Archive for October, 2007
Judge Sides With TEAM Before Final Ruling
Oct 17th
Judge Paul Sullivan denied Quixtar’s motion today to halt a TEAM function being held in Louisville this weekend. Since the TEAM founders were terminated from Quixtar, they have been reportedly running as a neutral leadership training organization that does not endorse any one individual opportunity. However, Quixtar is claiming that the meeting will be used to encourage more IBO’s to resign and cause further damage to Quixtar, and would be a violation of a standing restraining order issued in August against TEAM’s founders.
One would think that Quixtar would be quite upset with the decision, but they seem to be turning lemons into lemonade. Quixtar appears confident they will prevail when the judge issues his ruling on the accusations against TEAM founder Orrin Woodward breaching his restraining order. They are also confident in a favorable ruling when their arbitration with TEAM commences sometime in the future. It’s not clear whether the arbitration decisions will be made public or not, but Quixtar is looking to reap damages for the more than 14,000 IBO’s that have resigned since they terminated Woodward and TEAM co-founder Chris Brady.
Technorati Tags: alticor, quixtar, amway, team, team of destiny, orrin woodward, chris brady, shaun carter, paul sullivan, ibo, mlm, network marketing, arbitration
Amway Takes Its Show On The Road
Oct 16th
Amway has terminated the businesses of another group of IBOs, this time across the Atlantic. The “Independent” businesses of Diamonds Jerry Scriven, Dave Butler and Pat Gregory, who operate the International Business Systems (IBS) group have all been terminated because of their lack of support for the changes being made with Amway UK’s business.
These sounds very similar to the termination of the Woodward and Brady (TEAM) businesses here in the US – the fact that the termination was over a disagreement with the changes the company is making.
TEAM founder Orrin Woodward is in court today in West Michigan defending against charges made by Quixtar that he broke restraining orders from August that ruled that he must stop using Quixtar sales materials, not encourage IBOs to resign, and return all confidential Line of Sponsorship information to the company. More details of that story to come.
Technorati Tags: quixtar, amway, alticor, team, team of destiny, orrin woodward, chris brady, mlm, network marketing, shaun carter, ibo, lawsuit
Welcome John Chow Newsletter Readers!
Oct 15th
If you are here because of the prize I am giving away for John Chow’s RSS competition with ShoeMoney, I welcome you. John put a link to Shaun Carter dot Com in his newsletter because of the two $25 Barnes & Noble Gift Cards I am giving away. It turns out John will be offering these prizes to lucky readers of his newsletter and RSS feed by e-mail.
“Subscribing to RSS by Email only take a few seconds and it may win you some great prizes as well. FeedBurner gives separate stats for feed and email subscribers. While there are over 9,000 readers subscribed to the feed, only 272 are subscribed with RSS by Email. The nice thing is FeedBurner lists all the emails. Therefore, I’m going to give away some prizes to RSS by Email subscribers. Let’s begin with two copies of An American Hedge Fund and two $25 Barnes & Noble gift cards by Shaun Carter.
This Friday, I will select four random readers who subscribed and confirm their RSS by Email subscription, to be the winner of the prizes listed above. With only 272 RSS by Email subscribers, your chances of winning are pretty good. More prizes will be drawn later so sign up now!”
So if you would like to win those gift cards, or one of many other prizes listed below, sign up for the RSS by e-mail at JohnChow.com!
$50 of cold hard cash by Preblogging.com- Two books (The Search and Wikinomics) by Piggy Bank Pie
- A free review by CashQuests (value $80)
- One hour of free blog consultation (value $60) by Blog Louder
- Two $25 Barnes & Noble gift cards by Shaun Carter
- $144 webhosting package from Tribune Hosting
- Two text links and a review (value $50) by Online Cash Flow
- One 125×125 banner (value $15) by Etienne Teo
- Five 1000 directory submission packages (value $550) by SEO Next
- The biggest prize of them all: a complete WordPress blog redesign valued at $750 by Adriann Pienaar of Adii. The winner will get a custom, unique blog design (unlimited revisions by the client). The design will be supplied to the winner as a widget-ready WordPress theme. You can see some of Adriann’s work here.
I am hoping to win the blog redesign or the directory submissions. Good luck to all!
Technorati Tags: john chow, shoemoney, contest, rss, feed, free, money, prizes, shaun carter, blog
Earnings Week Is Under Way
Oct 15th
There are going to be many publicly traded companies announcing earnings this week and it will prove to be a very volatile market in their wake. I have pulled almost completely out of individual stocks this week because I think there will be a lot of negative surprises. Already these negative earnings announcements have knocked the market down over 100 points.
Decliners are outpacing advancers at a rate of 2 to 1 and many earnings disappointments are coming in, such as Citigroup. Oil is trading up in new record territory above $85/barrel.
Technorati Tags: investing, citigroup, stock market, earnings, oil, shaun carter, nyse, nasdaq
CBS Picks Up Quixtar/Bloggers Story
Oct 14th
CBS News has begun covering the drama between Quixtar and the bloggers they are suing and there are some interesting things to take note of in the article posted on their website.
The passage that stands out the most is:
“Quixtar develops and manufactures nutrition, beauty and cleaning products that are marketed in the United States and Canada through a tiered selling system, hiring entrepreneurs to sell its products.”
I added the bold for emphasis on the word “hiring” because it is ironic that this is one of the arguments that IBO’s are making about Quixtar… that they are being treated as employees of the corporation and not as Independent Business Owners.
CBS was also able to uncover the identities of several of the bloggers and page owners by simply visiting their web pages… something Quixtar apparently didn’t do and that would explain why they are suing to get the names of the people involved.
I think Quixtar is only further damaging its reputation by filing this lawsuit, because now major media is going to bring even more attention to what would be considering big bully tactics that Quixtar is utilizing against its detractors.
Technorati Tags: quixtar, amway, alticor, team, team of destiny, orrin woodward, chris brady, shaun carter, ibo, network marketing, mlm, pyramid, lawsuit, class action, blogger, cbs
Amway Versus The Internet
Oct 13th
The local paper, The Grand Rapids Press, picked up the story about Quixtar suing 30 unknown individual bloggers and posters and added some more information about the case.
For instance, Quixtar has now disclosed that the reason they chose to file the case in Ottawa County and not their home office location in Kent County is “so as not to slow down a pending case against Woodward and other former distributors in Kent County.” They also continue to insist that the lawsuit is not aimed at the bloggers just giving their opinion but is only meant for those who are operating as an arm of the TEAM or Woodward organizations who would be in violation of a court order by speaking out against Quixtar. However, the lawsuit doesn’t state that anywhere. It says they are seeking damages in excess of $25,000 against each of the individuals for damaging the reputation of the company.
If Quixtar fails in its quest to discover these sites are operated by Orrin Woodward, he may have a good case against Quixtar for libel. I really don’t think Woodward is stupid enough to be operating any of these sites. When the gag order came down from the judge, he immediately took down all the updates he had been posting on all of his blogs, which number around ten. Since that court action I haven’t seen anything on the Internet purporting to be him. If anything, these people are disgruntled former IBO’s who’s businesses have suffered as a result of the lawsuits.
I am hearing from many TEAM IBO’s that volume in their organizations is down over 50% and some have lost nearly all of their volume as the TEAM IBO’s abandon the Quixtar ship. It will be interesting to see how much of an effect this will have on Quixtar/Amway sales for the year.
More Quixtar Information:
Quixtar Files Suit Against Bloggers
TEAM Loses California Court Battle
Technorati Tags: quixtar, amway, alticor, team, team of destiny, ibo, orrin woodward, shaun carter, lawsuit, class action, pyramid scheme, first amendment, free speech
Quixtar Files Suit Against Site Owners & Bloggers
Oct 12th
Quixtar filed a lawsuit today in Ottawa County against 30 anonymous website owners and bloggers including the operators of:
QuixtarLostMyCents.blogspot.com
———————-
Quixtar says they are suing the operators of these sites to determine if they are working for the individuals/companies that were named in a previous restraining order and barred from disseminating any information or making remarks toward Quixtar.
I have to applaud the company for publicly stating they are not interested in going after anyone they find to be a private citizen with no affiliation with the court cases who is simply giving their opinion of the situation. The Quixtar media blog has been a very welcoming place for all people to voice their opinions and it appears they have not taken part in censoring the blog comments as some of the blogs stated in this lawsuit have.
Technorati Tags: quixtar, alticor, amway, team, team of destiny, shaun carter, freetheibo, quixtar lost my cents, qreilly, drinkxs, ottawa county, circuit court
Retail Sales Rise in September
Oct 12th
In a surprise move, retail sales jumped in during the month of September. This news comes a day after most retailers projected lower than expected earning for the current and future quarters because of decreased consumer spending, but the retail numbers were held up by increased automotive sales.
This unexpected increase in auto sales is a good indicator that people are still spending their money and keeping the economy running smoothly. Most people are calling for decreased consumer spending through the holidays, but I think we will see a resurgence in high ticket items being purchased as a sure to come price war breaks out on LCD and Plasma televisions and other electronics during the after Thanksgiving sales extravaganzas at retailers all over the nation.
Technorati Tags: retail sales, auto, consumer spending, thanksgiving, sales, electronics, lcd, plasma, shaun cater, economy
Trade Deficit Narrows
Oct 11th
The US trade deficit has fallen to a 7 month low due in part to record exports of American goods. The recent rash of toy recalls from Chinese manufacturers has also had something to do with a decrease in certain types of Chinese imports. Even though the deficit is down, it still stands at a staggering $57.6 Billion for the month of August.
Technorati Tags: trade deficit, united states, shaun carter, exports, imports, china, manufacturers
Top Chef Miami Reunion Tonight!
Oct 10th
The contestants of Top Chef Miami will be dishing about the behind the scenes action from their culinary competition during a reunion show being broadcast tonight at 10pm Eastern on Bravo. The promo clips being shown on Bravo this week definitely look interesting as the contestants seem to bash on Hung and his lack of kitchen etiquette. I can’t wait to catch the show and see who wins as the audience favorite for a special $10,000 prize.
Technorati Tags: top chef, miami, bravo, cooking, reality tv, shaun carter
