YTB update

Pardon the delay in relaying Len Clement's "MarketWave Alert #86" regarding YTB. I can't seem to find a recent archive of his alerts on his site (a May 2004 Quixtar alert in the most recent in his archive section), so if you're interested in everything he has to say in each alert, then I strongly suggest you subscribe to the Alert newsletter as I do... it's free... and it only comes out sporadically. So far he's not one to spam.

As for his update, apparently YTB's attorney Ted Lindauer responded to his initial MarketWave alert about the company in which Len Clement described an investigation of one of YTB's top distributors, Rick & Brenda Ricketts, by the Florida Attorney General. In essense Mr. Lindauer stated "...the product... is a business opportunity".

Ahh yes... sounds like Burnlounge to me. The product can't be the business opportunity... or the store, or the web site that markets the opportunity... it has to be a product or a service... at least that's my layman's understanding of the law.

Now, here is where the MarketWave Alert gets a little unclear... or maybe I'm just overly suspicious of everything... but I take things literally...

Mr. Lindauer apparently also wrote to Len Clement that the Florida AG investigation was in 2006 and that they had dropped the investigation as of November. Len Clement goes on to say that he contacted a Florida AG "spokesperson" who stated that the FL AG did NOT have any meetings with YTB "in November".

Now maybe I'm being too literal here, but the unnamed spokesperson didn't deny meetings prior to November, or deny that the investigation had been dropped. Len Clement correctly points out that the investigative "notice" still sits on the Florida AG web site... but it wouldn't be the first time an old notice was left on a web site. Then again, if you look at the blue bar just above the description of the investigation, it does say "Active Public Consumer-Related investigation". So if the investigation really has been dropped... and Mr. Lindauer is worth the piece of paper his license is printed on, he'd get "Active" taken out or even the entire notice removed.

The bottom line for me is that when I was first introduced to YTB it looked, acted and smelled much like Burnlounge's stores... and while Burnlounge never admitted wrong doing, they pulled the plug on their MLM model. So since it appears that the majority of the money made by anyone in YTB is made when they sell a "business opportunity" and NOT when they sell travel, it looks like an illegal pyramid scam to me... and right now it appears the Florida Attorney General's investigation of RickettsTravel.com is still "active".