Many had made mention of the problems of business opportunities in letters to the Federal Trade Commission in the public hearings in 1995, 1997 and 1999. They cited issues with advertising and earnings claims from Biz Op sales people. The FTC launched a sting operations called; Operation Bizzillions, which stopped a few hundred such operators out of the 80,000 such business opportunities. This action by the FTC did collect some fines for the Federal Trade Commission in their quest to show progress here, but the MLM virus has again evolved and found a new host since the comments of 1999 and needs to be addressed in this rule making comment period and a vaccine needs to be introduced. The reputation of the franchising community in the market place has been hard fought and the viruses of business opportunities have been able to re-align themselves with that success. The Federal Trade Commission needs to separate out the two. Franchising and Franchise needs a pure legal definition that cannot so easily be used to promote that which barely resembles anything close to it, by fast, high decibel talking salesmen coaxing middle class Americans into a ponzi scheme using the franchising definition and examples. For when this is done it is lying to consumers in a harmful and hurtful way under the auspices of the business format I love. This my friends is unacceptable and must be stopped; a difficult task for Federal Trade Commission law enforcement? Yes, perhaps this is the reason that no mention was made of it anywhere in the recent FTC reports on this issue? Many MLM sales people are now using the term Private Franchising to uplift their status from Multi-Level business to that of the established franchise community. |
