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Interviews Quixtar Refused To Grant and Videotaped Statements

Regarding the "Interviews Dateline Didn't Do" it must first and foremost be pointed out that Quixtar became aware of the Dateline program nine months ago when Dateline asked to interview Quixtar executives. They refused. To be accurate, the title of this section of the website should be "Video Clips of Statements by Quixtar Executives and Apologists who Refused to Grant Interviews and a Smattering of Generic Statements by People with Titles." By videotaping statements, they avoid answering any questions at all, yet give the appearance of being interviewed.

To all those who were too cowardly to appear on camera, realize that both Mr. Scheibeler and Mr. Short have been physically threatened. We do not live far from those who threatened these people. We are putting our reputations and our families at risk by appearing.

Ken McDonald stated that the IBOs never registered a complaint with Quixtar. In the Dateline program, Bo Short stated on the air that he met with Mr. McDonald and talked with him specifically about Quixtar's role in supporting the approximately twenty high level IBOs who are raking in millions of dollars selling tapes and seminars to distributors like us, yet not supporting them in developing a legitimate retailing business. The tapes are designed to make IBOs feel guilty for not doing it, but do not teach how to do the business ethically. Mr. Short told Mr. McDonald to his face that people were being hurt. He was on a first name basis with Mr. McDonald. In this video clip, Mr. McDonald is not telling the truth.

Ken McDonald stated that the IBO under whom Dateline reporters joined, is a widow was supporting herself and seven children with the business. Yet in the SA-4400, it is clearly stated that the average gross income for an IBO is $1400. It is unlikely that almost anyone can support themselves with a Quixtar business, just the top few. Is this IBO outraged enough to step forward? Is she indeed supporting herself and her seven children with Quixtar income? Is Mr. McDonald accurate in this claim? Should he be believed in the absence of her corroboration?

Mr. McDonald stated that one of the ex-IBOs interviewed was just trying to promote his own company. This is false. Not one interviewee promoted any company of his own. Additionally, this ex-IBO is well connected and hardly needs to do a Dateline interview for his "fifteen minutes of fame," as Mr. McDonald claimed. Mr. McDonald clearly intended to insult him, to try to destroy his credibility. Credibility can only stand up when the facts support one's position. It appears, though, that the Quixtar executives who videotaped their statements would prefer to ignore the facts. They were so concerned about the Dateline show that they put together a carefully crafted but highly deceptive website, one that they paid Google to place in a sponsored website section.

Randy Bancino's videotaped statement clearly demonstrates that the purpose of the Quixtar Response website is to attack the messenger in order to obscure the issues. Quixtar hopes that the issue can be forgotten under all its rhetoric. Given that the website was prepared months in advance, Quixtar executives did not know what the message was going to be. Their choice was to attack the messenger rather than engage in a meaningful dialogue. This is a cheap shot in which the credibility of the messenger is attacked in such as way as to avoid acknowledging the truth or the logic of the message.

In his video clip, Mr. Bancino implies that the problem is that it is a "clash" of business models. He describes the Quixtar business model of "people helping people" as clashing with Dateline's model of "putting sensational shows on television so that they can get good ratings and sell advertising." First, Dateline NBC puts its ratings and credibility on the line with every show, and has nothing to gain and everything to lose if they cannot back up their story with facts. In his carefully scripted clip, Mr. Bancino tries to imply that "sensational" translates to "untrue," which of course it does not. This is intended to deceive the reader. The story is sensational precisely because it is true. Second, when one analyzes the dollars and cents of the Quixtar business as practiced by actual IBOs, it is difficult to believe that Quixtar is truly committed to "people helping people". Quixtar's numbers clearly do not support this claim. Third, comparing business models is completely irrelevant to the issues! Mr. Bancino is comparing apples and elephants, when the issue is a few kingpins taking advantage of people's trust in their friends and family to systematically deceive them out of their hard earned cash under false pretexts. Last and most important, Dateline did not go out and look for this story. Individuals sought to put this story in the public arena, because they had suffered harm from their involvement in Amway and Quixtar, realized that most of their fellow IBOs were suffering the same fate, and wanted the truth to be in the public arena.

John Parker stated that Quixtar paid out $343 million dollars and that there are hundreds of thousands of "successful" IBOs. Do the math. Even if there were only 100,000 IBOs, that translates to a mere $3430 per IBO per year, gross income. Quixtar states the actual number is $1400 gross annually. Are these 'hundreds of thousands" of IBOs actually meeting their goals? Of course not. The facts simply do not add up. Mr. Parker stated that there were only a few disgruntled IBOs. The company's own statistics also clearly indicate that Mr. Parker is not telling the truth. Only 41% of IBOs who are considered "active" renew each year, according the SA-4400, Quixtar's legal business document. In 2001, the percentage of first-year IBOs renewing was 32%. The average PV was 38 per IBO. The average number of retail customers per IBO is 0.23. This translates to one retail customer for every 4 IBOs. One cannot have a legitimate business with four business owners per customer! It is a mathematical impossibility. In the year 2000, a Quixtar document was included in The Business Owner magazine, published by Internet Services Corporation. In that document, it was stated in very small print that less than 0.2% of IBOs were Q-12 (Platinums qualifying 12 months out of the year). But are even these IBOs profitable? Emerald Eric Scheibeler's net annual income was $34,000 at its peak.

Ken McDonald complained that Dateline interviewed a disgruntled few. It would be absurd to try to interview thousands for a twenty-minute segment. There was much material Dateline did not use. Mr. McDonald, two out of every three IBOS quit every year. It appears to us that there are far more people unhappy with your business model than are happy with it. If we had been told we would be highly unlikely to make more than $1000 a year, but that it would cost us five thousand dollars per year to attend all these seminars and functions to teach us to do this, would we have ever started in the business? No, of course not. We were lied to, and systematically taught lies to tell our prospects, by our upline, all the way up to and beyond the Diamond level. We were taught specifically not to seek verification of these statements independently.

The Quixtar Response videoclip of Thomas Donohue, CEO of the United States Chamber of Commerce falls in the category of "Generic Statements by People with Titles." His statement failed to mention Quixtar or multi-level marketing at all. He spoke about franchising, an entirely different business model. He spoke blandly about a few bad apples, but he did not address the problem of the corporate executives supporting and protecting the bad apples. He spoke generically of whistle-blower programs. Since the whole point of the Dateline NBC program was to blow the whistle, we have no idea why this was included in their response site. His statement certainly does not paint Quixtar in a positive light at all.

 

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