The Voice - Consumer's Voice

Must I pay to return the bricks?

Kindly offer advice on the following matter.

About a month ago I made an order for some bricks from a supplier. He delivered when I was not around and the bricks are poor quality to me but he claims the quality is good. I saw the bricks and they are not up to standard. I wanted to return the bricks because of the poor quality and he says I will have to pay 33% handling fee to him.

What I my rights in the situation? I have not made any payments. I don’t have any signed agreement with him and have never seen his company policy.

Clearly this guy isn’t the smartest of people. He delivered bricks to your place without a payment in advance and then he wants to start fooling around with you? Doesn’t he realise that you are the one in control of this situation?

I suggest you write him a letter saying that the bricks he delivered failed to meet the requirements of Section 13 (1) (a) of the Consumer Protection Regulations that require goods to be "of merchantable quality" which is defined as “fit for the purposes for which commodities of that kind are usually purchased”. You should also say that as a result of the sub-standard nature of the bricks, you are cancelling the deal completely and that he is welcome to collect his bricks from your property. Don’t even respond to his silly suggestion about the 33% fee for handling the bricks that still belong to him.

Should we join World Ventures?

Richard do u know anything about World Ventures? My wife wants us to join but the way she explained it to me I smell something wrong about it. She has to come with 4 people who will bring more people for her to earn points. Please advise.

World Ventures is a pyramid scheme. That’s my opinion but it’s an opinion shared by the authorities in Norway for instance, who declared it was a pyramid scheme after they discovered that 85% of the income its members made came from recruiting other people rather that selling products. That’s the definition of a pyramid scheme.

We’ve been warning people about World Ventures since 2009 when they took over an earlier pyramid scheme called Success University. World Ventures and their Dream Trips scheme promise fantastic holidays in exotic places but they’re rarely clear that none of these holidays are free. You have to pay to join the pyramid and then all you get are discounted holidays. You still have to buy the holidays, just at a slightly cheaper price. And here’s a thing. A discount isn’t a product, it’s a reduction in the price of a product. Like the Norwegian authorities discovered, World Ventures is really all about is paying to join a pyramid-structured scheme in which you do your best to recruit multiple layers of people beneath you, just like any other pyramid or Multi-Level Marketing scheme.

The interesting thing is that World Ventures publish an "Income Disclosure Statement" in the USA every year and it makes interesting reading. To begin with, more than three quarters of all their American recruits made nothing from the scheme. Nothing at all. Zero.

Of those that made any money, the vast majority of the money is earned by a very small proportion of the people, the ones at the top of the pyramid. Furthermore, more than two thirds of all the money is made by the 3.7% at the top of the pyramid. 84% is earned by the top 19%. To put it another way, 81% of the recruits who earn money have to share just 16% of the money.

And these amounts refer to income, not profits. They’re before the recruits took account of all the money they had to spend on travel, accommodation, electricity, internet access and all the other costs of trying to recruit other victims into the scheme. The evidence from other similar schemes is that most people earn less than they spend trying to make the money. They lose money.

I suggest you tell your wife there are many better ways of spending your money!