After digging myself into debt trying to keep up with Creative Memories $500 minimum sales every 90 days, I decided last year to no longer be a consultant. I couldn't afford it anymore, and neither could my customers. I tried selling product that I had previously purchase on eBay while I was still a consultant and was told it was a violation of the consultant agreement. Oops. I thought if I bought the product I could resell it in any way I wanted. After all, I bought it. I was wrong. A couple months and a letter of reprimand later I quit being a consultant. That was in 2007.
Just this month I decided to start "Spring Cleaning" and selling a lot of things from around the house on eBay. One item I was selling was a Memory Manager software program from Creative Memories. I just never needed it and I figured someone else could use it.
Now Creative Memories is threatening to sue me! I am not even a consultant anymore, and haven't been for some time! All because of a clause in their Consultant Agreement:
"I will cease all use of Creative Memories Intellectual Property and Confidential Information and cease holding classes, workshops and presentations or otherwise displaying, offering for sale or selling Creative Memories Products. If I offer for sale or sell Creative Memories products in violation of the foregoing sentence, Creative Memories will be entitled to recover from me $5,000 as liquidated damages without having to prove actual harm."
Does this mean I can't even use their products at my scrapbook parties because someone might see me using them? That I can never be a consumer to them because I was a consultant at one time? What the heck is going on here?
I purchased all the products from them. Just like purchasing products from Walmart. Who are they to say what I do with them after I have paid for them? And where did this clause come from? Will they really go through with this?
Someone please let me know if they have experience the same treatment as a past consultant and what the outcome was. I sell lots of things on eBay that I don't use anymore, why should their products be any different from anything else?
0 comments