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Report: #1096436

Complaint Review: FlexKom - Kreuzlingen Nationwide

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  • Reported By: streetwise — Other
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  • FlexKom Burgstr. 8 Nationwide Switzerland

FlexKom International, Asker Sakinmaz, Cengiz Ehliz, MLM pyramid scheme. Tells you that you get residual income when you pay them big money for so called M-commerce system, wich does not exist at all. Kreuzelingen and Munich, Nationwide

*Consumer Comment: Learn German first, then make conclusions

*UPDATE Employee ..inside information: Proof is in the pudding

*UPDATE EX-employee responds: Flexkom is a scam

*General Comment: Flexkom Rebuttal

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Flexkom is a multi-level markting company. They are currently recruiting sales reps all over the world, but mainly in the USA, UK, Germany, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Russia, Kenya and in Trinidad Tobago.

Flexkom claims to be a M-commerce company, or as they say it: M-NDF, which stands for M-commerce Networking Directsales Franchise. They say that they have this patented, new and revolutionary way of getting more customers for the small stores in town. Consumers download an app and with that app they get discount in the stores. The customer pays the full price but then gets the discount in Flexkom's own currency, called FlexMoney, added to their app. The stores should get more customers this way because they could target the consumers with ads on their phone. But there's more. A store can hand out these apps to consumers. This way, a consumer becomes his customer. When this customer shops in another Flexkom shop, the shop who owns this customer, gets commission. Flexkom also says that in Turkey, this system is tested and making lots of people lots of money.

In order to get all the stores hooked up with the Flexkom System, they are recruiting sales reps. These sales reps have to purchase a licence. Prices for this licence range from 1500 to 3000 dollars. If the sales rap has purchased his licence, then the main goal is to recruit as much other sales reps as possible. That is because a sales rep gets commission of the turnover of these other sales reps he has in his so called team. Then, somewhere in de future, all these sales reps are going to hook up the stores to the Flexkom system. A sales rep gets commission for each transaction done in a store that he has recruited for Flexkom. Watch a youtube presentation on Flexkom, if you'd like to know what is being told by Flexkom. There are plenty of presentations out there. The presentation I link is somewhat older, when Flexkom was still an E-NDF company. Nothing much has changed, they only added an app to it, in addition to the cards.

Well now, several things are going wrong here and that is why Flexkom is ripping people off. Now bear with me, this is going to be quite a list:

First of all, the fact that you have to pay first in order to make money off it and that the only way of making money is to recruit other people yourselves, makes it that Flexkom is a MLM company. Flexkom sometimes likes to deny being a MLM company as MLM does not have a good reputation at all. But, by default, Flexkom is a MLM company. Being MLM does not make your company fraudulent by default, but it is common knowledge that MLM is bad business. Here's another article on why MLM is bad. Sometimes Flexkom says that it is a franchise or some sort, but that is a poor MLM analogy. So, the fact that you are about to deal with a MLM company should raise your suspicion. 

Second, there is no evidence of Flexkom having any working technology. The only proof that they give is an demonstration of an Android app showing a QR code. If you scan this QR code with your phone, the two devices communicate with eachother and execute some sort of program.. Nice, but no proof in my opinion. At some presenations I've attended, they claimed to have a patented system. Unfortunally, no patent of Flexkom is anywhere to be found. Furthermore, the app that they have for Apple and Android devices is not working. Primary features are to include VOIP. Not sure what VOIP has to do with customer loyalty programs. This maybe has something to to with the megalomaniacal plans Flexkom has. As you can see on their official site, they also claim to have products called FlexHotel, FlexHoliday, FlexCall. Searching on the internet also reveals plans of FlexTrain, FlexTV, FlexEnergy. Flexkom clearly wants to have it all! Calling a random hotel listed on the site of Flexkom reveals that the hotels are unaware of the existence of Flexkom. None of the hotels knows anything of Flexkom.

In the youtube presentation I've linked earlier in this article, you can see how the money is divided among shops and sales reps. A shop has to give a discount which the customer receives as FlexMoney on his card or app. The same amount as the shop has given discount, has to be paid to Flexkom. So if a shop gives 10 dollars discount, the shop also has to pay 10 dollars to Flexkom. In total, 20 dollars of turnover is lost to the Flexkom system.

This gives a few things to think about. First of all, the maximum amount of discount a shop can give to a Flexkom customer, is limited to 50%. Then the shop has lost 100% of this transaction. Second, the customer receives his discount in FlexMoneys. FlexMoneys can only be spent at Flexkom stores. That makes it not really a discount. Lets say that the Flexkom system is working and is giving a shop more customers. What if the storeowner decide to skip the Flexkom transaction altogether. He can give the customer discount in real $$ and he keeps the Flexkom commission for himself. He could even give the customer a bit more discount and still make more profit than with the Flexkom system!

As told, Flexkom thinks that a shopowner makes profit if his customers shop elsewhere. This thought is based upon the fact that a portion of the Flexkom commision is issued to the person or shop who gave the app or card to the customer. But this commission is paid by the shops themselves. That could in no way mean that shops make extra income off their customers, because they pay this extra income themselves. It's just a redistribution of money.

Then let's take a look at how things are going in Turkey. Not so good, according to one of Turkeys largest newspapers, Zaman. You'd have to use Google translate as the newspaper is Turkish. They tell that over 30.000 people in Turkye are ripped off by Flexkom. Also, they tell that there are lawsuits going on by the Turkish government against Flexkom management.

As we need more than one source to verify if it really is that bad in Turkey, lets use another globally known source, Google. Google Trends tells you how many times people search on a particular keyword. This is how many times people have searched for Flexkom in Turkey. Needs no explanation, I think. All most no one is searching for Flexkom anymore thus you can safely assume that Flexkom has faded away in Turkey.

Flexkom has been around in Europe for a few years. In 2011, they told everyone they were opening somewhere in 2012. In 2012, they told people it would be before Christmas 2012. By 2013, it was by the 26th of October. As you can guess; nothing happened that day. Now they are telling everyone that the sales reps need more training and that they want to roll out pilot stores in certain cities first, before they go live. That's odd, because they told you that their system was already tested and proven successful in Turkey??

There's more. A Flexkom sales rep gets paid if he signes up another sales rep. They actually give hundreds of dollars per person you sign up. If you sign up for about 10 other people, you already have made a profit. Sign up even more people and you get a free luxury car, tens of thousands of dollars bonus and more. Flexkom calls this incentives. This, ofcouse, is somewhat of a public secret. Should everyone knows that the real way of making money is by recruiting others, then everyone would know that we are really dealing with a pyramid scheme here. As you know, pyramid schemes are illegal in most countries. 

And for the people behind this evil masterplan. For some part, they seemed not to have existed before Flexkom. Their CEO, Asker Sakinmaz, has a small trail in Unicity but that's it. He seems to have been cloned just to push Flexkom. Their president, Cengiz Ehliz, has a slightly worse reputation. He has had several scams similar to Flexkom. One of them being IQ-Concept, leaving thousands of people ripped off. The country manager of the UK is Ian Driscoll. He has been with ponzi scheme Banners Broker before he entered into Flexkom. The USA country manager (who has already jumped ship by the way, because Flexkom did not open in Europe at 26th of October) was Karl Roller. He used to sell some phony health drink.

More and more people are realizing that they have been ripped off by Flexkom. For example, this guy was with Flexkom for 12 months. He now warns everyone to stay away from flexkom.

There are lots of blogs and forums out there who have also investigated Flexkom. Here are a few:

realscam.com/f8/flexkom-legitimate-mlm-scam-1862/ (Look at how Flexkom people are responding in that thread!)

lazymanandmoney.com/flexkom-scam/

mlmtheamericandreammadenightmare.blogspot.com/2013/08/lyoness-and-flexkom-have-exhibited.html

There are also a lot of fake, positive reviews out there, in an attempt to block the negative reviews out of Google. You can easily recognize them as they are all made by Flexkom people trying to recruit you.

There is way more to tell about Flexkom to why it is a scam, but I think this will be enough for now. Stay away from Flexkom!

This report was posted on Ripoff Report on 11/02/2013 03:36 AM and is a permanent record located here: https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/flexkom/nationwide/flexkom-international-asker-sakinmaz-cengiz-ehliz-mlm-pyramid-scheme-tells-you-that-1096436. The posting time indicated is Arizona local time. Arizona does not observe daylight savings so the post time may be Mountain or Pacific depending on the time of year. Ripoff Report has an exclusive license to this report. It may not be copied without the written permission of Ripoff Report. READ: Foreign websites steal our content

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REBUTTALS & REPLIES:
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#4 Consumer Comment

Learn German first, then make conclusions

AUTHOR: repo_man - ()

POSTED: Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Hey Dinkietoy,

 you should be called d****** Toy.

"Also, the current demo in Leipzig are fake. Look at this video: 
youtube.com/watch?v=12ZXz12F_sI
In this video, Asker Sakinmaz is demonstrating how the Flexkom system is supposed to be working. Look closely at 2:17. You can see the screen of the Flexkom POS. The customer has saved 2.38 FlexMoneys. Only, the Tablet says that the new amount of Flexmoney is 2.00. Looks like maths are not really Flexkom's cup of tea! Also notice that scammer Asker Sakinmaz is ignoring the false maths and quickly skips the new amount of FM."

This 2FM on the POS are for gaining and assigning new customer to the flexkom network. Each App or loyalty card is charged with 2FM before its first use. Go to Leipzig and have a look.

Big companies are scared of Flexkom,cos the idea is brilliant! I am talking about the `win-win situation` idea you can`t understand and you cannot have info about as you`re not an insider.

So crawl back to a cave you`re coming from and live in the past. FlexKom will become a new trend and I better be a part of it.

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#3 UPDATE Employee ..inside information

Proof is in the pudding

AUTHOR: Mike - ()

POSTED: Friday, February 07, 2014

The rip off report written here is from a person who has not had any contact with the company or been to a access point. All of the points made are from reading various websites and watching videos. This hardly makes them a credible witness. This is just a person taking stabs and wildly guessing about a company they have never been serviced by or had any personal experince with. It makes me wonder why this person has decided to write a page about FlexKom?

You may notice how the author is taking stabs at wide range of topics. He questions the accuracy of the technology but at the same time seems to acknowledge there are at least 3000 locations accepting the cards. So one wonders how the math can be completely off in the systems settings, but yet have 3000 merchants using the system. Not sure what the author is trying to say here.

The author doesn't have a clear point to the article. It's just an assortment of accusations but no real picture of why and what is truly wrong with FlexKom. I am compelled to ask which one is it? Problem with the technology or a scam?  Is it the technology or are the owners criminals or is it the concept that is bad.

On other sites we read reviews saying the company doesn't have the system completed at all they never opened in Turkey but we can see videos of plenty of shops and shop owners using the terminals, Who are these people? Actors? We see videos of transactions going through and then we can follow the numbers and accounts on the lap top showing the exact numbers that where done.

Some suggest that FlexMom has taken money from 40,000 people in Turkey but not kept their part of the agreement and that the stores are fake etc. But if you think about it, that would mean this is one of the biggest international scams in history. over 100 million dollars taken over 2 years ago and no one is reacting anywhere in the world to this fact. That just sounds crazier than people in aluminum hats waiting for the space ship to arrive. This is just not a possibility in today world. 

And now there are shops opening in USA and this is then suppose to be more actors and fake stores? These stores can be contacted on the phone and can be visited in person no need to try to figure it out online anymore. 

You can listen to this recoording of American shop owners sharing their excitement about FlexKom in their stores

 http://www.blogtalkradio.com/allwired/2014/02/07/flexkom-next-level-team-leadership#.UuvL1NqXEKM.email

I think the problem with paying attention to these types of authors is, it looks like they know what they are talking about because they cover a lot of details but when you start looking at what is being said you start to see there is just to many problems with their theory. 

It is almost like reading an article about car theif who is also trying to get a discount.

The stories overlap each other. So we can clearly see this author doesn't care what is true, the author just basically wants throw everything he can find against the wall and having it stick to the minds of the naive readers.

If one can look at these articles with the same scrutiny one looks at the videos and articles that are explaining and showing what FlexKom is all about I think it would be easy to see what the truth really is. After 4 years in Business not one government in the world has filed anything against FlexKom. Flexkom is supprted by Visa and Master card and they allow the money to be charged for licenses in all markets. Itunes have approved  every new version of the APP  17 countries are allowing FlexKom to charge people for the opportunity. A new terminal has been completed and paid for by the company.

I think people should realize we are not living in the 1980's when news traveled a lot slower. This 2014, and a company being around since 2010 would never be allowed to open in any country if any of those stories where slightly true.

These type of sites are doing more harm than anything. When the ripp off report is ripping people off from what maybe a great opportunity for them. So then the rest of their life they can see what a huge mistek they made by listening this kind of nonsense. 

Isn't the biggest ripp-off the ripp-off that happens when someone reads this garbage and passes on an opportunity that would make them hundreds of thousands of dollars. That means this site ripped them off in the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Wow!

The normal sites that have reviews don't have any negativity about flexKom it's just these sites that are built to collect negativity and usually many of the authors write on many topics not just one, they arent real customers with a real experince just people who sit at home surf the net and pick up any kind of rumor they find and then they pull it all together into  one what we could call "A Bull Sh*t  master peice"  

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#2 UPDATE EX-employee responds

Flexkom is a scam

AUTHOR: Dinkietoy - ()

POSTED: Friday, January 03, 2014

I agree with the ripoff report. Flexkom is an obvious scam.

The person who has filed the rebuttal on december 30 is wrong and has demonstrated that Flexkom is not working at all.

He clams that there are 70000 Flexkom shops and 400000 consumers using this system. Let's say that he is right and that these numbers are correct. That would mean that there are a little over 5 consumers per shop. How the hell is this supposed to work? 5 consumers per shop would mean how much revenue per month? Surely he cant be serious with these numbers.

Luckily for him, he is worng. There are no more than 3000 shops in Turkey, according to Flexkom. See flexkom.com.tr. These are not per se shops that are working or active. It is just a list on the official Flexkom site, but lots of info is missing at each shop page. On most pages all addressen, telephone numbers etc. are missing! Also, you can check how much shops there are in Antalya. In Antalya there was a demonstration of Flexkom in fall of 2012. People were taken to a mall where several shops were supposed to be using the Flexkom system. But look, there are 0 (zero!) shops in Antalya active now. The demonstration was fake!

Also, the current demo in Leipzig are fake. Look at this video: 
youtube.com/watch?v=12ZXz12F_sI
In this video, Asker Sakinmaz is demonstrating how the Flexkom system is supposed to be working. Look closely at 2:17. You can see the screen of the Flexkom POS. The customer has saved 2.38 FlexMoneys. Only, the Tablet says that the new amount of Flexmoney is 2.00. Looks like maths are not really Flexkom's cup of tea! Also notice that scammer Asker Sakinmaz is ignoring the false maths and quickly skips the new amount of FM.

Furthermore, the guy did not do his research well enough. He thinks that there is only one article in one newspaper that has some founded critisism on Flexkom. Would he have looked just a little bit further, then he'd found out not only that there are several newspapers with lots of articles about Flexkom, exposing all the FLexkom lies and fraud. 

Also the guy who replied to this Ripoff report makes several other mistakes. He claims that the number of max distributors in an area is limited. This is not true. Claiming that there is a limitation of some sort is just a marketing ploy to make it seem like a limited opportunity and more valuable. Truth is that anyone can enter, as long as you pay the entrance fee to purchase your GTM VIP package. 

You must understand that Flexkom does not have a working system at all. The management of Flexkom is all about delaying Flexkom. It's all about getting the money that people are tricked into paying for the GTM package. At some point in the near future, they will claim that Flexkom has failed and dissappear with your money.

 

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#1 General Comment

Flexkom Rebuttal

AUTHOR: Zaphod - ()

POSTED: Monday, December 30, 2013

Firstly I am a Flekom Global team memeber

There are a number of innacuracies surrounding this report that need correcting.

Firstly MLM or Network marketing. Thre is an insinuation that network marketing is in some a scam.  It is in fact a legitimate route to market and is respoinsible for creating more millionares aroundd the globe than any other business model.  Big names such Helrbalife, Amway, Avon Cosmetics, Visalus Sciences, to just name a few, are all turning over in the billions of dollars and have created income opportunities at many levels from a few dollars a month to tens of thousands a month and more. Some of these companies number distributors in the millions promting the parent companies products to their own network of friends and family etc. The term marketing is used because it involves taking a product to market and is a legitimate marketing model.  

In flexkom's model its about providing discount to customers and retaining the loyalty of those customers and allows a retailer to leverage the relationship between himself and the customer to greater extent than was previously possible whilst providing additional membership benefits to the retailers customers. I fail to see how that is a scam

Turkey is mentioned as a market that is in some dissaray.  In fact there are over 70,000 outlets supporting FlexKom and over 400,000 consumer members utilising the services. All that is mentioned are some web stats and a single press report from Turkey, whaich is not unbiased, as an indicator of its lack of success

The fact that people are incentivsed to recruit other team members is mentioned and again in network marketing this is the norm and is only available for the first month of your tenure. Distribution is vital and therefore a salesforce to produce the distribution is also vital.

Some people have difficulty in assesing the FlexKom model as it si not purely MLM.  Top income levels can be achieved with out recruiting a single team memeber.  This is not normal MLM and indicates that it cannot be viewd the same.  Also the numbers of Global Team Members (franchisee's) in any country or geography is limited.  Once that level has been attained the opportunity is closed to newcomers. This again is not typical of MLM and indicates that the term "franchise" is more realistic.

The product is also a Business to Business (B2B) and requires the utilisation of direct selling skills which is not true of other MLM's whre selling is degraded to telling and sharing. If you dont have direct selling skills don't invest in FlexKom - you wont acheive very much.

In view of the above I submit that the report is biased and unfounded full of inuendo and links to a few unhappy people. I have seen similar "scam" reports concerning other very successfull legitimate network marketing companies named above.  Tens of millions of people cant be wrong about them.

 

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