The D&C Henrietta blogger has posted his Final Followup on 5Linx and now everything is right with the world. Only -
- Spurred by articles at the Water Buffalo Press, 5Linx has applied for membership in the Direct Selling Association as a response to highlights here on the WBP that non-membership indicated questionable business practices by the respective entity. According to a representative from the DSA, 5Linx will not be accepted for membership as their application did not illustrate practices consistent with the strict guidelines of the DSA.
- As highlighted in our earlier article, Find the Red Queen, the supposed $6 million investment in the community is nonexistent as it can only be assumed, since exact figures are unavailable to the public, that $6 million has been returned to the company in the form of government investments and abatements.
- The championing of 5Linx as a leader in telecom is overstated, as 5Linx reps do not carry inventories; rather, 5Linx serves as a third party marketer providing website marketing materials (at a price) to direct sales representatives whose websites redirect customers to carriers.
- The pyramid nature of the business model is illustrated in the new jobs that will be housed in the expansion: According to Denise Nowak with 5Linx this inhouse sales team "provides quotes to small and medium size businesses that our independent representatives come across that would like to use our GLOBALINX service", (although the acquisition of leads from a supposedly independent representative raises questions about how independent this realtionship is) essentially these business leads are the most profitable and the 5Linx founders (the top of the pyramid, which includes ACN defectors) want to ensure that the profits continue to be weighted at the top of the structure. What is left for the independent reps to market to are private residential clients, undoubtedly less profitable than business sales.
All in all, the type of business that our region should brag about and subsidize?
1 comment:
Looks like 5Linx is a member of the DSA now. Perhaps you should update your article.
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