Another Classic "weasel" review of TVI Express

Here are weasel review made by various TVI Express distributors in support of TVI Express.

If you need some background on the TVI Express scam, please read TVI Express: an international scam first.

Is "Is TVI Express Legit" a good review?

Our second review to review is "TVI Express Review - Is TVI Express Just Another Fly by Night MLM Company, Or is TVI Legit?". Gee, that's a mouthful. It is available at

http://ezinearticles.com/?TVI-Express-Review---Is-TVI-Express-Just-Another-Fly-by-Night-MLM-Company,-Or-is-TVI-Legit?&id=3187919

The author is a TVI Express member. If you click on the link he provides at the end, it goes to his customized TVI Express recruiting website. Thus, if he said good things about the company, you'll have to take it with a grain of salt, as you cannot be sure of his motivation.

So what about the article? From his conclusion, his purpose was to demonstrate "TVI Express is NOT a scam." Let us see how well he argued.

First justification = strawman

He claims that TVI Express is not a pyramid, because...

First of all lets define what a "pyramid scheme" is. A pyramid scheme is a business model that involves recruiting people into a so called opportunity through and exchange of money with no product or service being delivered.

Unfortunately, that is nowhere CLOSE to what a definition of a pyramid scheme is. He is describing a regular scam, where your money is taken and you got nothing back, not a pyramid scheme at all.

The service that TVI Express provide is access to a dynamic travel membership. Membership owners are able to book flights, vehicles, hotels, and cruises at discounted prices. Members also get a 6 day 7 night vacation to the destination of their choice which includes a free return flight for one when they join. So from this aspect I feel comfortable in saying that this is not any type of pyramid scheme or cash gifting program.

His argument can be restated as follows:

1) Pyramid scheme is recruit people into something which delivers nothing
2) TVI Express does NOT deliver nothing
therefore
3) TVI Express is not a pyramid scheme

Unfortunately, this is a strawman, because he basically INVENTED this definition of pyramid scheme. I'll just cite Federal Bureau of Investigation's definition... again

Pyramid schemes, also referred to as franchise fraud, or chain referral schemes, are marketing and investment frauds in which an individual is offered a distributorship or franchise to market a particular product. The real profit is earned, not by the sale of the product, but by the sale of new distributorships. Emphasis on selling franchises rather than the product eventually leads to a point where the supply of potential investors is exhausted and the pyramid collapses. At the heart of each pyramid scheme there is typically a representation that new participants can recoup their original investments by inducing two or more prospects to make the same investment. Promoters fail to tell prospective participants that this is mathematically impossible for everyone to do, since some participants drop out, while others recoup their original investments and then drop out.
-- http://www.fbi.gov/majcases/fraud/fraudschemes.htm

So we can conclude this first explanation is useless, and an outright fallacy.

Wait a minute... that's it?

Yep, that's it. The author has offered NO OTHER justification for his premise. He described some aspects of the company, and some of the background, which came straight out of the promotional material provided by the company. There was no attempt to independently verify the information, or any additional research. He basically parroted the info.

Then he threw in some personal opinion backed by nothing:

My Opinion When I first heard about TVI Express, I really paid it no mind, as I am a network marketer I hear of new companies and so called pre-launch opportunities every day. As the company started to grow I took a closer look. Their business model is unlike any other company that I have seen in the industry which is a good and a bad thing. Its good in that it makes them unique from all of the other opportunities out there however, when a company has a business structure that is this different it can be meet with a lot of skepticism. Ultimately I think TVI Express will do very will because of its revolutionary compensation plan and since it revolves around every distributor only having to recruit 2 people I foresee many people being successful in this business even with no prior marketing experience.

At least he is honest enough to say it's his own opinion, not fact. Unfortunately, it is obvious he had never seen a scam before, because the "2x3 matrix" is just a copy of the "airplane game" in the 60's and 70's. It's not only NOT revolutionary, it's ancient.

I prefer to believe that he honestly do NOT know what he's doing, because if he *did* knew that it's a scam, then he had willfully engaged in fraud.

Conclusion = FAIL

The author gave only ONE argument to support his premise that TVI Express is legit. Unfortunately, he gave a strawman argument that is easily debunked. He did not use a commonly accepted definition of pyramid scheme, but instead invented his own. He sabotaged his own argument.

This article is representative of typical arguments trying to prove TVI Express is not scam. By using logical fallacies these TVI Express members fail to make their case.