Translated material
Carry your "quest"
Quest International is a new pyramid that is banned even in Pakistan, but is successfully developing in our country
A friend called the other day: “Wan, soon I will be earning millions! If you want, join, this is a very profitable business: you don’t have to do anything, and you can just get huge money - for a whole life in your newspaper you can’t ...
A friend called the other day: “Wan, soon I will be earning millions! If you want, join, it’s a very profitable business here: you don’t have to do anything, and you can just get gigantic money - you won’t earn money in your newspaper for a lifetime! These words reminded me of something suspiciously familiar, and after a while I realized: the older generation did not pass on the lessons of grandfather Mavrodi to the youth ... Purely professional interest played out: will the Russians again step on the same rake as in the 90s, or will I Am I wrong and is it really possible to get huge money with a minimum of effort? The meeting was scheduled for the next day.
At 8.50 I arrived at the Dubrovskaya metro station, the conversation was supposed to take place at 9.00 in one of the offices of a nearby shopping center. To be honest, the building of the shopping center on Dubrovka itself makes a very solid impression, inside everything is somewhat worse - dirty shopping malls, workers constantly scurrying back and forth, a product that you can doubt the quality of without even looking...
I ducked into the designated office on the second floor. Here the atmosphere is much more comfortable - white walls, wooden office doors, wide windows. At the entrance I was greeted by the same friend:
- Well, go into the room, now a man will come who will tell you everything.
A few minutes later a woman in her fifties entered the room. From the very beginning of our conversation, I understood: the worst fears are justified ...
pyramid stories
It turned out that the company, which until this meeting was anonymous to me, is called Quest International (popularly - Questnet) and specializes in network marketing, simply put, it sells goods without intermediaries via the Internet. The goods are very different - from tourist vouchers to expensive Swiss watches. According to the consultant, the Quest International empire is among such giants as Coca-Cola and Microsoft, and its unknown to a wide audience is due to the fact that the company does not invest in advertising. “It’s better to give these incomes to employees than to use them for PR – over time, we will win the people’s love for ourselves,” they explained to me in the office. After a short presentation of goods and owners, a conversation began about the mechanism for making money.
It turned out that to start building your career at Quest International, you need very little - to buy one of the company's products. Each product is assigned a certain number of points, which are awarded to the buyer after the order; in order to start a business, you need to make a purchase for three points (for example, a tour package for 60 thousand rubles). After that, everyone who entered the business must invite two friends to it, who, in turn, must also make a “three-point purchase”. If all operations are successful, then for these two referred friends, the first buyer, let's call him "K", receives $250. Then the action unfolds according to the following scheme: two newly minted members of the club (“L” and “M”) must each invite two of their friends, who must also make a purchase. If purchases are made, then "L" and "M" each receive $250, and "K" - already as much as $500.
So this pyramid can grow indefinitely, and ideally some of its most diligent members can actually earn decent capital, but in reality everything turns out completely wrong.
exposure
The first weak point of the pyramid is that at any stage there may not be two friends who will be ready to buy a product that is very expensive for the average Russian. In this case, the development of the pyramid stops, and the cash flow "to the top" decreases by a multiple of the number of links in the "slowed down" layer of the pyramid. If the whole level abruptly fails, the matter simply comes to a standstill. As a rule, this is how it happens - the pyramid of an ordinary "business partner" is built in two or three levels, after which its development comes to naught.
The result - at least seven people can not only earn, but also return their money. And there are hundreds and thousands of such "dead" pyramids in the territory of the company's operation - the management profits from them. At the same time, in the hope of still living a beautiful life, people begin to look for ways to build a new pyramid - new acquaintances are invited who could invest money. However, the pyramids are stalling again. The company's management does not hide this either, stating that only those who do not feel sorry for the strength to convince friends of the need to enter the "business" can earn money in QI.
The second puncture is in the very structure of the business. As in any financial pyramid, the last, most numerous layers remain without financial profit in QI. And if in some pyramids those participants who are on the second step from the bottom can already earn money, then in Questnet only those who are on the 4th (!) step from the bottom and above can compensate for their expenses and receive a little bit of income. Now imagine that the entire population of the planet (? 7,000,000,000 people) is involved in QI activities. By simple mathematical calculations, we find that only 437,500,000 people will be able to have an income, and 6,562,500,000 people will not be able to return their money. In Russia with a population of 140 million, only about 20 million citizens would be able to return their money, and even less would make a profit.
Here, rather from desperation, one can object: well, we won’t return the money, but at least we will get the goods. Unfortunately, the quality of QI products has been in doubt for a long time: there are cases when a gold jewelry bought from the company turned out to be gilded, expensive Swiss watches instead of mechanical ones declared in the price list - quartz, etc. Even tourist vouchers - and those with a twist: the company indicates that the owner of the voucher can go to any hotel of the company for three weeks, but does not explain that the cost of the voucher does not include flights and accommodation (!), And the vacation itself must be divided into three years .
By the way, according to QI managers, who naturally do not recognize the company as a financial pyramid, it is the availability of goods that is the main difference between their corporation and MMM and similar structures.
- Unlike financial pyramids, where the buyer invests money "in the air", we offer to buy material items, and therefore even if the business "does not work", the buyer will not lose, because, in fact, he makes an ordinary purchase, like in a store , - Nathan Azulin, an employee of Quest International, explained to the New.
The quality of the goods is guaranteed by the employees themselves, and their guarantees are denied not only by independent experts, but also, for example, by the Union of Swiss Watch Manufacturers, in which the “famous” watch brand offered by the company is not registered.
But why do people fall for it?
No business, just personal
In the process of our communication with the representative of the company, I noticed that, willy-nilly, I begin to think about his words and even trust them in some way. In moments of sobering up my mind, I tried to notice why the person opposite was so lulling my consciousness. Soon everything became clear: the company's consultants use some schemes from NLP technology. Capturing the attention of a person attracted to the business, they begin to put pressure on weak points: the desire to live better, quick success, the imaginary reliability of the scheme. When you try to interrupt, they increase intonation, making it clear that they are saying something important. Weak-willed customers quickly give up under such onslaught, and soon an absolutely flawless scheme is fully established in their head, where everything depends only on them, and the company acts as a big brother interested in their success.
They say smart people learn from the mistakes of others. I can safely call the experience of my friend my own - I learn from her. During the month that she spent in the QI system, she managed to find only one person who invested money in the project, she cannot connect the second to the case. During this time, she never visited the institute, she ceased to be interested in what she was interested in before. He speaks exclusively on “business topics”, when you try to talk about life, he translates everything to a “better future”. Every day, from morning to evening, she disappears in the company's office, where she meets with potential buyers of services.
What to do?
Representatives of QI claim that now about 1,000 people are involved in their business on the territory of the Russian Federation. Such a low figure is explained by the fact that the company has existed on the Russian market for less than a year and does not yet have offices in the regions. It is in this rudimentary state that it is necessary to freeze the construction of this pyramid. Company executives can be held liable under at least two articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation: Art. 165 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation "Causing property damage by deception or abuse of trust" and Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation "Fraud".
Quest International is banned in Azerbaijan and Pakistan; in many Asian countries, legal proceedings are ongoing against company representatives. In the enlightened European market and in the US, there are no Questnet representations at all. In order not to repeat the scenario of the 90s, Russia should also refuse to provide economic platforms for the activities of this booming company. Novaya Gazeta sent an official request to the Prosecutor General's Office with a demand to check the integrity of this organization. In the comments to this material, we announce the collection of signatures for the closure of the branch of Quest International in our country.