Uttles's Journal: My story about quixtar spam

That's right, these goonies of herbalife/quixtar/amway are out in full force trying to sign up as many unwitting subjects as they can. Here's my personal story:

I started my own website, tigerslash.com, and in an effort to promote it I made my own bumpersticker and put it on my car. One day when I was getting gas, a "successful" looking "businessman" across from me asked about tigerslash.com. I told him what it was, briefly how I made it, and things like that. He then proceeded to ask me if I was willing to work on other internet projects, and I said "if I have the time, maybe."

Well, I thought I was going to make some extra bucks on the side for a little web design, and Mr. X made me think the same thing when he followed up with "I run a website and I need some extra help with some of it." Then he proceeded to give me his business card, and I gave him mine, and he said he'd call once he'd consulted his associates...

Well he did call, so I thought I was going to make some quick cash for a little web work. We set up a meeting for that thursday and when it came around, I was interested in seeing what needed to be done. Well, I show up at the office and he presents me with this flyer about Britt Worldwide and all this information about their web strategy and "e commerce infrastructure." This is when the bells started going off in my head.

Mr. X then proceeded to elaborate on the whole mission, online sale of products combined with multilevel marketing. It was called Quixtar, the next big thing, and it sounded like a great scheme... if you were an idiot. I didn't beleive one word of it. I sat through about 30 minutes of this and took the brochure politely and left.

When I got home, I went to the website and started shopping. Amazingly, everything was overpriced. I thought "how in the world would they get people to buy this?" The fact is, the only people who do are the ones coerced into joining, so that they earn "points" with their purchases. If you're at the top of the pyramid, this is great, but if you're the average Joe, all you're doing is paying their salaries and getting $5 a month in return (after spending hundreds on "great products.")

I did some more digging and low and behold Quixtar is nothing more than Amway with a new name. It's the same owners, same company, but they don't say a damn thing about it when you ask them face to face. What a scam.

Needless to say, I was pissed. This form of Spam had approached me with a technical need in my field of work, then proceeded to waste my personal time travelling to, meeting, and researching these people. All that effort to find out I had been recruited for Amway. That's the worst type of spam ever.