For our advertising class we were broken up into groups for a Buyer Beware project. My group decided to examine Planet Antares/ Wealth Builder seminar. We were sceptical when we first heard about this “business adventure” and thought it was worth looking into. We got lots of the information from the company itself, as John attended the seminar Planet Antares hosted. We noticed a lot of things wrong with this idea right away.
Things such as the idea of getting rich almost overnight, the fact that in the original material that they sent out to potential investors, an initial investment of $87,192 is expected and they do not give you very long to think the idea over. The company encourages you purchasing multiple machines for the get go and they recommend you maintain a secondary source of income.
We found by going out to possible venues for the vending machines that not many people use them anymore, and the locations with large enough traffic to potentially generate a profit already had contracts with vending companies. We found that on a Saturday during the peek hours at Cindy Klassen Recreational Complex the vending machines collected less then $10 in two hours. Taking the prices we found at Costco of products to fill the machines with 1 time cost an average of $137. Also once Planet Antares has you money for the vending machines they leave you on your own to deal with everything, from finding a location to filling the machines to repairing vandalism on the machines.
We also noticed that it was hard to find any complaints on the Internet about the company, which we found shocking. So we looked into them and found out that Planet Antares has the sites they control at the beginning of the search engines. It takes until the second page before you get feedback from other sources, and the feedback is not very pretty.
As a group we decided that Planet Antares is a scam and we hope that after reading this people will stop falling into it and other scams like this which are after your money and then leave you to pick up the pieces.
Edelman Trust Barometer 2013 on Employee Engagement
10 years ago
Thank you very much for your article. I was leery after reading the pamphlet that came in the mail and decided to google the the subject to see if I could find any detractors or people putting their experiences or just the facts up on the net.
ReplyDeleteI applaud your efforts to save many people from possibly losing time and money to folks like this.
Thank you greatly,
Jerry Schulz
Good luck with your future!