The issues are continuing:
April 11, 2006 - Spread the Word announces
a new compensation plan. I believe the new one is even more complicated
and difficult to understand than before.
May 12, 2006 - An email goes out announcing
that "due to several problems" they have immediately
terminated their phone service with their current telecommunications
provider, and they will have "new" service within three
business days. I have been in the telcom business for several
years (one of my many ventures), and I don't understand why they
didn't simply switch to a new provider without having to go without
phone service for several days.
May 20, 2006 - Spread The Word CEO, Steve
Darrow, and CMO, John Godzich, announced on on the STW Nuts & Bolts
Conference Call that STW is suspending the sale of bookstores
and products indefinitely until the appropriate capital can be
raised in order for the company to move forward. [This
effectively shuts down bookstore owners, since most of their
income comes from bookstore sales. By the way, John Godzich is
well known for his involvement with Amway.]
June 7, 2006 - John
Godzich, Chief Marketing Officer, announces that they are broke
and suspending
all operations until they can raise capital. Here is an excerpt
from the conference call: "Well, right now, we are in
the following situation: We have essentially run out
of money,
spent
all the
money that Steve has put into
it - Steve himself has put in about $2 million dollars into this
- and since we've run out of money doesn't mean that we
are shutting
things down. We're just suspending them..." (Note that
he doesn't mention the $2 to $3 million raised from the sale
of bookstores. While some of that money was paid out in commissions,
what did they do with $4 to $5 million dollars?) Shortly
after this, all bookstores and the main Spread the Word website
were
taken down. Instead of seeing a message of some kind, you simply
get "page not found." This is very unprofessional
and inexcusable.
June 28, 2006 - They announce that the
bookstores will be up and running the first two weeks of July.
At this point, who in their right mind would want to place any
trust in these folks?
July 4, 2006 - The new bookstores are
launched. Turns out they turned them over to a different company
entirely
which, by the way, offers FREE bookstore websites. That means
anyone who paid for a bookstore could have had a nice one for
free. Will Spread the Word be refunding the fees paid for bookstores?
Also, since this new company offers free bookstores, it doesn't
appear that the opportunity to sell bookstores (and actually
make money) will exist. It would be unethical to sell something
that people could otherwise get for free.
July 28, 2006 - In an email forwarded
to me from another bookstore owner, Spread the Word has acknowledged
that the new company does provide free bookstores, but with the
new partnership those will be be going away. So, what used to
be free will now cost money. It seems to me that greed and the
desire to make money are driving their decision-making. It
is misleading and inappropriate that they use the word "ministry,"
because it is not that at all. It is a for-profit business,
and a very questionable one at that. It saddens me to see that
all
of this is being done in the name of our Lord who, by the way,
was NOT rich, in fact, He didn't even have a place to lay his
head.
July 28, 2006 - It came to my attention
that Spread the Word's "domain registration service" is
an affiliate account with Go Daddy, the same company that does
the incredibly trashy
commercials on TV, and they also host
pornographic websites. Thinking perhaps they were not aware of
this, I notified
Spread
the Word of this several weeks ago, but they have continued to
use the same company. Is the desire to make money so strong that
they are willing to partner with pornographers?
July 30, 2006 - In an email sent out today, they
say that the new spreadtheword.com and 30fold.com websites
will be ready on July 29th (the previous day), but they are
not working at all. (You get the page not found error). Additionally,
deepercalling.com and deepershopping.com (the two sites associated
with the new bookstore company) are also not available. Are
the Spread the Word guys running those sites now, too? That
would really be a shame, because at least if another company
(with different management) were in charge of the bookstores
there would be a chance that they would work better than the
Spread the Word bookstores did.
November 20, 2006 - In spite of my informing
them and exhorting them to stop working with pornographers
(see the July 28 post), they continue to do so. I really have
to question what this company is all about, and what their
true motives are. |