Almost two years ago, I was visiting my cousin in Montreal. I met his friends and they were all very nice. I happened to meet them at a very interesting point in some of their lives. A few of them — and one especially — were all the rage about this company, ACN.
ACN is the American Communications Network. It offers ‘quality’ communications service that can make you rich. In order to join their sales team, it costs $500.
Now any company that makes you pay to join them (as opposed to paying you) should raise a red, blue, yellow, green and every other coloured flag. Moreover, once joining ACN, as I learned with this unfortunately blinded fellows, you are pushed to recruit. Recruit, recruit, recruit! And why not, there’s a money incentive for it.
In fact, so much time is spent recruiting, that hardly any telecommunications goods and services get sold. Every recruitment is another $500 for ACN, minus off the top some money to the person who recruited the newbie, and the person who recruited the recruiter, and the one who recruited the person who recruited the recruiter.
And that’s how pyramid schemes (more professionally known as ‘multi-level marketing’) are born. Sadly, these nice men would hear none of it and continued on. I often wonder if they ever got out of the trap, or if they have become one of the success stories, hoarding in thousands of dollars each month at the expense of the people who trusted them.
And now, for some videos about ACN.
Tags: acn, pyramid scheme, scam
June 7, 2009 at 2:04 pm |
did you see ACN on NBC primetime televison dumbass?!? hahhaahahahaha fucken loser employee. Keep kissing ass hoping for a dollar raise. I love those who can’t do, talk shit, too bad you weren’t born with a pair of balls to start your own business instead of blowing people for 50 years of your life you spineless sheep!
June 7, 2009 at 6:40 pm |
June 11, 2009 at 10:06 am |
How much does it cost to buy a Togo’s, or Subway Francise? $499 seems pretty cheap. Yes, as with any franchise you have to pay the corporation that holds the name. Also, do you know what a pyramid scheme is? I know the reporters from FOX don’t, as it was obvious from the report. Will MLM’s work for everyone..no.. beacuse they are actually businesses that you have to WORK at, not get rich quick schemes (that is part of a Pyramid, you put money in and wait to get paid).
This is the great thing about blogs, you can sy anything and take no responsibility. You wrote this without even checking with the people that were involved in it to see how their experience was.
June 11, 2009 at 9:02 pm |
You raise a good point: with many franchises you have to spend money to make money. However, Subway and Togo’s, once invested in, aren’t training you to sell more franchises to your friends and family. They are training you to sell sandwiches, and/or whatever Togo’s sells. (Never heard of it.) Yes, MLMs do not work for everyone, as in every other industry, but MLMs have consequences for investors/sellers that are cruel, such as fee penalties for recruiting people who fail to make investment payments.
As for ACN not being a get rich quick scheme, explain all the blogs, videos, hyper-propaganda with Donald Trump’s thumb-of-approval promising prospects fast money in a personalized (ie: better) environment.
The overwhelming pro-ACN, and reactive protectionist blogs and postings online further something else you said: “the great things about blogs… say anything… no responsibilities.” I guess that’s why bloggers should, and most of them (including me) do not pretend to be anything more.
I have Facebooked the ACN sellers I know to find out how it is going for them. I’ll keep you posted.
June 11, 2009 at 9:07 pm |
[...] to my ACN post By assaultofknowledge Not sure what happened in hte last two weeks, but my sleepy ACN post just stormed out of bed. The responses I’ve been getting to it are much higher than usual. [...]
June 12, 2009 at 8:06 pm |
Togo’s sell sandwiches (toasted).
Because a MLM charges people for not performing, again, does not make it a pyramid. I switched jobs recently and was given a bonus, if I left the company within a year or was fired, I would have to return the bonus. That’s business. As for the fast money, it is true, that you can make money fast in this MLM, I know a 22 year old who is making $25 grand a month and she has only been doing for 4 months. This will not happen to everyone, and it was not sold to me that way. I was told, up front, that this was a business that had to be grown over time. The faster I grew MY business the more I could make.
As for recruiting your friends, in my industry (Engineering) companies give bonuses for referring people to the company. If they are hired, the bonuses can run up to 10 grand.
The problem is that people are looking for something wrong with MLM’s because they are either to lazy or fearful to take advantage of improving there lives. When people bash on the internet, think of how many motivated people, who could improve their lives, won’t because of the fear of someone else.
June 27, 2009 at 10:07 am |
Fred you totally ignored Assaultofknowledge’s very valid point. When I go into a Subway they dont say to me “We’re selling a $500 franchise today. We dont care who you are, what skills or business aptitude you have, as long as you pay us $500. Basicaly our requirements for acceptance into this franchise are that you are human and over 18. Oh and, you cant use the Subway name/logo in any advertising. Oh yes, and we’re also selling some sandwiches”
If you’re going to start using genuine franchises to support your argument then perhaps you should compare them properly. MLM is NOTHING like a franchise.
October 6, 2009 at 3:38 pm |
And why is it that everyone has “heard” or “knows somebody who makes $25 grand a month”? Where are the people who actually have earned the money themselves? They must all be busy trying to find recruits.. Not out selling phones. I have just been to a ACM meeting and there wasn’t ONE mention on how to buy the actual phone.
June 17, 2009 at 9:24 am |
Hi Everyone,
My name is Anil Sanduja . I am travel agent and ACN Representative. I have been ACN member for long. I have been buidling my team through my everyday clients. I sell them tickets and then tell my stupid customers to come at ACN seminars. I have been very successful at doing this. I already made lot of customers using this way. ACN is for clever, greedy and money hungry people. If anyone of you who went to ACN seminar. YOu will see mostly general labour people, Black people and spanish, filipino ,indians ,stupid people who have dream of becoming business man who have dream to become rich by seconds. ACN use this dream of becoming rich and tell people to join them. Basically, ACN is a full fraud company made by some evil minded business people. You can’t see the chart of ACN how many people have joined it? Ask why? ACN is basically family run extortion company but they doing white collar crime using their brilliant brains. Why governments are not taking actions? ACN is company made by illiumatis and Free-MASONs? DO you know what are FREE- MASONS? Even their symbol where you see SUN glowing is MASionic Symbol- Go save ur souls from ACN. Give me a call if you love to talk to me about this ACN-905-790-7800
July 19, 2009 at 9:48 pm |
kidding u r. right?
August 17, 2009 at 4:00 pm |
Anil Sanduja,you talk about stupid people,yet you bring up indians,I am assuming you are talking about native American people.
they are not stupid people,Indians are the ones who own and run casinos,making millions.
remember trump 29 Casino? its now spot light 29 casino which is no longer owned by trump,he had no right to own the casino in the first place.
it belongs to the native people.
August 27, 2009 at 7:52 pm
Tefs I think you might be one of those stupid people she is talking about, look at her name you idiot. She is Indian from India and she has some valid points about the scam of MLM’s. People you should hold on to that $500.00 that they want and spend it on Lotto tickets because you have a better chance at making millions from the Lotto then you do with this company. Why are there News stations talking about this? Because it is a scam! Why are there YouTube video’s from all sorts of people about this being a scam? Because it is a scam! Take your money and start your own business with something you actually sell, why? Because that is not a scam, someone gives you money for an item or service! Not hear someone say give me $500.00 and now you go out and find someone else to give me $500.00 and then I will give me some of your money back. So go ahead and screw over your friends and family, see how many people take you serious the next time you call them up!
August 22, 2009 at 8:52 am |
Anil
I don’t know about ACN but you are stupid and ignorant as they come. What defines stupid people? What defines general specially how you put it, by race. I have seen plenty of general white labor around where I live if I am going to use your method of stating that. Go to college first and learn to leave a comment.
September 3, 2009 at 11:41 am |
Yes, and stupid people can use computers too.
June 26, 2009 at 2:25 am |
i just want to know if it is a scam. can some one tell me the truth…time r so hard for my family right now i can’t loose 500.
June 27, 2009 at 10:13 am |
If you join ACN you are going to lose your money. The majority of people fail in that business, and I suspect that you will have considerably better luck learning a trade and getting paid a set salary because as well as getting paid you’ll also be getting experience. You don’t get usefull experience working for ACN and if you fail, which as I said is extremely likely, you’ll have wasted all your time.
And if you really want to set up business, do so independently from a MLM scheme. Dont join a business that makes you pay all the profits up to other people.
July 12, 2009 at 6:07 pm |
momontherocks. you cannot believe ghe negative of what you read on the internet. There is good and bad in everything, for sure – ACN is a good company, and if you apply yourself and treat others the way you would want to be treated – you do not alienate anyone, you do not brow beat anyone, and you do win. I’ve been doing a year and we are marching our way, steadily upward – it is not a get rich quick, you have to work at it – like anything. 90% of people quit everything they start – then go write on the internet how someone else made them fail…hogwash – anyone can win in ACN – just takes honesty, character and persistence. I am a mother of two small kids and this is the best step we’ve ever taken in our career choice.
July 12, 2009 at 6:19 pm
90 % of people quit everything they start? Got some stats to back that vague, empty claim? If you’re projecting from the quit-rate of ACN employees, I think it only speaks of ACN the company and nothing more.
July 19, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Assa: People quit. No stats have to be given to prove that. Be real. Don’t beat anybody up for hustling and trying.
July 19, 2009 at 9:59 pm |
Anybody that doubts any company or service any more than the next should pause for a second. Do a search for almost any company on the planet (especially the US) and add the word scam or fraud or complaints or success.
I would be shocked and amazed if you find any company of almost any size in any industry that has no complaints or negative propaganda on the web.
People like to complain, especially when they are uninformed and suffering from their own fears and limitations.
Pray about your decision and regardless of your choice, step out on faith to whomever you worship. No job has 100% guarantees. No business has 100% guarantees. In any venture, I have not seen anyone work hard and smart and fail with nothing to show for it, even if it is just a lesson learned. Good L.U.C.K. (labor under correct knowledge)
August 27, 2009 at 8:01 pm
I wrote ACN in a google search and ACN came up with SCAM all by it’s self 10 times before I saw anything else on the company, so why don’t you do a search on let’s say McDonald’s, just write it as McDonald’s, and you will come up with locations to the nearest one, or the Ronald McDonald House and websites and postings like that, the worst thing you will see on them will be that McDonald’s makes you FAT, and all of us can say “that’s right if I eat McDonald’s a lot then I will probably get fat”. Now say ACN, and you will say probably if you are one of the normal people in the world, “you know I think ACN is a scam, and most normal people will say you know I think you are right about that”.
October 16, 2009 at 9:44 pm
Mike, 97% of the US population work for the other 3%. That is normal. I choose to not be normal. We do ACN meetings here in our state and they last about an hour. The first 30 minutes are all about the Products and how you have to sell a minimum number of services to be paid a dime. The AT&T service I had before ACN was more expensive than the service I have after renewing thru ACN. My Dish Network that I got thru ACN is the same as the service any other Dish customer gets, except I am smart enought to get paid residual income from myself. My Verizon aircard(bought thru ACN), gets me on the internet just like it would if I had went into the store. Maybe it is a scam, Donald Trump is in on the scam, NBC primetime is in on the scam, Sprint, Verizon, Nextel, AT&T, TMobil, ALLtel, Dish Network, Direct TV, ADT are all in on the scam, 20 regulatory bodies from 20 different countries are in on the scam. Heck Mike the only person not in on the scam is YOU and the other handful of people that read this blog!!!
June 29, 2009 at 2:37 pm |
Everyone is focussing on one aspect of the business, the recruiting of new representatives. You don’t have to recruit anyone. You can go out and get customers for any of their products and/or services just like any other company. And just like any other company, it will take a whole lot of customers before you see any big money rolling in. The reason they talk about recruiting new rep.s is that you could build your residual income faster that way. And yes, you get bonusses if you do recruit people who get customers. You don’t get any bonusses (or any other income for that matter) if you don’t get customers.
The majority of the company’s income comes from the monthly billing of its customers and not the first time $499 (yearly $149) from its rep.s.
I’ve been looking at some old posts on this company and I’ve found that it has changed how it represents itself as well as the products/services it offers. Now they are focussing more on how to aquire customers and having good product knwoledge. They also have a robust support system for new rep.s. It’s a little scattered, but all the information is there.
There are no guarantees made as to your income, just as if you started your own company or went to a school. Both usually cost a heck of a lot more. Ask all the people who work for the auto or construction or real estate or banking or etc. industry if their incomes are certain. You’ll get a resounding NO!
As far as whether or not ACN is a legit company or not, nothing I say should sway you one way or another. Go to a meeting, do your own independant research and make up your own mind. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks, it’s what you think that matters. I’ve seen people succeed and fail at ACN and I’ve seen people succeed and fail at ExxonMobil. Find what is right for you, and go all out. At least you’ll know you did your best which is all anyone can hope to do. Good Luck!
June 29, 2009 at 8:14 pm |
a turd by any other name…bottom line, and i know because i’m a telecommunications analyst (altho anyone can understand if they take the time to read the acn products section), is that they’re business model, if it is in fact to sell communications services and products, is fundamentally flawed.
The entire telecommunications/cable industry is going through a major transformation worldwide. The internet, w/Google as the poster child, has changed the world forever. They offer everything that ACN does FOR FREE! to anyone with a computer….except access and I wouldn’t at all be surprised if they provide that too in the not too distant future. The premise of this business, that no one will stop paying their communication services bills is silly. Evidence of downward price pressure on the market has been clear for years, Skype, YIM, GTalk, GoogleVoice, Bit-Torrent, online streaming…it’s just a matter of time. Ergo, ACN MUST make most of its money from recruiting…and the ever dwindling residual from poor ignorant folks without computers or high speed access. btw: The 500.00 + recurring yearly 149.00 fees to become and remain an ACN rep are also encouraged to (and i suspect, mostly do) pay ACN at least 40 and as much as 300.00 in monthly fees for telecom/tv access and services…which is far in excess of the cost of equipt/services one can get from companies like Dish, Verizon, ATT, T-Mobile, etc. that they are reselling. *sigh* …hard to believe people don’t do a little research before they get sucked into this kind of thing.
July 19, 2009 at 1:50 pm |
Not true or standard info. Not trustworthy. ACN has stable, competitive prices and services.
June 29, 2009 at 8:23 pm |
meh, typoses in my post, but i think y’all get the picture. even if i dissuade one poor soul from falling victim to ACN. oh btw: i listened to the pitch because a high school buddy asked me to. it was everything i expected…down to the lack of a Q & A session. these guys oughta be keeping bernie madoff company in jail…but i guess, as David Mamet paraphrases the great P.T Barnum in “House of Games.” there’s a sucker born every minute…and two to take em.
July 19, 2009 at 1:51 pm |
my meetings have detailed support and plenty of Q&A. So now what?
June 30, 2009 at 2:12 am |
I just saw an acquaintance of mine went to one of their meetings with donald trump and what not and i decided to do some research and I’m fairly certain it’s a pyramid type scheme….simply from the fact they say they are not one…every pyramid scheme lists at least 4 reasons why they are not.
Also I went to their site to look at what they sell…horrible website design and on every page they have links to join…the whole website is deigned mainly around getting people to join. And the fact that everything they’re selling you can either get for free off the internet or will be about the same price as any other company you’ll go to.
No other legit company does this…the website should revolve around the products if that is what they’re selling but you look up acn and go to their site and the first thing they’re trying to do is get you join them.
Everybody always says these companies are like mcdonalds or whatever…but for example you have to click on like 4 different links on their website to even get to franchising…cause they’re website is about their products.
I’ll just say it’ll be interesting to see if this actually works out for my friend or he’ll just become another scam statistic…
June 30, 2009 at 10:15 pm |
I totally agree with you assaultofknowledge… I’ve seen many people get brainwashed… They show you exactly what you want to see, money money money.
They’re the ones making money in the end, and stupid ones enroll in it to make them richer.
Those telecommunications are not going to sell, Rogers, Bell, Fido, Telus, Koodo, and maybe Virgin, THEY control the telecommunication, and ACN is never going to replace them with their product. It’s just a gadget, and they aren’t even focused on selling or developping their product, they just want people IN.
July 1, 2009 at 11:13 am |
I was approached very recently by an ACN rep. He actually came all the way from CA to make a presentation. I signed up 2 weeks later for $499 (never ever informed about the annual fee–found out on my own. Had numerous reservations about signing up but went with it anyway knowing I had 10 business days for a refund. I generated a top 25 list of people I wanted to contact. Actually had about 1/3 interested in learning more. But it became very difficult to get them a meeting for a presentation. So I exercised my option for my refund. The that signed me up was extremely persausive, telling me how good I could be in this business, how right it was, how committed I had proven to be in such a short period of time. He told me how down on his luck he been just prior to becoming an ACN rep. But in just 7 months he was knocking on the door of becoming a RVP. What he neglected to tell me was 12 earlier he was indicted for racketeering, wire transfer fraud and conspiracy charges in the telemarketing industry. He was sentenced to 51 months in prison. What kind of company takes on people like this? The kind that survives off of recruiting anyone they can get there hands on.
July 19, 2009 at 1:17 pm |
Does ACN have anything to do w/ somebodies crime record? Wow, haters are really straining on this site.
October 6, 2009 at 3:47 pm
..and theres only one “lover” using time trying to defend ACN. The problem is that, when you go to an ACM meeting, you get hyped into believing that you will make money easily. We can keep discussing pyramid schemes etc. but the problem is that the system is not transparent enough.
July 2, 2009 at 5:25 am |
Why would anyone buy any telecommunications services from ACN? They offer nothing that isn’t available directly from the provider, and as many of us have learned, when cable companies are competing with telco for broadband, and when we have all sorts of cell phone companies, you can negotiate a better deal with any of them. ACN offers only one plan of several offered by a provider, with no opportunity to negotiate.
Its vaunted video phone does not appear to be compatible with other devices and seems to be very similar to a VOIP device that was a failure when offered by other providers. So I buy one, who do I call? (they usually answer by saying, “even if you don’t call anyone with the video service, you can use the phone to display digital photos and it costs less than one of those digital photo display frames you can get at the store” Yeah. Surrrrrrrrrrrre.)
ACN reps like to compare the $499 dollar initiation fee to franchise fees. But the company tries to have it both ways; for it to be a franchise fee, certain legal niceties must be observed
26 states require business opportunity disclosure filings by a company offering franchise opportunities, at least half of those states require the documents to be filed with the state.
The Federal Trade Commission requires a franchisor provide all potential franchisees TEN DAYS BEFORE ACCEPTING ANY MONEY with a disclosure document containing 23 specific items of information about the offered franchise, its officers, and other franchisees. Required disclosure topics include, for example: the franchise’s litigation history, past and current franchisees and their contact information, any exclusive territory that comes with the franchise, assistance the franchisor provides franchisees, and the cost of purchasing and starting up a franchise. If a franchisor makes representations about the financial performance of the franchise, this topic also must be covered, as well as the material basis backing up those representations.
There are also requirements in many states that “subfranchisors” make similar disclosures. That means if I’m in someone else’s food chain, I have to make disclosures to everyone I recruit as well.
Has anyone ever verified the income of these $25,000 per month reps? I mean real disclosure, and not just flipping through a bank statement
July 2, 2009 at 5:34 am |
I would suggest anyone even thinking about this check out the Federal Trade Commission advice on “franchises”
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/invest/inv07.shtm
They also, btw, like to compare their fees to “licensing fees” charged in many businesses. but no license is required to sell any of its products.,so the analogy doesn’t wash
July 19, 2009 at 1:53 pm |
It’s an analogy!! Duuuhhhhhh!!
July 2, 2009 at 3:47 pm |
oh my gosh!!!! what have i done?
July 19, 2009 at 1:56 pm |
You have given yourself an opportunity to make a positive financial change in your life. Don’t let “haters” kill your vision.
July 3, 2009 at 4:09 pm |
My friend sent me this link and here’s the email I responded to him with after checking out this page.
—-
i read the site and watched the video! and…i was at the convention center that day, it was just a few weeks ago and i had a great time, enjoyed the presentations and got ‘fired up!’ . haha! just like the lawyer in the video says… its not for everyone and its too bad that some people are presented w.the opportunity as the only way to make money, its not.
if u want to know why i am involved, here it is. if u dont, skip to the end:
-i sold amway in the 90s and was pretty successful. i made my initial investment back plus a few thousand dollars until i stopped selling the product. amway was one of the first mlm opportunities out there and did very well. i did very well with it myself, so im a huge supporter of home based businesses and mlm. just like any of them, work it… ur rich. do nothing, u make nothing. (also, i support my mary kay gals, another hugely successful mlm, and wrestle with being a rep at every party i go to.) there’s actually quite a few mlm’s i support now that i think about it. not all home based businesses are great investments or opportunities, but there are thousands that are. my tenants have their own home based tshirt business and neither of them have had a ‘real job’ in years. they pay their rent on time every month, so no complaints on their home based business being their only income.
-acn boasts residual income on products i already use. my cell phone/wireless access and directv. i get a small percentage of my own bill each month. and anyone who simply purchases the services they already use via my website (like a video phone or cell phone or satellite service), then i receive a piece of that. im sure u understand, the more customers, the bigger the piece.
-the business opportunity that comes along with it is totally for me. it may not be for you, i dont care. irrelevant.
-people will always feel they were conned into paying for something for nothing. so they pay, do nothing and get nothing and make noise about it. also, it sucks that the complainers paid $500 NOT knowing what they are paying for. (i dont get why u would pay so much $ and not know WHY.) you pay for ACN to maintain & service the customers on their network. every service we have (cleaning, cooking, phone, travel, rentals) we pay for. with acn you pay that cost upfront, annually. its less than i pay my cleaning lady to service my home every week and i use my phone, tv on a daily basis. for that alone, the cost is justified for me.
thank you for the link! loved the video, especially the lawyer, he was spot on. i love you for sending it to me and hopefully you read the responses at the bottom because i thought they were good, uhh… minus the racist ones! give me a break, i was $500 away from buying a quiznos a few years ago and talk about ‘empty promises’! a whole notha story.
——
People determine their own destiny’s. No company or thing can or should determine it for you.
PEACE
October 16, 2009 at 9:59 pm |
Excellent posting Jo!!!
You sound very intelligent and it was well woth the read.
Good luck in your endeavors
July 4, 2009 at 7:42 am |
I was an ACN rep in Australia. It looks very attractive & they make you very hyped. However after a number of months things just didn’t work out at all ( no reps under me & very few customers ). If you didn’t recruit people to the business then you made very little money. I made $11 in 12 months. This doesn’t cover your ongoing annual fee, ur[front fee & ongoing training fees. Yes ask about that. I would say about 98% of people fail in ACN. Thats a huge failure rate & its never mentioned to you before you join. The market just isn’t there. So if you haven’t got $500 to spare, then my advice is to put it somewhere else. I dont think the company cares if you succeed. They just care about your $500. And come to think of it if something costs that much to join then there must be something wrong.
July 7, 2009 at 7:21 am |
The ACN scam is that you have to prey upon your relatives and friends. You end up alienating them. They stop calling and answering your calls.
After signing up the first thing you have to do is either sell or buy services to get your initial $500.00 back. There you go, ACN just sold their product… TO YOU!
To recruit they tell you to call your friends and tell them that you were thinking of them because you have this great business opportunity for them but you can’t tell them about it, they have to come to a meeting to find out.
My wife signed up and I was at a meeting and I asked one of the higher-ups how we make this stuff work. He said “you learn at the meetings” then walked away from me. Wait, we ARE at a meeting, the MF’er.
July 12, 2009 at 6:24 pm |
90% of people quit everything they start…not just a MLM. but everything. and the only way you alienate is if you ask more than once if they say no. have been doing over a year and have alienated nobody – and am building slowly not quickly – its not about how fast you can make $$$, it is about doing it right…we only need 20 customers a piece – we are not trying to get everyone – just a few that we know we can help… it is a great oppty – sorry to see so many people are so negative.
October 13, 2009 at 10:38 pm |
Pupple, you are so right on. I signed up in October of 2008 and canceled in January 2009 when I saw it was a SCAM. I had to pay the penalties. BUT they didn’t cancel the “Business Assistant” and have been billing me each month for a service I never used. I CAN’T GET THEM TO STOP BILLING ME THE $29.99 PER MONTH ON MY CREDIT CARD. Do you have any suggestions for me? I’ve phoned them, emailed them, faxed them — NOTHING HAPPENS. Thanks!
July 9, 2009 at 9:30 pm |
Oh my goodness Pupple. You are awesome. You just created the most logical reasons why this ACN is a complete SCAM.
Excellent job.
July 10, 2009 at 7:42 am |
Hey you guys…unfortunantely the majority of people in the U.S. are programmed to be workers. You go to school and they train you for the workforce. They want you to become employees, have a career, work for a company and hopefully work there for 40 to 50 years, and eventhough less than 7% of companies don’t do pentions anymore and social security will be gone in the future (for me cause I’m 20) you’d hope to be able to retire from that company. That’s the problem though, most people are worker bees. All they know how to do is work. Why because they have to have someone telling them what to do, they don’t want to take responsibility for themselves. I just signed up with ACN 2 weeks ago. Most people want to see a paycheck in 2 weeks at most…worker bees… HANDS DOWN, I’ll rather work like a dog for 4 years, than be treated like a dog for 40 years. Most people fail because they have to change their mentallity of how money is made…you don’t only earn money by working, ask an investor. I’ll rather work hard for my family and I…no matter how difficult it may seem, than work hard for someone else. Bout you, are you a worker bee? Go build your own hive, not somebody elses…that’s what I’m going to do with this oppurtunity.
July 10, 2009 at 6:33 pm |
Okay, so you signed up with ACN 2 weeks ago. You’re currently riding high on the ACN propaganda. You’re spewing everything they just “programmed” you to say. I challenge you to return to this site in 6 months and tell me your honest opinion of the company.
September 3, 2009 at 11:31 am
assaultofknowledge; I read Chris’ post and I don’t see the “propaganda” you claim he is spewing. If ACN is a scam then the fortune 500 corporations in this country must logically be outright fraud. I have spent the last ten years working for fortune 500 and fortune 100 companies and have little to show for it except and unemployment check and no health insurance.
I myself have signed up with ACN 6 weeks ago and was skeptical at first myself. I now realize that there is real opportunity with some hard work. I would gladly accept your challenge to return to this site in 6 months to discuss my success (or lack thereof).
August 27, 2009 at 9:01 pm |
Hey Chris, Why don’t you join the military and have a real job instead of hustling people, and after 20 years that’s right 20 years (you would be 40 if you joined now) and you get a retirement check for the rest of your life. Also if you actually worked, not just flapping you jaw for ACN, you can make it up the ranks pretty fast and know that you actually did something worst wild in your life and for the betterment of your fellow citizens. Or you could be a part of the governement, Post Office you get a retirement at 30 years I think with them. Oh, is ACN going to be paying you residuals in let’s say 10 years? The Internet can already do what your supposed product the “IRIS 500 dollars” isn’t that what it’s called, also it doesn’t work with let’s say a WEBCAM or any other videophones. Why should I give you $500.00 up front and then $30.00 a month for a videophone, when I can get a laptop with a webcam for about $500.00 and internet connection for about $20.00 a month and have the same thing? Plus I can do work on it, finances, look at pictures I’ve taken, browse the internet, play games, have it teach me all sorts of things, like “ACN AND YOUR VIDEOPHONE IS A BIG FAT GIGANTIC SCAM”. So grow up and get a real job or start a real business and stop telling us all this crap you are spouting about being a worker bee, did you get that from saying “Worker Bee” from your semiar and your whole 45 mintues of training? Think about it.
October 16, 2009 at 10:12 pm
Mike. I did spend 10 years in the military. The good thing for me was that it taught me discipline and work ethic. If applied to any endeavor you can be successful. I am also in ACN. There is no scam. The video phone works great, my customers can buy it for $99, not $500. Did you happen to notice that we broker for all of the top 6 cell carriers. I bet you use one of those cell phones…Do they send you a check every month for paying your bill? You are scamming yourself, at least I am smart enough to get paid for using services I was using anyway.
September 2, 2009 at 4:45 pm |
worker bees? who do you think you are? You’re a worker bee for the people at the top of your chain. You are just a salesman. If you are so good at sales why don’t you sell a product that is any good? Why do ACN reps think they “own” a business. Our salesmen at my company don’t think they own the business. They make more money than any ACN rep and sell great products. The vision is so skewed it’s scary. Don’t call yourself an entrepreneur if you don’t own the product. YOU ARE ALL JUST SALESMEN, face it.
July 10, 2009 at 7:52 am |
P.S who ever started this blog it is sad…how should flags be raised if a company asks you to pay them, that’s stupidity…I got my Security Officers license last year…I had to pay around 190 dollars to be able to get that license. I knew that if I wanted a job as a Security Officer I’ll have to pay that fee.I can’t just say no, I don’t want to pay it and expect me to work as a Security Officer and get paid. I know that that’s a license, and we have to get certified, but you must first invest money to be able to get money. I did it and began to work…that’s the problem with jobs they only pay you enough that you wont quit. I made my money back in a week, because it was me swapping my precious sleep time, for money. No offense but this guys an idiot, and it’s sad that many people think like him.
July 10, 2009 at 3:51 pm |
I feel your pain, I am a rep with ACN and have built a downline with a nice income for myself. It is a very difficult job to do, alotttttt of work. Even though I am making a nice monthly income from ACN I have decided to quit. Between myself and my downline we have about 300-400 customers. The problem is that the services offered by ACN are very, very poor. 85% of our customers are having issues with the services they have signed up for. The biggest problem is the video phone and ACN’s lack of resolution. I feel very bad about bringing my friends and family into ACN as Reps and customers, they trusted and supported me. Please before signing on with ACN make an educated decision so you are prepared for the issues at hand.
September 3, 2009 at 11:21 am |
Have you updated the firmware on your video phone yet? It’s easy to do in the settings menu.
Honestly, it may be your Internet provider or your own network settings. I have a video phone and know others who have them and they work great for what they are designed to do. I’ve used other products and this video phone is the easiest to use and performance is more consistent than Skype.
October 16, 2009 at 10:18 pm
My video phone works great as well. We love it and my friends that have them love them as well. Make sure you just set your QoS setting in your routers to make video/digital phone service a priority setting so it provides better bandwidth. Most are set to give priority to video games.
July 13, 2009 at 2:04 pm |
This kid I went to highschool started talking to me on Facebook about 7 years after last talking to him. He starts off by telling me he has this great opportunity that he’s only telling his closest friends about. Right there I knew how lame ACN was and how pathetic and desperate he was. I let him explain it all to me only for my own entertainment. He told me the videophone is the next greatest invention, as important as the internet, everyone’s gonna need/want one…etc etc. When I told him in asia they have video cell phones he didnt believe me, and promised that a stationary phone in your house is what everyone would want. I’m assuming the majority of the idiots who join ACN are similar to this kid and really have no clue about technology beyond the limited knowledge they get from some pamphlet.
Anyways, I questioned why I had to pay to make money for this company. I have a great job right now, all i had to do was interview. He promised the money is invested in so many ways to make sure we’re all successful. Interesting because they don’t pay for advertising. He also told me how it’s just like any other franchise. I said, maybe, but any other franchise I can find some pretty credible information on the internet about them. Oh but there is credible information on the internet he told me! He sent me links to MLM websites that had ACN ads, but the kicker was when he tried to make me look like an ass by saying, “listen, you can do all the research you want, but I doubt you can research any better than Donald Trump and his team, they’ve already done all the research you need and they ENDORSE ACN!……..”. He then continued to question my intelligence by asking if I even knew who Donald Trump was. He also thought I was an idiot for never having heard of Robert T. Kiyosaki. So impressive!
I talked to this kid a few more times and it only got more pathetic. He’d mock me for working so hard when he quit his day job so that he can do ACN whenever he wants. The last time I talked to him he started working a full time job (his reasoning was amazing; he didn’t NEED the full time job, he wanted it…rightttttttt). Every time I’d ask how much money he made was comical. His response was “I can make up to $XXX amount.” He never had the balls to tell me his actual income was close to zero.
That’s my story. I’m sure many people have very similar stories.
Good luck to you clowns selling the video phone; I was assured by this kid it’s AWESOME to get girls naked over it.
July 14, 2009 at 1:22 am |
ok lets say all u ACN’ers make thousands in the next 5 to 10 years and are living off it quite comfortably. Then all of a sudden ACN has to get shut down or goes bankrupt. Then what ?? What happens when your income goes to absolutely nothin. Do u think your bosses will compensate you? Ha ha, good luck. Their liable to just run off with the money and leave the country cause all these guys look like crooks. Does acn have a pension plan?? would you be able to get govt insurance? i think not. Thats what you acn’ers dont get. When this company goes down you are all screwed. You rely on it like its going to make all your dreams come true. but the reality is companies like this never last. ya ya i know acn has been around for 15 years , blah blah blah. But its a ever changing world and ACN is falling way behind. This is not how you business. Wouldnt it be much wiser to go to school, get an education, do somethin you love and get respect for it from all your peers? and if you do lose your job, there will be another one waiting for u. Wouldnt it be wiser to have a job with a pension plan knowing that you will be secured financially when you retire? And not having to worry about some company u work for that no one really knows anything about which just might someday stop and leave you with nothin? The reality is ignorant and uneducated people think there is a easier way out of life. THERE ISNT!!. why work at something knowing you might not get paid for it? Why not do something u know will pay you guaranteed? You say i d rather work 4 years for acn and then retire. What kind of idiot attitude is that? You getting paid handsomely is not guaranteed so why risk that? Why waste your time on it. U idiots arent thinking about your realistic long term future.
July 19, 2009 at 12:53 pm |
You’re kidding, right? Degrees are useful at times, but they are NOT the “solution”. ACN is behind? I am respected for much more than what JOB I may have or had. Who cares about a J.O.B.? Another one waiting, uh, yeah. The unemployment rate means nothing, of course.
What stops a company offering a pension from folding or making your benefits sooo small after retirement, that it’s not enough on which to live?
No pay is guaranteed. We all know this, so why post such?
July 19, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Laughingkindahard,
You make some very valid points in your posts; however, you write, “Who cares about a J.O.B.? You are wasting your time debating with people that will not see any side but their own. The fact of the matter is that being an ACN rep is a job. You are performing a service and getting paid to do it. Some are better at it than others. Some do not have what it takes. As long as you are happy with what you are doing, earning an income and paying your own bills… who cares what everyone thinks. They are doing exactly what they are doing BECAUSE it doesn’t work for them or they have seen others it didn’t work for. Some people aren’t cut out to be doctors, attorneys, pilots, astronauts…. it is about what works for you.
Unfortunately, many people think that MLMs are NOT a “real” job when in fact they are. They take a lot of work. They aren’t the most conventional job; however, for the most part you get to make your own hours, you get to socialize with others throughout the day and everyday is different so there is no monotony.
Some people have nothing better than to sit on a board and whine and complain. Negative people are not want you want to be around. I keep reading about what about when the business folds. Has anyone noticed anything about our economy lately? Businesses that have been around long before Walmart have shut their doors. There is no longer such a thing as job security. I am not knocking a college education and think that if possible, everyone should continue learning. The point is, there is NO SUCH THING AS JOB SECURITY and there may not always be another job waiting for those who are laid off, fired, etc. Look at the unemployment stats.
I wish you the best in your endeavors and extra success for positivity! May you prosper in all that you do!!
July 20, 2009 at 1:23 am
So your solution is buy into a company that doesnt care who signs up, a company no one has ever heard of and doesnt look like they have the best track record, and a company that will pay you about a tenth of you what you actually worked , if lucky. I dont know about you but i expect to get paid for every hour i work each week. And thats a guarantee. Why wouldnt it be? with this you have no idea what you ll get paid from one month to the next. Who the hell would want to waste their time not knowing that. Who the hell would want to risk their future for something like this? I ll tell you who- suckers who get brainwashed believing something as stupid as a videophone is going change the world. Give it up. If it hasnt changed the world as of now, its not going to happen.
August 27, 2009 at 9:14 pm
Degrees are useful at times? Idiot knowledge is always useful and when you get a degree that means you actually worked hard for YEARS to learn that knowledge, not 45 minutes from some hustler. If you stop and really think about it, the technology is going to be way beyond a video DESK phone, it will be in a video CELL phone and AT&T, SPRINT, QWEST, etc etc are all going to have it very soon and then what are you going to sell us? Look where your fabulous company started. Read up on it at wiki or other know sites, and you will see that it is a MLM “Morons Leading Morans” (I should trade mark that saying maybe I will make a million dollars off of it) so lemming go ahead and jump off that cliff just don’t ask me to follow you, because I will be the one left at the top laughing my butt off at you.
September 2, 2009 at 4:59 pm
HELLO??? Does anyone know what a SALESMAN is? this is not an “unconventional” job, it is a sales job. Most sales jobs can be done from home and can be of any nature. An ACN rep is just a different salesman with a really crappy product. When ACN goes bust with the phone, they move their “down line” to a new product. It doesn’t matter, ACN people will always be fine. They will always have work because there will always be something to sell. No degree required.
September 21, 2009 at 8:12 pm |
Did you know that ACN is 100% DEBT FREE
July 19, 2009 at 12:42 pm |
So far, this is hilarious. There are too many points and counterpoints to have a fair shot at covering them all, but here is my 2 cents. I am a rep.
So far, ALL of my video phone calls have worked fine, par with the quality of the immediate network connection. The phone service runs over the same physical lines as most of the major local carriers, so “problems” are not ACN based.
A pension makes a hill of beans difference if you had sense enough to invest and save wisely.
Entrepreneurs work for things quite frequently for things that may bust. Most startups do. I have had success with MLM’s and I don’t do them to get rich, but I do get paid well.
There are uplines that do not support or train, so I am fortunate to be with a group that is 110% supportive. If ACN dries up one day, I’ll use one of my 3 degrees again w/ a little CE to get caught up IF I leave my industries in the first place.
Some reps are just wrong for what they do, how they do it, and why. Unlike E-ron, wal_ s_re-t, and others, I operate ethically & morally. No promises or guarantees of dollar amounts or getting rich. But I do promise my support in helping others build.
None of what was described by pupple happened to me. Anywhere I see to improve a process, I improve it. No friends or family are alienated and those I am able to assist are thankful. It is really about how you do what you do.
Franchises are overtly about that brand moving their product for their benefit. We live in, what is it called (and not being funny here) a capitalist society. That’s where folk are free to do legal things to earn income. If I buy a mickey d’s or a subway, on average, 1) i’ve spent hundreds of thousands to do it, 2) I may have borrowed to sustain the business for the 1st 3-5 years, 3) I’m working day & night to survive.
With ACN, I work hard, but I enjoy it, there has been NO stress from doing it. As both a customer AND rep, I’ve received great support 95% of the time. With my old local phone carrier, I was messed over repeatedly w/o fail. So, I know I may not ALWAYS get a great customer rep for ACN, but so far so good.
What’s left? I get paid, I help people, products/ services worked as expected, and I don’t have a unreal picture of what to expect.
So far, so good. If something goes awry, I’ll be the first to highlight it. I only have one life and am trying to make great use of it. Good luck to all whichever path you choose or is chosen for you.
July 19, 2009 at 7:31 pm |
ACN=SCAM
Hmmm…Lets say that you are the very last person in the whole world to sign up with ACN. After you pay your $500+, who the hell are YOU going to sign up?? Hahaha! Yeah…GOODBYE $500!!
That’s when the ACN house of cards starts falling all around you. The perpetual money machine finally broke down, and you’ll be stuck holding an empty bag of cobwebs instead of your “millions”.
OOHH pleeease sign me up so I can pay $500 a year plus other stupid fees and retire on my WHOPPING 0.25%?!
If I’m really good at hypnosis and can get more suckers signed up, I’ll be allowed to make a whole 1%…HA-HA-haaaaaaaa!
Listen you’re better off starting your own REAL business that people actually want, for less than $200, and make waaaaay more than 0.002 cents on the dollar!
The SECRET is this…do what ever the hell you want, BUT make sure that what ever it is that you offer (product/service) that IT IS THE BEST in that field and I’ll guarantee you people will be seeking out your stuff and paying top dollar for it!
So stop being blinded by greed and give your head a shake, not many people want to part with $500 just to to go out and lie to other people about making millions.
No I never worked for ACN. Just that a friend at work tried to pressure me into signing up with ACN’s outdated technology. I just amused myself with saying no to every “clever” reply he could come up with till he finally gave up.
Listen, if this scam was the cats ass, why then do the reps have to pressure people (family members) into pitty sales, etc? Because they know they wasted their $500 and know that their ship is sinking!
Now if ACN had anything good to offer, the reps wouldn’t need sneaky tactics to sign people up. People would be seeking them out and be lined up outside their doors with $1000 in their fists never mind the $500.
Think about it.
July 20, 2009 at 2:01 pm |
Last messg was well said..
And for the rest of you.. I’m sure ACN is doing well with or with your comments
September 3, 2009 at 11:13 am |
I despair when I read posts like this. Aside from being barely readable, Many if not all of the comments are wrong and are not based in any facts. A little research would have gone a long way for many posts on this blog.
Please remember, the whole world can read your posts so they should at least be readable and informative.
July 19, 2009 at 9:50 pm |
Sounds like your friend wasted his time with concern for you. Poor friend. Your views are very limited and it’s too bad. Ah well.
July 19, 2009 at 10:53 pm |
ACN is using it’s reps to capture market share.
They made the process easy so that anyone could do it.
You only need to switch 20 services and if my friends or family are not saving on their bills by doing so, then I don’t ask them to. I just look for someone else who will be saving and I help them.
As for the recruiting part of it…..it’s word of mouth advertising.
If a big percentage of the population joined ACN and each brought in 20 services then ACN would build a massive distribution network of reps and capture a big piece of the market.
When new services or products are introduced the distribution network is there to dominate that market.
I believe a big portion of the $500 is being used as incentive to the reps to expand the network of reps.
Who, instantly, became the #1 distributor of toys a few years back?
McDonalds, when they introduced the Happy Meal.
Same concept here, if you have the distribution points, you can dominate any service you introduce. As you move up the company ladder, you receive very few recruiting bonuses but instead you earn a percentage of your team’s client billing.
The recruiting bonuses are there to keep you with the company until your residuals kick in.
Is there failure within ACN?
I’m certain there is. Not everyone is meant to be self employed.
Some may receive bad training or no support and still succeed but a majority of people need both training and support so I would advise anyone who is interested in joining ACN not to just look at the information on the company but also look closely who you will join under.
If your sponsoring rep is not someone you can trust or is not a good leader then you are likely not to get the training or support you need.
If this opportunity is done correctly, you can and will be able to retire with a healthy income. If it’s not, you will be telling everyone about how you got scammed.
Few people take the time to praise a good experience but most people take the time to bash a bad one, no matter who’s fault it may be.
Ultimately you can do as you please.
I don’t own ACN so I gain nothing either way. I am just sharing my thoughts and experiences on it.
I do know that my friends and family are paying on the average $80/mo less for the services they were already using and I feel good about that.
Good luck to all of us.
Cheers!
July 23, 2009 at 5:38 pm |
I joined ACN today, and for the products and the backbone of the Mlm is plan and simple and works.. example in your current job or career if you just punch in and punch out doing your normal half ass attitude oppose a person who shows up early and looks to excell and word hard no matter if it is a tough job who’s going to get a raise? it’s all up to you………..
should lazy people get paid the same as people who work harder…….
July 25, 2009 at 6:42 pm |
I would like just one ACN rep to show me the model and show me the money. If you are making such great incomes then why can’t you share how many points you need and what you make, etc. ANYONE who hides this is a cheat and a liar, point blank.
September 21, 2009 at 8:27 pm |
Wow! I was shown up front and right away. Afterall we are all in this to make extra money right. If you are a good person and you have a passion for life and people this can be the vehicle to help them too. No matter what if you have integrity and a good work ethic and you want to earn extra money no matter how much. This could change your life for the better. If you look at any financial opportunity there are people who make millions and people who don’t. It is ultimately up to YOU! No one else can be to blame. So if you make it with ACN or anywhere that was because you did what it took. If not YOU didn’t.
July 27, 2009 at 11:17 pm |
No it is not a scam… maybe you should do REAL research and interview the people that claim to have been scammed….these are the same kind of people that want to get rich in an instant without the work and dedication…oh but wait, you are one of those too. I am not an ACN rep but I have relatives and friends that are and THEY have busted their chops to get to where they are at and I am very proud of them. I have not signed in because I, like you am not willing to make the sacrifices they have made… I should because theirr sacrifices have only been to maybe not have as much time to watch tv as I do and pursue other non-productive ventures…but to claim they are a fraud or a scam… shame on you. At least i admit I have CHOSEN to just watch tv and not be pro-active….why don’t you spend a little time being honest with yourself and take responsibility for your sins of ommission (yeah, things you chose not to do)!!!!.
July 30, 2009 at 8:11 pm |
Chale, email me off blog and I’ll send you the flyers that break down the compensation. eliasremax@gmail.com
Otherwise you can find and ACN rep in your area and go to a meeting to see what it’s all about.
Best of luck.
August 1, 2009 at 4:57 pm |
This in an interesting blog for sure. I’ve been to a few ACN meetings lately but have not signed up. Still not sure if I will, but I’m not going to bash those that simply seek to better their financial positions.
The whole concept of a MLM business model is and has always been intriguing–that is to leverage your efforts by duplicating yourself (eventually exponentially) and get paid residual income from other peoples’ efforts. If I’m not mistaken, that’s what every traditional business owner seeks as well. Its true that the $500 (or more like $700 once you buy the phone and other tools you’ll need to truly get up an running) is a big pill to swallow, but for those who will become successful, it is an insignificant amount.
I’ve looked an numerous MLMs recently and have concluded that before I make any decisions one way or another, an opportunity must have the following components:
1. No product to stock. I don’t want to feel like I’m trying to sell people something they don’t already have, ie, lotions, vitamins, miracle-working-amazon-jungle-berry juice, etc.
2. It has to be a consumable item, or at least something that gets used and/or paid for regularly and does not require discretionary income and is not a luxury item. Stuff we use everyday and will always use or need.
3. A customer doesn’t have to change their lifestyle or buying habits to use the product. No auto-shipping, no exclusive websites etc. They get it from the same place they always do.
4. It has to be a superior product or the same product at a discount. There has to be some tangible benefit to the customer or they won’t stick with me as their rep. Loyalty only goes so far.
5. I don’t want to be embarrassed to ask close friends and family to be my customers. I don’t want to feel like I’m using my relationship to pressure anybody into being my customer–let alone a rep in my downline. It has to bring enough value, be no inconvenience, and be something they already use or else I’m asking them to do something that they would only do because of my relationship with them.
6. The business cannot be based on just firing up somebody’s emotions and trying to keep them in that state with regular meetings, trainings, conference calls, etc. If its a real business, anybody should immediately be able to see the long-term business vision. Emotions fade quickly. What I’m excited about today will not feel nearly as amazing after a good nite’s sleep. All the “energy” in a room is quickly forgotten when I’m alone in my home office staring at the phone that I’m supposed to pick up and make calls with. It has to be something that motivates me deep down. Something that makes me want to pursue it regardless of my fear of failure, or rejection. And it has to be something that rewards me quickly for my small initial successes. I’ll lose the vision quickly if my reward takes too long to realize.
7. There is a simple and proven-successful system in place so that I do not feel like I have to figure it all out myself–and training for this system is adequately provided without me having to dig or beg for it.
8. My upline is highly motivated to help me succeed.
9. The culture of the company is pleasant and non-competitive.
So far, ACN is the closest to my “ideal standard” that I have seen. I have no doubt that I am able to succeed should I opt to do it. I hesitate because I do question my own commitment level. Right now, $500 is a very significant sum to me, but I’m also tired of hearing how I should take that $500 and go back to school, or take some other training class that will improve my current education level. $500 won’t do squat towards that end or I would have done it already.
There are really only two types of successful people in MLMs: 1. Those that are desperate and to which failure isn’t an option because they can’t afford to fail. 2. Those who approach their opportunity like a start-up business with realistic goals and objectives. They do not expect instant success and wealth and are consequently not discouraged when people slam the door in their faces. I think statistically, 95-97% of all people who sign up for MLM’s fail at it. I believe it’s because they buy into the destination without considering the journey. If that is the case, then the MLM company shares the majority of the blame because they should take more time to talk about how much work is realistically involved. It’s not fair to only present the vision without spending at least as much time warning of the pitfalls along the way.
I’ll let you know what I decide.
August 4, 2009 at 2:50 pm |
All,
It is not the business model that is wrong or that people claim to be self employed and some who are not. My father established his own business at the age of 17 and till the day he died, he worked hard for it and was lucky to expand and was very successful (7 companies in Latin America 1 in the US dedicated to Import/Export Automotive parts with more than 5,000 employees total in all of them) is quiet impressive for someone who finish just elementary school. Once said that, I choose to get a University degree on IT engineering which I being doing for more than 16 years and I know about self dedication when I have to help my father to work hard on his business when I was a teenager and I knew more about marketing from the field than any education but, this is my point: I learned that to succeed you have to be honest and dedicated, the money is not the goal that is part of the bricks to get your goal. Even when my father got enough to retire at the age of 45, his goal was different. The problem that I see and I have friend to dedicate to CAN and friends who don’t believe on that I want to say that the problem is that none of the people in the ACN meetings that I have been invited is honest NONE. See my points:
a) They mention that profits are rising exponentially well, none of them has seen or can’t find the financial reports of the company, they are denied to the public or their own reps
b) If you get someone to buy the service, and they don’t paid, the rep is responsible to pay the bill
c) They don’t tell you upfront about the annual renewal and extra fees that came every month around 10 USD or so.
d) I asked several times about Equipment compatibility (tech side) none of them know about this. All what they get trained is to join more people and about the service they don’t know anything
e) Forget the tech side I asked about what everybody is concern today. Any equipment connected to internet can be hacked so I asked about security? They don’t know, I asked about what if I get a new Credit card and I have to dial to activated as any normal people will do using your home phone is it secure? They don’t know
Imagine this, I have the phone and I got the service so we get a call and my daughter answer the phone and in the video she get a Porn Video, what security it is use to avoid this? You got it, they don’t know, are the Phone ready for the HD? They don’t know. Consider the risk of today’s world were from the comfort of your hotel if you travel, or office you can activate you house alarm or set your DVR from your phone!! What security this company offers? Again, you got it!!! They don’t know WHY? They don’t care; they just want people to join. I asked, again, and again and again and the guy(s) who gave the presentation told me that they don’t care about that but they can put me in contact with someone. So I insisted and I accepted, well the guy who called me told me that they have a huge building with computer equipment to ensure that they are secure. How LAME was that answer, That can be accepted for someone who doesn’t have IT knowledge but not for me so I asked again and I also asked if all the out of the country calls will be charge and the cost per minute, I got as an answer that WORLDWIDE the networks will be open in 2012 CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT!!!! I don’t think that the second richest guy in the world (previously #1) the Mexican Carlos Slim will give up his telecommunications emporium to Everybody, I mean if AT&T has been in a legal battle for more than 10 years to make Mexico open his market now ACN tells me that it will be worldwide? And I don’t want to go further in Brazil or Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Spain, etc, that belong to Carlos Slim and he is getting in the Asian market. SO they are LIARS
Nobody questions personal efforts on this if you are dedicated that is fine but why to lie to someone to get in and I do not care but I do care when a friend of mine was involved with lies, he is responsible for their own actions but not showing the facts a priori is a matter of being honest and your own personality. If he decides join then good luck
So far, all I got is LIES and more LIES and have not found ANY that can tell the true upfront and, that claim to be at least one of the people who check the financial reports of the company. At the end, EVERYBODY is a puppet of the companies CAN or any other if you are employed and if you have your own business keep working hard. ALL, please set your goals in life so far, I found that ACN gets people just because the people want money long term, short term but what they want is what the video shows.
August 12, 2009 at 11:56 am |
Smartme, it sounds like you’ve done your research. I’ve attended one meeting and the biggest sell at the meeting was that ACN was going into Mexico in 2009. I live in San Diego California, next to Tijuana. I do know who Carlos Slim is and my boss who is a international corporate attorney has attempted to assist a client to get Cricket into the Mexican telecommunications market to no avail; though I had not heard about AT&T’s previous decade long fight. Thank you for posting.
August 5, 2009 at 4:40 pm |
Laughingkindahard…I’m supposed to be going to a meeting Monday night, and wanted to do some research first. part of me is super interested and gung-ho, the other is skeptical. I read a post where someone who was a rep said a lot of people are having trouble with the services. Can you tell me if you’ve had the same experiences?
August 6, 2009 at 7:58 pm |
All I have to say about the fee to start, When you start a job. ANY JOB! You have to invest money. When you got your first job at loeb, did you not have to pay for the uniform? When you start a business job, do you not have to buy nice clothes to wear to work? When you start a job in construction, do you not have to buy your own tools?(yes you do, trust me, I did it) So I don’t get what the difference is. WHEN YOU START A JOB, YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR SOMETHING, AT SOME POINT. GOD PEOPLE I mean come on…it’s not rocket science here, use a little common sense
October 23, 2009 at 1:38 pm |
Right, you’re saying you have to pay for SOMETHING, like a uniform or tools. But $500 for a DVD and pamphlets that come in the mail about five days after you sign up? How much did you pay for those construction tools, I wonder?
August 12, 2009 at 9:16 am |
Thanks for the info. One big warning sign is hooking up with Trump.
October 16, 2009 at 10:41 pm |
What Billionaire is endorsing you?
October 23, 2009 at 1:46 pm
That’s a straw man argument. How does this poster not having a billionaire endorsing him or her make their comment any less valid?
Donald Trump has filed for bankruptcy twice with respect to casino operations. Do you think he might have been endorsing those products as well? He was also the financial advisor to Mike Tyson at one point. Do you support anything Mike Tyson does because he was in business with Donald Trump?
August 15, 2009 at 1:22 pm |
Ask yourself the following questions about ANY MLM:
What is the fee that you pay up front, for?
Does it cover products, learning materials or a licensing fees?
How do I get paid?
by selling products and services or by recruiting people?
If it is by recruiting people and you have not sold these OBSOLETE TELECOM products and services — this is a scam and you may be arrested and jailed (Ignorance of the law is not an excuse – you can be arrested)
Ask you recruiter:
(Look them in the eyes and make sure you get this answer, OK???)
Ask them how long they have been in the business – and how much money they have made SELLING the Telecom products and services – or whatever products and services…
Remember to make sure that they are looking you in the eyes!!
Just because they are friendly with you and offer you rides to the meetings and give you positive Quotes of the Day and call you to see who you have recruited and sold to…etc. Does not mean that they have your best interest in mind.
There is something called Affinity Fraud — If I am a great person and I call you and we have been friends for 10 years — you are going to trust me…and If I introduce you to another person whom I trust, you are going to trust my judgement…and in turn trust MY friend
This is how MLMs work — The ones who care about you get manipulated by those who do not.
Then you make friends with these manipulators and you become a part of a loud, fun, joyous group of people — you feel energized and addicted to this energy — so what do you do? You buy the CDs and the DVDs and you go to Saturday meetings and you make Friday meetings and you buy Motivational tapes and you force your friends to join (and if they don’t they are not your true friends anyhow — good riddance)
Do you get the picture —- simple accounting if you put more into this then you get out of it (financially or otherwise) – get out !!
Get out before you MAX out all of you Credit cards – get out before your only friends are in the MLM and get out before they tell you that the reason you are not successful is because you are” Lazy and stupid”
NEVER LET THEM CONTROL YOUR SELF-WORTH!!!
~Peace
August 25, 2009 at 6:08 pm |
Sheila well said! You hit the nail on the head…….I do business with one of the top people in ACN and thid person can not pay his bill with me? The leaders in ACN are all about Perception…..How do people view them, I am so tempted to out this person becasue they are a fraud feeding on the weak!
August 17, 2009 at 1:04 am |
****Let’s evaluate the profitability from a quantitative perspective. *****
The commission rate for the first 5 level is 1/4% and 1% for level 6 and 8% for level 7. Say YOU find 2 reps and these 2 reps finds 2 reps each up to the 7th level. Say each rep, aka customer, signs up for 20 services each just for example sake. The “20″ is not random, i get this number from the meeting slides. Anyhow, that means, the team will be composed of 128 people and 2560 services signed up with ACN. With excel, it shows that the commission for YOU will be $8386. Not bad huh? But the catch is here. Suppose YOU are unlucky, you can only get reps up to level 6. YOUR commission will then be $604!! Hence, unless YOU have reps at level 7, YOU are far away from making $8386/month. Nonetheless, $604/month is still not bad, at least it pays off the $499 sign-up fees and other admin/misc fees. True. However, let’s be honest, how long it will take you to get to level 6? Not to mention level 7.
For example sake, say YOU are a star performer and you reach reps down to level 7. Assume there are 3 people per household and each household signs up for 5 services: 2 cell phone, 1 video phone and 1 internet services. In a city of 3million population, there will be 1 million households, and 5 millions untapped services available. 5million untapped services/2560services = 1953 star performing reps like YOU. i.e. An additional star performer will not be possible given a city with 3 million people. Still, 2k reps can make 10k per month. It’s not bad huh? Think again. This means that the entire city will be using ACN only and companies such as Bell, Rogers, …etc will have 0% market shares. (I’m from Canada) Let’s face it, it’s impossible. Let’s suppose that ACN can capture 5% of the market. That means only 97 reps can make over $8k/month. Last Saturday in Montreal’s quarterly meeting, there were about 3k people attending. Let’s assume that that’s the number of reps in Montreal. The success rate is 3.23% (i.e.: 97/3000). It’s not bad again huh? Not everybody is Bill Gates in this world. Nevertheless, this number is only good if ACN’s market share is 5% and only 3k reps are in Montreal. The ratio will be smaller if ACN has less than 5% market share and more than 3k reps in Montreal area.
I think most of the people who joined ACN neglect the basic math behind those fancy numbers ACN trainers promote. I simply want to point out the likelihood of success given the known variables. If you are a dedicated rep and be among the 3.23% who succeed in this network marketing scheme. I’ll be truly happy for you. You deserve it.
P.S. Skype offers unlimited US/Canada plan for $2.95/month vs $32.99/month + $99.99 IRIS 3000 video phone…. You may ask, you need a computer to run Skype. You are right. But honestly, we live in 21st century. What’s the probability of people not having a computer at home…. If your computer doesn’t come with a Webcam. Please go buy one on Ebay for 10$.
September 28, 2009 at 10:06 am |
Your facts are off on a few critical areas which throws your numbers off completely. You also failed to mention the new customer bonuses that amount to a significant amount while your business builds.
This is not a “get rich quick” program. It does require work to build the residual income part of this. It will honestly take at least 18 months to get it built up.
It’s true that most of the reps don’t build it up to the higher levels, however that fact falls in line with the 80/20 rule. People join this organization for the right reason but with the wrong expectations and that is not ACN’s fault.
The one’s who “get it”, do it! The rest just complain about it and set up their own failure. Spreading misinformation does not help anybody in any way. The Fox 11 story and Blogs like this only spread ignorance and fear which I find to be very sad.
October 29, 2009 at 9:33 pm |
took me 5 months to get well beyond 7 levels.
August 17, 2009 at 1:13 am |
Another remark, I just re-read some of the postings above mine. “95-97% of all people who sign up for MLM’s fail at it.” My 3.23% success rate calculation is actually very close. However, as I said, the number will get smaller and smaller if ACN’s market shares is less than 5% and more than 3k reps in the specific loocation.
October 16, 2009 at 11:12 pm |
Let’s use your math here genius. Telecomunnications is a $1.25 Trillion industry. If ACN captures 5%… That’s $62.5 Billion…They are at $500Million now… That’s an 12,500% increase..Man I hope your numbers are right. Oh, yeah one other thing, in my 2.5 months in ACN, I have people on my 6 level and not just in one city like your example, I have them in many cities and 7 different states. I have made more money in ACN than I have spent ($5,779 to be exact..part-time) Since I can do business in all 50 states 300+Million population…Well you do the math, I’m going to do the business. BUT if you just stick to your example, maybe you should just get off your ass and be one of the first 2000 reps in these markets to make the $10,000+ per month, instead of crunching numbers on your break at McDonald’s.
November 7, 2009 at 11:40 pm
Telecom is a very broad term and it could mean a lot of things other than simply telephone. Also, telecom does not equal ACN or vice versa. We should break down the $1.25B in pieces in which ACN has a market. For example, we can break down that pie into commercial and residential. To the best of my knowledge, I believe that ACN is more on the residential side. Hence, I respectfully argue that $1.25B could not be the correct number to use in this context. However, I can not provide a concrete number because I don’t know. A math genius doesn’t mean that he/she should be a marketing guru.
From I have learned in my humble years of education, I believe that one can’t discard my example by proving that something else is right. I would appreciate if you go through my math and reasoning and tell me what’s not making sense?
I used a 3 million population as an example. You may choose to use 300 million and the statistics will probably be the same as the purchasing behavior is more or less similar across the country. Thus, in proportion, there are 97X100 = 9700 possible top performers in a 300 million population. According to the info provided from the fellow bloggers below, there are currently 150k active reps in ACN. Therefore, 9700/150k = 6.46% is the cap of how many reps could be the top performers given this population size. However, if we take into account the inactive reps, the above number will decrease.
All this to say that I am honestly glad that you are among the top performers making close to 6K a month. I am not here to bad-mouth ACN. I just want people to make informed decisions because MLM might not be everybody’s cup of tea.
Brother McDonald surely gave a lot of useful thoughts during their breaks at the early McDonald to make it a successful business and I honor those who make use of that time for creative thinking regardless of their current employment status.
November 8, 2009 at 12:06 am
My mistake, the 150k number is from RVPMatt of another forum. As the name suggests, the number seems to be from a valid source of information.
August 22, 2009 at 9:26 am |
wing, thanks for doing the math; exactly what i needed to know, but just didn’t have the patience to crunch the numbers. fwiw the idea of having reps working for you is not dissimilar from a real estate broker having agents bring in the business. being a real estate agent myself, i can understand. the acn rep that presented to me even used that same analogy of being a broker of telecomm services. the problem i have w/ the acn business model is the financials as commented on earlier. “transparency,” as often used of late when addressing economics/business, is what seems to be lacking w/ acn.
October 16, 2009 at 11:18 pm |
Stick to real estate. There is no problem with ACN’s business model. You help people save money on services they are already paying for anyway. You find other people who want to make money helping people save money and the company pays you. No different than your real estate broker did, he found you guys to come on board, get listings, get clients, get referrals and he pays you to do so. If you don’t sell any houses what do you make? It’s the same with ACN, if you don’t sell services, you don’t make any money.
The right people are in ACN and the wrong ones are not. It is not for everyone.
August 30, 2009 at 12:15 am |
well these blogs are full of narcissistic people,not anyone is made to sell cars,appliances or houses.I own a business that has been open 5 years and am making 6 figures,I am looking into this ACN co. Not sure if I would commit to it yet!Like in everything in life you have to work hard at what you do to succeed,I pay employees on commission and had to fire some people within a couple of days because they don’t have what it takes to make money,not only for the company they work for but for them.There are really 2 people in life,the go getter’s and those that work for them……(I won’t even get into the welfare people)
It’s funny for me to hear all this negativity,put this into perspective people.I once worked for a company that does what I’m doing know,I have taken my company and surpassed the number of employees they have and if I so choose can buy them out lol……….(be open minded) don’t let anyone say no to your dreams………
August 30, 2009 at 9:56 pm |
1. Your target market is friends, family, and church members.
2. ACN does not advertise.
3. It is MLM, it is “network marketing”.
These three simple facts should be reason enough to stay away from this friend alienating, shameless crap.
October 29, 2009 at 10:42 pm |
your reality definetly bites moron!
September 2, 2009 at 6:20 pm |
damn Wing, that was an awesome statement. I majored in statistics in college so I resonate with your findings. Let’s go above 5% though, just so people could feel better. I would really doubt ACN could capture even 10% of a major American metropolis, please correct me if I’m wrong, but who is going against Verizon, ATT, et al? 10% would be a huge goal. That being said, if you told me I had a 6-10% chance of cracking 8,000 per month… that would be crazy hard work. Also, 8000 per month really doesn’t go that far after taxes. Only to uneducated workers and security guards is that a lot of money
I choose “laziness.”
September 4, 2009 at 3:49 pm |
I’ve watched the news story in this Blog and I have to say that it’s at the very least a very poorly done story. I believe the term used is “yellow journalism” for this kind of shoddy work and lack of fact finding.
First, showing up at a training center and harassing employees is hardly investigative journalism as they are bound by signed agreements not to talk to the press when they were hired; something EVERY employee must sign when working for a large company. Why would channel 11 news bring a hidden camera into a meeting that’s open to the public. That falsely conveys that somehow the meetings are private or done in secret. The voice-over claims that monetary gains are being promised when the woman speaking in the meeting clearly said “able to” when referring to the amount discussed. Her quote was most likely taken out of context for the story anyway.
Second, there’s tremendous lack of information about the company, its product line, background, history or influence worldwide. It appears to be a smear campaign with interview snips of two disgruntled members that we know nothing about, numerous accusations with little or no supporting facts and the usual hand-held camera chasing people around who can’t comment on the reporter’s questions. The only people speaking positively were positioned to look like brainwashed fanatics of some kind.
I have always held that network news is worthless as a medium for information and this only cements my opinion when I see stories like this. TV station news departments have to fill up time slots everyday so they become more news creators than news reporters. The ignorance can unfortunately spread and end up on Blogs such as this one touting misinformation over and over.
I would lend credibility to any news organization who would do some real work on this story such as going to the main headquarters, interviewing officers of the company, looking into the financial information of the company, etc.
If people want to know more about a company such as the one in this story, they would be better served finding out facts and details on their own instead of relying on the pre-digested news stories from major media outlets and newspapers that sensationalize stories to gain market-share to line their own pockets with. That is a fact that is painfully obvious today and does not require a hidden camera to figure out the truth behind it.
September 6, 2009 at 9:10 pm |
ACN claims to be the world’s largest direct seller of telecom services
ACN according to wiki had 600 employees in 2007
AT&T Inc. according to wiki has 294,600 (2009) Employees
October 16, 2009 at 11:24 pm |
ACN brokers for AT&T and all the other top 5 carriers….ACN also has tens of thousands of independent representatives..
And why would you compare a 2007 statistic with a 2009 one?
September 11, 2009 at 12:23 am |
Let me tell you what we all should never forget. No matter what promises are or have been maid from any MLM It is the sole Responsebility of the investor / rep/person getting involved to make it work for them. I have been in alot of MLM’s (quixtar/amway/X20 water/menaluca/Isogenics/and Now ACN) It does not matter which one is for you or I It only matters which one works for you or I.In otherwords It only works if you or I put effort into the MLM. Now MLM’s are not for everybody . Some People choose to work at a normal everyday job. Nothing wrong with that at all. In Fact if everyone out there joined a MLM there would be no life as we see it at all. So is MLM”s for everybody, No. Infact I’m greatful for the franchisees out there so that I might eat when I go out of town Or maybe sleep in hotels .Just remember that a pyramid schemes Is only when you can’t make anymore money then the person above you ,also when there is no product. Now ACN offers you the chance to make more money then the person above you and gives you a website ,and a chance to get out of that everyday normal job Now to me I think that $499.00 for the franchise is a bargin .I get the recipe for great sucess and a way to get out of normality (jobs).They give you all the tools to go out and sell Phones,security,wireless,internet,local and longdistance lines,and also lets not forget the team they will help you form a team for great sucess.Now say a person does not want to be a rep they can chose to be a coustomer for you or me it does not matter.Thank you for letting me say what is true and what is on my mind .Thanks RON
September 15, 2009 at 10:44 am |
Thank you for posting this article, and for inspiring the (mostly) thoughtful posts that followed, especially Wing’s analysis of the true profit potential.
My sister and her husband have been ACN reps for a few months now, and this is what I know:
$500 to become a member (did not know about the annual fee, or penalties for customers who do not pay, don’t know that they do, either).
$200 for a video phone that they use for demo purposes, but they only know of 2 people locally that also own them. They can’t even use it at home because their internet is via a wireless air card (internet options are limited in their area), and will not support it, but they still have to pay for the account.
Every Saturday one or both of them attends a training meeting in a town about 25 miles from their home.
Business trips to Dallas and Detroit for more training (We live in central Arkansas), and as far as I know the only thing ACN provided was “a sweet deal” on accommodations.
Numerous meetings held at their home on weeknights to recruit customers, and late-night conference calls.
Monetary costs aside, the personal costs are the pitches to friends and family–fortunately I am the worst salesperson in the world, I HATE it, and am doing good to sell candy bars for my kids’ school fundraisers–and the fact that their 4-year-old daughter is spending less and less time with her parents, and when they are there they are almost always talking to someone via phone, text, or internet about it. They were gone for 6 days on the Detroit trip while I kept their little girl, and then had a meeting scheduled for last night when they returned. Thankfully, it was canceled–I’m assuming due to lack of interest–and they went ahead and picked her up.
Not long after this began, I asked my sister when her “training” meetings would be over. She laughed, saying that there is always something new to learn. So, essentially, there is no end. In order to make any money at this, it seems to me that you have to be willing to devote all of your time to it. Supposedly you are in business for yourself, but that is in my opinion a fallacy. You are working for the fat cats in HQ, and the real money is made by dragging in more and more people. You do the dirty work, they collect the real profits. My sister and brother-in-law think this will set them on the road to financial freedom, but I think they are selling their souls, and their daughter is paying the ultimate price.
September 22, 2009 at 6:49 am |
I have been approached by a friend to join ACN as a way to be able to earn £5000 a month and was sceptical from the first meeting which I felt was just a bit too over hyped.
I saw nothing in terms of the wealth and the reps just seemed to me like a bunch of scamming evangalists.
They hardly spoke about the products and services focusing more on recruiting. I really hope my friend does succeed but she just seems to have jumped in with both feet without doing any real reearch ans is just blinded by the earning figures thrown at her. She payed the joining fee and as bought the video phone even though she only knows one other person with one and thats the person who recruited her. I don’t know if I should tell her about all the bad press I’ve read, but would I be a friend if I didn’t?
September 24, 2009 at 2:58 pm |
youre all f’d up
September 24, 2009 at 3:00 pm |
I love ACN it feels good to sit in a room with a 100 people who have zero hope and have to borrow 500 dollars so they can make 25 if there lucky or good at lying. Turn your garage into a grocery store you’ll have better luck !
September 30, 2009 at 12:58 pm |
Anyone who thinks this company is a scam is a fucking retard. At every presentation there is a notice that success as an ACN represenative is NOT GUARANTEED! Yet there are God knows how many people complaining that they were guaranteed success. And during that video, the lady said you COULD make up to $33,000 a month. Was that a guarantee? I dont think so. Those people who signed up and had no success, did you try hard enough? Im having no problem with this company. All you have to do is put in the time.
October 6, 2009 at 10:24 pm |
assaultofknowledge, thanks for posting this.
I just left early (thank goodness!) from an ACN introductory seminar a so-called “friend” lured me into attending. I was put off by all the hyper-positive salesmanship-gladhanding-positivity, and after sitting through an initial presentation wherein I learned that (a) Donald Trump himself heartily endorsed them (for how much?), (b) they were a “direct marketing” (MLM) organization (red f_cking flags), and (c) they offered wondrous ‘videophone technology’, then a subsequent snake-oil-slick presenter pep-rallied the audience through some questions about their intersection with technology (ahem) and asked, “How many people in the audience work in a growing industry?”. Two others and I raised our hands (I’m a database architect at a rapidly growing internet company); “Three? OK, you’re excused.”
I stepped out of the conference room at that point. “He’ll be back.” No, I won’t.
Just because “the P.T. Barnum theory of marketing” has been expressed doesn’t mean it needs to be reinforced…
October 7, 2009 at 10:19 am |
I find it very interesting with companies like this, that usually every person you talk to knows someone personally who is making extraordinary money using this business but no one them selves is actually making money through the business(at least not yet). As with Amway, they tend to have people like engineers, lawyers etc who are on top, used as mouth pieces, but these people had money before they started, and usually can talk more people into joining because people see their nice cars, clothes and houses and are sold. I have a very difficult time with trusting a company that pressures people into buying and pressures people into recruiting that generally is a sign of a company not worth doing business with, yes some companies will give you incentives for bringing other people but it isn’t the core focus of the business, just an incentive most businesses have their own marketing team, management team, hr team etc to find people who are interested and worth doing business with. One more thing, as with colleges, if a college was worth getting into you usually need a good gpa and or test score to get in. When they let any and everyone in(especially in large numbers) people with 2.0 gpa, low test scores, it lowers the value of the school and make it less legitimate. Just like Devry, University of Phoenix. To me MLM’s are the University of Phoenix of the business world, it isn’t worth much if they let anyone does it who had 500 dollars to donate.
October 8, 2009 at 8:03 pm |
I found this site as I did Google the ACN as I was in this week in the ACN recruiting. I tell my story of ACN in Austria. I apologize my English.
I did get a phone call from the man, who said he did get my number from some person who’s name I did not recognize, but what was a very famous Austrian millionaire-family name. The man on the phone invite me to job interview. I did get a address and time of the appointment.
I did go there. It was a private apartment, what was located at downer middle class area. There was two man waiting for me and I asked again from who they did get my phone number, as it is a secret, and I did get some a very vague answer,
like hmmm shhhsh Geraljsjhdu SWAROVSKI. I said I don’t know that kind of person, but they turned very quickly to an incredible marketing talk about the ACN business opportunity, where I should come in.
Ok, it was a business offer, not a job interview and I asked, how much money they want from me to start a this kind of business, they said it pays NOTHING, it is totally free, what I really wondered. They continue the big marketing show and making a numbers how much money I will do with that and that many clients and new partners. They said that I make at minimum 2000 €/month what is a small start money and later, about 3-4 months later about 10 000 €/month and in 6-9 month later about 40-50 000 € per month and of course, they showed a Donald Trump videos!
As the other guy said he is a vice president of the company and medical doctor and talked all of time how wealthy he is and how much money he do with ACN and has been stop working as a medical doctor because of ACN and added Porsche and Ferrari to same sentence, I asked, how much he do with ACN per month, and he said he make after 6 years a amount were have a six numbers, so at least 100 000 € per month
and again he put on some Donald Trump video!
I looked him and the apartment and said, sorry, but I don’t see such a money and I smiled to him.
That guy was dressed to a cheap jeans and shirt and had a ugly sneakers! We are in Europe, were the people if they have even a little bit money, want to dress well and these guys should be a well earning businessmen! That apartment was decorated like any truck drivers home and not like a man who make such a great money. I don’t believe he is even a medical doctor. The way of his speaking and attitude was more of person who never has been near of any University.
He did get nervous and start to press me to sign the papers. I said I want to think about 2 days and asked, can I get a contract papers to home to read. They say no and I should read the papers now.
I did read it and there was that I have to pay 399 € and then other fees, what I don’t remember how much they was. I asked about that, and he said, yes, you must pay it and I asked, why he said first I don’t have to pay nothing and he started to stammer that 400 € is nothing compared to that how much I can do with this business and that’s why he said it is nothing.
I said him that he did lie and if he want somebody in the business, he cannot speak a false. Then he offered to pay that 400 € to me for that I sign the papers right away. I said no, I think about few days and said my boyfriend is waiting for me a dinner, so I must go now and I did really have to be rude to get out of there.
Later on I found out that these guys has been check the addresses in all good living areas and check out the addresses and phone numbers and has been call around of neighborhood saying they did get a number of some famous or rich name etc.
I am not going start such a business and it is not because that what happened in the meeting. It is because I don’t see why anybody would buy example T-mobile cellphone and contract by via ACN as it is a same price, some cases even cheaper straight from T-mobile and for sure less problems, at least no disruptive ACN recruitment. After the counting, I realized that the saving of money for the client by using a ACN between of client and normal company is minimal.
Any my friends would not use ACN as it will get a address, phone number and bank account number and permission to charge that
and the case is ACN have a reputation as making a scamming. It is easy to Google that.
Second thing is, I think if you really want to do a good money,
you must be Mike Cupisz, Robert Stevanovski, Greg Provenzano
or Tony Cupisz or Donald Trump who for sure get a good money from acting in ACN-commercials.
Only for them this ACN-business is brilliant.
From all of them I would like to have a proposals for the marriage as that way just any beautiful and intelligent woman can make a good business..
or work for them as hired business manager…as I have a fantastic business ideas to make a scamming and funny business pyramids to suck people’s money to our bank account. 
))
October 18, 2009 at 11:17 am |
To me, a pyramid scheme is something you pay $$ into, and then do nothing but wait for more to sign up under you so you can make money. This is NOT what ACN is doing.
ACN is simply brokering services through AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, Nextel, Altell, and T-Mobile….they also broker services through Direct TV and Dish Network and ADT security services. (they also have a few of their own services that you may, or may not, be interested in.)
80% of the people I know have 1 or more of these services….I personally have 5 cell phone lines and Dish Network, High Speed Internet, a wireless internet card for my lap top AND a VOIP phone service.
NOW as a ACN rep, I can broker those services to myself for the SAME price or better than is offered directly by these providers and make a small commission off of that. BUT I also have friends and family that use these services.
Let’s assume that none of my friends want to sell….direct marketing is simply not for everyone. BUT as their contracts expire, they can RENEW them with me…using the same carrier or change if they want. OF COURSE they are going to go through me (just to help me out) if they are getting the same price.
And, of course, if this opportunity makes sense to them….they are going to WANT to sign up and broker the services to their friends.
This opportunity just makes sense to me – I have had a verizon cell phone plan for 10 years and do not see it changing. I have 4 kids….I will never be without Sattelite TV or High Speed internet. I know that I am not the exception to that rule.
This is the telecommunications era….and guess what? I just happen to be brokering telecommunications services!! Yes, I will have to actually work at it….but I (really) do not see how I can not make money at this as long as I am willing to do so!!!
October 18, 2009 at 10:56 pm |
For those of you that hate ACN: ACN is and isn’t a scam. It’s a scam in the sense that most people that join it don’t succeed enough to make some profit or even their money back. They preach that if you don’t sell services you’ll never make any money (btw you can’t even recruit people if you don’t sell enough services). The problem is that whether you’re selling services or recruiting, it’s hard to convince other people ACN is a legitimate company when their business model looks like a scam. However, you can check out ACN, as well as any other company, on the better business bureau’s website. ACN has an A+ rating, which is as good as it gets.
ACN is not for everyone. It’s for people that know a lot of people and are not afraid of losing their friendships (a lot of people will find it offensive if you bring ACN up). I haven’t made any money during my 6 months membership. However, I’m the only one to blame. If you don’t work hard (very hard btw) you won’t get anywhere. But isn’t that how every business works?
Don’t let biased news channels twist the truth. If you actually listen closely to the video above, they can’t prove ACN is a scam.
October 19, 2009 at 9:34 am |
Its really sad to see all the misenterpretation in this blog. alot of the facts are wrong. some are embellishments of the positive truths and some are negative lies.
Wing said just earlier that the first 5 tiers of your downline pay u 1/4%. not true, maybe wing should have paid more attention.
your personal customers start with a 1% commission rate. with every 1000$ chunk of monthly billings in your direct customers you get an extra percent and that up to 10% total. your first 2 tiers will generate a 1/4% commission rate for you. the 3rd 1/2%, the 4th 1%, 5th 3%, 6th 5% and 7th 8%. (NOTE: video phone customers pay slightly higher commission rates).
i also noticed how no-one hear mentioned that you MUST aquire customers to make ANY money. thats right, you can have as many reps as you want, if you do not have your minimum requirement of customers, you will never cut a check, and if your new reps dont aquire there minimum amount of customers you will never even make a bonus for signing them up. say i sign up a rep and it takes him more than a month to aquire his minimum customers, i never get a bonus for having him signed up.
the reality is that the real money is with the residual, not with the aquisition of reps. you aquire reps to leverage your time and if you leverage your time properly you COULD make some money. its never about what you know, its who you know. you need to be motivated and optimistic.
the downfall in all this is that ppl sign anyone up who has a pulse to become a rep. personally i believe this is wrong. i hand pick my reps and make sure they are exactly who i want on my team, i have even refused reps in the past and told them to keep there money.
Heres another thing, i refuse to sign up family and friends, i let business motivated ppl find me and i try to build THEIR success, mine simply follows. to make money you dont need a good leader, you need to BE that good leader. i have found my customers by finding friends and family that need to save money and i help them do so. and when they ask me about the business i say this…”it’s not for you.”
Ive decided to interview prospects and only keep the ones i want. what that does and gets me to have only a handful of motivated reps that i can keep a close mentorship relationship with.
im willing to answer any questions anyone has if they want to email me. positive or negative i promise to inform you with nothing but the truth and hopefully it will give you the insight you need.
guys, you dont need to listen to your upline. the business model worked for them years ago but times have change. do your own thing and be in-your-face-honest about EVERYTHING even the negative and you can get success.
CHEERS
email me with questions at kila_wear@hotmail.com
November 8, 2009 at 12:46 am |
My mistake about the %. Since you brought it up, let’s go over it amicably together.
The commission rate for the first 3 level is 1/4% and 0.5% for level 4, 3% for level 5, 5% for level 6 and 8% for level 7. Say YOU find 2 reps and these 2 reps finds 2 reps each up to the 7th level. Say each rep, aka customer, signs up for 20 services each just for example sake. That means, the team will be composed of 128 people and 2560 services signed up with ACN. With Microsft Excel, it shows that the commission for YOU will be $11031. Not bad huh? But the catch is here. Suppose YOU are a bad rep and could only recruit 50% of the 128 people, which is 64 people and stops at level 6. YOUR commission will then be $3249 and not $5500 they advertised. If YOU do much worse and could only recruit 10% or 12 people (level 4), YOU will make $87.4 and not $1100 they used in the example. Hence, unless YOU have reps at level 7, YOU are far away from making $11k/month. Nonetheless, $87.4/month is still not bad, at least it pays off the $499 sign-up fee+tax and other admin/misc fees in about 7 months, of course after you meet the requirement. Although there are some misleading info in their presentation, the commission is still decent. The question to ask is, can YOU do it?
As for the $0-1999 billing volume compensation, with a service costing $40, $1999/40 = 50 customers. I didn’t mention it because i was using a 2 rep as example. Moreover, it is in people’s best interest to build in depth rather than in breadth.
Another remark which I have posted in another forum is attached below.
*****
Besides the video phone which makes ACN somehow unique, the products that ACN resells aren’t very competitive. It’s not like going through ACN could make a customer save much or even at all. Thus, the only way a customer could truly save money is to become a rep himself/herself. However, there is the $499 joining fees. In the absence of this fee, I think all reasonable individuals would join. I would join for sure. So, why isn’t it the case? The company knows that by waiving the $499, the possibility of people joining will dramatically increase. Then, ACN could take a certain percentage from the companies whose products ACN resells. Nonetheless, ACN couldn’t make money like this. The margin is too thin and those companies such as Dish/Direct TV already give referral fees to their customers if the latter could bring in more customers. Hence, they don’t have to rely on ACN. So, how does ACN makes money? I really believe it’s off the $499 + annual fee. Then one may ask, how do i know that the margin is thin? Had the margin not been thin, ACN could have make big buck off the commission from the companies it represents. There will then be no need to charge that $499? So, using a little calculus 1 here,
As the limit of joining fees goes to 0, the number of customers through ACN will increase and ACN’s commission from the companies it represents increases
So why ACN doesn’t do it? Because the above only takes into account the Revenue from the sales of products and not the Profit.
As the limit of joining fees goes to 0, the profit of ACN decreases
In English, it means that increase in revenue from sales doesn’t really mean increase in profit without the joining fee and annual fee.
In this case, it is obvious that the product doesn’t matter at all, it’s from the subscription fees and the annual fees that it matters to ACN. Then, one may ask again, the point is that the reps make money too. Isn’t it a win-win situation to ACN and the reps?
Let’s bring some basic probability on the table. It’s a binary tree, by the way.
When a rep presents the product/service to someone, the latter could choose to be a customer or a rep. Since the services that ACN resells aren’t competitive, there is no reason for that customer to buy the services through ACN. So, the customer has to, by default, choose to become a rep in order to make savings. However, one can only make 1/4% by sign up himself/herself to the services (if one gets qualified). It doesn’t even cover the $499. So, the new rep has no choice but to get more reps. Then, once again. What’s wrong with this?
From this binary tree, we know that being a customer is not the optimal path to choose, but instead, being a rep is the only way to make money. Therefore, the products/services to be sold are completely irrelevant because no one wants to be a customer!!! Regardless of what product or services, the person will choose to become a rep anyway! (except if the person choose neither, which is not important to our analysis) The same applies to the next person being introduced and the next next person… Even if the product is just a mop, it doesn’t matter anymore.
So, what did I prove with all these pretentious math proofs? Nothing. Just to show that this scheme works even the product is a floor mop.
But I have to admit, the videophone is pretty cool. The only product that they have that could make someone want to be a customer is this. But as a user of Skype, IRIS3000 is a discrete spending that I would not want to afford.
November 8, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Wing,
If we use the ACN 7 level example that you also quoted, you’d have 256 people in the organization and not 128. I see the confusion here, I had the same impression at first too. All of the levels must be added together for the correct number.
Even if we built a smaller organization, ACN used an extremely conservative monthly bill of $38 which is what their local/long distance package is. I think it’s not unreasonable to double that number since most folks spend close to $100 a month for wireless service these days and probably close to that for cable TV. The numbers do work and the comp plan does pay well for those that work their business.
For all of the posts that I have read here and elsewhere, I have not yet found one shred of solid evidence that ACN is a scam or does anything otherwise illegal or immoral.
There are plenty of scams out there, this just isn’t one of them.
October 22, 2009 at 3:16 am |
I was in ACN, I made quite some money, then I quit, when I realized how negative the company is.
Heres a few little known examples.
1) When i was in it, they used to display the exponential growth of the company, now they dont. Because the profit dried up, and its going down. In 03 they had 600 million, in 04 it was 500 million… and in 05 its less…
2) You are brainwashed… and told exactly how to respond to everything. Money to some, sadly, is more important than anything, so it works. It was for me for a long time.
3) Violating any rule makes acn able to take away your downline, essentially your entire business (wait I thought I bought a piece of the company). THEN, they encourage you to break the rules on the down low. If you get out of line, and oppose anything the founders say, regardless of rank, you will be tossed. This happened to plenty of RVPs, including Tim Herr (one of the largest in California). He simply moved whatever downline he could to another MLM (5 links).
Hes not the only one, this has happened to MANY MANY reps who were higher ups.
October 22, 2009 at 11:30 am |
Let me understand your last claim here. You are saying the company is negative because they protect their good standing by eliminating representatives who bend or break the rules that they themselves agreed to follow when they signed up?
October 23, 2009 at 1:27 pm |
I’m skeptical of a few things that I can’t get answers to from ppl in ACN where I live.
1. I know a Training Coordinator who has an upline of 1,100 reps but only 7,000 bills. I think we can all agree the reps count for about one third of the customers. People are only joining bc they think they can get their minimum customers and build a big downline that will pass residual income up to them. This cannot go on indefinitely since the number of ACN reps would be growing much faster than the population. What happens when you join ACN but can’t find any reps bc most people have heard about it? When you know you can’t build a downline, what is your incentive then? The personal commissions are a complete joke. No one, and I repeat, no one in their right mind would join ACN to just make sales to customers. That’s chump change. So, I’d like an ACN supporter to show me how the ACN business model is going to survive when ACN reps have saturated the market and it’s only growth is left to selling? Do you think the people with small downlegs are going to go out and sell phones? They’ll only make money for the people in their upline.
Follow my numbers here. If an ACN rep’s organization grows at the same rate as the entire ACN community, he’ll never succceed. We have 15,000 people in New England. For this thing to work, and keep in mind my numbers are pretty conservative, by the time someone who joined now had 64 people in his downline, there would have to be 960,000 independent reps, just in New England, assuming growth rates are universal. Sounds pretty unrealistic to me. Of course any model built on exponential growth like that is doomed to fail. At this point ppl who join are just going to be the last few levels of ppl’s downlines. We’re almost at the point where except in really rare cases someone will actually build a decent downline if they join now. You have to give the guys who created this credit. They created an inverted compensation scheme so that the percentages of commissions are higher for your lower legs because there are more people. I’m sure they knew that time would come when you won’t be able to get any more ppl into your lower legs bc everyone’s heard about it. Feel free to debate me on this.
2. But if they actually altered the compensation scheme so that you get equal or decreasing percentages of phone bills from customers in each lower level, then there would actually be an incentive for someone to become a rep and actually make sales. Of course that would mean the people who got in early and sold their minimum amount of service to get qualified and then made all their money off their downlegs would make less money. Greed will ultimately make this thing stop working. Once the market saturates like I discussed above, no one will want to sell the services and make the lousy personal commissions if they can’t get many reps under them selling for them.
3. The IRIS phone is $225 after shipping, activation, and what not. So I would appreciate if reps were honest about this and stopped saying it costs $99.
4. If ACN reps are told not to tell their friends that much about the opportunity, but to just blindly invite them to a meeting at their home… does that really seem honest? Or is that just a way to get people in the door and make a quick sell on them while their emotions are running high, and get them to spend $500 to sign up without thinking it over. Pretty shady.
5. I keep hearing Apple inked a deal with ACN to build the first video cell phone. I’d like to see proof because I’m not believing it.
6. I hear WiMax, who bought the old analog TV frequencies and will use them to broadcast internet access, will distribute their product solely through ACN. I’d like to see proof of that as well.
7. If you’re in ACN, how does it feel badgering your friends and family to switch their bills over to you to give you credit? Are you really saving them money?
October 29, 2009 at 10:04 am |
Not sure where to begin here but you keep going on about market saturation which is not even a realistic point to argue. ACN is not about to saturate anything any time soon. There’s no such thing in a competitive free market system. Look at AT&T who is over 130 years old and even they don’t have total saturation across the country.
I also can’t debate you on your “conservative” numbers because they make no sense. I marvel at people who try to break down the compensation plan when they don’t even understand it themselves. There’s no smoke and mirrors here, but you do have to read the full compensation plan before slamming it.
October 29, 2009 at 10:39 am
Steve,
Of course ACN is not going to saturate the market soon, in at least the way you think I’m talking about. About 15% of my friends know about it. When thats the case, its too getting about too late to build a downline.
You don’t understand my conservative numbers because you, like many people, do not understand exponential growth. AT&T wasn’t set up to grow exponentially.. that’s why it hasn’t saturated the market. ACN right now is set up to have to grow exponentially for everyone to have a chance to build a reasonable downline.
We’ve both read the compensation plan. The difference between you and me is that I can see the short sightedness of it prior to us being there, and you can’t.
Once again, here’s my simple numbers to show why it can’t work like you want it to. There are already 15,000 ACN Reps in New England. If I can recruit people into it at the same speed as everyone else, then by the time I can tell one person to join, so will all the 15,000. Now I have myself and the person I just told. When we recruit another person each, there will be three people under me. But what about the original 15,000 plus the new 15,000. Won’t they still be able to tell one person each in that same time? What, am I magically faster than everyone else? So by the time I have myself and three people under me… which means my organization has doubled twice, wouldn’t the original 15,000 people ALL BE ABLE TO DO THE SAME THING? SO IF THEY ALL CAN RECRUIT 3 PEOPLE, THERE SHOULD BE 60,000 people. And by the time I get to 64 people, which is LISTED AS A GOAL ON THE COMPENSATION SCHEME, then shouldn’t all the other 15,000 people in New England be able to do the same thing? And do you think there will ever be almost 1,000,000 ACN reps in New England? So since that’s not possible, I doubt I’d be able to get 64. Not with 15,000 people in New England already signed up. Maybe if you were one of the original 500 or 1,000.
Another thing… my little numbers game is flawed in one respect, but in a way that makes ACN look bad. I actually would be able to get 64 people much easier than the 15,000 could grow to about 1,000,000. The reason why is because I’m willing to bet ACN has a very high failure rate. Most of those 15,000 people aren’t building downlines. They’ve maybe held a PBR or two and then have given up. That’s not really pitched is it? If they were honest, they would either not charge $500 or make the actual numbers of failure / success readily available on their video.
October 29, 2009 at 12:41 pm |
Skeptic,
You went to great lengths to explain why it won’t work only to state in the last paragraph why your point is flawed. The fact is your last part made the most sense because no organization ever has 100% participation; it’s impossible.
I usually lean on the 80/20 rule but even that’s generous in this situation because most people do not make it beyond the second or third level of growth and that may be for a myriad of reasons but they just don’t follow through.
One of the reasons I believe they charge $500 is to prevent too many people from joining and doing nothing with it. If people have some skin in the game, they will be more motivated to follow through and build a business. Even so, people spend the money, join and move on to the next thing, however they do have the opportunity to build but they choose not to. That does not make ACN a scam. The comp plan rewards heavily for those that follow through and build the business, but that is NO different from any sales organization I have worked for in the corporate world. Hard work always gets rewarded, not the other way around.
October 28, 2009 at 9:28 am |
I have been exploring the idea of ACN since meeting with one of their “Executive Vice Presidents”.
I’m a trained and experienced systems and business analyst who has been dealing in the realm of communications for nearly 30 years. My conclusion was:
1. You need a high speed internet service to make it go and that is the most expensive component of any VoIP service. ACN does not have a discounted provider of services, so they (ACN) provides no value-add in that respect.
2. The VP talked about all of the added services that an ACN rep can provide (Dish network, Direct TV, Verizon, etc.). The user is billed by and provided customer service by these providers, not by ACN and there is no real discount over purchasing these services from Best Buy or directly from the providers so again… no value-added.
3. In our hour long conversation all that I heard about was… video-phone and MEMBERS or REPRESENTATIVES. To sell what? I’ll tell you what: memberships (that they call a franchise) and video phones.
Why would I pay someone $500 to join their exclusive club so that I can harass my family members and friends to join too, just so that we can all buy a video phone?
That’s it.
They have one product and no services.
This is PYRAMID… period
October 29, 2009 at 9:43 am |
JD, I trust your exploration of ACN is finished at this point. One problem I see is that people such as yourself go to meetings that may have not had a real good speaker who explained the company or products properly. There are no hard and fast “rules” on how they are conducted and I realize some are done better than others.
First, a pyramid is not a conclusion as most things in this world are pyramids with people at the top leveraging others below. Corporations are pyramids, governments are pyramids, even families have a pyramid structure. What you are talking about it a Ponzi scheme where Peter gets robbed to pay Paul. Nothing about ACN rewards or otherwise pays you without new customers being taken in for services; customers, not new reps. Nobody gets paid for bringing in new reps or for having meetings. In fact, from your description, you may have been at a training meeting instead of the opportunity meeting.
The fact is that ACN has 3 of its own services it offers and partners with major service providers for the rest. They do offer Internet access though it is not available everywhere yet. ACN can offer better pricing or options for nearly every service provided but since the bill does come from the respective carrier, they control plan pricing. As ACN grows, so does its portfolio of services it offers and they leverage better pricing as well.
While I can respect your decision not wanting to be a part of ACN, it is not right to spread misinformation that disparages the company based on your one time meeting experience. I know many very honest people making a go at it and enjoying sucess without harassing anybody in the process. It can be done.
October 29, 2009 at 7:13 am |
JD, ACN has no “Executive Vice President” positions. And to address all of your other idiotic conconclusions:
1- High Speed internet in my town is only $19.99/mo, if that’s too expensive for you, then you need to do some other business besides what you are doing b/c you are broke!!
2- Our equipment is cheaper than you get at Best Buy, Verizon stores etc.. If your friends and family are going to use these products anyway, why wouldn’t they get them from you? Well maybe they don’t like you?
3- We don’t harass anyone in my town to join, we make a presentation and they make a decision. that’s it, very simple. your problem is that you have been ANALyzing things too long. get a life, if you are too stupid to see the genius in this program, we don’t need you anyway!
Oh Yeah, why were you looking at a business opportunity anyway? 30 years doing what you are doing, aren’t you rich yet????