Hey Bluebird,
Welcome.

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1. I have a friend who was involved in Tradevest and she, too got her money back. Now that is not to say that the whole thing was handled in a great way, only to say she got money back.
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My understanding is there is a world of difference between a tradevest customer and a tradevest "sales associate"..

Maybe Steve can explain this better [the spirit of Cartmen compels you, Steve]

As I understand it the Tradevest sales associates were in the pyramid but the customers were just buying from a catalogue.

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Originally posted by Jeremiah:
My understanding is there is a world of difference between a tradevest customer and a
tradevest "sales associate"..

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I did an Internet search and found these three articles that talk about Tradevest:

http://www.inc.com/incmagazine/article/1,3654,ART3395_PAG2,00.html
"Spend and Save", Inc. magazine, 2/1/93
A fellow named Andreini bailed out of Tradevest 4 months before it filed bankrupcy. Andreini used the same principles to start a company called START. I don't know what ever happened to START.

http://www.money.com/money/archive/magarticle/0,4015,4434,00.html
"The Mess called Multi-Level Marketing with Celebrities Setting the Bait...", Money magazine, 6/1/87
A review of MLM schemes, including Tradevest. (Search the article for Tradevest because its 5 paragraphs are toward the bottom.)

http://www.money.com/money/archive/magarticle/0,4015,4527,00.html
Reader mail response to the "Mess" article by the president of Tradevest, Money magazine, 8/1/87

The Mess article says "A Tradevest customer pays $839 and an annual $39 service fee." The president's mail says "there is no fee for signing up as an associate."

So Jeremiah, your understanding seems to be correct -- a world of difference between customer and associate! (altho the reverse of what I would have guessed)

You guys -- it went exactly like this: Tradevest sucked: huge, moist, pasty Art Bell laughing / flabbering, pimply white ASS for "Tradevest Associates"!

We paid the IMO grifting Jackass channeling act (and / or yuppie demon-posessed hamster puppet paw thing) to "train" us for: "more success than many of you are currently prepared to handle" -- a direct quote from a Bizarrass weekend Tradevest training I "experienced".

When the f*cker blew sky high -- we were told by Con:Sin in essence that: "(It was massive pilfering at the top levels of Tradvest's management -- and we can / could do NOTHING about it, boo hoo -- feel sorry for us -- OR ELSE!)"

You know the response I received for sympathetically expressing my writen anger to Penaaaah about JP&M getting we Bizarrass Heads sucked in -- sledge hammer through the phone from Jachass.

Sufice to say -- yeah, if you were a Tradevest *customer* willing to pay $395 in order to buy a lot of *extremely unnecessary* consumerist crap (we're talking HEAVY emphasis on *car leases*, people -- idiotic(!) financial move *read The Millionare Next Door, By Stanley*, folks -- and other mindless midwest false-esteem generating Animal Farm "show the Joneses" breakables -- ALL at prices you could FAR -- FAR best in 1986 -- and invest the damn money yourself! (Annuities are a really BAD investment, folks -- unless you are VERY old and *very* mentally impared). Think of what the S&P 500 did for the last 15 years -- !

Anyway -- KA-Boom! No refund of training kit costs, Lazaris Tradevest Training Seminar monies -- NOT EVEN SO MUCH AS AN ICY YUPPIE CHEESELOG APPOLOGY -- !

Just like.. when they closed the Isis gallery in Corte Madera, CA -- without ANY notice and not so much as a *note* in the window (it had become quite the place for we Marin local Bizarrass heads to go and resonate / spiritualize.. such as it was).

So did this latest sh*t about the suicide pact surprise me?

In four words:

Hell No You Guys!

Cheesy Poofs Mom! AHH can't take this level of mind poisoned, 401K-lethal consumerist sewage realitah focus for too long God damn it.

Eric

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I did an Internet search and found these three articles that talk about Tradevest:

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Excellent, thanks.

How did you find those? I didn't find any of those articles when I searched. I did find the name of one of the guys in the article. I called him and he claimed to have no knowledge of Tradevest. But clearly he does..

So any searching tips would be appreciated..

Thanks,

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Originally posted by Jeremiah:

How did you find those [Internet articles about Tradevest]? I didn't find any of those articles when I searched......So any searching tips would be appreciated..

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I'm intrigued by this Tradevest thing, so I spent more time with the search engines than I ever do.

The first article, about Larry Andreini, was easy -- several search engines had it. The Money articles were a little trickier. At the bottom of a short Metacrawler results page, it asked "Research tradevest at Electronic Library", so I clicked and got a list of the other two articles. To view the articles, tho, I'd have to sign up (only 10 free days and then they'd automatically charge my credit card). Since Electronic Library gave the source and date, tho, I went to the source -- the archives of Money magazine. And there they were. At the time, I felt like I'd found gold!

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I did find the name of one of the guys in the article. I called him and he claimed to have no knowledge of Tradevest. But clearly he does..

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I admire your guts. Who did you call? I did some more searching on the 3 names we have (Andreini, Cohen, Isaac). But I wore out. The only mention of Tradevest I could find with any of them (besides the Andreini/START article) was ex-president John R. Isaac who, according to Forbes, is now an officer of Hallwood Energy Corp.
very long URL which makes this page very wide if I left the whole dang address in.

I'm wondering how anyone could get a check that they're told they'd have to wait 20 years for when the company folded surely when it was much younger than 20 years. Must have been some additional rebates/rewards in between time. When was the company founded anyway?

Thanks!
Susan

So, we have our own private "Snoop Doggy"

Good work!

This is really good stuff, and it's interesting to note that the attention has been taken off of this thread.

I thought it would be good to get it back on top.

I don't know the answers to your questions about how people got their money back, maybe someone in the know will feel moved to explain all this to us. We've sure been asking for a long time.

I'm off to catch up on the interesting reading you've provided.

Muchos gracias,

Thanks to Jade for putting it so well (in the Thoughts about Judgement thread):

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Originally posted by Jade:
Tradevest isn't the point. Jach's previous involvement with MLMs (a shady type of business), the business endorsement of the supposedly wise, loving, extremely highly evolved entity L, the incongruity of presenting this proposition to ensure financial security in the old age of "mapmaker, magicians", and the apparent financial advancement of P,M & J and C:S ( not just that they weren't just as "badly screwd" as L followers) are the reason's to discuss and examine the Tradevest flop. Which is only one of many areas of inquiry related to the validity, integrity and intent of C:S and L.

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I do get carried away sometimes digging for information (from whatever's handy--like the Internet or my in-home library), and several times I've asked myself why I was on this Tradevest dog trail. Was it just a nosy, juicy inquiry for me trying to dig up dirt? Well, maybe, a little , but the real answer always had to do with the incongruity of a Lazaris-endorsed investment opportunity that subsequently crashed. That alone is curious enough. Then add the so-far undisputed claim that the Jach and Peny et al promotors came out with lots of cash and prizes and the followers came out several hundred dollars poorer, and all the things Jade mentioned.

And it cost money to attend Tradevest/Lazaris seminars???? That astounds me! From what (admittedly not much) I know about other MLMs, motivation meetings are free.

Now that I've exhausted my "handy" reference materials (at which point I usually drop my investigations), I will be asking around about Tradevest, and might even drop by the city library one of these days to check pre-1988 volumes of the good old Readers Guide, or whatever they might still have around.

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Originally posted by Katie:
So, we have our own private "Snoop Doggy"

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Thanks for the title, Katie -- I always wanted to be a Nancy Drew or a forensic something or other!

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This is really good stuff, and it's interesting to note that the attention has been taken off of this thread. I thought it would be good to get it back on top.

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It sure didn't stay at the top very long! BTW, thanks for letting us know about the hit statistics and the like. It's so-o-o very interesting!

Susan

If you have a question, you just ask girl.

We don't have all the answers here, but I believe that as a group we know more about Con:Sin than they do about themselves, given their own blind spot when it comes to themselves.

I am very committed to digging out every little tiny bit of information on this group because I personally want to know it all, and I know there are others here who do too.

This isn't about digging up dirt for the purpose of gossiping, it is about exploring the lives, pasts, and activities of those who have set themselves up as spiritual leaders.

Some of us here have marveled that we just merrily went along without doing this homework first. Well, it's never too late.

So, if ya ever want to pull out your magnifying glass again, jump on board!

It ain't over yet.

Nothing new to report about TradeVest, but I found something interesting about why MLMs would appeal to those on a spiritual quest. This is an exerpt from a "conversation with Robert Fitzpatrick" (author of a book about MLM scheming), in Nexus, Colorado's Holistic Journal (Jan/Feb 1999)

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Quoted from http://www.nexuspub.com/jan99/mlm1.htm (with permission even!)

NEXUS: What is particularly appealing about MLMs to people who are interested in holistic consciousness and new spirituality?

RF: Multi-level marketing has utilized the faith and the beliefs that would today be called New Age tenets or beliefs. And by those I mean beliefs that are based upon personal empowerment, a sense of a divine purpose, of a benevolent deity, for example. Companies are espousing the concept of a universe in which prosperity and wealth and good health are intended for everyone. So this is a benevolent universe, a benevolent deity. They teach that each individual can achieve these ends through spiritual methods. So the concept of succeeding in this business is presented in many meetings as a spiritual exercise, that it depends first upon your orientation, your attitude, an opening to allow prosperity and success to enter your life. When that happens, success will flow, companies tell recruits. The philosophy and the tenets that are taught coincide closely with the principles that are taught in many new age communities or new thought churches, such as Unity or Church of Religious Science. It is a system that reality can be formed by your attitude, that you can shift reality by changing yourself. That what's intended in life is for you to be successful, happy and healthy. That poverty or illness is often a sign of resistance to the divine pattern. This is taught all the time in multi-level marketing.

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By golly by gum.

Susan

Thanks for posting this very interesting information.

Isn't it interesting how this concept of a benevolent universe in which abundance is freely given to all is somehow tweaked by these cult like groups as a way to extract money from people's pockets?

It really is almost Machiavellian.

On the other hand, it is also symptomatic of a kind of laziness on the part of those who are looking for someone else to provide their information and solutions to life's little dilemmas.

As long as there are suckers there will always be scams.

I love that you are sharing your research projects with us.