Shari - from Liverpool, NY - is right.
In early March of my wife and I got involved with ExpresScents (candles) with the intention of developing a part-time business for my wife to run as we started down the road toward parenthood, to give her something flexible that she could operate in her schedule as a 'stay-at-home' mom.
We spent 2 1/2 weeks evaluating the business, reading the manual, phone discussions with Ron Wattu (National Marketing Director), calling the references, checking the BBB, etc. Trying to make sure that we were not getting into a scam of any kind. Well, unfortunately for us, we did not investigate far enough.
Long story short... We ran into the same problems listed by Sheri (along with several others that we found on 'r-complaints.com') including finding out that we had competing distributors in what we were led to believe was an 'exclusive distributorship territory', that the 'locator service' (the same one recommended by ExpresScents) refused to even attempt to get us locations in Allen County (the main county within our territory) because they were, at that same time, working to set up other distributors in our territory (but when directly asked if there were other distributors working in our territory, they said 'no'), etc.
At first, we spent 6 weeks trying to get help from the company to get our accounts set up, to get a grasp on the number of distriboturs operating in our territory, etc. All to no avail.
When we were finally able to be honest with ourselves and admit that this was a scam, we simply requested that we be allowed to return the candles to the company, obtain a refund for both the candles and the territory, and walk away... But they refused to reply. When we took the initiative and attempted to return the candles to their place of business, they refused the shipment, stating that we had not obtained a 'return authorization number' prior to shipping the candles.
One of the locator company's recommended by ExpresScents, the JS Company, Inc. (Jimmy Sanders Company) out of Florida, could only locate 13 of the 27 accounts that we had requested, and, when we requested a refund, only then did they say we had violated parts of the agreement contract (which was not true) and stated that they were no longer obligated to complete the contract. They charge $100 per account to locate and we had only requested a $1600 refund, the same number of accounts they were unable to locate. Of the 13 original accounts, all had requested that the displays be removed within 60-90 days as the candles were not selling.
You would think that if the company were really serious about making money by selling candles, that they would be looking at the bigger picture, that is getting a distributor set up and their accounts working so that they continue to buy more and more candles. As good business owners/managers know, recurring business is the key to a solid business. This company seems more interested in getting our money up front, then avoiding dealing with the issues when they come up rather than helping us get up and running so that we all could make money.in April, when we were having difficulty in getting our accounts set up, we requested assistance from the company for help in getting our accounts set up.instead of getting assistance or pointers on how to get our accounts set up, we were told to do 'community fund raisers' for schools or churches instead. The problem is, we didn't buy a community fund raiser program (By the way, my wife did check into a few of those and found that doing fund raisers for community churches and local school systems required a presentation to the church and/or school board for approval at least one year in advance to the start of the expected date of the fund raiser... That is, if you were given approval.By May of this year, the presentations and approvals had already been decided for the 2005 school year and many of the churches had already made their decisions for the 2005 calender year. It would be the 2006 school year and/or the 2006 calendar year before we could even do that, again, if we were given approval.)
I don't like to be negative about companies, but rather honest about my experience with them. We have requested to return the products and obtain a full refund, but that has been ignored. We have attempted to return the candles and that has been refused. My wife is now 25 weeks pregnant, is unable to work full time (due to a difficult pregnancy), and things are getting pretty tight financially. When you make a $14,000 investment, you expect a moderate return (or at least a refund) on your investment. This company does neither. (We tried to get set up for the company's $ return program, but they refused to help us when we needed it, thus making us 'ineligible.')
I would be interested to see if this company would be interested in making a reasonable refund offer (by reasonable, I mean at least 85-90% of the total of the $5600 paid to secure our distributorship territory the $5800 to purchase the candles and have them shipped to our home the $2700 paid to their recommended 'locator service' = $14,000... Or a refund of approximately $12,000.00.) or if they are just another rip-off?
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