Say Your Way Review: Survey scam model resurfaces
Say Your Way launched earlier this year and is headed up by CEO Brian Marsh, Chief Operating Officer Martin Duke and Chief Marketing Officer Kitty Leung.
Say Your Way claim Marsh
has owned and operated advertisement agencies, studios, and other small advertisement businesses throughout the world. He also serves as a board member for several different creative agencies.
Brian has been actively involved in the advertisement industry for 25-plus years and has been involved in the direct selling industry for more than 16 years.
I can’t comment on the advertising industry but as far as MLM goes, all I could find was a now defunct blog (brianmarsh.net), indicating Marsh had joined Organo Gold in February 2012:
One would assume with his new CEO responsibilities that Marsh is no longer an Organo Gold distributor.
A Kitty Leung appears to have at some point been involved in Canadian MLM company ‘Lifestyles’ as a ‘Global Marketing Director’, marketing botanical juice.
The domain ‘sayyourway.com’ was registered on the 6th December 2011, however the domain registration information is set to private. As far as MLM companies go, private domain registration is usually a red flag as it indicates a reluctance towards transparency in divulging information about the business.
Furthermore on the Say Your Way company website, a company address is provided at
12/F International Commerce Centre
1 Austin Road West
Hong Kong
A Google search on this address shows a number of businesses operating out of this address, indicating this is nothing more than a virtual office.
Throwing more confusion into the equation, the Say Your Way website is currently being hosted in Singapore and the company’s “Disclaimer” states that
You agree that any legal action or proceeding between sayyourway.com and you for any purpose concerning this Agreement or the parties’ obligations hereunder shall be brought exclusively in a federal or state court of competent jurisdiction sitting in Indonesia.
This strongly indicates that, despite using a US based domain privacy company, having a virtual office in Hong Kong and website hosting in Singapore, Say Your Way appears to operating out of Indonesia.
Read on for a full review of the Say Your Way MLM business opportunity.
The Say Your Way Product Line
Say Your Way has no retailable products or services. Instead, members are only able to market membership to the company itself.
The Say Your Way Compensation Plan
Say Your Way offer two primary commissions to their members, those paid out upon completion of surveys and those paid out on the recruitment of new members.
Survey Commissions
Say Your Way pay members $20 per advertisement watched, survey filled out or feedback provided (feedback on what though the company does not specify).
Say Your Way will send one of the above to members each week, meaning a standard member can receive up to $20 a week in “survey” commissions.
Say Your Way members however are able to purchase a maximum of 8 “subpositions” with each membership they purchase, with there seemingly being no limit on the amount of membership positions (or subpositions) a member can purchase.
Thus, as long as annual membership fees are paid for each membership account purchased, members are theoretically able to earn unlimited $20 survey commissions each week.
Recruitment Commissions
Using a binary commissions structure, Say Your Way pay out pairing commissions to their members.
A binary commissions structure places you at the top with two member positions directly underneath you. These member positions form the start of two teams, with each splitting into two member positions under it and so on and so forth:
Say Your Way pay out $15 USD for every new member recruited. For every subposition a member creates under their main membership account (limited to 8 per membership account), the company also pays out a $10 commission (effectively functioning as a cashback).
At the end of every day, members are also paid a commission based on the amount of paired positions they have in both their left and right binary teams.
A binary pair is defined as one member on your left team and one on your right team. For each new pair found, Say Your Way pay out members a $25 commission, capped at 20 pairs a day ($500).
Members in a binary downline can only be paired once, thus this is a one-time commission paid out on the creation of new pairs.
Subpositions purchased under a main membership account also have binary teams under them and attract paired commissions, however subposition pairs are counted as pairs of 3 new member positions on both sides of the binary.
Subposition binary pair commissions are capped at 10 a day and pay out $35 a pair ($350 total).
Joining Say Your Way
Membership to Say Your Way is $300 USD annually.
I believe subpositions also cost $300 annually, with a maximum of eight subpositions being able to be purchased under one primary membership position.
Conclusion
Revenue wise analysis of Say Your Way is a no-brainer, with the entirety of revenue coming via the paying of membership fees by company members. Otherwise there’s no logical reason whatsoever to charge people money to fill out surveys, unless of course you’re using that money to pay out trickle commissions on the proviso that they’ll recruit new members before you pay out their initial seed money.
Looking at the surveys, the idea put forth is that the world is just bursting with companies willing to pay people $20 USD a week to do a survey. When you consider that one person can claim $20 no less than twenty-seven times for watching the same advertisement, filling out the same survey or sending in the same feedback form, things get even more implausible.
History wise Say Your Way has a near identical business model to the Ponzi/pyramid scheme hybrid Speak Asia.
Offering members $20 a week for completing surveys and costing $220-$240 a year to join and similar paired binary commissions, Speak Asia was a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme that was shut down by authorities in India after the company made false claims about having actual survey clients. It was later of course revealed that none existed, meaning all money coming into the company was via membership fees.
Oddly enough, like Say Your Way, Speak Asia was also hosted in Singapore whilst primarily operating offshore in another country. Quoting membership prices in USD, I’m not sure whether Say Your Way is targeting a global audience or have limited themselves to Indonesia.
In any case, the company’s legitimacy entirely depends on the existence of companies willing to pay out thousands of dollars each week to have Say Your Way’s members fill out their surveys and feedback forms or watch advertisements.
In the absence of any indication or proof of actual corporate clients signing up to the Say Your Way service and given that Speak Asia, with nearly two million members pushing through hundreds of millions of dollars in membership fees, used the same business model and had no such corporate clients, I’m inclined to say they don’t exist.
What you’re then left with is a simple Ponzi scheme, which pays out an annual ROI using a pyramid scheme binary structure to attract new investors. This is evidenced by how Say Your Way themselves define their business opportunity:
The USD 300 you have invested seems like a tiny speck compared to the earnings that flow in from all directions.
What next? A simple joining process and you are on!
Those looking to join Say Your Way would do well to thoroughly read up on Speak Asia and the millions it left out of pocket in India. Speak Asia’s CEO’s Manoj Kumar and Harendar Kaur siphoned off hundreds of millions of dollars out of India and are currently wanted by Indian authorities, with both believed to be hiding out in Singapore and Dubai.
Did they still have those fake DSA and other badges at the bottom of their website?
It was supposedly launched by people linked to Tarun “TVI Express” Trikha’s scam
http://kschang.blogspot.com/2012/06/did-tarun-trikha-launch-more-scams.html
Yeah lol. I noticed them but forgot to investigate further.
Member of the DSA, good one guys!
Dear all
I”ve a question I try to register a new account but I write wrong mail how can I correct it to send me the new transaction code.
Contact the company and get them to correct it. Should take all of thirty seconds.
i am from Egypt.now say your way is expanding in egypt >lots and lots of people want to join.
i am so so sorry but i didnt understand completely . yo are saying that say your way is a fraud?
There’s no revenue source other than membership fees. Combine that with a guaranteed ROI and recruitment commissions and things get pretty obvious.
Say Your Way needs a constant stream of new investors to survive. After they’ve pillaged Egypt for new investors they’ll try to spread the scheme to a new location.
So is say your way is really in egypt , and if it really have branch in egypt is it legal establish & what is the address & contact info
I’m confused…if SYW is a fraud and it only depends on a pyramid scheme, then that means there would be no profit if one doesn’t recruit others.
But, according to SYW, if someone payed $300 to purchase only a main position, then he will receive $20 per week for 52 weeks which means that at the end of the year he would’ve recovered his payment and earned an extra $740 as profit.
Am I right or did I miss something?
@Hesham
The MLM survey model is a pyramid/ponzi hybrid.
It needs new people to survive who invest. Where the money comes from doesn’t matter so long as it’s continously injected into the company. Otherwise they have nothing to pay out existing investors with.
I am from Indonesia. I joined in July 2012. And do not get in the withdrawal August 2011.
About nov 2012 SYW all accounts can not be opened in Indonesia, with marked invalid account number. Many people invest in Indonesia crying because SYW.
makes no sense! how can u say that the only profit is from new membership fees. if it was like this, they are losing more than they are gaining.i think may be they gain from the companies they are making suyrveys for….
i dont know what to do, i am thinking of joining and i think it will continue with no problem for at least one year in egypt so can anyone give me a hint what to do….
Not if they charge you for a whole year first, THEN pay you back little by little every month. If they sign up more people initially and last less than one year they’ll keep a lot more money.
did any one try to request payout from SYW to liberty reserve?
when were we receive our new survey?
Please i need to know the truth about say your way in egypt is there any problem regarding the payment because i can liquidate my money and the servay of this week doesn ‘t appear yet please sent me any fedback for this message
Typically when the surveys stop and cash flow problems arise, that means the survey scam is over and your money is gone.
so say your way doesn’t exist
It’s a survey based Ponzi scheme. No surveys and payments would indicate the Ponzi scheme collapsed.
Typically in this scenario the admins run off with your money.
Not that they don’t exist, but more like they don’t do real business.
I mean, come on, offering to pay you for your opinion is fine, but having you pay them first? What sort of survey company does that, except a scam company? Clearly they want your MONEY more than your survey results.
Think about it… You don’t make back all that money for one full year. So if they close up within 1 year you are all doomed, so to speak.
Why SYW Site is not working? Is there a problem?
hello,
i want to inform every one that Say Your Way was closed in Egypt without any reason and without any alert for the members..many peoples lost a lot of money … pleas i need some one to give me one reason!!!!!!!!!!!
we trust it and trust the security certificate …. i think the E business loss a big area cose of this Monument company.
so till us the truth about what happen to your company in egypt.. there is no survey this week, and the web site doesn’t work and there is no money.
The website does appear to be gone, along with your money.
This is what happens when you invest in Ponzi schemes.
please give us a solution to recover our money
You can start by making enquiries with Egyptian authorities.
I suspect however due to the low-level scale of Say Your Way that it would be a fruitless effort. Take away the lesson from this collapse: don’t invest in Ponzi schemes to begin with.
If someone local recruited you into it and made false promises maybe you can hold him accountable, but no way you’re going to sue someone that’s legally based on other side of the globe and recover anything.
This website works the other way around. Post information if you have anything to share, something that can help other participants / victims.
You will find the most basic information about the company and the organizers here. Try to add more information?
“Sue your upline” is normally not the right idea. It won’t work in reality.
Since the scam has been most active in Egypt, the organizers are probably from Egypt too.
Say Your Way was a copy of SpeakAsia Online in India, a well proven survey scam. You will find more than 50 articles here about SpeakAsia, e.g. about how it was organized.
If you’re able to identify your entire upline, you will probably find people connected to the top leader. Ask your upline for information, e.g. “Who was YOUR sponsor?”, “Who did YOU pay money to?”, “Who did YOU receive information from?”.
Follow the money trail right to the top, if people in your upline received payments in cash directly from the people they recruited. You will find local managers, area managers, district managers etc. a few levels above you.
The top leader is probably from Egypt, or he CAN be from the same group of organizers who organized SpeakAsia.
But they catch one of the owners in the air port called ingy so do you think we will get our money back instead to make the police leave her
The trick here is determining who’s really the top man in your country. Not your direct upline (i.e. who recruited you), but who recruited him, and so on up the line, like M_Norway said.
Though in South Africa, China, and Indonesia some TVI Express “leaders” were indeed arrested for fraud. They were “local” leaders. You need to complain to your local authorities with proof and names so they just need to confirm your info and make an arrest. If you want them to do all the work they will delay and delay.
She is not upliner she is one of the admenistratives in the company and the police catch her in the airport she was trying to escap ,do you think she will give us our money back
For anyone interested, here’s some other “David Johnson, professional con artist” videos on Youtube (links disabled, the videos are actually commercials from befraudaware.ca).
“Know your victims”
youtube.com/watch?v=AuOiJBuOiZk
“Stolen Dreams”
youtube.com/watch?v=Catva7gb8s8
The first video (post #22) was named “Ponzi 101” before it was modified to a Bidify version.
People become victims because they willingly and voluntarily expose themselves to scams, e.g. by actively or passively looking for income opportunities or “professional advisors”.
Post #9 and #12 clearly show why the scam can work. People really WANT to believe in the promise of making money.
They’re not losing any money when the investors are putting more money IN than what other investors are cashing OUT.
Ahmed ASSUMES he are paid for doing the surveys. He hasn’t even thought of that the surveys can be fake, used primarily to attract money from him and other investors.
People are too eager to convince themselves about their own ideas, e.g. WHY an opportunity will work and for HOW LONG it will work. They will simply ignore most of the red flags.
Doubt it. Money is probably wired to some other country already. That’s the problem of joining a company you’re not even sure where it’s based.
She’s probably just a “local leader”. Most scams have them to act as “judas goats” to lead all the victims along.
can we know who the owner of the say your way is Egypt or Honkong or what?
We don’t know. Someone can check Hong Kong corporate office, but I have a feeling the office is fake. It’s probably registered in Indonesia, where records are often not online.
if its located in indonesia why when the issue happened in egypt the survey is stop.
Because it’s a Ponzi scheme and the owners in Indonesia didn’t have enough money to pay everyone out anymore.
so if one company down all will be don is not logic. if egypt down we have many countries left so ?????
Ponzi schemes are illogical.
The entire scheme, regardless of which countries it operates in is run by one person or group of people. They have your invested money and have done a runner.
That’s how these scams work.
one more thing egypt is down or leader is arrested so why affect Indonesia and why the site is down.
Because a leader probably doesn’t own the company, and the other leaders are covering their tracks.
so you are sure that say your way is closed in all of the world.
(Ozedit: removed spam)
its independent company, but how as same location honkong mentioned and same info at all only different in some of design.
No idea.
The website is gone, your money is gone and the surveys are gone. You work it out.
This is not Say Your Way support. Any further requests for technical support regarding the scam will be marked as spam.
I can add something to that …
People will need to add information themselves before they can get any meaningful answers from others.
I gave some basic information about Ponzi schemes, about survey scams (I compared it to SpeakAsia), and about general “vulnerability” among victims.
Gihan added some information about an arrest. If anyone can dig up more information about that, it will probably be of interest for other readers.
That’s the best strategy here. Try to fill in factual information about the company, the shutdown or anything else of interest. That strategy will attract factual information from other readers.
damn, it’s a scam for real, never discovered till now right after they caught the headmasters at Egypt n throw them into the jail, thank god i wasn’t involved with too much cash, i was supposed to listen to ppl who warned me from beginning. Anyway, one doesn’t simply learn except by falling at least for once…
survey is available for hours ipad and i finish it
good comeback for say your way.
^^ Sigh… some people never learn.
Why the site is down in Egypt ???
I didn’t get it why after arresting the administrator and the syw closed they open it again 4 a few hours and put new survey with old date and after that the site closed.
in ur opinion why they do such things like that to prove to the authorities that they r not the top leaders.
Somebody is obviously running things from outside of Egypt.
The person they arrested is probably just a master-distributor/affiliate for the country.
Gents,
i was walking thru all comments and nothing new about Engy in Egypt as she still arrested and the website working fine and surveys in ever week and income cash add to our accounts here in Egypt but nothing more ?!!!
what do you think why its still open and whom working on it and whom are paying for the participation’s ?!!
The same people who have always been paying your commissions, new affiliates recruited in who knows where.
Can you withdraw money, or does it simply “add to your account” in the back office?
Programs like this typically have reinvestment functions (compound your investment by buying more survey panels). They also have “pay yourself options”, e.g. people can use their earnings to generate a new PIN (new membership), and sell that membership to a new member and keep the money.
The company can simply disappear with the money, while the members are “compounding” and “paying themselves” for weeks or months. The organizers will only need someone to send them new surveys each week.
Where is the money? The company cheating people.