Friday 28 August 2015

Good News: Vemma shut down for running a pyramid scheme

Vemma, the energy drink and other "health" products MLM company has been shut down by the FTC for running a pyramid scheme. This is great news since it might help shed some light on ACN as well, since it gained attention recently for being endorsed by presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Read more about the FTC's ruling here : FTC Acts to Halt Vemma as Alleged Pyramid Scheme

Thursday 13 August 2015

ACN 2016 Asia expansion plans

So it seems that the plan for ACN is now to expand their business in Asia. Like for any company, it is a good thing to try and grow your business in order to maximize your income and power. The more your grow, the more money you get, it's simple.

But in this case, expansion is not a good thing. It will expose even more people to the dangers of ACN. It will be interesting to see how this plays out for them. If you remember the Enron saga, you know it didn't turn out so well for them when they tried to enter the asian energy market. In that part of the world, there is simply no need for what ACN is offering. Their diet & health products are targeted at mostly first world countries while their telecommunication services prices are among the lowest in the world (once again, the "favors" will have to be used in order to gain customers because they won't be able to offer competitive services).

It's interesting to see all the reps getting hyped over this expansion and showing it off on social media while they have no idea of the business side of things (even if they're calling themselves businessmen/women). The buzzword "expansion" is enough to get everybody hyped and to fuel their circlejerk.

We'll see how this plays out.


Wednesday 29 July 2015

Trump endorsement numbers revealed

A recent story by The Daily Caller has shed some light on what Donald Trump is earning from ACN. According to their findings, Trump has touched $1.35 million since last May.

Monday 22 June 2015

Rapper Redman's involvement in ACN

We all know that Donald Trump's involvement in ACN is the reps' favorite argument in order to showcase the legitimacy of ACN. As I explained in another post, this is nothing other than a paid endorsement. I was contacted about a month ago by someone claiming the rapper Redman "joined" ACN and is now involved in the business too. At first I thought this was hard to believe and the only evidence available were a couple pictures of himself with some successful ACN reps.

Fast forward to last week-end and it was ACN's San Jose training event taking place. I got tweeted a video showing Redman doing some sort of motivational speech in front of the whole crowd and now I have no other choice but to realize he is indeed involved in this company. Here is the short video (the sound quality is low) :


To me it still looks like an endorsement. If you look at his Facebook and Twitter pages, there are no mentions whatsoever of ACN or any sort of opportunity. Why's that? When people are involved in ACN, the first thing you will see them do is promote the business to their friends and family through social media. I think the simple answer is that, since it's an endorsement, Redman will do everything he can to hype the crowd, as he would at a rap concert, but outside those walls he's not involved at all in the business and has no reason to share it with his fans and people following him.

As an example of why having big names is important to ACN, here is a Facebook post from a rep using this as a way to prove the legitimacy of his "business". This is how these endorsements are used and why you shouldn't always believe what you might be told.



Tuesday 16 June 2015

Donald Trump for president!

Today, June 16th 2015, Donald J. Trumps has officially announced that he is running for president in the 2016 United States elections as a Republican candidate. Now I'm not here to tell whether he'll succeed or fail, but I can already predict one thing : the ACN fanboys will be (and probably are) all over this news.

I wish the best of luck to Mr. Trump, but let's not forget one thing : he is a businessman, not an ACN representative or even executive. He is a paid endorsement by ACN, a poster boy like Michael Jordan was for Nike. The exception is, Jordan actually used the product, Trump is not. But he showcased ACN's video phone on his Celebrity Apprentice show! Well sure he did, because he received a very good amount of money to do so. It's called product placement. In the event that Mr. Trump becomes president (let's be honest...), I am eager to see what will happen between him and the company; will they continue doing business together, or will he cut the ties?

To be continued..


Tuesday 9 June 2015

ACN Europe Team Trainer fee

So it seems that ACN Europe dropped the Team Trainer fee (the initial sign up fee) to £48. It is unclear at the moment if this is a temporary or permanent change to ACN Europe's program, and also if it is going to spread to other countries. At the moment, ACN Canada, U.S., Australia and New Zealand still all have prices ranging between $400-$550.

If you know anything about this, feel free to let us know. In the meantime, we're looking into this and have updated the website with the appropriate notice. We'll make sure to do an update once we know more.

This is a good step taken towards making ACN a more respectable company but I think they are only doing this in order to reach more people because they've ran out of potential reps willing to pay $500. If they want to keep the cash flowing they need to get new people in the scheme. $50-$75 is still a fair amount to throw away that goes into the pockets of people you put your trust into

Sunday 31 May 2015

Wake Up Now

If you are not familiar with Wake Up Now (WUN), it was basically the same business model as ACN but with different products, and shared many similarities with them. If you wish to read more about this company, feel free to make your own research.

I recently stumbled upon a very interesting This American Life radio broadcast about the now defunct Wake Up Now. It is very interesting and I strongly suggest that anyone interested in ACN and their practices take at least a half hour to give this very informative piece a listen.

From the beginning, similarities arise between the two MLM companies. First of, WUN mainly geared their efforts toward recruiting students and people of color, as does ACN. The main problem with recruiting these groups people is what they have in common : they're struggling with money. Students still studying or coming out of college, thousands of dollars in debt, looking for some extra income and immigrants / less fortunate people looking for a way to make it in America (also Canada, Australia, UK, etc). It is very sad to see those people get lured into these types of schemes, being promised the world but "failing"* because from Day 1 new recruits are part of the 95%+ of IBOs never making a significant income from MLMs.

* Note that they don't fail, the system is simply made against them, so ACN can easily put the blame on the rep for not putting enough effort. If you wish to read more about this technique, see Part 2 of The ACN Scam.

Then you have the various meetings where it's not clear what everybody is actually doing there, other than listening to gurus shouting buzz words and playing loud techno music.

I could go on for hours listing everything wrong about both companies, and how ACN is bound to fail like WUN, but I will let you listen by yourself. I have also included a report made about ACN exposing the shady practices and cult-like techniques used by reps.

WUN radio broadcast :
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/543/wake-up-now

ACN report :




Sunday 17 May 2015

ACN is for the children

Am I the only one seeing something wrong with this?


Of course nobody can deny that helping feeding children is a noble and great thing to do, but in the case of ACN this is an obvious way to gain positive PR and make people forget about the shady stuff.
Oh ACN helps feed children, what a wonderful company, why should I doubt their legitimacy?
Again you will tell me any company that donates to charity does it for positive PR (on top of helping of course). While true, it doesn't change the fact ACN does it for the purpose of covering their unethical behavior. So I'm not saying to stop feeding the children here, only to look past these tactics to lure you into their company.

Thursday 14 May 2015

The Vault

Recently, ACN Pyramid Scheme has anonymously received some pretty interesting information concerning ACN, IBOs and their practices. Without going into too much details for now, new information should surface on the website in the following weeks. The blog will keep you updated on the latest news. I would like to thank again the person who has forwarded this information to us.

Another update to the site has been the addition of "The Vault". All the interesting documents will be dumped into this folder for everyone to view and download. The most recent additions (the only files there for now) are also documents forwarded by the anonymous source. They show the acquisition bonuses ACN IBOs are offered.

Visit the Vault here.

That's it for now.

Monday 11 May 2015

Submit your story

On top of having a comment section at the bottom of the front page, a new page containing stories and experiences related to ACN is being created in order to hear the other side of this so called "amazing opportunity".

We have received emails and are appreciating the feedback people are giving us, so don't hesitate to say hi.

Also, more updates coming shortly!

Sunday 26 April 2015

Cult mentality

A big part of the ACN scam is the cult-like techniques used in order to gain and keep IBOs. It would be easy for people to walk away from ACN once they realize it's not that profitable, but by using certain psychological methods you will realize how easy it is for them to build an army of loyal brainwashed reps.

A first version of this text has been added here. As you may have noticed, the website is not updated as often as last month, so more content will be added in the following days, this is only a first draft.

As always, if you have any questions or would like to share something, feel free to contact us.


Monday 30 March 2015

The ACN Scam : Part 2 - The deception

A first version of the second part of this text has been published here :
The deception.

In this piece, we discover that the people most affected by this deceptive business are the relatives and friends of the ACN reps. Their trust is being used by ACN themselves as a way to gain customers. These people are the ones targeted and called their "warm market". A business based on so-called "favors" is not a good business. Period.

Take note that the text is not yet completed and many more points needs to be addressed. As you can already see on the page, the following topic will be the cult-like mentality of this MLM. Stay tuned for updates.

You can follow ACN Pyramid Scheme on Twitter here : @acnpyramid

Thursday 26 March 2015

Updates

So in the past month I've been adding more content and working on the website. It is not yet completed as I have other obligations right now, but in the next couple of weeks it should be almost done.

What has been added :

  • Separated pages for the different parts of The ACN Scam (Part 1 and Part 2). Only the first part is available right now.
  • A page page with the content of the cost breakdown section from the main page.
  • Another page dedicated to our good friend Donald Trump and a look into his endorsement of ACN.
  • A resources section still in construction. Links and articles will be available in it.
  • An "Experiences" page where I will post user submitted stories about ACN.
As it is stated on the website itself, this whole thing is still being worked on, so keep checking back for new content. Part 2 of The ACN Scam will be released shortly and more will follow.

If you have any question, comment or feedback, feel free to send an email to contact@acnpyramidscheme.com.

Tuesday 3 March 2015

Disclaimer

The blog

First of all, let me be clear here. The ACN Scam is not intended to bash on the company that is ACN and no real accusations are being made. They offer legitimate communication and energy services (on top of many others) and use a multi-level marketing program to recruit Independent Business Owners (IBOs) to help sell those services. In itself, everything here is legitimate and legal. You are entitled to your own opinion, and so are we.

That being said, it's important to mention that this blog is also not intended to convince you to join ACN or any other MLM / business opportunity like it is often the cases with "the truth about X" blogs. You can keep your peace of mind during your visit because other than the average Google advertisement, you will not see any sponsoring / selling / marketing on this website. Only facts and opinions. 

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Advertisements, if any, placed on this site are used solely to cover the cost of the hosting & domain renewal of http://acnpyramidscheme.com/. No profits are being made from this.

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If you have any question, feel free to contact us. Enjoy your read.
 

Welcome to The ACN Scam blog!

The main goal is the update you on the scam behind the company ACN. We will post as much information as possible about this company that we consider to be a pyramid scheme and explain thoroughly why you should avoid ACN at all costs.

To get a better overview of what ACN is, feel free to visit ACN Pyramid Scheme, a parent website, to better understand what it is about.