My husband, who is a stay-at-home dad to our two kids, tried to earn some extra money as a sales consultant with the Traveling Vineyard. He loves wine, so he figured it would be a great match for him.
He met with a local sales director, who talked about how it was so much different from other network marketing gigs because wine sells itself; she glazed over some of what we later realized were big loopholes in the plan. When my husband pressed her for information on how he was supposed to be reimbursed for the $75 wine tasting kits he had to buy for each party, she blew it off, assuring him that "it all comes out in the wash." She also gave him some leads that turned out to be useless. As another reviewer mentioned, the plan is filled with loopholes; like a casino, the "house" always wins — and the "house" is the Traveling Vineyard.
For starters, you have to buy the wine tasting kits for $70-$75 apiece for each party; they "expire" after a several weeks. (So if you buy the kit and the party cancels, you're stuck with it and get to eat the money you spent on it.) You have to sell at least $200 worth of wine and accessories in order to even get reimbursed for the kit. If the party guests don't buy $200 worth or more, you eat the $75 you spent. You get 20% of the amount of the sales, but if you paid $75 for a kit and only sold $100 worth of wine, you would get back $20 but lose the $75 you spent, meaning it would COST YOU $55 FOR THE PRIVILEGE OF MAKING $175 FOR THE TRAVELING VINEYARD! Even if you make over $200, you still don't get fully reimbursed for the wine. My husband sold $680 at one party but only got back $65 out of the $75 he spent on the kit; essentially, he had to buy his guests a free bottle of wine.
Then, they push the web site on you. It costs you $10 a month to run the web site (after the initial free month) and you only get 10% of the sales from it. Thus, you have to sell $100 worth of wine and accessories off your web site each month in order to break even; you have to sell a lot more than that in order to make the thing even worth your time.
Don't be fooled by the "wine sells itself" ploy. The Traveling Vineyard is no different from any other network marketing plan. If you want to get anyone to have parties, you have to hound them and harass them. You have to become that pushy person that everyone tries to stay away from — the person who will pester you about tupperware, dildoes, jewelry, Southern Living, Mary Kay, or whatever nonsense they've been duped into selling at "parties." And the only way to make any real money is — you guessed it — by recruiting others to work underneath you. Traveling Vineyard is just like any other quasi-legal pyramid scam: you make pennies on the dollar as a distributor; the only way to make worthwhile money is through recruitment.
The Traveling Vineyard is just like any other MLM scam. The biggest difference with TTV is that they have loopholes in place that allow for the distributor to make no money at all — and even end up having to pay the company for the privilege of making money for them!!!
This company should be taken to the cleaners for the fraud they have perpetuated. We would be more than glad to testify in a class action case.
0 comments