A letter to a friend involved in multi-level marketing

Dear MLM friend:

I hope all is well with you. It has been a while since we've spoken, so I figured I’d drop you a line to let you know what’s been on my mind lately. I find I’m better writing than speaking, so I will pass along a few ideas to you you.

My reason for doing so is I can see where things are going here, and I figured I’d put some information front of you before we go any further.

Mind you, nothing I will say below is against you personally. I found you overall to be an intelligent and fun person to converse with. I don’t say this to spite you personally, I say it because I personally seen the damage that this toxic type of “business” does to friends, family members, near associates, and personal finances. It causes bankruptcies, loss of friendships, shunning by relatives, and divorces. I know the latter part of that equation all too well, having seen it personally.

We probably haven’t spoken of this before but I’ll fill you in on a little secret from my past history. Many years ago, when I was very young – aged 10 or so – my parents divorced after almost 25 years of marriage. The reason they divorced is because of multilevel marketing, or MLM from hence forward for purposes of our discussion.  This was a rather large shock to a 10-year-old, and at it was only with the passage of time I came to understand why it was they couldn’t get along.

The short story is that for about five years previous to that point, my mother had been involved with a little-known cosmetics MLM, and during said time she acquired all kinds of training, in-house certification, tools and product to sell, with the end result being exactly as my father predicted: namely, very little cash flow or business money coming in, compared to exceedingly high expenses. It was a total flop, as the creators of the pyramid intended. There are multiple reasons for this - some of which I will discuss below – but the final total was somewhere north of $100,000 pissed down the drain, all because my dear mother got roped into network marketing. To this day she blames herself.

As you might imagine this would make me a poor candidate for any sort of pitch for network marketing, direct marketing, direct selling, network selling, “deals”, “business opportunities”, cookie-cutter business plans, uplines / downlines, potions, lotions, vitamins, pyramids, or anything that looks, sounds or smells like any of the above. I thought I’d made this clear to you in earlier conversation, but apparently I had not.

I have very little patience for these things, not because I’m a prototypical “hater” as the kids would say, nor because I’m a professional cynic or critic.  That would be too easy to make such a mischaracterization here.  Those are the types that don’t investigate, don’t research, and don’t inquire about certain affairs in this world, but instead stand on the sidelines of life and say to all that will hear “that will never work!” I instead say these things because I’ve made it a point to read, research, and investigate this type of business and I’ve concluded from independent research that it is fundamentally flawed.

Is flawed, I say, because MLM is purposely structured to be dishonest and deceptive. Something like 70% of all payouts go to the top dozen or two dozen people in the entire pyramid chain. Financial losses for all involved in these schemes exceed 99%, and the average payout across the entire pyramid is something like $10 a week. The entire structure is predicated upon endless recruitment, yet 75% to 85% of the people in any MLM whatsoever do not qualify for any commissions, so “the house always wins” here, just like in Vegas. Why else would the two founders of Amway be multi billionaires while churn rates at the bottom exceed 50% to 75% per year for everyone else that gets roped in? If there was really that much money floating around in this or any MLM, they’d be killing people to keep them out of it.

[The online reader may need to click on the below image for it to display properly. Blogger is a nice platform, but I don't have the control over display that I would if this was a freestanding site.] 

Consider this chart from http://www.financialindustryscam.com/mlm.htm:

The net effect of photocopying sales distributors in a MLM organization is it massively enriches the company in general and top of the pyramid in particular, but the people at the lowest levels of the organization starve.

Further references and rock-solid proof for what I speak of might be found here:

·         Pershing Square Webcast: Former Herbalife Distributors Speak Out (with Q&A): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNnRhkLMuJw  

(This is about HerbalLife but since the structure behind all MLM’s is virtually identical this applies to MonaVie and all other MLM’s as well.) 

·         Merchants of Deception: An Insider's Chilling Look at the Worldwide, Multi Billion dollar Conspiracy of lies that is Amway and its Motivational Organizations by Eric Scheibeler. https://archive.org/details/MerchantsOfDeception

·         The Myth of MLM Income by Robert L. FitzPatrick: https://archive.org/details/TheMythOfMlmIncome

·         http://www.financialindustryscam.com/mlm.htm

·         Multi-level Marketing Unmasked by Dr. Jon Taylor (a man with two MBAs and a PhD in business) http://mlm-thetruth.com/multi-level-marketing-unmasked/ I have attached this.

·         30 Questions for MLM distributors (excerpt from a book, also attached).

In the real world, you should be in the black on any business in about 5-6 months, according to Brian Tracy’s course on How You Can Start, Build, Manage or Turn Around Any Business. If you are not in the clear by then, either there is something wrong with your approach, your product or service, your timing, the target market or audience, or something wrong business plan you have subscribed to.

To wrap up, I will be more than pleased to entertain any “proposal” you might put in front of me, but for sake of brevity I must limit it to facts, figures, numbers, statistics, and that alone. (If I were to be purchasing a franchise, I’d need to sift through 100+ pages of business paperwork, consent decrees, statements of understanding, legal forms, business contracts, etc. Have you the same to offer here?)  I have zero interest in “Rah!- Rah!- Rah!” / “We’re the best!” / “Go team!” / religious revival-styled “business” gatherings, nor high-powered pep talks or similar mental masturbation about what a smashing opportunity awaits just around the corner for me if I hop into the right person’s downline.

My standards before I would invest in anything are as follows:

• Business pro forma
• Two years of Schedule C filings.
• Two years of personal income tax filings from the person making the proposal.

These I will ponder in silence and research at my own pace, not in a high-pressure sales pitch environment.

There are many roads to success in this world, and in my opinion having investigated multiple successful people who have started and run one or more successful businesses, the proper secret of success in this world is a combination of bringing your own innovative product or service to the market combined with investments in real estate and stocks / bonds. This is what the financially well-off have done in the past, and what others will do in the future. When losses in MLM exceed 99.7%, that is none of the above, that does not meet the above requirements, and that is not an opportunity. That is what we call, in plain English, a scam.

In short, MLM behaves like a bastard child from the unholy union between a religious cult and Wal-Mart.

The real “market” served in MLM is not one where there are a bunch of “eager beavers” out there in the wide world somewhere just waiting to hear about the opportunity to peddle the opportunity, plus some juice or vitamins on the side. The real market in MLM is the pyramid selling to you, the person in the downline. Training, tools, rallies, frontloading on product, all of those ponderous expenses add up before you can even begin to make a first sale. The MLM researcher Dr. Jon Taylor (above) worked the NuSkin MLM for a year, and even with $23,000+ spent on advertising and promotion, building his downline, and so on, he was still losing $1,000 per month.  What a great deal! (For the guys up top, that is!)

In closing, I wish you the very best in your future success and future endeavors. Should you wish to discuss something else other than MLM, MonaVie, “opportunities” and so on I’ll be pleased to discuss with you further any number of subjects including but not limited to business concepts, product invention ideas, long-range investment strategies, personal development courses, inspirational books, or even certain insights I have acquired from my study of thousands of pages of human history. I will not be discussing with you or anyone else any MLM or anything of a similar or related nature or type. Life is too short for me to be going around in circles on that affair.

Yours very sincerely,

Tom Jones

P.S.: Please find some sage advice for starting your own business here: http://mlm-thetruth.com/advice-for-starting-a-business/

A letter to a friend involved in multi-level marketing

Dear MLM friend:

I hope all is well with you. It has been a while since we've spoken, so I figured I’d drop you a line to let you know what’s been on my mind lately. I find I’m better writing than speaking, so I will pass along a few ideas to you you.

My reason for doing so is I can see where things are going here, and I figured I’d put some information front of you before we go any further.

Mind you, nothing I will say below is against you personally. I found you overall to be an intelligent and fun person to converse with. I don’t say this to spite you personally, I say it because I personally seen the damage that this toxic type of “business” does to friends, family members, near associates, and personal finances. It causes bankruptcies, loss of friendships, shunning by relatives, and divorces. I know the latter part of that equation all too well, having seen it personally.

We probably haven’t spoken of this before but I’ll fill you in on a little secret from my past history. Many years ago, when I was very young – aged 10 or so – my parents divorced after almost 25 years of marriage. The reason they divorced is because of multilevel marketing, or MLM from hence forward for purposes of our discussion.  This was a rather large shock to a 10-year-old, and at it was only with the passage of time I came to understand why it was they couldn’t get along.

The short story is that for about five years previous to that point, my mother had been involved with a little-known cosmetics MLM, and during said time she acquired all kinds of training, in-house certification, tools and product to sell, with the end result being exactly as my father predicted: namely, very little cash flow or business money coming in, compared to exceedingly high expenses. It was a total flop, as the creators of the pyramid intended. There are multiple reasons for this - some of which I will discuss below – but the final total was somewhere north of $100,000 pissed down the drain, all because my dear mother got roped into network marketing. To this day she blames herself.

As you might imagine this would make me a poor candidate for any sort of pitch for network marketing, direct marketing, direct selling, network selling, “deals”, “business opportunities”, cookie-cutter business plans, uplines / downlines, potions, lotions, vitamins, pyramids, or anything that looks, sounds or smells like any of the above. I thought I’d made this clear to you in earlier conversation, but apparently I had not.

I have very little patience for these things, not because I’m a prototypical “hater” as the kids would say, nor because I’m a professional cynic or critic.  That would be too easy to make such a mischaracterization here.  Those are the types that don’t investigate, don’t research, and don’t inquire about certain affairs in this world, but instead stand on the sidelines of life and say to all that will hear “that will never work!” I instead say these things because I’ve made it a point to read, research, and investigate this type of business and I’ve concluded from independent research that it is fundamentally flawed.

Is flawed, I say, because MLM is purposely structured to be dishonest and deceptive. Something like 70% of all payouts go to the top dozen or two dozen people in the entire pyramid chain. Financial losses for all involved in these schemes exceed 99%, and the average payout across the entire pyramid is something like $10 a week. The entire structure is predicated upon endless recruitment, yet 75% to 85% of the people in any MLM whatsoever do not qualify for any commissions, so “the house always wins” here, just like in Vegas. Why else would the two founders of Amway be multi billionaires while churn rates at the bottom exceed 50% to 75% per year for everyone else that gets roped in? If there was really that much money floating around in this or any MLM, they’d be killing people to keep them out of it.

[The online reader may need to click on the below image for it to display properly. Blogger is a nice platform, but I don't have the control over display that I would if this was a freestanding site.] 

Consider this chart from http://www.financialindustryscam.com/mlm.htm:

The net effect of photocopying sales distributors in a MLM organization is it massively enriches the company in general and top of the pyramid in particular, but the people at the lowest levels of the organization starve.

Further references and rock-solid proof for what I speak of might be found here:

·         Pershing Square Webcast: Former Herbalife Distributors Speak Out (with Q&A): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNnRhkLMuJw 
(This is about HerbalLife but since the structure behind all MLM’s is virtually identical this applies to MonaVie and all other MLM’s as well.) 

·         Merchants of Deception: An Insider's Chilling Look at the Worldwide, Multi Billion dollar Conspiracy of lies that is Amway and its Motivational Organizations by Eric Scheibeler. https://archive.org/details/MerchantsOfDeception

·         The Myth of MLM Income by Robert L. FitzPatrick: https://archive.org/details/TheMythOfMlmIncome

·         http://www.financialindustryscam.com/mlm.htm

·         Multi-level Marketing Unmasked by Dr. Jon Taylor (a man with two MBAs and a PhD in business) http://mlm-thetruth.com/multi-level-marketing-unmasked/ I have attached this.

·         30 Questions for MLM distributors (excerpt from a book, also attached).

In the real world, you should be in the black on any business in about 5-6 months, according to Brian Tracy’s course on How You Can Start, Build, Manage or Turn Around Any Business. If you are not in the clear by then, either there is something wrong with your approach, your product or service, your timing, the target market or audience, or something wrong business plan you have subscribed to.

To wrap up, I will be more than pleased to entertain any “proposal” you might put in front of me, but for sake of brevity I must limit it to facts, figures, numbers, statistics, and that alone. (If I were to be purchasing a franchise, I’d need to sift through 100+ pages of business paperwork, consent decrees, statements of understanding, legal forms, business contracts, etc. Have you the same to offer here?)  I have zero interest in “Rah!- Rah!- Rah!” / “We’re the best!” / “Go team!” / religious revival-styled “business” gatherings, nor high-powered pep talks or similar mental masturbation about what a smashing opportunity awaits just around the corner for me if I hop into the right person’s downline.

My standards before I would invest in anything are as follows:

1.    Business pro forma.

2.    Two years of Schedule C filings.

3.    Two years of personal income tax filings from the person making the proposal.

These I will ponder in silence and research at my own pace, not in a high-pressure sales pitch environment.

There are many roads to success in this world, and in my opinion having investigated multiple successful people who have started and run one or more successful businesses, the proper secret of success in this world is a combination of bringing your own innovative product or service to the market combined with investments in real estate and stocks / bonds. This is what the financially well-off have done in the past, and what others will do in the future. When losses in MLM exceed 99.7%, that is none of the above, that does not meet the above requirements, and that is not an opportunity. That is what we call, in plain English, a scam.

In short, MLM behaves like a bastard child from the unholy union between a religious cult and Wal-Mart.

The real “market” served in MLM is not one where there are a bunch of “eager beavers” out there in the wide world somewhere just waiting to hear about the opportunity to peddle the opportunity, plus some juice or vitamins on the side. The real market in MLM is the pyramid selling to you, the person in the downline. Training, tools, rallies, frontloading on product, all of those ponderous expenses add up before you can even begin to make a first sale. The MLM researcher Dr. Jon Taylor (above) worked the NuSkin MLM for a year, and even with $23,000+ spent on advertising and promotion, building his downline, and so on, he was still losing $1,000 per month.  What a great deal! (For the guys up top, that is!)

In closing, I wish you the very best in your future success and future endeavors. Should you wish to discuss something else other than MLM, MonaVie, “opportunities” and so on I’ll be pleased to discuss with you further any number of subjects including but not limited to business concepts, product invention ideas, long-range investment strategies, personal development courses, inspirational books, or even certain insights I have acquired from my study of thousands of pages of human history. I will not be discussing with you or anyone else any MLM or anything of a similar or related nature or type. Life is too short for me to be going around in circles on that affair.

Yours very sincerely,

Tom Jones

P.S.: Please find some sage advice for starting your own business here: http://mlm-thetruth.com/advice-for-starting-a-business/

Spamming Author Alice Adamek "My Journey After Death" Book

My online bookstore email account got this bit of spam.
If I didn't sign up for notices of new publications from you or your publisher.... please don't send me ads for your book.
I can't be the only bookseller who has these feelings.
Here's the cookie you aren't getting!

Alice Adamek Shares Her Experiences on Crossing the Other Side

New book "My Journey After Death" recalls a woman's journey through hell
and how this most incredible near death experience change her life forever.

     Broomfield, Colo. (PRWEB) February 10, 2014

Some people wait for death. Some people experience it unexpectedly. Others
force it, and most people, at one time or another; have contemplated what
happens after death. It is one of the great mysteries of life. But author
Alice Adamek's extraordinary encounter with death was highly remarkable.

"My Journey after Death" recalls Adamek's journey through hell and how this
most incredible near death experience change her life forever. On the day
she was rushed at a Virginia hospital after a massive heart attack, Alice
experienced a beautiful journey as she crosses over to the other side. When
she encountered a figure known as the grim reaper, she encountered a man
who was fair, beautiful, robust, and had rosy cheeks. The fear she
anticipated on meeting him someday was immediately dissipated. He held a
pair of scissors, not a sickle, and was not dressed in black.

On her journey through hell, Alice walked a thin line, with angels guiding
her along, knowing if she missed one step she would be gone forever. The
terrifying bubbling black oil with figures reaching out and calling to her
was a temptation she found not hard to resist. Her final destination was a
room that shimmered with oblique rays of beautiful lights shining down on
her. As the angels evaporated into the light, she was bewildered and she
asked the first of many questions. The answers were deeply moving, and it
changed her life forever.

Today, Alice is more contented than she have ever been. Her fear of death
is gone; her understanding of what it is all about has all been answered.
"My Journey after Death" will open the hearts and mind of readers on how to
make their lifelong lesson and journey on earth. It will appeal to those
who have been on the road of death and to everyone who has wondered about
life and death.

For more information on this book, interested parties may log on to
http://www.Xlibris.com.

About the Author

Alice Adamek was born Alice E. Lamphere in Mile City, Mont., on December
15, 1944. Alice was the first child of her mother and the fourth of her
father. Throughout her childhood, her family did not put down permanent
roots due to family businesses in many states. Her roots were wherever they
all hung their hats at the time. She had an exciting and fun childhood. Her
father was a bit of a joker and always saw the good side of everything and
in everybody. The closest she can get to describing her father in actions
and looks is Tom Selleck in Magnum P.I. Her mother was a warm, loving, and
caring, gentle soul, but more strict than Dad. The mother of two adult
girls, three grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. Alice, at the
time of this publication, now resides in Colorado. She still loves to see
what's over the hill, and that might be the reason she owned and operated a
courier service in Denver for fifteen years. She had other varied careers:
a training coordinator for an aerospace company, a manager of a clean room
for a computer company, and an owner of a beauty salon.

My Journey after Death * by Alice Adamek

Publication Date: January 22, 2014

Trade Paperback; $19.99; 135 pages; 978-1-4931-6320-5

Trade Hardback; $29.99; 135 pages; 978-1-4931-6321-2

e-book; $3.99; 978-1-4931-6322-9

Members of the media who wish to review this book may request a
complimentary paperback copy by contacting the publisher at (888) 795-4274
x. 7879. To purchase copies of the book for resale, please fax Xlibris at
(812) 355-4079 or call (888) 795-4274 x. 7879.

For more information on self-publishing or marketing with Xlibris, visit
http://www.Xlibris.com. To receive a free publishing guide, please call
(888) 795-4274.

Innovative Bookseller Better World Books Combines Labor Outsourcing With Book Donation

In the past I've reviewed Better World Books and some questions members of the bookselling community might have had about whether or not they... act like a business but pretend to be something else.
That question aside, they're doing something innovative and amazing to help folks get things done.
They have boxes you can use to donate books to them. The for-profit entity sells them, pays operating expenses, and a small percentage of the profits generated by selling the books goes to a charity. Last I checked, that charity was usually Books For Africa, but I haven't paid them that much attention recently.

Well, now you can put those donation boxes to work for more than creating jobs at Better World Books and giving folks in Africa stuff to read...

Here's a testimonial:

Tyrone S., Arizona “In today’s day and age, who has time to walk their dog? So I hired a Drop Box for a full week. It just stood there. It doesn’t speak English, or at all. It’s a giant, inanimate green box.”"

but I haven't paid them t


Here's some ad copy promoting the product:
"As we continue to place book Drop Boxes around the country, we have come to realize the full potential of these marvelous constructions. 

Sure, they look nice.  Yes, they can hold approximately 800 books at a time.  And, of course, they attract well-read and environmentally-conscious consumers to every location that hosts one.  This is all common knowledge.  But they can be so much more!

So that’s why we are announcing our “Hire a Drop Box” program. You read that right—not rent. Hire.

Let us paint you a picture:

You’re heading to that company softball championship game. It’s the bottom of the ninth, and your star shortstop (let’s call her Christine From Quality Assurance) takes an injury. Nobody, and I mean nobody, can snag those line drives like Christine From Quality Assurance.

Or can they? Hire a Drop Box. Slap a glove and a hat on that thing. You may not have a star shortstop per se, but at least you won’t have to forfeit for not fielding enough players."

And, another testimonial:

Alice J., Ohio “We needed a substitute teacher for a few days at the school where I work, so we tried a Drop Box. Guess what makes a great teacher? A human being. Not this thing, though. Who thought of this service? It makes very little sense.”

Alright, Bad Bookseller readers, get back to me with any reviews. Have these guys worked out for you in the past?
Looking forward to your feedback on this!

Bad Bookseller? No, Bad Authors, No Cookie!

Here's a post by  a bookseller on being a decent author and getting in with a local bookstore.
If you're a local author attempting to develop a decent fan base locally, this can be important.
I'd certainly read this article.
Here's how to piss off a bookseller:
". . . show up unannounced unless you’re bringing presents…and even then…expect to wait.
. . accuse me of being a bad bookseller because your book doesn’t sell because “You’re not trying hard enough!!!”…great way to end up in the sideroom and off the shelves. This happens to me about 10 times a year....
. . . hand me a pile of manuscript papers and ask me to read them this weekend...."

Here a link to the article:
Fountain Bookstore (Kelly’s) Rules for Making a Great Impression as a Writer in Our Bookstore

Here's the cookie that I'm not giving authors that ignore this good bookseller's guidelines:

In other news, a good friend of mine has launched an online store that focuses on:

Fun girl stuff: music boxes, kitch, incense, wind chimes, rainbow makers, wigs & eyelashes, gag gifts, flasks, glassware, bath & body stuff, clocks, fair trade totes & handbags, fake tattoos, cats, fortune-tellers, self-help books, vitamins, owls, mannequins, celestial stuff, statuary, gardening, ultra-femme aprons, art, old fashioned toys, fancy things to put in your hair.

Link: Eastwick Eclectic

I'd appreciate anyone looking for fun girl stuff or wigs taking a look at the site. It's a cool site, and they feature some of the most honest product reviews on wigs you'll find anywhere.

Bad-Ass Comic Bookseller! Lots of cookies! Lots of Polymorphous Dog Adventure Time!

Today I'm sending a shout-out to an old friend with his own comics store.
Andy Neal of Chapel Hill Comics was mentioned today on the Bleedingcool forums for:
"A number of comics have run retailer variant covers, exclusive to one retailer who orders a whole bunch. It can be a fun promotional exercise, it raises publicity for the retailer, it guarantees hundreds more sales for the publisher, it can be a real win win. It can however be on the expensive side.

But when Andrew Neil, owner of Chapel Hill Comics in North Carolina offered to draw the cover to his retailer variant edition of Adventure Time #1 from Boom's kids line kaboom himself, well, that was a bit of a saving.

I understand that the success of Adventure Time is rather taken Boom! Studios by surprise a little, and it may well be their best selling book of the year, already.

Adventure Time #1 ships in February. This cover will only be available from Chapel Hill Comics..."

For Original Story, Click Here

Here's the obligatory cookie pic, showing lots of cookies!

Daily Deals, formerly DailyDeal USA: Meet A Spider

: The subject of this article is unrelated to Dailydealusa.com, a Phoenix-based site that reminds one of Groupon.



Sometimes you see a pattern of behavior, and it lets you safely infer that certain unstated things are going on.

I have noticed a dealer selling a healthy number of textbooks, and at the same time having a low feedback count.

Normally large inventory counts come with commensurately large sales, especially in the textbook marketplace. When the kids are buying textbooks, they’re buying by the truckload.

There are a few explanations that are plausible. One is that this dealer is engaging in what is colloquially known as ‘spidering’.

Spidering is a polite term for finding an item on one online marketplace, let’s say Half.com, and then cross-listing that item as your own on another online marketplace, such as Amazon.com.

When you spider, you use an app to find listings for a given item on one site and then note the price. Your app then marks up that item and places it for sale on the other.

I can’t say where they’re spidering from, but I believe DailyDeal USA is spidering for at least some of their listings.

One tell-tale of this behavior is feedback for lost books. The USPS’ rate of losing properly packaged books is well under 1 in 1000. If buyers are relating in feedback that the book is being lost by the post office, you’re probably looking at a spider. Note that I didn’t say “a buyer” in that last sentence, I said buyers in the plural. If you can find a ‘seller said book lost in mail’ on the first page, that’s highly suggestive. If you can find two, that’s very suggestive.

Let's look, shall we?

1 out of 5:

"Never received item purchased. Seller replied after sending second email and said item was lost in mail. I do not believe that it was lost, but did receive money back." Date: September 5, 2011     Rated by Buyer: Rachael H.

Hmmm. A second lost item on the first page of feedback:

2 out of 5:

"Ordered on July 30th, estimated time I would receive product was August 22nd. Its September 4th today still no book!! As a student this lag in delivery time is VERY inconvenient. " Date: September 4, 2011     Rated by Buyer: Sunnie Ayers

Interestingly, despite having USA in the name, they shipped from Germany:

5 out of 5:

"The outside box was pretty battered but the contents were is perfect shape. The shipment came from Germany so some battering was to be expected. Came earlier than expected as well." Date: September 3, 2011     Rated by Buyer: John Rogalsky

Another spider-sign is customers opening a package and discovering an invoice in the package with a lower purchase price on it than what they paid. This occurs when the spider orders a book from a lower-priced seller for shipment to a customer who has paid a higher price. 

In your example below, the spider charged $66.75 and paid $47.02. 

1 out of 5:

"I was charged $65.75 for this order however when the book arrived the invoice indicated that the total order came to $47.02. When I confronted the seller with this, I was told "...the wrong invoice..." came with the order. Do you believe this???" Date: September 2, 2011     Rated by Buyer: Richard Bond

On Amazon, you wind up getting paid 85% of the selling minus about $1.35 or so. 

So, in this case, our spider got $54.53 and then had to spend $47.02 to get the product for his customer.

I'll tell you what, if you told me my job was to order books online and that you'd pay me $7.51 each time I checked out, you'd have an employee for life! Not a bad deal from the spider's perspective.

In a few instances, they're accused of having cancelled an order and then having re-listed the same item again.

What people don't realize, of course, is that they didn't own the item to begin with; they sold the item to you, then the guy they tried to spider FROM was out of stock, so they cancelled on you. Their spider app doesn't know about the history of a given title, so it goes ahead and slaps it back up there the next time it runs.

Two feedback suggestive of this:

1 out of 5:

"Seller cancelled order and sold for higher $.BEWARE!Seller canceled order per own convenience. Seller stated my book had been sold and said that the ones listed on the site were higher quality then the one I ordered. However the book ordered was Used-Like New and the other one they were selling was Used-Old. 1day later post my cancel, a book Used-Like New was posted for HIGHER $" Date: August 30, 2011     Rated by Buyer: Christian G.

1 out of 5:

"Had ordered the book they cancelled saying it was out of stock. Looked the book up again they (DailyDeal USA) had put the book back up for more money. Will never do business with DailyDeal USA." Date: August 29, 2011     Rated by Buyer: Caleb Fisher

As I scroll down their feedback, I come to yet another 'lost in mail'. That pretty much cinches it, these folks are spiders:

1 out of 5:

"I didn't receive my order and when I contacted the seller they responded that it must have been "lost in the mail". No tracking number was ever created and I suspect that my order never shipped. " Date: August 25, 2011     Rated by Buyer: Ellyn P.

1 out of 5:

"I ordered package on July 13, received an email informing me of its shipment July 18. August 4 I contacted Daily Deals to find out where my package was and was told to contact them if it wasn't there by the 19th. My package never arrived, I was told a refund would be posted and six days later, after contacting them again, was told that they didn't post it and I am still waiting. Bad Experience!" Date: August 25, 2011     Rated by Buyer: Johnathon B.

Notice two of these, on the same day no less!

As an aside, on some forums this type of seller is referred to as a drop-shipper. 

While it's common usage online, the term more properly refers to a wholesale provider that fills orders placed by a retailer for direct-to-consumer shipment.

When applied to the online marketplace in transactions like this, DailyDeal USA isn't the drop-shipper; rather, all of the other sellers they order from are drop-shippers. 

Here's the final nail in the coffin:

DailyDeal USA Storefront

4.7 stars over the past 12 months (669 ratings)

See more information about this seller.

Showing 1 - 24 of 429,302 Results

Notice that they have 669 ratings with an inventory of 429,302 different products.

If you carried a physical inventory that large with sales that poor, you couldn't afford the rent.

And, their feedback:

DailyDeal USA 

Feedback Rating: 4.7 stars over the past 12 months (670 ratings) Feedback 30 days 90 days 365 days Lifetime Positive 86% 92% 93% 93% Neutral 3% 1% 1% 1% Negative 12% 7% 6% 6% Count 224 497 670 670 What do these mean?

In and of itself, I don't think that spidering would make you a bad bookseller.

However, it seems that one thing frequently leads to another.

In this case, spidering results in unhappy customers, and 12% negative feedback. There's no excuse for that.

Therefore, 

Bad Bookseller, DailyDeal USA! No Cookie!

[The cookie you're not getting today is for my favorite Sesame Street character, after The Count.]