zeekrewardsI’ve been tracking this story since it broke about a week ago now, hoping that Zeek Rewards would put out a press release explaining just what is going on regarding the recent banning of members from six countries.

Unfortunately despite banning accounts of Zeek Rewards members based in these countries over a week ago, to date the company has yet to put out any official explanation.’

Instead, I’ve had to piece together what’s happening from members themselves and what little snippets of info have been made public by Zeek Rewards’ support staff.

Approximately a week ago, members from Serbia, Slovenia, Belarus, Egypt, Croatia and Macedonia woke up to find their Zeek Rewards account deactivated. No explanation or information was given as to why.

Initially staff at Zeek Rewards support centre had no idea what was going on, but over the past few days a number of responses have indicated some rather dubious explanations for the outright strange reasons for the ban.

Yesterday, the first response from Zeek Rewards support regarding the issue was made public.

We do not have total knowledge of what happened. What I do know is that it is something with your countries government policies (not the Serbian people itself), that has required us to not list your country anymore.

This was in response to a Serbian Zeek Rewards member’s concerns but appeared to apply to all six named banned countries.

Grossly inadequate, given that a week or so had passed since members had been banned, the response only raised further questions.

First and foremost, how is it that six independent countries all got together and coordinated political restrictions against Zeek Rewards?

Secondly, with Slovenia being a member state of the European Union, how is it that they alone have a unique political climate that required Zeek Rewards to ban members from there?

From Wikipedia:

The EU has developed a single market through a standardised system of laws which apply in all member states.

If political reasons were truly the reason behind the ban of members from Slovenia, then surely the same political reasons would apply to all EU member states?

Finally, there’s the fact that, as far as I know, no other MLM company has had to ban members from these six countries. This of course begs the question as to what these ‘government policies’ are that Zeek Rewards staff are citing.

Why is Zeek Rewards alone having to ban participation in what is supposedly a legitimate MLM opportunity in these six countries, whereas other MLM companies are carrying on business as usual?

One possible answer to this is that regardless of how much compliance you have or what terminology you insist your members use to promote your scheme, you’re not really changing the fact that you’re running an unsustainable investment scheme that relies on new member investments to keep afloat.

Requests for further clarification on the matter by banned Zeek Rewards members has since been met with ‘no comment’:

We apologize for the difficult position that this creates for you and us, but we are not able to do anything more than refund whatever purchases and subscriptions you have paid.

We are being advised that we any not make any further comments about the issue. It is unfortunate political situation and we are all affected by it. We wish you well. thank you for contacting Zeek!

With some of the affected banned members having been with Zeek Rewards for a year, understandably ‘no comment’ is an abysmally inadequate response.

Offering refunds on subscription amounts and purchases is a start, but only further highlights the virtual currency nature of the Zeek Rewards business.

All those VIP points these now banned members accumulated aren’t worth jack. Do Zeek Rewards have any liability (90 days or otherwise) on ROIs to pay out to these now banned members?

Not according to Zeek. They’ll just pay out the original invested money and wash their hands of the members they’ve banned.

Along with illegal business model admissions, gargantuan amounts of fraud occuring, dodgy as hell looking penny auctions, banning members with no formal reason or justification can now also be added to the list of problems that has plagued Zeek Rewards these past few months.

With no official announcement on the horizon but this still very much a developing story, I’ll keep the article updated as more news comes to hand.

Perhaps Zeek Rewards members in other countries should take note of what the actual value of all those VIP points they’ve invested in really is.

Can you think of any other MLM company that would let earn commissions from supposed sales for a year, pay you out a fraction of these commissions whilst letting you re-invest the rest back into the company, and then after a year ban you and only offer you your initial membership fee and personal sales purchases?

What a joke.