I’m writing this 3 years later because I want people to know my personal experience at ACN. My experience is my own and I have not made a single statement below out of thin air. People can say what they want about ACN. Just try it yourself and post your own “true” experience.
I think the last time and my only time that I was at ACN was in about 2006. One of my buddies introduced me and brought me to the place. When I walked into the ACN building he had me meet all kinds of people that worked at ACN, mostly the top people who supposedly made a lot of money. I noticed that pretty much everyone that was there that were starting were teenagers and people in their 20′s. So they gave us seats just a few away from the front with all the other people. A few of my other friends were invited to this presentation but after a few minutes they said this is a scam and walked out while I stayed. The presentation began and they have several different older men giving presentations about how great it is to be working at ACN. They stated that you could make “a lot” of money if you want to. So after a few speakers went up and explained what they were buying with their money that they made, they brought us back to this room with just me and my friend who invited me. He asked me if I liked the presentation and If I was interested in making “a lot” of money. I stupidly said yes and he immediately asked if I would be able to get $500.00 there by tomorrow. I explained that it would be hard but he said you can make a lot of money. “Think about if, if you put in $500 dollars and then you get more people to put in $500 dollars, you earn the money from recruiting them into it. At no time did he ever say anything about selling any phone products or whatever else they sell.
Basically he said the way to make money was to recruit people and I would make money off of them. Well I didn’t give them any money that day but he said you bring me $500 dollars and I will make you rich. I had doubts about this company since my friends said it was a scam, so when I got home I did some research about them and found a whole bunch of links and complaints about how ACN is a scam. Well I decided then and there that this company is “most likely” a scam since everyone has complaints about it. Granted many companies have complaints against them. Since then, I have never gone back to ACN and as of now my buddy doesn’t work there anymore. I am not sure why though and he divorced his wife whom he worked with at ACN.
Opinion:
I have read many stories about how people say that ACN is about selling products but in my experience they didn’t say anything to me about selling their products only recruiting people to recruit more people. As for selling communication products, what makes ACN so special anyway? There are many companies who sell these products and ACN as far as I know doesn’t have any better prices than the other leading companies. Even ACN admits themselves that most people don’t make a profit after they join ACN. While ACN has not been shut down in the United States I firmly believe that eventually they will be shut down. There is no other company that I know of that makes you put in $500 dollars to recruit people. To me this definitely sounds like a pyramid scheme. How it hasn’t been shut down by now is beyond me. Will it ever get shut down? maybe, maybe not
This is my own personal experience about ACN. I have written this because I realize how big ACN is becoming and all of the opinions about whether ACN is a legitimate company or not despite all the complaints and the company still legally operating in the United States.
Here’s a link to Fox 11 investigating ACN.
Oh and one more thing….just where are these paychecks of workers at ACN, I couldn’t find any on the internet.
hi, i had a guy on my myspace that was trying to get me to go to one of there power point things. I looked up acn on the internet and told him i wasnt interested and he thought that by insalting me would make me run down there and throw my money at them. I strongly believe that acn is a scam and i want gonna put up $500 for something that might not last or even work at all.
Ok, so I was one of those ACN guys that recruited all his family and friends into ACN and got them to chase their dreams. Hey we made some really good money: delt with alot of bullshit from shitty phone service, but most of all we had a blast. We travelled, ate, drank and partied like kings. All I can say is sorry to those who did not ‘work’ the business as it does take a person with a ‘carney personality’. You know the type, the guy at the local fair that suckers you into trying to win that prise for the little lady beside you. So is it truely a scam, who’s to say. It just seems weird that people who are making the money call it a dream come true, and those who don’t, call it a scam. To those who are about to join ACN listen up, 70% of those who sign up will quit in the first year, 27% will make some money and only 3% will be up on the stage talking about the big money they are making. The choice is yours good luck!
$500, try more like $5000, Between my Fiance and myself we spent well over. I was roped in because… Hey! Donald Trump was endorsing them and it had only come to my State 3 weeks prior, and then the video phone… OMG! How many people I knew that could see and talk to their families that live out of State, well… They are good! they have it right down to a science. My first meeting they told us how much money they were making and how little time it takes… The Saturday training they had Ett’s and up doing testemonials about how they were on their way to making $3000 in just a short amount of time, which was a lie, knowone up there did. After becoming an Ett you are then brought in to a Fri. night training where they teach you how to lie to rope people in, and once you learn that they have you go to home meetings and lie to more people about how much money you are supposedly making…. Well guess what? I made about $36.00 and I was with ACN for 3 months before I finally said this is the most horrible thing I ever got myself into. Do you see how many meetings I was already involving so much time into? they say you can have more time to spend with your family, vacationing, exc… when in reality they tell you afterwards that the more meetings you do you will be more successfull, so you should be doing them every night. I told everyone I came in contact with about this great business opurtunity that could make them alot of money, I became one of them… We even had Mon. night and Thurs. night training calls over the telephone for a total of 1 hour at 10:00 so you still had plenty of time to schedule home meetings. Those training calls were testemonials of again how much money was being made, one of RVP’s would spend maybe 5 min. telling you the same thing you heard 100 times before. At my 3rd or 4th meeting I started to see the pattern and became very sceptical, but kept it to myself… I knew they were lying, but they put it in your head you get highs and lows, thats why you will have negative thinking, it never really sat well… They keep you going to meetings so they can brainwash you into saying the same things as them, I did exactly everything they told me to do, but one thing I was not about to do was lie to my friends and family, and I am so glad I didn’t because alot of people I know lost the trust of their friends and family over ACN, and out of all those people that I went to training meetings with and National training events (whole nother way for them to steal your money) they too got out, and a few became ETL’s wich supposedly they make up to $7000 a month ( but thats only if you keep meeting a quoter) you may not make it the next month either….
About the National trainings real quick- When you attend one of these three day events, they pick the longest day (12 hrs.) and lead you to believe your getting a special training at the end of the night by the top guys (your RVP’s) when again! it’s to rope you into signing up for the next event because if you dont they will be sold out, and the longer you wait the admission doubles and the more you go to you will no doubt be a success story, just like them… and after going to 12 of them you will be an RVP… Lies, just like the first Sat. training, they tell you next week the room will have double the amount of people and you will be ahead of them and each week they’ll be more and more, so that will give you a lead and you have the potential of making more money quicker.
So needless to say, Alan and I did sign up for the event that was 2 months away even though it cost us $4000 for San Diego ($ 2000 just for the flights)
Then the worst happened to us, Alan’s father got diagnosed with cancer a month later, so we weren’t about to go out of state when we didn’t know what the future had intailed for him… Do you think these Christian hipocrits gave one ounce of empithy??? No way! Even if we produced documentation of the circumstance our monnies were no way refundable…. But I thought they would be sold out so quickly that it would be two extra spots for someone who really wanted to go??? Hmmm! By the way! They build themselves up to being honest Christians and because of that God has led them to this great gift of success with ACN Lol! They even had a church service on the second morning for whoever wanted to attend.
After the big “No Way” that’s when we both looked at each other and said
F_ _ _ _ this misleading, brainwashing co. ACN. “Shame on us” we’re both not nieve people, but this time we were… Maybe because our up lines wife has a masters degree in fianance and makes $150,000. a year, the numbers do work if it was as easy as said… (they were ready to get a divorce over ACN once she stopped believing in them 8 months after us)
That is no lie, they went to counciling and stayed together because he let go of ACN for his wife and 4 children. I can imagine how hard that would be after putting in about 85hrs. a week, between meetings and speaking to people that were his downline and their people, helping them to recruit on the phone,and the 2 meetings he demonstrated every night so he could reach his monthly goal, which he did make it to ETL after 5 months and didn’t always make the highest potential amount of money for that level ( hours-money-doesn’t add up does it?) Once again! the time that is involved was far from what we were all led to believe.
After we were refused our refund we wanted out- what they don’t tell you is now to get out of the phone contract it cost about $250 or you can pay the $40 something ea. month phonebill for 2 years, thats another thing to add to the list of betrayal… the list goes on and on of all the money this company got me for…. (switching services to get points) you can’t keep existing services that are no longer under contract, you have to go with a whole new co. How much did It cost me??? I don’t even wan’t to add it up, it just makes me sick! This is everything you find out after the fact.
So, bottom line… Do you think it’s a scam now??? I think I broke it down in a nice way, so “BEWARE” it will end up costing you both ways “time and money” and the only pockets that will get filled is the pockets of these “Liars”.
Paid the $500 to help out a friend, did not think much about it….untill……I switched my cable TV over to Dish Network with ACN. I was told that would cost me $31 a month. Saving me $49 each month. hahahh what a joke. Shame on me for falling for it. I NOW pay $79 each month for a basic package with Dish, to make a long story short, IT COST ME!
On the bright side, I went through the hell of meetings I did not have time for and money I could have given to charity only to realize. THANK GOD I DID NOT RECRUIT ANY OF MY FRIENDS OR FAMILY! DO NOT DO IT, ITS A WASTE OF TIME UNLESS YOUR THE TYPE OF PERSON THAT SCREWS FRIENDS AND FAMILY. THEN GO FOR IT!
So glad I did not let my friend recruit me yesterday with ACN. Although she was very very keyed up and so very positive and counting her spoils before she even has signed up herself I had red flags flying all around. I know by now she has forked over her $500 and is well on her way to her first million. I will be there to console her when she hits the bottom, again, but I will not get involved. Then…there is another friend who is with some company that sells the most wonderful vitamins….I really need to go with her to a meeting…damn it, RUN AWAY FAST!
ACN is not a scam, it takes a lot of work that not anybody is cut out for but its real. And not every Representive is good at making the presentation, the way it was presented to me it was about both. Its just as much as about recruiting as it is about providing services both get you paid but the Residual is where the money is because if you build a good enough customer base then eventually you will get paid a lot of money monthley, The recruting is so that you can build of team of individuals who are also interested in the business and help you get more customers and so you can get bonuses for getting Representatives but your customer base residual will eventually pay you more than the recruiting.
this is the best and smartest comment that i heard on all acn comments apparently u took time to disect the company as i did to find out the best way to get paid on a long term basis and u seem to be very smart i m pretty sure u will be quite successful at this !!!! thanks for sharing your comment im very impressed and good luck to you!!!!!!
The residuals are a joke! I know for a fact from a former RVP that you still have to actively recruit to get the residuals they promise. His current position is TC and he has over 50,000 customers(most are probably reps) and they barely make $500 a month.
The services stink and are not competitive. One SVP spoke at a convention telling reps how to get more cell phone customers. Because the big cell companies know ACN can only get a very small fraction of the business, they usually don’t offer the best phones and if they do they are much more than say wirefly.com or even EBAY. So Spencer Hunn told reps to ask their friends and family for a “favor” and to buy their cell phone with ACN, and to have the rep pay the difference for higher cost of the cell phone! So they can get the $5 a month in commission from ACN??!!! And pay $100 or more for the same cell phone and service…”all to help out a friend..” come one! Here’s another one…have your friend get a free phone with ACN wireless then they buy the one they really want on Ebay! Does this make any sense??? I know… I don’t…”see the big picture!” Heard a thousand times people. I have tried to be patient with ACN but I now have come to see it is as brain washing at it’s best!
The commission for wireless is $40 spread out over 2 years and no residuals.
The business model itself isn’t all that bad, but you have to be the right “type” of person. You need to have a HUGE contact list–meaning, you need to know a lot of people. You also need to be friendly, patient, and a good salesperson. If those things don’t apply to you then you won’t be successful in ACN. The problem is, they don’t discriminate. They’ll take a broke person with only $499 to their name who knows virtually no one and whom has no social or sales skills and convince them the are going to be a millionaire . This is setting people up for failure. What’s even worse is that a rep who signs up and makes no money will also not make much money for the person who signed them up. So getting people to sign up when you know they won’t be successful is a waste of time. But they figure that there is a one in a thousand chance that the person might be successful or they might know somebody who will become successful, so they sign them up anyway. If the person loses their money and the respect from their friends and family then that is not your problem, right?
ACN uses a psychological manipulation tactic called “partial reinforcement”. It’s where they know that you will eventually fail, but they give you occasional postive encouragement in order to string you along the path of failure for as long as possible. Instead of honestly judging your situation and prospects for success and telling you that this doesn’t appear to be working for you, they tell you to keep going, even in the face of complete and total failure. Imagine anything, whether its a company or activity, wherein they tell you to continue to do it until it blows up in your face. Imagine someone telling you to play the lottery and not quit until you are either a millionaire or you have no money left to spend on tickets. This is the exact same thing ACN is doing. They tell you the equivalent of: “Oh, you were only a couple digits off. Buy a couple more Powerball tickets and hope that next week you have better luck!”
Then they structure it so that once you finally realize that you must quit, you are forced to do so on your own at your own detriment–meaning you can’t get out of the two year contracts you locked yourself into. The idea behind that is to make it so undesireable to quit, that you’ll hopefully stay in. Then ACN tells you that you only lost money because you are a quitter, eventhough you did your best based on what you had to work with. And this is how ACN works. Going from one town to the next, one country to the next, one family to the next, ripping each person off and throwing them into the maw and spitting out their broken dreams. Then they call you a loser and move on to the next sucker after pocketing your money and whatever reps or services they tricked you into signing up for them.
You’re an idiot. And now people will know you as a slacker. Do yourself a favor and don’t ever do network marketing. I’d hate to have you on my team. And any sales team would have fired you for the way you think. Good luck at being an employee for the rest of your life.
for anyone reading with an actual BRAIN; get out of there and get out of there FAST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
hahaha. I feel bad for you faithless people. ACN works if you work, definitely not a scam. Oh man if any of you really understood. But I’m not going to sit here and try to convince any of you, I can already tell that’s impossible. I’ll just keep being smart and MAKING money in ACN. Best decision of my life!!!
what was your gross income from ACN last year?
$126,000 – I’ve been in ACN for a year
Hey Scott, I’ve been thinking of joining. However, I can’t find a single ACN person to tell me (much less SHOW me) their gross income. You were kind enough to share your income…..which is a no-brainer because if it really WORKS, then why wouldn’t you share your success!!!!! If you can show me your 120,000+ salary, I will join TODAY under you! All I need is a picture of your tax return (without your name or info) showing the line that shows 120,000 income from self employment income! Thanks.
P.s. what area of the country are you in?
People with excuses do not get anywhere. ACN is definitely NOT a scam nor has anything to do with scamming or lieing to family and freinds. We all have free choice. To be at the top you have to come from the bottom so simple people!!!Nothing is easy in life and that is a fact!!!!
Everyone on here complaining that ACN does not work is a complete loser. I’m sorry for being straight forward but it makes me angry to think that people want to be GIVEN everything. You have to be a moron to think that you pay $500 and sit back, not do anything and just collect large checks. That’s called a pyramid. ACN is not a pyramid. Pyramids are illegal. I guarantee you right now that everyone that didn’t make money was not listening to their mentor. How do I know? I’ve been in sales for 10 years and the numbers are all the same: only 3% make a ton of money and about 10% are very coach able and do as their told. Here’s the kind of person that has failed: you didnt have 2 home meetings with 20+ people to share the opportunity, you didn’t go to every Saturday training, you didn’t talk about this business and advertise (would you start a million dollar franchise and not tell everyone you know that you are in business? Well that’s how a lot of you slackers are doing – not advertising to friends and family). And another thing, you don’t have to pay for anything about the initial $500 franchise fee. Everything else is optional and only there to help your business. And another thing, ACN is a services company, NOT products. It amazes me how people that say they’ve been doing it for a while and it doesn’t work, are absolutely lying to themselves. Don’t disrespect yourself. You’re only embarrassing yourself. You are letting the world know that you are a horrible business owner. I promise you anyone that follows the system at ACN and is absolutely coachable sees your comments and they feel embarrassed for you, because they’d all ask you the same series of questions to see how active you were and you would put your head down.
To anyone that is evaluating ACN, listen up. It’s not easy! It’s not get rich quick! But it is a simple process…lots of small simple processes and over a 3-5 year period, you could potentially have a very healthy income. It’s get rich slow, which is better than get rich never. You are not required to buy anything or be a customer after your initial $499 franchise fee. Don’t nickel and dime this opportunity and embarrass yourselves like these people that are absolute slackers. Be coachable. Show up to training. If this was a sport, it would be like you joining a team, never showing up to practice and wondering why everyone else is performing but you. Be real and honest with yourself. Don’t lie to yourself. You are an adult. They don’t call it a business secret. They call it a business opportunity because that’s exactly what it is: an opportunity. It CAN change your life, but only if you work at it. Be the 3%. Good luck.