SLAMBOARD

Here is a concise explanation of what the FTC does, taken from Wikipedia:

The FTC carries out its mission by investigating issues raised by reports from consumers and businesses, pre-merger notification filings, congressional inquiries, or reports in the media. These issues include, for instance, false advertising and other forms of fraud. FTC investigations may pertain to a single company or an entire industry. If the results of the investigation reveal unlawful conduct, the FTC may seek voluntary compliance by the offending business through a consent order, file an administrative complaint, or initiate federal litigation.

Reports from consumers is first in the list of things to which this great big independent government body responds. In the absence of consumer complaints, a misleading online sales pitch can thrive indefinitely. Here is a video tutorial on how to file a complaint with the FTC:

Interestingly, this video recently celebrated its second anniversary an Kimkins is still not in compliance with the current FTC regulations. The FTC has a page of good advice for people shopping for weight loss products and services. Nobody who reads that page carefully will pay for a Kimkins membership but at this point it’s not the careful consumers that we are worried about. If Heidi Diaz had been around in the 1800s, we’d probably be debating whether she had coined the phrase about suckers and their reproductive rates. Kimkins doesn’t comply with the FTC because it simply wouldn’t work. The FTC disapproves of fantastic claims of weight loss and asks instead for typical or average results. Please leave some comments with wording suggestions for the typical results of Kimkins. My suggestion is as follows:

I lost $39.99 in just 3 months!!!

I just saw this on the Daily Mail website…

Almost everything about Jackie Cox mirrors the Kimkins Controversy.

• 500 calorie diet -check.
• Weightloss guru who is discovered to be obese -check.
• Dieters reporting hair loss and other health side effects -check.

There is one very important difference. As far as I know, Jackie Cox has never posted fake pictures of herself or fabricated facts about her own successful long term weight loss. The other difference may be a direct result of that difference. Her diet empire, LighterLife, continues to thrive and Jackie lives the good life in the Bahamas (a popular tax haven with the Brits).

Everybody is blogging about today’s health science news item. It seems that women’s brains are not as effective as men’s brains at suppressing food urges. I read through a couple of media interpretations of these findings and they both highlight suggestions that pregnancy hormones may play a role. I can see how that makes sense, but I also want to suggest something completely different.

I think it’s possible that there has been an evolutionary advantage to having men resist the urge to eat things. They have been the strongest and largest of the genders since before we were even people. A short list of foods that a caveman might not have been able to resist include food intended for babies, babies and mothers. The caveman that was able to resist eating this stuff had a better chance of passing on his genes.

I had a sort of ‘Scam Immersion’ therapy recently. I was taking care of the administrative duties for a new WAH website that reposts carefully reviewed job opportunities. I am so glad that we got a kind of blacklisting system installed. Before I got the blacklist configured, the site was pulling in around 7000 postings a day for me to review. That was impossible.

I was pretty ruthless with my keywords for the blacklist. I used words like ‘cash’ and ‘legitimate’ in addition to the web addresses and company names that I had identified as scams.

There have been a few business models that made for a tough call. There are multilevel marketing situations where recruiting down-line salespeople is more lucrative than selling the actual product or service. I am repulsed by these situations because they involve pressuring people to lie and exaggerate about how easy and lucrative the potential sales are in order to earn referral money. That being said, they are often selling actual products and some people are actually making money as salespeople/recruiters.

Longstanding MLMs appear to have people working hard to refute online criticism. I saw at least on person claim that he had a paid job spreading misinformation about an MLM on the scam-watch sites.

Independent distributors ALWAYS conceal the identity of the company when advertising WAH opportunities. I have decide to avoid reposting anything associated with Herbalife. They have been in business for over 20 years and are a publicly traded company. I am assuming, based on the information that I could find, that the vast majority of people who buy into the scheme end up losing money or at the very least wasting their time.

AmeriPlan is another very big MLM. The thing with both of these companies is that they are set up to have a logarithmically increasing number of salespeople serving a finite market. Ameriplan also has a dubious product. It sells discount health and dental plans that less thoughtful people might confuse with actual insurance. Salespeople who find out that the plan is under-served by doctors in their region have to make an ethical choice about whether or not to sell people something that is of little use to them.

What both of these MLMs have in common is a plethora of conflicting information on the internet coming from detractors and defenders who each have their own axes to grind. They are also instigated by companies that operate well within the bounds of the law while tacitly encouraging independent salespeople to act in ways that are legally and ethically questionable. I continue to debate myself about whether or not these are scams. I think the only people who will assure you that they are not scams are either making money from them or still hoping to make money from them.

Check out this site the investigates Herbalife.

First off, for the sake of search engines… X2O is a SCAM

This product is touted as a breakthrough discovery in natural science, but it is really just a means to an end for an MLM scheme. Multilevel marketing has to have a product in order to be legal in the USA and many other countries. Selling little bags of electrolytes to people who are desperate to lose weight fits the bill. I tried to find out exactly what was in the product, but the site is more about enlisting salespeople. They even sell amphetamines so they can have wired salespeople.

I have a life sciences degree and I can concur with the hype to the extent that drinking an adequate supply of water is important to good health.

Here is a silly testimonial that is meant to be taken seriously…

Testimonial:
I have been drinking 40-50 oz. of soda every night working the over night shift for the last 9 years. There are no words to explain how I feel after using X20. This product has been a blessing for me and my family. I feel alert, healthy and have more energy to work. As an added bonus…I LOST WEIGHT TOO! THAT IS GREAT! Thank you Xooma for this X20 product.

Hmm… So a Floridian stops drinking 40-50 ounces of soda and replaces it with water. That reduces daily caloric intake by over 500 calories, yet the happy customer credits the packets of proprietary electrolytes with the improved health and weight loss. Do you think that customer might also be selling the stuff?

EDIT: As an added bonus, this Weight Loss Water miracle comes complete with a Lexan bottle, which is quite possibly carcinogenic.