The Network Marketing VT site is live again at http://networkmarketingvt.com/

I just noticed they posted the day before that the issue is a back office software upgrade ( on May 23 ) but then on the 24th ( above ) they report it as a hosting issue.

Time to get the story straight. Which is it NMVT? A software upgrade, a hosting issue, a meltdown, all of the above?

Not surprisingly, Network Marketing VT ( Network Marketing Virtual Training ) run by Jason Spurlock ran into a snag last week.

I wrote a lengthy and unflatteringly direct Network Marketing VT review , their apartment building headquarters, and the lack of any verifiable credentials, so I'm not surprised by these developments.

The Facebook page is still active, and as is the usual case the owner ( Spurlock ) is somehow trying to spin this meltdown as a positive, while unfortunate koolaid drinkers cheerlead him along when he offers free hosting for the life of the program ( while unable to maintain his own hosting ) while soliciting a $98 payment and as complaints roll in.

From the Network Marketing VT Facebook page:

If you are running a questionable business from a business address in an apartment building in Florida, selling master resale rights that anyone can obtain for almost the same fee, the three big no-no's are:

1) Don't stop paying commission

2) Don't let your website go dark, or get shut down

3) Don't let the complaints pile up.

That's like planting a "Pyramid Scheme" flag in front of your building and waiting for the AG to show up.

lol, I got all worked up over this already in another thread, but nice job man, I linked it on my facebook so hopefully anyone cruisin around for some supplements and come across them will refrain.

There are, in the world of network marketing; Sharks waiting to skim the vast ocean surface for the uninformed chum-like consumers floating directionless in the path of predators. One such predator that has proven itself to be quite a despicable business entity, is the company known as Regeneca International Inc., a distributor and seller of so called "natural and organic" health products intended to combat the weathering of life by reversing the aging process and heal the body. Regeneca's products revolved around health, skin care and fitness, via several juice based nutraceutical beverages and a an erectile "supplement" product that eventually became its core focus known as "Regenerect". Regenerect became one of the more interesting network marketing highlights discussed on these boards because it turned out not only to be a scam, but a dangerous one.

Essentially, Regenerect released the product under the premise that it was all natural, organic, and a safe alternative to hard pharmaceuticals such as Viagra or Visalus. In order for that marketing pitch to have been accurate, it would have had to contain no synthetic ingredients. The product was definitely considered to be effective, however many people were complaining about various health problems such as headaches, racing heart, and lightheadedness. The ingredients listed included Silkworm Extract, Oyster Extract, Gouqi Extract, and White Willow Bark Extract, however there was in fact a fifth element in the equation that was not listed, an ingredient by the name of "sulfoaildenafil", which is a derivative of Sildenafil, which is the main ingredient in Viagra. 

Viagra is a drug that requires a prescription for very good reasons, because it is highly capable of causing heart attacks and strokes in people that aren't physiologically capable of handling it. Put simply, Regeneca sold a product that was potentially fatal for an entire demographic of people, and ironically, its that demographic that would have been the most interested in an all natural product. To this day I wonder how many medical appointments were made to treat symptoms of people taking the drug, and I am also concerned over the possibility that it could have been a factor in what may have appeared to be natural deaths. It happens to be here on these Repspace boards that a member took notice of a typo on the Regenerect web site which we now know deliberately mistyped a word in order to avoid listing a complete description of the ingredients. The original thread in which Watchdog took notice can be found here:

http://repspace.com/forums/t/2621.aspx

Eventually, the news broke out that Ethos Environmental conducted a recall when it was determined through a series of testing that Regenerect was not as it appeared to be. FDA tests, confirmed that Regenerect contained Sulfoaildenafil and a recall was put into effect. I don't think I need to preach the ethical implications of this company's actions, but as it turns out, Regeneca is at it again, after scrapping its Regenerect campaign, it has since moved on to a new core product, it calls Regen Slim. A brief synopsis of this new product can be found here:

http://repspace.com/forums/t/3181.aspx

Ultimately, I am without answers as to how companies can legally remain in operations when laws have clearly been broken. Perhaps I'm not privy to the inner workings of the legal process and I'm expecting too much action too fast, but it is strange to me that this ship remains floating. I admittedly had grand visions of Regeneca getting cease and desist orders, and swat teams busting in to kneel on the back of the necks of Regeneca's CEOs, but I suppose I'll have to embrace reality. I hope that these posts see enough traffic to remain high in search results as to keep those that aren't aware of Regeneca's practices away. This company has proven itself unworthy of being in operation in any form, and has not only proven to use underhanded tactics, but has also proven to be dangerous toward consumers, and needs to be shut down thoroughly, and permanently. To any who read this long post, please share it with others, in the interest of public safety.

Hey guys, I don't know if you read it, but I did put in for some freebies with this mlm and I did get the envelope. it was soggy but otherwise fine. Me and my significant other tried it and they worked amazingly well for about 10 minutes, then all signs of dry elbow/knee returned. Not sure what Bellamora's deal was, if it was just a scam and the product was meant to give the effect of an instant cure or what, but in any event, I'd say they are dead in the water.

A case of grabbing the ball with a brief, but quickly diminishing pool of confidence....then. flop.

Interesting,

I researched this one, as I do all new deals, and I happen to focus on those which offer free samples, notthing gets more attention in marketing than FREE.  Free samples seems to be catching on, as this is one of three programs I was evaluating recently, but like most, the proof is in the products, price point, value and quality, and since I never got my free sample, I sat back and just watched searching for any posts which would indicate what is going on, hence, I landed here, so thanks for the posts.  It appears they are going down the drain, so sad, it looked promising when launched.

Success to all,

What a great post, I had no idea Bellamora was having this many problems, if all of this is true than its safe to say they are likely taking a nose-dive. There's virtually no information on the BBB for Bellamora, but at the rate they're going, I bet it wouldn't be good if there was. As of right now Bellamora is still active, the site is up, and the latest update was given about a day ago, so at least on the surface all appears ok.  There is however one thing I noticed, and for me it is kind of telling in relation to Mybigteam's post. There are no more live events scheduled at all, and you can see there was a fairly consistant pattern of about twice a month since January, now; nothing.

I have my own ideas about why these things happen and while I'm no expert, I do think some of it amounts to common sense. If you're going to enter a market, the first thing you should look at is whether or not anyone has already conquered it, and if not, how many people are already trying? Put simply; how many skin care companies can possibly still exist, and broken down further, how many skin care MLMs can co-exist beneath them? Why start a company selling something that really doesn't stand out in any way? My fiance and I tested a few of Bellamora's products and we weren't impressed, her more the expert than I of course.

I have always held the same attitude toward nutritional shakes, weight loss systems and all products of similar ilk. STOP MAKING NEW ONES! We are literally drowing in an ocean of skin care companies that have broekn down the market so badly that unless you create a cure for agin, I don't see how it can get any better, any smoother, and younger, any more wrinkle free, and especially any more expensive. I can sometimes feel that little inner urge to get excited about something, FantaZ, Tastefully Simple, things that have created their own market, but Bellamora is drowing in its own lake of obscurity because there is already too much there to look at.

That is my opinion anyway

Bellamora is definately having problems.

In one week the top 3 corporate people either got fired or quit.

Ed Ayala, Bellamora CEO was fired.

Brian MClane, Bellamora CMO quit.

Allison Lamarr, Bellamora Corporate Trainer quit.

There have been signs that trouble was looming at  Bellamora.

There was no customer support by phone or email.

There was no communication from Bellamora Corporate for almost a week.

Products and samples that distributors have purchased are not being received.

Websites the distributors pay a monthly fee for have not been working.

Distributors have not been able to sign new people up.

Distributors are reporting they have had duplicate charges for thier autoships.

Top earning Bellamora Distributors have quit and left downline not knowing what is going on.

Kelley Foote has been recruited to supposedly clean up the mess.

But one has to wonder if Bellamora will survive this and what actually caused it.

This is exactly the kind of thing that ends poorly, I spent a long time sifting google, I looked here, there, and everywhere, and there is no information at all regarding the comp plan, benefits, nothing whatsoever. I did find a post by someone who joined,only to be astonished that there was literally no more information available to them as a rep than there was for anyone else, how retarded is that? I see your point when you say that its crazy how you have these people pushing and spamming and just bull horning this all over the net when they really have no idea what they're talking about themselves lol. The irony is that everyone is saying "JOIN" for free when all you can sign up for is free information. So ultimately, what are the odds of this actually even existing? Is there a company building, a small office, some dude in his mom's basement? Anything?

There is another person I found a post from claiming that bamboopink is not a scam. She says she has recruited quite a few people and she attends meetings and conference calls regularly. None the less, for a $49 application fee after there needs to be a hell of a lot more beef with this meal. Besides, lets just assume that the company really is legit; after looking at the atrocious end of Arbonne, of even The Customer Advantage, do you really want to risk putting your money, time, trust of family and friends on a start up company? Not me. One thing I'll say in favor of them is that there are quite a few people that claim to be Bamboopink reps, and openly look down on spamming and constant digital harassment. Does that mean its not the same people doing it after heroically condemning it? Not exactly, but its good to know there is at least a diplomatic stance on the behavior one way or the other, and they aren't just blatantly saying there is nothing wrong with the behavior. Besides, how much can they afford to monitor their own reps at the moment anyway?

Hi everyone!

I hope you have all been well.  I haven't been on the site in a while but now I'm catching up with some posts.  Things have gotten a little busy around here...

Since so many of us constantly do research on other companies, I thought you might be interested in post I did this week that caused quite a stir.  The comments are better than my post. 

Let me know what you think!

http://www.wahmbahm.com/nightmare-bamboopink

I'll tell you what went wrong, how about that? lol

Agloco is dead, don't let the new site fool you, it was a great idea that was managed poorly, and I'm saying that out of kindness. Agloco was just a rehash of other ideas, and some of the people involved in the first run under a different company name had it out to grab your money and run. In the golden age of Agloco, which lasted like 2-3 days, that's what the problem was within the ranks. Unfortunately not everyone that was operating it at the time had any idea that not everyone was onboard with legit intentions. A bunch of the developers ended up going to Webpss.org, which also crashed a year or two later and left them all completely abandoned. Could they be linked? maybe, weird story anyway.

The original version was AllAdvantage, and that too was a big smelly sham, and guess what happened in an equally small amount of time with them....all the members got emails not unlike the one Yvonne pasted, saying the same thing. Do you really think that it wasn't all intentional, or that the deepest most significant people in the ranks of Agloco didn't have it all worked out? Of course they did. They were excellent at picking something everyone and their second cousin Lewis would want to get paid for, and that's doing what we all do flawlessly and with pleasure; surf the net!

Nothing went wrong at all, it was working as intended.

Hmm, cool post Yvonne, I actually never heard of these guys until I saw your post. I really like that you're willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, but the more I read about them the less I feel they are outside the boundaries of what I might consider an Agloco Scam. It seems to be said often on these boards that when there is no actual product, such as with points, or credits, or what have you, then that is one sign that what you're dealing with is not legitimate, or at the very least, not in functional enough condition to be taking people's cash for start up money. That stupid tool bar STILL doesn't seem to exist, and I don't even know if they are still a company or what, but they are still taking memberships apparently.

Think about the fact that they can change the rates and policies any time and in any way they choose, there is nothing stable about that at all, and when something is introduced in a such a way legally, they can basically give you 1 percent. That's just stupid to get involved knowing things can be turned around on you, and we aren't talking about a mainstream business that simply retains the right to up your fee a few cents or change the cost of a product. These are strangers, with no product, letting you know they can change anything they want, and you need to pay them to join....or so it was planned after launch. Agloco had all of these stipulations that just about paved the way for scamming you, like controlling the value, limiting hours, rates, and being able to kick anyone out at their own discretion. Its very design is something I'd have avoided, but I can definitely see what you mean by pointing out what it 'could' have been..

I think that was a great post, and I appreciated reading it. I haven't done any research to see what else is out there Yvonne, but maybe there is a company just like them without all the bad parts that you could participate in. There is usually 3 or 4 versions of every idea when it comes to MLMs anyway from what I've seen, and this is certainly a decent idea.

Nice to meet you all everyone, I'm thrilled that I found these boards because I haven't seen too many places where mlm companies are discussed in detail. I wanted to find out how many people are down with AGLOCO. For those of you that have never heard of the company, AGLOCO was something that was based on another idea from another company that didn't wok out too well. I gave this company a pretty good try but decided with certain conditions I just couldn't hang, and just after I bailed, they folded up shop anyway due to insufficient revenue.

AGLOCO was something like a pay to surf mlm program that made a pretty good start all over the Internet, but was backed by the same team as AllAdvantage which didn't do much for its image since that company took a nose dive.  AllAdvantage had a simple idea: pay people for the hours they spend on the Internet through their browser and market it in an mlm package. What actually ended up happening was an onslaught of what they call "bots" and for all of you that aren't familiar with the term, a bot is a program that can pretend to chat, it can be programmed to surf the Internet, and do any number of tasks on a computer. This had a major impact on the entire program as well as the user-base. It didn't take long for the bots to be detected, and ever newer, more advanced ones to appear.

AGLOCO had a similar concept.

You sign up for the program and install the AGLOCO tool bar which around the time I joined wasn't available yet. You start your browser while the tool bar is running and presumably get your online surfing time recorded. One major contributor to this company's decline was that no matter how much time you spent, you couldn't exceed 5 hours a month, and if that weren't limited enough, AGLOCO had the right to change their rates at anytime. That wasn't good for obvious reasons, but to make it even more unattractive was the fact that your time was divided into shares, not cash but because AGLOCO was a private company in start-up mode, they had no public shares to distribute. Many people believed at the time that this was intentional, but I do not. I think it was a simple design flaw that they just didn't see coming.

When people saw this and began to realize that AGLOCO couldn't legally distribute unregistered shares to the public, then the scam word was thrown around and that really began to mark the end. It was imperative that AGLOCO could get as much public attention as possible, but with those legal bindings, it was impossible to launch the way it needed to in order to be successful. AGLOCO still has an active web site, although it is little more than a collection of spam links for programs that most of us wouldn't bother with.

In the end, a number of people felt that AGLOCO had used every possible tweak to control exactly how much the program's users got in return for their work, which incidentally didn't amount to much. That further ignited the feeling that the company was fronting all along, and they lost what was left of their image on the Internet. Having said all that, I don't think AGLOCO was a scam. It is a poorly conceived scheme that appeals to those who know very little about finance, share issuance and regulation. Even after I left the program, I received this email about 2 months later..

We would like to update you on the status of AGLOCO’s operations. We continue to believe in the AGLOCO concept, but our revenue is currently not sufficient to give Members a meaningful distribution. And though there are increases in membership, the resulting revenue is not enough to support operating costs. As a development team we are unable to continue to use our savings to fund the operations. If any Member would like to pursue continuing the operations of AGLOCO, you may contact us at agloco1@live.com .
We would like to thank every Member for supporting our effort to bring a piece of the Internet directly to the user. We hope that we can find a way to keep the operations going.

AGLOCO dropping out didn't surprise me, but it did leave me a little disappointed because this was a good idea managed badly, and if I could find something similar in design, I'd like to come up on that, and throw a little something behind it. The program wasn't a scam by any means, but in its current state I'm not sure how successful it could have been because of its history. Now if the concept could somehow be reintroduced with a few modifications, then this mlm might just prove itself as a major player.

Was any information ever posted on the FTC CieAura Complaints?

[quote user="Jim Heron"]

Has anyone reported to any State Attorney General or the FTC about the inability to receive a refund?

Sometimes you have to love the Freedom of Information act.

One phone call, and I was able to answer my own question. I received a packet from the FTC today with several pages of complaints about CieAura.

The mildest is one complaining about paying $5.95 for priority shipping, and not receiving overnight shipping.

The others are filed under claims of "Deception/Misrepresentation": I will try to scan and post the complaints here if possible.

[/quote]