I am glad you accepted the wine-house trophy and have given your acceptance speech.

I have never stopped commenting on your blog (as you have suggested). Your last post on “The Waning Days of Summer” didn’t inspire me to comment.

I suppose if I were running a product based pyramid scheme, I would want to be involved in an association which furthered my desire to pull the wool over any new prospects eyes. That is really what the DSA does. The DSA doesn’t sell anything. They serve to provide the window dressing of respectability so I could go about my pyramid scheming in confidence that if any questions are asked, I’d at least have one association that I can point to who supports my business. I can support the DSA’s code which requires buy back provisions and so forth and still act as if my business is legit.

It doesn’t surprise me that questionable cons, schemes and scams fronting as MLMs or direct selling businesses would become part of an association that lends some degree of normality to the insane MLM business model. Not insane for the company, but the distributors that end up being fodder for some of these bad deal companies. Inventory loading, high priced products, over-blown dream selling, and money extracting tool kingpins being some of the worst situations going on within the supposedly legit DSA organizations.

The DSA will continue to hold its nose about all the bad fruit in the Association’s basket. In this case, it took action by the California Attorney General to force you to peek into the basket and take a look at this one rotten YTB piece of bad fruit. Do you not see any others in there while your eyes are cast in this direction?

I don’t know how you can say I have cohorts. That is your situation! You have all the cohorts; look in your basket?

I happen to agree with Tex that there are important issues raised by the TOOL SCAM which make association with Tool Scammers and the companies they front for something prospects need to avoid all together.

Amy, you’ve been in denial so long, I don’t think you’d know what a pyramid scheme is? Think about that the next time you receive an application for new membership. Obviously all the buy back policies in the world and the DSA Code are not going to make many of these bad deal MLM schemes a good deal for consumers or folks who really open themselves up for fleecing by signing on as distributors.

Your trophy is in the mail.

I have responded to this “award” directly on Bob’s blog by reiterating the finer points of self-regulation. Hopefully he’ll post my response as I have posted many of his comments here even though I do not necessarily agree with his views. It’s a shame, really, as we were having such a civil conversation, but it appears it was nothing more than lipservice.

Now, most people probably wouldn’t wear the award given me by Bob as a badge of honor, but I do because it gives me just one more opportunity to help people understand what DSA membership is all about – and why the fact that a member company has come under scrutiny by a law enforcement official does not undercut the purpose of the Code of Ethics. DSA obviously takes the allegations in California very seriously, and as I pointed out in the post above, DSA is not empowered to enforce the law – but we are empowered to create and enforce standards that serve as guideposts for people evaluating direct selling. DSA will seize situations like this as opportunities to evaluate the Code’s standards against marketplace demands – afterall it is ultimately the expectations of consumers that set the bar. If the Code’s standards need to be updated, they will be.

So, I am disappointed that my fellow bloggers have become frustrated because they do not understand or respect due process, self-regulation or the role of DSA with regard to its member companies and the public. But, I know there are millions of others out there who are interested in helping DSA set the standard in self-regulation and will continue this conversation with me.

Chances are most direct sellers have not, but should read the code and help their company by doing what they can to work from the code as a distributor. I believe this so strongly that we (the academy) have incorporated the DSA’s code of ethics as a required reading in our course curriculum.

I feel it is important to understand that people many times will be quick to point blame or allege that someone did something just to try and derail the good efforts one is trying to do.

If direct sellers themselves work to implement strong ethical standards in their in-the-field actions, they can help keep this industry growing as a respectable business model… preserving the ability to earn a residual income through a multi-level compensation plan.

While the DSA does a great job in educating their member companies on working from a strong code of ethics, there are many more companies that are a part of this industry that do not belong to the association. These companies should begin following the same code and even their distributors should voluntarily work to implement higher standards in their selling and recruiting efforts.

TIP - If the company you represent is not a DSA member, encourage them to join the association.

As a direct seller, know that the association is on your side as well. While you can’t join as a consumer, you will see in the code of ethics that the code is design for benefit of the company, you (the direct seller), and the consumer. Know that the efforts provided through the association and its members is to help improve this industry (which includes you).