UPDATED 10:23 A.M. EDT (U.S.A.) AdViewGlobal (AVG) autosurf members again are complaining about “low” payout rates, confusion about debit cards and how best to fund accounts. They also are grousing about an absence of comprehensible guidance from the top.
Meanwhile, some members are grumbling about a culture of super-secrecy, a preoccupation by some leading advocates with spies and “plants” and passive-aggressive lectures from insiders who blame the company’s problems on members.
Some members have been clamoring for more “tools” to sell AVG’s surf and the “VIP” payout “opportunity,” viewing the “advertising” rotator as the Main Event and saying nonsurf products and services AVG recently introduced have little appeal to the surf crowd, despite claims AVG has “fortune 500” (sic) clients.
Other AVG members continue to complain about vague messages from the company.
A PowerPoint presentation produced by the company claims that 519 page views “should garner you in the neighbourhood of 37% conversion if not higher,” adding a strange disclaimer: “Given your sales copy doesn’t totally suck.”
The presentation includes charts and graphs, including one that speciously boasts of a “400% increase in Traffic!”
AVG “advertisers” pay to have their sites shown in what the company now describes as a “testing platform.” Because “advertisers” are paid incentives to view the ads of fellow “advertisers,” the quality of the traffic is dubious. The claim of a 37 percent conversion rate — and a claim elsewhere in the presentation of a 10 percent conversion rate — strains credulity.
The conversion rate claim of 37 percent implies it can be achieved across-the-board, regardless of the nature of the product, the quality of the traffic, the state of the economy, the demand for the product or the pricing of the offer. As the PowerPoint presentation stands, a doughnut priced free or a doughnut priced at $10,000 both could expect to enjoy a conversion rate of 37 percent, something absurd on its face.
Surf And Sun
AVG, which has been operating for about six months, also includes what it calls a two-year “Case Study of a BIG thinker.” Why a company that formally launched in February 2009 would choose to call events that have not happened a “case study” is left to the imagination. The “study” includes vague, speculative updates in six-month intervals, concluding with the subject of the two-year study “on the beach” and enjoying his autosurfing success.
As the “case study” subject is enjoying life at the shore and still doing his AVG surfing, the company challenges viewers to “do the math now” without providing any solid numbers that actually would permit members to do the math. The “case study,” for example, does not say how much the subject spent, describing his first purchase vaguely as an “initial quota of Advertising.”
Within six months, the subject — who appears not to do any recruiting — recovers “all of his costs + around 10 percent.”
Although AVG has released the PowerPoint presentation with the speculative, two-year “case study,” current members are grumbling that significant sums of money they sent the company for “advertising” are generating minuscule returns — chump change as opposed to beach money — and that downline members (and family members recruited into the program) are losing faith and having to square off against embarrassment for having joined.
Other Complaints
At the same time, members are complaining about the sudden removal of a member-to-member button that enabled them to move cash or cash-equivalents to other members. They also are complaining about a promotional video with a low-quality voiceover that smacks of amateurism and the company’s inability to solve problems that have dogged it for weeks.
Meanwhile, some AVG members have called for the company to make participation in a so-called 80/20 program mandatory, suggesting that trapping people’s money is the tonic AVG needs to succeed. If implemented, however, such a mandatory program could heighten concerns that AVG was trying to cover up a Ponzi scheme, selling unregistered securities and acting as a bank or financial-services company without a license.
Indeed, the mere existence of a nonmandatory 80/20 program is one of the hallmarks of an autosurf Ponzi scheme that is thumbing its nose at securities, wire-fraud and money-laundering laws. Such programs are designed to stem the outflow of cash — and outflow should not be an issue when a company claims it does not rely on funds from new members to pay older members.
The Accountability Equation
Perhaps the greatest AVG mystery of all is how the company, which purports to be a professional advertising and communications firm based in Uruguay, can send so many confusing messages.
Some of the incongruities border on the comic. Although the company purports to be operating from Uruguay, insiders routinely describe “international” members as those who live outside the United States. If AVG truly was operating from Uruguay, all members from any country other than Uruguay would be “international” members, including members who lived in the United States.
Stop Being So Stupid!
AVG promoters also have a curious habit of scolding fellow members. This habit is accompanied by awkward appeals for loyalty and aggressive, even paranoid appeals that stymie members who ask too many questions.
In March, AVG announced its bank account had been suspended. Incredibly, it blamed members in the very first sentence of its announcement for causing the problem.
“Due to people bank wiring too many transactions over $9500.00 each, the bank we were using for Bank Wires and ACHs suspended our account,” AVG said at the time.
Although AVG announced in May it had struck a deal that enabled members once again to wire money to the surf, one of the companies it identified as a facilitator of the wire transfers issued a public denial it had any business relationship with AVG.
AVG is engaged in a highly questionable “industry.” The U.S. government has destroyed several autosurf firms. Several government agencies have issued warnings about the autosurf trade in general, and the U.S. Secret Service issued a news release last year, noting that it had seized more than $93.5 million from Florida-based AdSurfDaily Inc.
AVG, which launched after the government seized ASD’s assets, has close ties to ASD. Unlike ASD promoters, however, AVG promoters used the surf’s purported offshore location to drive business to the company.