Elite Designs - Expresscents - Designerscents - Country Kitchen Candles
Scamming, deceiving, misleading, totally fraudulent and lying company in their advertising and promises to their distributors RIPOFF

In April I purchased a 20 account candle distributorship from this unscrupulous, underhanded and fraudulent company. Everything that possibly could have gone wrong went wrong once they received their money.

The main reason I purchased this distributorship (for a nice sum, I might add), was because their advertising promised that THEY would find the high volume retail stores for us, from which to sell the candles. The candle company recommends and promotes what are known as locator services, both verbally and in writing, in their brochure. They knowingly refer their distributors to these services because the vast majority of distributors would not buy into the company if they knew they'd be going door to door to retail business trying to get these businesses to take in their displays.

Well it seems that these locators are virtually useless. They take your $2,000- $4,000 (depending on the number of locations/displays you purchase), and virtually do little or nothing to help set up the acoounts, at least for the majority of the distributors. Still, the candle company continues to refer and recommend these services to their distributors.

Next, you are verbally assured and promised that you will be the only distributor in your county (as are several others). However, as you are forced to get out there and try to sell your product, as the locator services have completely failed to do what they were paid to do, you discover similar displays all around your so called "protected territory". This is most disturbing as you have been promised that this is your own territory. Too, the concept is no longer unique and the idea that people will purchase these novelty items becomes less and less likely based on the fact that many, many stores are selling the same item.

In the meantime, the time period that they use in order to calculate your year end anniversary, necessary to participate in the $ back guarantee, has also expired. There is a $ back guarantee provided you have all of your accounts set up within 30 days of the initial shipment of the candles from the company in R.I., to the distributor. (There are other rules involved in the $ back guarantee, basically having to do with paperwork). So it's a double whammy! They are not responsible for these locator services that they promote and refer you to, as they are separate agreements and separate checks. And as if that's not bad enough, they know that most people can't participate in the money back guarantee because by the time you're done arguing, pleading, fighting and begging with the locator serivce, and realize you are on your own, your 30 days are up.

They give you so called "distributor references" to call and they have wonderful things to report about the candles and the company. The only problem with this, is that the references are not legitimate distributors. However, having spoken to many different distributors over the last few months, we have discoved that we all had the same few "references". The only thing is, one of them in Texas is both a salesperson for the company and also a "reference". Another couple of references that I called back and spoke to a second time some months later, gave me completely different stories than the first time that we spoke. Either they couldn't really remember what they had said to me previously, or they just gave totally different stories. Now if that isn't fraudulent, I can't imagine what is.

Another few things that they lie about come from the brochure. One of the things has to do with shipping. They claim that shipping is approximately $. 25 per candle from R.I. To CA. And less as the destination gets closer to R.I. Some distributors were paying huge amounts on relatively small reorders. Turns out that the $. 25 quote only applied to the initial order. After that, it's whatever they want to charge you.

Another huge deception is the burn time on the candles. The brochure states that the small pie candles burn for 40-45 hours and the large pie candles burn for 75-80 hours.in fact the candle company is now suggesting that they not be burned at all, rather just used as a decoration! I ask then, how can you possibly have repeat business and how do you sell candles to retailers while telling them that they're not really meant to be lit?

For now, the last thing I'd like to say is that this is not an isolated incident. There are MANY of us involved all across the country. It is a HUGE SCAM that so far the R.I. BBB and Atorney Generals' office has not yet been able to stop!

Company: Elite Designs - Expresscents - Designerscents - Country Kitchen Candles
Country: USA
State: Rhode Island
City: North Providence
Address: 17 Thelma Ave
Phone: 8884243668

  <     >