The Voice - Consumer's Voice

Is World Ventures legitimate?

Please help us understand. World Ventures is now talk of the town and many people are lured to fall into it. Meetings are held almost everyday. Personally I was enticed to join and I did not have cash amounting to $411 or P4,500. I asked the lady who wanted me to join to use her money from her account to help me join since I was skeptic and indeed she gladly did so. I later in the day asked her to ask the administrators to cancel my transaction since my skepticism grew by the day.

I humble request that your organization makes more and loud noise about this movement. it is very pathetic to see even poor workers falling into the bottomless pit.

I’m glad that you didn’t waste your own money joining this scheme. It was very smart of you to get the person recruiting you to spend her money instead!

World Ventures is a pyramid scheme. The Gaming Board in Norway announced a few years ago that following a lengthy investigation they were certain that World Ventures is a pyramid scheme. Their main criteria for deciding this was simple. 95% of all the money paid out to recruits in Norway was for the recruitment of other people, not from actually selling things. That’s a pyramid scheme.

Like many other schemes that try to appear legitimate World Ventures have been forced by various countries to post income statements that illustrate what their distributors actually earn from their business. The latest figures showed that three-quarters of all people who join make nothing at all from the business. Of the quarter that had an income, almost all of the money was earned by the tiny proportion at the top of the pyramid. Everyone else had to share the small amount left over. But don’t forget that these statements only talk about income, they never mention profit. These figures exclude all the costs associated with running the business like transport, phone and internet bills. It’s likely that, with the exception of those very few people at the top, everyone else loses money.

So don’t waste your time on this scheme or any others like it. The rule is simple. Get Rich Quick schemes only make the crooks at the top rich, at the expense of you and me.

Where’s my insurance?

I insured my vehicle last year in May. This year in August I had an accident, and when I tried to lodge a claim the insurer told me that my policy had expired. This completely shocked me as I was NEVER informed by the insurer that my policy has expired even when I was in contact with them in throughout May for a claim that I was processing at the time. I appealed to the CEO, who informed me that they will only give me feedback on the appeal once they have assessed the vehicle (meaning that they needed to know the cost of the damage first before deciding on whether to cover or not). I have subsequently received a notification that the vehicle wont be covered.

They claim to have tried to call me once and failed, which I don't believe since I didn't get any missed calls from them; and I also feel that calling once was not enough! They could have sent email and or sms to actually inform that the policy had expired.

This I believe is very unfair business practice where the insurance company does not want to take responsibility for failure of the staff to inform a client that their policy has expired. 

Yes, I agree with you that the company should have made efforts to contact you to. Section 15 (1) (a) of the Consumer Protection Regulations requires a company that offers any service to do so “with reasonable care and skill”. I think that means they should have tried harder to let you know the policy had lapsed.

However, if the policy lapsed because your payments stopped for some reason, then there’s also an obligation on you, the consumer, to have noticed this. Yes, perhaps it was the bank’s fault but it’s still your job to ensure that the payments went through. You, after all, are the customer, not the bank.

Nevertheless, we’ll get in touch with the company and see if they can reconsider their decision.