About-Hair-Removal.com
Unless you look carefully, this site may appeas to be a consumer hair removal guide, but it is actually a sales site promoting topical hair inhibitors with biased and unreliable information.
Products and information available at About-Hair-Removal.com should be avoided by all consumers.
Eventually, any hair removal link on the site quietly but surely leads to a sales site for a hair inhibitor, whether the consumer is seeking information on laser, waxing, anything.
2003 update
After lengthy correspondence with Mike Jones, I am pleased to announce he has made his site considerably more consumer-friendly. He has dropped several of the most disreputable products and now notes that he is a distributor:
This site still gets a hairfacts warning, because two issues still remain unsolved:
1. The mixture of truth and misinformation regarding the Kalo hair inhibtor he promotes.
2. The lack of evidence that the Kalo hair inhibitor he promotes can work as claimed.
Mike Jones has also provided updated and corrected materials for this site. While I disagree with some of his tactics and believe the product he promotes does not have adequate proof it works, at least he is responsive to criticism. That’s more than I can say for some quacks involved in hair removal.
Contact information
Address: 27 Old Gloucester Street London WC1N 3XX
Telephone: 020 7419 505
Email: webmaster@about-hair-removal.com (main one)Old address: [edited*] Normandy Way Plymouth PL51SR non-US 51111 GREAT BRITAIN (UK)
Old phone: 01752 [edited*] or 01752 [edited*]Old name: "David James" (DJF161) djamespk@YAHOO.COM
Mike Jones wrote to me in November 2002, saying he longer uses the ID David James or the email address djamespk@yahoo.com. On 12 December 2002, Mike Jones wrote to say that David James and the old address were those of a friend who allowed Mike to use his parents’ address when registering has site. I have removed the street address and phone number as requested. If you have a legal reason for needing this address and phone, please contact me.
Please note that hairfacts has not confirmed whether or not "Mike Jones" is the actual name of the person running this site..
Names associated with this site:
"Mike Jones" (MJ119-IYD) mikejones@vitalstop.com
mikejones@vitalstop.com
mikejones35@yahoo.com
mikejones35.tripod.com
mikejones@getresponse.com (an autoresponding company)Other hair removal/beauty sites promoted by the owner of about-hair-removal.com:
about-hair-inhibitors.com
Bodyfaq promotes the standard herbalist arsenal of questionable products to sell: pills and creams for breast enhancement, cellulite reduction, weight loss, mood enhancement, and "age reversal."
This site promotes the sale of vitamins and nutritional supplements.
Another affiliate-driven site promoting prescription medications.
This site is run by Sunset international, another distributor. Their site sells Kalo and Nisim products.
Background
Sites like this are about closing a sale, not necessarily getting consumers reliable information. The owner is a well-known multilevel marketing guy who landed on herbal "hair inhibitors" as a great money-maker. Right now he’s pushing Kalo, a "hair inhibitor" I’ve written about extensively.
The owner has also begun offering unsuspecting consumers an electronic version of the site’s contents in exchange for their friends’ email addresses. Just like the site, it’s also frequently erroneous information.
The real product sold: Multi-level marketing (MLM) and affiliates/distributors
Mike Jones has been involved for many years in internet direct response marketing, particularly selling based on Ken Evoy’s methods. He runs the following sites:
vitalstop.com
about-internet-marketing.com
about-goal-setting.com
The product doesn’t matter to someone like "Mike Jones." It could be hair removal scams or phone services. He’s just working to generate a sales commission or selling a "home business opportunity" for others to generate sales commissions. This type of distributorship of affiliate program is called multi-level marketing. Maybe you’ve heard of Amway, Herbalife, Mary Kay cosmetics. While these companies do sell products, the real money is made in recruiting others to sell, because recruiters get a cut of their recruit’s action. That’s the multi-level part. The problem with these schemes is that the market quickly reaches saturation, making it impossible for those lower on the tiers to make the kind of money promised.
In recent years, MLM has gone high-tech and is now all over the web. In the hair removal industry, there are two methods heavily promoted through MLM schemes: "hair inhibitors" and home-use epilators of questionable effectiveness, such as electric tweezers and transcutaneous hair removal. Both have sordid histories before the internet existed, and now they’ve just updated their age-old plans.
The US Postal Service has put up some information on MLM and work-at-home that describes how these hair removal products are marketed. As MLM schemes:
Legitimate distributorships and franchises can be profitable forms of business enterprise. Examples include fast-food franchises and new car dealerships, which offer great opportunities to those willing to invest substantial amounts of money and time to operate such businesses. Unfortunately, not all franchise opportunities are legitimate. Con artists seeking to capitalize on the franchise boom create their own "investment" opportunities, which they promote to inexperienced investors.
Be wary if the promoter is more interested in selling the distributorship or franchise than in marketing a product or service. Also, if you are not encouraged or allowed to contact other investors to ask about their experience and results with the promotion, think twice about investing. Your local Better Business Bureau or the Consumer Affairs Branch of your State Attorney General’s Office may have information on the reputation of the promoter of any distributorship or franchise operation you are considering investing in. You may also wish to check with the newspaper or magazine where you saw the promoter’s advertisement to see if there are any complaints against the promoter.
As home-based business opportunities
Some work-at-home schemes don’t really offer work in the home, but sell ideas for setting up home businesses. Other schemes require you to raise animals. Many schemes require you to produce items, such as sewing baby booties or aprons, making Christmas wreaths or toys, or fabricating other specialty products. You are not told that you will have to sell these items yourself and that there is generally little or no market for them. The promoters of such schemes are only interested in selling you something–that is, the ideas, animals, or materials you need to start your business.
Mike Jones sells selling
"Mike Jones" is the name used by the author of a number of widely-disseminated articles on internet marketing and deluging the web with direct-response web-based selling. He is affiliated with Internet Marketing Challenge and The High Achievers Journal ezine. He is also involved in setting up boilerplate sites for distributors and affiliates in numerous business schemes beyond hair removal.
Mike Jones’ newest scheme: phone sales
After getting his feet wet with hair removal schemes, it appears that Mike Jones has moved to the more lucrative world of phone and internet service. He’s currently involved in a number of phone schemes through Cognigen, who began an aggressive affiliate program recently. These sorts of affiliate programs can often lead to "rogue affiliates" who will do anything and everything to close a sale, even if the tactics are not approved of by a company. That’s why few legitimate companies ever being programs like these. The potential for abuse is too high, and they are usually only undertaken when a company is looking for a fast cash infusion. Below are a few of the communication service companies for whom "Mike Jones" is an affiliate under the code name fly2hi:
all-phone-services.com ("Mike Jones’" gateway for hard-sell phone and internet service)
USATel
Cognigenpc.com NextDay Network
Cognisurf
Metrocall/Vocall via moneysaver.net (Cognigen Networks)
Cogniconference.com (CST?Cognigen Switching Technologies)
Cognicall.com
Cognidial.com long distance
cognibox.com voice messaging
Pagenet/Paging Network, Inc. via pagenetagent.com
Speakeasy,net broadband
extreme-programming web hosting and mirroring
lowestdomainrates.com
warpspeedhosting.net
kallback.com/ kall8
MLMthatworks.com
faxaway.com
ld.net
unitedwayshopsaveandgive.com
Mike Jones boilerplate examples
Boilerplates are ready-made web templates you can buy from someone and just plug in the appropriate company names. Mike Jones offers these for affiliates as ready-made home business opportunities for generating a "passive revenue stream." In other words, money for nothing, supposedly. Anyone who has worked for a legitimate franchise can tell you that it takes a big commitment of time and money to make one of these work. People selling affiliate programs are not about the product sold, but the revenue from convincing others to join the affiliate program.
Below are screen shots from two sites affiliated with "Mike Jones." Note that the woman praising "Mike Jones" appears in both sites, even though one depicts her as a resident of Arkansas, and the other as a resident of Pennsylvania.
Affiliate programs like Excel, ACN, Fortune Hi-Tech are competitors with Cognigen. For example of Cognigen boilerplate, check out:
then visit any of the sites below
Whether it’s phone service or hair removal, Mike Jones is going to sell it to you however he can. I don’t know about the phone service, but I can say that the hair removal product and sales tactics used by about-hair-removal.com add up to something consumers should avoid.
Conclusion
About-hair removal.com is to be commended for making several changes that make the site less misleading. They are also to be commended for distancing themselves from the very sleaziest of the online hair removal quacks. However, I still take issue with promoting the Kalo/Nisim products, especially the completely unfounded claims of permanent results. Even the proven prescription products can’t do that. It’s the clearest evidence that these guys are nothing better than modern-day snake-oil salesmen who put sales above the truth.
As nice and friendly as the Kalo/Nisim people are, they are selling a product based on health claims that have no published scientific proof. Their general niceness compared to their sleazy competitors does not excuse the fact that they are involved in quackery.