flights too and treat you like a good valued customer, but you are bombarded every month with trainings (costing from 99US to 500 US), Marketing Tools that should be offered for free (ie 30 US per month to use a mailing system) and many more additional costs that WorldVentures uses to extract more money out of its reps and members.
Basically WorldVentrures makes a huge additional income on its trainings, although I have to admit, most of them are pretty good and entertaining and there are people who do enjoy paying for those trainings because they get some value in the friendships they make and the shift of mindset in spending a weekend in a room-full of positive minded people who are looking to change their lives. However, what people don’t realize is the cost of producing that training vs the proceeds of the company with the very high participation fees, gives WorldVentures a pretty good additional profit for each and every training! (out of which, of course you don’t get any commission, even if you have campaigned your whole team to attend and if you are a leader, you are asked to be one of the trainers for free!).
5 Unethical Training guidelines for approaching prospects
The training on how to invite and ‘close’ leads goes against any ethical business practices. Members are encouraged in the training, not to tell their prospects what the invitation is about and to push them to sign the form giving their visa information right after the presentation, before they have the chance to ask too many questions!
They are basically masters of psychological pressure and brainwash. There are many ethical and proper ways to invite a friend to come see a presentation about something that you are doing without you acting weird and hiding things, putting your friend and yourself in an uncomfortable position. It is also unethical to practice tricky pressure techniques with your friends to get them to sign in to something they have no real clue about what it is (after the first 30 minutes of presentation, where they only present their own version of what they want you to see) and without giving you the time to think about it and ask questions.
6 Presentation style: creating fake enthusiasm and pushing for the sale.
Again, what I am mentioning above. Reps are encouraged at all the trainings to create fake enthusiasm in the room and push for the sale right after the end of the presentation, so that ‘too many questions’ are avoided. This goes against my logic of keeping some standards of ethics.
7 Constant Legal Issues of the company and bad media coverage – WorldVentures is going through legal issues sooner or later, in every country it enters. Have that mind that if in your market there hasn’t been yet negative publicity in the media about Worldventures and about how it has been sued for this or that, or for the fact that it is probably a Pyramid or a Ponzi scheme (I will get into that discussion in a future post), as there will probably be something soon. Are you ready to handle it? This will mean losing a big portion of your team every time this happens, losing a lot of respect from friends and family, being laughed at and rebuilding everything from scratch every time (most of the time leaders move from State to State or from country to country to sustain growth as markets are crushed and burned out) until the company builds in all the markets it could enter and totally collapses. I personally prefer to spend my time and effort more constructively on other projects.
After one by one all the above points revealed themselves to me, I felt so ashamed of having dragged in WorldVentures with me, so many amazing people which were also left disappointed and wondering how they didn’t see it coming! I even had my wife sign up, who is the quiet type and shy at giving presentations and she had been so supportive that she had already spend around 1000 US in membership fees from her hard earned salary within a year, although we didn't really need a second membership as a couple.
I totally lost interest to promote it and realized that the only person I can truly count on is myself and what value I have to give to the society as an entrepreneur. I didn’t want to be that fake mascot of an unethical company anymore….
I am now making money in a different business model, I no longer get angry customer phonecalls, I no longer get insulted for unethical behavior that I wasn’t even responsible for.
Who is WorldVentures good for?
It wouldn’t be fair not to add a paragraph about the fact that some people do indeed enjoy paying that 1000US/year WorldVentures membership for while, either because they have been lonely before and they found a fun group of people to go travelling with (because Dreamtrips offer no privacy, on the contrary they are group vacations where you interact with other members at parties, excursions etc) or because they enjoy all the ‘personal development’ training and bonding with other members that happens at the trainings. These are the 10% of people who stick with the company for more than a year as reps working hard on building teams and swear by the value they receive.
And yes, I did attend a couple of very nice Dreamtrips which were memorable experiences and did see some great friendships being formed in WorldVentures that's why I am keeping this blog anonymous, as many of those people who are still in WorldVentures and enjoying it, are my friends and I truly respect them as individuals. I wouldn't go to them and try to change their mind by giving them the information that I wrote here, because it is my story, it is up to form their own experience with the company.
If WorldVentures makes some people happy and fullfills their life purpose, I am not the one to tell them that they are wrong, it was just the wrong project for me for all the reasons described. For them, it might be their true life purpose to promote this company or it might be a journey they have to go through, to learn and grow like I did.
Or like me, some of these people have spend so much effort and time to build big teams, they have put so much trust and time in WorldVentrues, that they would hate to admit 'defeat' and admit to anyone (especially to friends and family who made fun of them in the beginning) that WorldVentures isn't really what they thought it was when they started, they are now too deep in and dependent on it, to make any decision to quit if they decide like me, that they don't feel comfortable with the product not delivering what it initially promised or if they find that they disagree with certain policies and procedures.
For me quitting and going on to start ventures which were true to me, was liberating, because I realized that with WorldVentures I wasn't giving the value I was promising to people. For others, quitting might show defeat to all their friends and family, so they do what they gotta do to prove what they have to prove to whoever they want to prove it...
And yes, I did attend a couple of very nice Dreamtrips which were memorable experiences and did see some great friendships being formed in WorldVentures that's why I am keeping this blog anonymous, as many of those people who are still in WorldVentures and enjoying it, are my friends and I truly respect them as individuals. I wouldn't go to them and try to change their mind by giving them the information that I wrote here, because it is my story, it is up to form their own experience with the company.
If WorldVentures makes some people happy and fullfills their life purpose, I am not the one to tell them that they are wrong, it was just the wrong project for me for all the reasons described. For them, it might be their true life purpose to promote this company or it might be a journey they have to go through, to learn and grow like I did.
Or like me, some of these people have spend so much effort and time to build big teams, they have put so much trust and time in WorldVentrues, that they would hate to admit 'defeat' and admit to anyone (especially to friends and family who made fun of them in the beginning) that WorldVentures isn't really what they thought it was when they started, they are now too deep in and dependent on it, to make any decision to quit if they decide like me, that they don't feel comfortable with the product not delivering what it initially promised or if they find that they disagree with certain policies and procedures.
For me quitting and going on to start ventures which were true to me, was liberating, because I realized that with WorldVentures I wasn't giving the value I was promising to people. For others, quitting might show defeat to all their friends and family, so they do what they gotta do to prove what they have to prove to whoever they want to prove it...
So Is WorldVentures a scam?
This is for you to judge after reading this article and doing your own research. I am long gone for all the reasons I described and I pray for my friends who are still in this company promoting the concept, not to find themselves one day in the streets with no team and no money, having to rebuild their life after WorldVentures would have broken their dreams.
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