TVI Express Member Lies Vol 1: THREE logical fallacies as proof, membership is worthless, weak analogy has no validity

This hub is one in a series that collects lies and untruths told by various TVI Express distributors in support of TVI Express, either here on Hubpages, or elsewhere on the Internet.

If you need some background on the TVI Express scam, please read TVI Express: an international scam first.

Our first review to review is "Is TVI Express a Valid Business", on http://www.betternetworker.com/articles/view/mlm-news/companies/is-tvi-express-a-valid-business

First of all, you may recognize the avatar. The author is a hubpage member.

Second thing to notice, the author is a TVI Express member. He admits so in the final sentence, "In the end, she showed me that I should have started TVI much earlier." If he said good things about the company, you'll have to take it with a grain of salt, as you cannot be sure of his motivation.

So what about the article? His purpose was to demonstrate "TVI Express is NOT a scam." Let us see how well he argued.

First argument in support of his premise turned out to be a weak analogy.

My first step was to search via Google. There were numerous articles expressing their opinion on TVI Express. Some were written by persons who had attempted to succeed with this opportunity, but failed. I will exclude their feelings here. Some others felt that TVI Express is a rip-off because it does not sell merchandise. My investigation showed that there is definitely a product - a travel service. In this regard, TVI Express is very similar to AAA. In AAA, you have to be a member in order to take advantage of their services. The dissimilarity from AAA is that your membership with TVI Express is a one time fee. It is NOT a monthly or annual fee.

While the argument initially sounds fine, it is actually a logical fallacy called "weak analogy". A weak analogy is defined by logicalfallacies.info as

(1) A and B are similar.
(2) A has a certain characteristic.
Therefore:
(3) B must have that characteristic too.

In this case, the argument can be summarized as "TVI Express and AAA are similar (both have benefits you only enjoy from membership). AAA is legitimate, therefore TVI Express is legitimate".

The author ignored two major facts: a) In AAA, you are NOT required to recruit two more members, and to teach each of them to recruit two more people, while in TVI Express, you are required to do so. b) TVI Express's travel products can be purchased directly from Travelocity.com without paying for the the $250 TVI Express membership fee, whereas AAA's membership benefits can only be enjoyed by joining AAA.

Thus, the comparison between TVI Express and AAA is not valid, and thus, the argument is not valid.

So what was his second argument that supports his premise that TVI Express is not scam?

The articles that I read also indicated that TVI Express is a scam because you are paid to recruit. That is untrue with TVI Express. The fact is that you are paid to recruit in every MLM or network marketing company. That is, you are paid commission when you have more people in your organization. The method in which you are paid is what can make an organization be against DSA policies. If you are paid money when each recruit starts, your company is going against DSA policies. My investigation proved that in TVI Express you are not paid when someone new becomes a member. In fact, 14 people need to be in your organization before you are paid. Does that mean that each member needs to recruit 14 members? Absolutely not. Each member only needs to recruit 2.

The argument here can roughly be summarized as "if you got paid as each recruit starts, it's bad, but because you are only paid when you got 14 people under you, and because you only recruited two of them, it's good."

Unfortunately, this directly flies against the FBI definition of a pyramid scheme:

Pyramid schemes, also referred to as franchise fraud, or chain referral schemes, are marketing and investment frauds in which an individual is offered a distributorship or franchise to market a particular product. The real profit is earned, not by the sale of the product, but by the sale of new distributorships. Emphasis on selling franchises rather than the product eventually leads to a point where the supply of potential investors is exhausted and the pyramid collapses. At the heart of each pyramid scheme there is typically a representation that new participants can recoup their original investments by inducing two or more prospects to make the same investment. Promoters fail to tell prospective participants that this is mathematically impossible for everyone to do, since some participants drop out, while others recoup their original investments and then drop out.
-- http://www.fbi.gov/majcases/fraud/fraudschemes.htm

Getting paid to recruit is not illegal. Headhunters and recruiters do that. Thus, the argument that "getting paid for recruiting is illegal, and that's not true" is logical. However, this tactic is called a "strawman".

Logicalfallacies.info defines strawman argument as "one that misrepresents a position in order to make it appear weaker than it actually is, refutes this misrepresentation of the position, and then concludes that the real position has been refuted."

By presenting "getting paid to recruit is illegal", and defeating that argument, then explaining that is TVI Express pays to recruit, the author argues that TVI Express therefore is legal. However, he did not tell you that TVI Express members are REQUIRED to recruit two more people, thus making it a pyramid, instead of a normal "pay to recruit".

The DSA definition (which was never cited, and cannot be found on DSA website, by the way), plus insisting that recruiting only two out of fourteen, and not getting paid until all fourteen got in, is perfectly fine, are both red herrings. They are irrelevant to the issue at hand.

Thus, the second argument is also invalid.

The third argument the author used to support his premise that TVI Express is a valid business is simple:

TVI Express now has over 1,000,000 distributors in over 150 countries. Talk about incredible growth and expanse. The pure member numbers point toward a very legitimate business system.

Unfortunately, this is known as "bandwagon fallacy", i.e. "if it's popular, it must be good." In this case, "TVI Express is popular, therefore it must be legitimate".

Logicalfallacies.info defined bandwagon fallacy as "arguments that appeal to the growing popularity of an idea as a reason for accepting it as true." The argument fail to take into account that there there are plenty of things that are popular, but that doesn't make them "legitimate".

The remaining paragraphs are some mumbling about needing teamwork to succeed, and thus do NOT contribute to the premise: "TVI Express is legitimate".

Of all three arguments offered, all three have been revealed to be logical fallacies. Therefore, the author have failed to support his premise that "TVI Express is legitimate and valid business."

This article is representative of typical arguments trying to prove TVI Express is not scam. By using logical fallacies and irrelevant facts as red herrings, they have simply failed to make their case.

Stay tuned for more TVI Express Member Lies.