Members Choice Review: VIPtv streaming & $39.95 a month recruitment
Members Choice operate in the personal development and streaming MLM niches.
An incomplete corporate address in Conyers, Georgia is provided.
Members Choice list two co-founders on their website, Howard Harrison Jr. (President and CEO) and J. William (Executive Vice President).
In his Members Choice corporate bio, Harrison claims he’s “better known as Pastor Howard”.
Prior to co-founding Members Choice, Harrison was an Executive Advisory Board member of the Noble 8 Revolution gifting scheme:
J. William (full name: Johnny William Cabe) claims to have been “active in network marketing for 40 years”.
On the Members Choice website Cabe is credited as “Dr. J. William”.
In 2015 Cabe (right) ‘pleaded no contest to five counts of unlawful practice of medicine‘.
The Rev. Johnny William “Bill” Cabe, the York County pastor who spent seven years in prison for stealing $8 million from church investors, will serve no prison time after pleading no contest Friday to 2010 charges alleging he claimed to be a doctor and performed exams on an 11-year-old boy he had befriended.
Cabe, 56, was charged twice in the 1990s on similar allegations of giving hernia exams and other improper contact with minor boys at Riverside Independent Baptist Church but was never convicted.
Read on for a full review of the Members Choice MLM opportunity.
Members Choice Products
Members Choice resell vStream TV’s VIPtv service for $39.95 a month plus a separate $39.95 set up fee.
As per the VIPtv website, the service is
is distributed and administered under exclusive license to AMG/SONY Music International and promoted through AMG Music, Film & Television.
vStream TV is a third-party MLM company. The nature of the business relationship between vStream TV and Members Choice is unclear.
Members Choice also bundle access to a “personal development program” with affiliate membership.
The Members Choice Compensation Plan
Members Choice affiliates purchase $35 positions in a 3×5 matrix cycler.
Commissions are paid when they recruit others who do the same.
A 3×5 matrix places a Members Choice affiliate at the top of a matrix, with three positions directly under them:
These three positions form the first level of the matrix. The second level of the matrix is generated by splitting these first three positions into another three positions each (9 positions).
Levels three to five of the matrix are generated in the same manner, with each new level housing three times as many positions as the previous level.
Positions in the matrix are filled via direct and indirect recruitment of new Members Choice affiliates.
When all positions on a matrix level are filled, a “cycle” is generated and a commission paid out.
A cycle also unlocks a new level on the matrix to earn from, until all five matrix levels have been unlocked.
Payments across Members Choice’s 3×5 matrix cycler are as follows:
- level 1 (3 positions) – $27 cycle commission and cycles into level 2
- level 2 (9 positions) $131 cycle commission and cycles into level 3
- level 3 (27 positions) – $2391 cycle commission and cycles into level 4
- level 4 (81 positions) – $52,306 cycle commission and cycles into level 5
- level 5 (243 positions) – $1906,395 commission paid out
Residual Commissions
Members Choice pay residual commissions via a unilevel compensation structure.
A unilevel compensation structure places an affiliate at the top of a unilevel team, with every personally recruited affiliate placed directly under them (level 1):
If any level 1 affiliates recruit new affiliates, they are placed on level 2 of the original affiliate’s unilevel team.
If any level 2 affiliates recruit new affiliates, they are placed on level 3 and so on and so forth down a theoretical infinite number of levels.
Upon earning $500 in commissions, Members Choice deduct $150 and place affiliates into a unilevel team.
In order to participate in residual unilevel team commissions, each Members Choice affiliate must pay $100 a month.
Members Choice use this $100 monthly fee to pay residual unilevel commissions down seven unilevel team levels:
- Affiliate – 10% on level 1 (personally recruited affiliates)
- Bronze – 10% on level 1 and 5% on level 2
- Silver – 10% on level 1 and 5% on levels 2 to 4
- Gold – 10% on level 1 and 5% on levels 2 to 6
- Platinum – 10% on level 1 and 5% on levels 2 to 7
Rank qualification criteria for the above ranks is as follows:
- Affiliate – sign up as a Members Choice affiliate and earn $500, then continue to pay $100 a month
- Bronze – personally recruit five affiliates and maintain 25 customers across your unilevel team
- Silver – personally recruit and maintain at least ten affiliates (four must be Bronze or higher)
- Gold – personally recruit and maintain at least twenty affiliates (8 must be Silver or higher) and have 160 affiliates and 800 customers across your unilevel team
- Platinum – personally recruit and maintain forty affiliates (16 must be Gold or higher) and have 2560 affiliates and 12,800 customers across your unilevel team
Customers refer to non-affiliates paying $100 a month for a streaming subscription.
Joining Members Choice
Members Choice affiliate membership is $35.
Affiliates who wish to earn residual unilevel commissions are charged an additional $100 a month.
Conclusion
That Members Choice is headed up by two pastors is no coincidence.
The promotion of both Noble 8 Revolution and Members Choice is rooted in religious affinity fraud.
Like Noble 8 Revolution, Members Choice is attached to weekly “prayer calls”.
Saturday Prayer Call
Join Pastor Howard Harrison for our weekly prayer call.
As to the business model, the matrix side of Members Choice is a simple pyramid scheme.
Of that $35 you pay for the PDP Pack:
– $10 will be designated for administrative costs;
– Approximately ten percent of the remaining $25 will be donated to helping people in need around the world;
– The rest will be shared with the entire Members Choice family including, of course, our qualified members
You sign up as a Members Choice affiliate, pay $35 and as others are recruited who do the same, you get paid.
The unilevel tries to project retail sales and by itself wouldn’t be an issue. Considering what it’s attached to is fraudulent however, any merit the unilevel VIPtv subscription component of Members Choice is negated.
vStreamTV on its own never really took off, so I don’t see a white-label offering through Members Choice being much different.
As I understand it Noble 8 Revolution are continuing to delay launch, while management milk those who’ve signed up with fees for leads and training.
Members Choice has strong ties to Noble 8 (what with its co-founder being a corporate advisory), and appears targeted at those tired of waiting for Noble 8 to launch.
Ultimately the concept of both business is the same.
Those running the company will primarily profit at the expense of those who sign up and continue to pay monthly fees.
Once recruitment slows down, commissions stop and its widespread losses among affiliates.
At the time the boy was touched, between 2008 and 2010, Cabe was a recently-released felon who spent seven years in federal prison for stealing millions from unwitting religious followers in a pyramid scheme that spanned the Atlantic Ocean.
Cabe was convicted in 2001 in federal court of stealing more than $8 million in the 1990s but never admitted any guilt in the scheme involving another pastor.
He was fined $7.8 million, and officials seized more than $1.2 million of his assets.
While I doubt, coming off the failures of Waszupp Global and Noble 8 Revolution, Members Choice losses will run into the millions, the modus operandi behind the business is undeniably similar to Cabe’s past exploits.
Here we go again…
So, if you’re willing to look past the guy being a convicted thief, you can be comforted that he wasn’t molesting children, he was just giving them medical exams, even though he’s not a Doctor. Nice little bit of plea bargaining there.
Admin is a pastor… that should be more than enough DD for anyone to make an informed decision… SMFH… LMAO!!
Where’s the math fail in the breakdown of the $35? $10 for admin costs, $2.50 (10% of the remainder) for charity, and the remaining $22.50 used to pay commissions. Obviously all pyramid schemes are a maths fail but I got the impression Oz is referring to a more specific error, which I’m not seeing.
Hah, was a reading fail on my part. Didn’t process the “ten percent”.
Yes a go-between to sell something that is illegal anyway and charge the gullible member base to allow them to promote it leaving them accountable for their actions.
That’ll work 😛
Ah, wait a minute….
maybe this is not such a great position to put yourself in 😛
But hold on. It’s a pastor pushing it. A man of God.
Anyone who uses this argument should look at the Churches in the US and see they are paid thousands each month to have their symbol turned into covert cell towers (look for yourself especially in Southern California).
Real God fearing Pastors would not be trying to con people into selling tainted goods and this religion element is just to implement trust is that which is otherwise devoid of any morals.
Pastors!!!!!!! They know how to fleece their flocks.
go to ebay.. buy a streaming box fo 21.95 ONE TIME FEE… Done…no more other costs ever.
FRED BENDER, Global Founding Director of WASZUPP GLOBAL is also one of the key people behind “OUR MEMBERS CHOICE”, which is a competing gifting scheme platform based out of Conyers, GA, where Mr. Bender is from.