Following the delayed commissions and then the disabling of Savings Highway Global’s website for almost a month, owner Steve Gresham is now threatening affiliates who talk about it with legal action.

To break down exactly what happened last December, we turn to a January 9th YouTube video from Kyrsti Snyder.

Snyder, who has since left Savings Highway Global, describes herself as the “number one earner for over a year and a half” in the company.

Snyder reveals Savings Highway payment problems began on or around December 13th. Following non-payment of commissions, Savings Highway initially brushed off concerns as unscheduled “programming updates”.

While commissions were eventually paid on the 13th, this is the last payment that would go out for weeks.

Three days after the first payment delays, Savings Highway Global’s entire website went down on December 16th.

Gresham initially blamed the unscheduled outage on Plexus, a software development company based out of Chicago.

On December 17th, with Savings Highway Global’s website still in accessible, Gresham then blamed “the hosting company”.

As of December 21st, Savings Highway Global’s website remain offline. Gresham named and blamed BlueHost in an update shared with Snyder.

We called BlueHost again. They have not been helpful. They have also not responded to the email.

We’re continued to move forward getting everything back up. I will update you.

In a second update shared later the same day, Gresham additionally claimed;

Found out today that last week BlueHost was bought be [sic] another company, laid off tons of people on Monday and terminated accounts that had any issues.

Jeb spoke to someone who got canned. I have a lawyer on it too.

“Jeb” refers to 5Linx co-founder Jeb Tyler.

Tyler was sentenced to fourteen months in prison following a 5Linx criminal case filed in 2017. Apparently sometime after getting out of prison, Tyler joined Savings Highway Global.

BlueHost is a fairly large domain registrar and hosting company. It was acquired by Endurance International Group in 2010 and remains a subsidiary to this day.

No significant BlueHost layoffs were announced in December 2023. Nor was there any significant uptime.

Certainly in the world of hosting, where downtime is measured in minutes, a major hosting company going offline for a week (before Christmas no less), would be headline news in the tech industry.

In short, I wasn’t able to verify and of Gresham’s BlueHost claims.

Five days later, Savings Highway Global’s website remained offline.

On December 27th, Gresham announced that “new servers are installed and working”.

Despite Gresham’s claim however, Snyder claims it wasn’t until January 7th Savings Highway Global affiliates were able to log into their accounts.

If you’re keeping track, that’s twenty-two days of unexplained downtime. Oh and did I mention nobody was paid anything during this time?

After initially claiming that he was “importing data” into Savings Highway Global’s new servers, Gresham would later reveal that affiliates would have to update their payment card details.

Snyder claims this is because Gresham “lost all the data” and “did not have a backup plan”.

They were completely idiotic, I guess is a great way to put it.

Somewhat amazingly, in a January 3rd Savings Highway Global webinar (during which live chat was disabled), Gresham patted himself on the back for the unscheduled downtime.

As quoted by Snyder, Gresham claimed “things like this can take up to 3 months to repair… but “he’s done it in 3 weeks”.

From my own personal experience, anything in tech that takes more than a few hours to fix is a disaster. In a competently run company, nothing in tech takes “3 months to repair”.

One additional point Snyder makes is Gresham explaining nobody getting paid because Savings Highway Global had “no revenue”.

Since there was no revenue for this last pay period, there will not be commissions this week.

Snyder likens Savings Highway Global needing new revenue to pay commissions to a Ponzi scheme.

He needs new money to pay out new commissions. That’s literally a Ponzi scheme.

BehindMLM reviewed Savings Highway Global on January 24th, 2024. We weren’t aware of the downtime and payment problems, but noted the current iteration was the third reboot of an existing documented pyramid scheme.

To explain away Savings Highway Global’s website going down and nobody getting paid for almost a month, Snyder and other top distributors were instructed to lie to their downline.

Here is the message Gresham provided them Snyder and other distributors to share:

As you may know, our Savings Highway Global website is currently undergoing a major upgrade.

This process began on Saturday, December 16th, and it’s nearly complete.

During this server upgrade, billing for memberships was paused, so there has been no revenue during this time period.

Because of this, there will not be commissions paid this week as there was no billing or revenue generated.

We are about to resume billing, and commissions will flow once again!

What’s more, in 2024, you’ll experience even faster payouts!

We truly appreciate your patience and cooperation on this journey. Your support means the world to us.

An abbreviated version of this message was posted on Savings Highway Global’s website.

If you’re already doubtful as to what actually happened with Savings Highway Global over December and January, here’s more fuel to the fire.

Apparently during the downtime, when the website was down, Savings Highway Global was processing account cancellations and sending out confirmation emails.

Snyder also claims that during Savings Highway Global’s downtime, affiliates were cross-recruiting her downline into TranzactCard (now FinMore).

And apparently the “savings calculator” on Savings Highway Global’s “new” website is bogus.

Now that the site is live, they have the savings calculator – screenshots of everyone’s savings – but they are FAKE savings.

They are estimated savings. But yet, Steve Gresham tells people via text and email to go post their savings number insinuating what they saves, when they haven’t.

Eventually Snyder gets to the crux of Savings Highway Global’s downtime – the loss of payment processing services.

When you look at the new site, there’s the annual membership now. But you can only pay through Zelle and crypto.

If you know anything about Zelle, it has to be paid to someone’s phone number of email (typically number, just as I pay my nail tech).

So now you have to trust that the person who gets paid is going to put the money in correctly and disperse that out 10 levels deep.

The fine print for annual also says “no refunds” available for annual.

Another payment related problem is backoffice balances, which were used to pay membership fees, have disappeared.

Gresham instead required everyone to pay new money into Savings Highway Global last month, regardless of how previously unpaid commission balances had been accumulated.

As per Snyder, anyone who didn’t pay new money into Savings Highway Global was threatened with termination.

These developments prompted speculation from affiliates regarding Savings Highway Global’s payment processing services.

To the best of my knowledge, Gresham has thus far failed to explain what happened to Savings Highway Global’s payment processing account.

Summing up her video, Snyder claims she left Savings Highway Global due to dishonesty, the business itself being “very unsafe” and non-payment of commissions.

Naturally after nearly a month of downtime, Snyder wasn’t the only Savings Highway Global affiliate speaking out.

Gresham’s response has been to send out letters threatening legal action.

As per a February 5th cease and desist seen by BehindMLM, Gresham, through a lawyer, equates discourse around Savings Highway Global’s recent issues with defamation.

Pursuant to your joining SHG, you agreed to be bound by its Terms and Conditions.

You have taken actions, individually, and in concert as [redacted], in violation of the Company’s Terms and Conditions.

Under the Terms and Conditions, you agreed to several things each of which is of the utmost importance to SHG.

You have published numerous defamatory and disparaging comments regarding SHG and its CEO Steve Gresham, and you have encouraged other SHG members to terminate their business relationship with SHG and cross-recruited them to join other companies.

Not only does this conduct amount to a clear breach of SHG’s Terms and Conditions, it also in many instances amounts to defamatory conduct because your statements are false and have caused, and continue to cause significant damage to SHG and to Mr. Gresham individually.

Under threat of a lawsuit, Gresham is demanding recipients of the cease and desist, whose accounts have been suspended, to (quoted verbatim)

  • remove any and all social media posts … or other published comments or content that is disparaging about SHG or Mr. Gresham.
  • reaffirm your obligations under the Terms and Conditions to cease making negative, disparaging or defamatory comments regarding SHG, Mr. Gresham, other SHG members or advisory board members.

An attached “Certification Declaration” is to have been signed and returned to Gresham’s attorney by February 13th.

Failure to comply with these demands will result in further damage to my client and will result in certain and immediate legal action against you.

First the obvious: There’s probably a good free speech defense in discussing Savings Highway Global going off line for almost a month and how that was handled by Gresham.

Next, while a Terms and Conditions document is available on Savings Highway Global’s website, as I understand it individual affiliates didn’t sign anything specific.

There is a checkbox indicating the unlinked Terms and Conditions have been agreed to upon signing up as a Savings Highway Global affiliate.

There’s also a question of integrity of the agreement. At the top of Savings Highway Global’s Terms and Conditions, the document states;

Effective Date: November 17, 2006.

Term: These Terms and Conditions shall take effect on and from the Effective Date.

Savings Highway Global’s Terms and Conditions references a “Titanium membership”.

When I earn $700 or more in 4 weeks, my account may be upgraded by the company administration to the Titanium $199 monthly level.

Depending on when my next payment date is set to occur, the company may elect to move my next payment date forward.

Once upgraded, I will become eligible to receive access to all benefits included with Titanium Membership.

BehindMLM first reviewed Savings Highway Global in November 2012. At the time there was no Titanium Membership, suggesting Savings Highway Global’s Terms and Conditions have been stealth updated at least once.

This is potentially problematic as, to the best of my knowledge, Savings Highway Global doesn’t track who has individually agreed to what.

I can see a case for a lack of individual consent and changing renders Savings Highway Global’s entire Terms and Conditions document worthless.

Furthermore, there’s a question mark as to when Gresham created Savings Highway Global’s Terms and Conditions.

While today there’s a link to the Terms and Conditions on Savings Highway Global’s website, it’s a recent development.

Through the Wayback Machine, we can see that as late as October 2022, Savings Highway Global’s website didn’t have a Terms and Conditions link.

In any event, I think trying to suppress public discussion of Savings Highway Global going offline for almost a month and then trying to cover it up isn’t legally actionable.

It’s a bad look and the threats from Gresham come off as despotic.

At time of publication Savings Highway Global’s website suggests standard payment processing services have been re-enabled.

What happened on December 16th remains a mystery, but the strongest candidate is Savings Highway Global lost access to processing services.

Whether the annual membership is still non-refundable is unclear.

 

Update 24th February 2024 – As far as I’m aware Gresham hasn’t initiated any legal action.

As of late February however, Savings Highway Global affiliate accounts flagged for legal threats are being terminated.