#ACN #FLN The truth about how the payment structure is all geared towards conning people and moving further up the ladder: ACN/FLN products are sold on a points basis with each product being allocated a number of points, the more points you build up the more potential earnings you unlock. The products are also divided in to preferred services and non-preferred services. ACN encourages the reps to push the preferred services and this is signified by the fact that certain bonuses cannot be earned without selling a minimum required amount of preferred services. This is not a problem in general as most of the products are preferred services. Compensation Plan This is the area where the business of ACN becomes problematic, never in the presentation will you be shown a copy of the compensation plan in conjunction with the slides. The reasons for this are clear as you will see. There are essentially three methods of payments in ACN which are as follows; 1. Commission on your own sales 2. Commission on your teams sales 3. Team building bonuses 1. Commission on your own sales This is earned in two ways: •Monthly promotions – For example a common one is you get a bonus of £120 if you sell ten preferred services in a month. This is not bad considering if you sell 5 gas & electricity packages in a month you will get £120. Simple enough, straight forward, no problems here make the sales get a bonus. Everyone is happy. •A percentage of the total amount your customers have billed – for example if the total of your customers virgin broad band, ACN telephone line and E2save contract come to £100 a month you can earn up to 10% on it (according to the slides, not in reality). Despite the slides and presentation claiming you can earn up to 10 % on your personal sales this is not true. The fact is that you personally will NEVER earn more than 5% on your own sales as once you reach the 30 point mark half of your percentages are distributed between your up line (those above you in the triangle shaped structure that is not a pyramid) .This is deliberately misleading to those who the presentation is being given as well as being in conflict of ACN’s ‘Policies and Procedures’ document which prohibits; “Making false or misleading representations of any kind including, but not limited to, misrepresentations about ACN’s products or services or the ACN Opportunity;’ It is funny how they expect their reps to act and behave in honestly and ethically when the material they give them to present the opportunity is grossly misleading. Based on this point alone I would be applying for a refund for my ACN joining fee had I been a rep. Furthermore it must be made clear that these percentages that are promised to you are based on the billable amounts stated in the compensation plan not a percentage of the customers billing as whole as the reps presenting the opportunity would like you to believe. This means that if a customer’s electricity bill is £150 you will NOT be earning a percentage on that £150 you will be earning a MAXIMUM of 5% on the billable amount which £20, so basically when you reach 50 points you will earn £1 a month on every Gas & Electricity package you have sold. An important point to note is how this billable amount presented on the compensation plan. Instead of simply writing the billable amount for Gas & Electricity is £20 they give a figure of £40 and write ‘This fixed invoice amount is 50% commissionable’ the reason for this is so that you have a larger figure in your head than what is the reality. 2. Commission on your teams sales In this method you get paid a percentage of the sales those in your down line (those recruited below you) make, there are two slides in relation to this method of payment, one which shows seven levels with how many reps you require underneath you to hit each level as well as the percentage of commission you earn at each level. The second slide gives a hypothetical example in which if you get “Each representative in 5 markets 15 ACN Products/Services monthly billing of £20” you can earn £3200 in residual income. What “each representative in 5 markets means” is highly unclear. So I thought since ACN’s description of how to get this £3200 a month is vague let me work out what I can make at the top level which is the 7th level based on the hypothetical numbers of each rep selling 15 services with an average value of £20. – At Level 7 you have 128 people under you and earn 7% on each individuals sales – Let us assume each rep sells 15 products/services – With an average value of £20 per product/service – 15 products * £20 = £300 – £300 * 128 people = 38400 – 7% of 38400 = £2688. •So at level 7 using ACNs hypothetical value of £20 per product and service with each of the 128 people below me selling 15 products /services the grand total comes to £2688. So where do ACN get this figure of £3200. Just like everything else in ACN not very clear and misleading. 3. Team building bonuses This is where there you make the big bucks. This is where ACN becomes more about recruiting reps than actually selling the products. They show you these figures in the presentation and talk of open lines and getting qualified but really and truly you will not understand what this means unless you study the compensation plan. Most of you will not do this so I will try and explain it as simply as I can: •The more people you recruited into your down line (people underneath you) the more money you will make in Customer Acquisition Bonuses (CAB’s) •Open lines are people under you who are in their first 30 days (so basically new people re-cruited in that month) •Getting qualified means getting 6 point and with a minimum of 3 preferred services. • The Formula To get the bonuses at the different levels within ACN – At ETT: 14 Open lines – qualified within 30 days = £2000 – At ETL: 40 Open lines – qualified within 30 days = £5600 – At TC: 100 Open lines – qualified within 30 days = £20,000 So basically in every new month you have to recruit new people to get your open lines which are then converted into bonuses if they can get qualified within the space of 30 days. For example if you get 200 people under you in a month and 100 qualify and 100 don’t you will make £20,000. Therefore the more people you recruit the more chance you have of hitting these bonus. Essentially it just becomes a game of numbers rather than a business where the focus is around selling the product. Another important point to note is that the rep being encouraged to get qualified will make a grand total of £0 for doing so, they will be pushed to get qualified within their first 30 days so that the people above them can earn their customer acquisition bonuses. They will be encouraged to get qualified by doing things such as buying an adapter for themselves or signing up to a £20 a month ACN subscription service which allows them to see who is recruited below them (despite already paying £390 to join). The sad fact is that once you are qualified they don’t really care if you make any more sales the focus will be on recruiting more reps in order to get more open lines the following month. What essentially is happening is they are chopping the £390 the rep pays and making a profit directly from it despite their claims to the contrary. The getting qualified business is just a side issue which acts as a smokescreen so they can claim that the bonuses are for helping the rep make sales. The fact is there is no advantage to the rep to get qualified in their first month. The mathematics of why the bonuses for this stream of income are so high are simple, for example 100 open lines * £390 = 390,0000 generated for ACN, this is before the money ACN earns from the reps joining their business assistant service for £20 a month. So if your generating £390,0000 + in a month for ACN they will gladly give you 20k for your efforts. But the vast majority of this sum will come from license fees paid by reps not from the sale of products. Conclusion The whole business of ACN is built around deceiving people to buy into the scheme with exaggerated claims and playing on their love for money. I will say that YES there is potential to make money and a lot of it the problem lies in the fact that most of it will come from other people making a loss. Another major thing which I found quite annoying was that when asking the reps who invited me to see the business was the way in which the opportunity was presented to me. All of them without fail were not willing or were unable to explain what the business was without me having to see it for myself at a presentation. As a general rule I will say if you are part of a business no matter how complicated it is you should be able to explain what it is about to someone you wish to be a business partner. If you can’t it means one that either you don’t even understand the business yourself but you want me to be a part of it or that something is fishy, either way it doesn’t bode well for a good business relationship. My advice to anyone who wants to join ACN to ask the following questions before doing so to the rep that introduced them or to one of the presenters: * Can I see a copy of the compensation plan? * How much did you make last month and can I have proof? * How much did you make from the sale of products and how much did you make from ac-quiring reps? * Why is there an event to recruit reps every week but never one to recruit customers for the products which are decent? * If you are Muslim – Are you sure this business is halal? – In fact this should be the first question you ask them if you are Muslim.
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 15:00:28 +0000
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