PET CORNER INTERNATIONAL: Scam or No Scam?

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• Perhaps checking out another siter and comments by m. lucas would bring
  some balance to this situation. M. Lucas is a very successful Pet Corner distributor and goes into some detail as to why he is successful and also why he chose to become a distributor with Pet Corner.

• I bought this dealership and could not get the product sold. The company is just interested in selling you the inventory for a one shot deal. The price point is to high. The margin for the pet retailer is only about 27% if you average what is cost for all the products. Even if it were 30% the pet industry excluding pet food works on 50 to 60 % on all the toys and cloths from China. They are not interested in consignment at 30%. I lost 18,000 on this company. Ask them about other distributers that are succesfull they give you only two that give you the same answer. I offered my entire inventory to one of them for 50% off my cost. You would think they would jump at it. Never heard from either one of them.
  What company do you know of that will not let you promote your product on a website, Yelp or linkedin ? You would think they would have a distributership in New York the most densenly pupulated place on the planet. Ask the for names of distributership and they will only give you two with the same success story. do not invest a dime into this company.

• Stay away from Pet corner International. Unscupulious at best. Ask them for 10 dealers you can talk to. Ask them where are the stores that the product is sold at call the stores and see if it sells. Why wont they give you the names of 10 dealers that you can speak to or the stores that carry the product ? They say they are an international company there brochures say they advertise on TV. No one has heard of this company. After you buy the inventory you will get 1 or 2 calls at best. the product does not sell at 19.95 I have 16,000 dollars of Inventory I offered to other dealers for 50% off never heard a word from them. I am not sure they exist, When I spoke to them I was very suspicious whent hey said how well they were doing. This company by all means is not transparent. Do not send them a check Buyer Beware !

• Don't even go near these guys. They are out to sell inventory. Ask them for at least 8 sucessfull dealers that are selling 90 bottles a month to one account. You will never get that information Ask them who the owners are. This is by all means not a transparent company. Dealers have been sold thousands of dollars of inventory that does not sell. They tell you what you want to hear. They are so evasive and slick, do not send them a check unlless you go to at least 20 pet stores, you will find out even on consignment the margin is to low at 30%. They sell all there items at a 50 to 60 % margin. They are not interested in taking up space for 30%. Same item on the market now for 9.95 STAY AWAY FROM PET CORNER INTERNATIONAL.

• PCI representatives have proven to be deceptive and unscrupulous. Actually, to be blunt...they are thieves! I have secured legal representation for two reasons.
  1. I wanted to build a distributorship where I reside in Lake County, IL, but the PCI distributorship sales rep, Bob Lambert told me they wouldn't set up a distributorship in this area because it doesn't meet their "recommended demographic profile". However, he said that if I purchased a dealership in Kane County I would be free to pursue accounts in Lake County. I purchased my distributorship in July, 2011. In October, while at a local dog event I discovered PCI had already sold a distributorship in March, 2011 covering most of Lake County which means I am in fact not allowed to pursue accounts where I had intended to do so. This of course made me furious.
  2. I purchased the highest level distributorship requiring their account specialist to set up 16 accounts in Kane County, IL. He only set up 9 accounts and NONE were located in Kane County. Four were scattered throughout the northwest Chicago suburbs and the other five were set up in McHenry County. They have been unwilling to offer me an acceptable territory in closer proximity to where I live in Lake County and in fact have tried to interest me in a very undesireable territory further into the city.
  When I voiced my dissatisfaction with Bob Lambert he acted offended that I would suggest that he is a liar (I never actually used that word, but he obviously knew my compaint was legitimate), he read me the riot act and hung up on me before I could even respond. In my over 25 years working in health care and senior living operations and marketing, I NEVER treated a customer so horribly. I am confident there is a special place in hell for him!
  PCI is a scam!! The only acceptable resolution to this mess for me is PCI refunding me for all my costs associated with setting up this business. We took on a large, international vacation club 3 years ago for deceptive practices and won. There is no way we will walk away from this without either recovering our costs or at least seeing them shut down so nobody else will have to go through what I have been put through.

• Bob lambert is the owner an Old transpalanted New Yorker. That sounds like a Kosher Deli Manager. He and his Staff are most dishonest people you could imagine. They are Thieves. Do not get involved with this company. They will not give you a list of succesfull dealers. The answer they will give you is that they are so busy they have no time to talk to anyone. They only give you 2 that will tell you how well they are doing. I offered them all my inventory for 50% off. You would think if they were doing so well they would jump on it. Never heard from them. Ted is the operations manager, he lies through his teeth, Ron Singer is the bait man that gets you in. They have a retail account specialist that looks like a has been cowboy. They have these endorsements and they market themselves as a ligitimate company. I lost 16k here I have it in storage. Anyone want it ? email me [redacted]

• Like most reporting there is a grain of truth in them, unfortunately they always
  tend to leave out the most important details and facts.
  PCI was very open to offering Patrick alternative territories but we were stopped
  from doing this by Patrick.
  Incidentally one of our distributors just expanded and in so doing purchased another distributorship and is developing into a larger territory.
  Why would someone do this unless they were succeeding, or perhaps they
  are just very, very lucky or maybe crazy.
  The next step will be for a few people to want to speak with this distributor, ostensibly about 'ideas', in reality it will be a nasty and negative call. Why would anyone in their right mind take that kind of call, unless of course they were crazy.
  Getting back to Patrick, we are still ready, willing and able to work things out with him, but the ball is in his court.

• My response to Jeff Kingman.....You trying to suggest a willingness to work with me by offering an alternative territory is a joke. You sound like you are having trouble grasping my complaint. Let me try to explain it to you again.
  I only purchased a PCI distributorship because Bob Lambert advised that although they would not set up a distributorship in Lake County for me due to Lake County not fitting the "recommended demographic profile" for an approved territory, I would be free to pursue accounts in areas where there is no distributorship present....in my case, Lake County. Had Bob Lambert been truthful and disclosed to me that they had just sold a distributorship in Lake County and that my being able to pursue business interests in Lake County wasn't possible, I would not have purchased a distributorship. Bob Lambert intentionally withheld this critical fact and gave me a false excuse why I couldn't set up a distributorship in Lake County in order to to get my buy-in. You can't see how that is deceptive? Really?
  At this point, there is no alternative you can offer that will enable me to pursue business opportunities in Lake County, so any "alternative terrirtory" would be unacceptable. Besides, why would I want to continue a business relationship with PCI after their representatives have proven to be dishonest and deceptive?
  Also, I never heard of Ron Singer until my attorney asked if I had any communication with him as he is the one who should've made sure I received the required Disclosure Document and my signed acknowledgement back in July which never happened. According to my attorney, that fact alone would make our agreement null and void.
  Finally, I have no confidence in the product either. We gave the hip and joint formula to our 7-year-old westie following the simple instructions and it made her horribly sick. She vomited what looked like her intestines. Fortunately, she got her appetite back and was okay after about 48 hours. I would never recommend PCI products to anyone.
  Oh, by the way, those nine accounts Don Dahling set up in October produced ZERO sales. Several of the convenience store owners said they' figured that the product's production date being so prominent on the bottles was a sales deterrent in addition to the high cost. One even said a customer asked why they were selling expired product assuming that the production date was actually an expiration date.
  My full time job is being a community relations director covering a wide territory for a senior living community. I am compiling a list of the pet related businesses in my territory and will call on them and alert them to the reaction our dog had to the hip and joint formula and to suggest they not stock PCI products in their establishments. I encounter pet owners every day and I make it a point to tell them about my experience with PCI. As a public relations specialist, I am quite capable of spreading the word & promoting the virtues, benefits, etc... of a service or product. I am equally capable of discrediting a poor product and a shady buiness operation as well.

• NOTE to Hammond B3......The two presumed "successful distributors" I spoke with were hand picked by Bob Lambert, a gentleman in the Virginia Beach area and a woman south of Indianapolis. I wanted to speak with someone in the Chicagoland area, but they didn't want me to talk to them for some reason. I'm wondering if these successful distributors are real or just personal contacts who are posing as such.
  You would think that PCI would encourage distributors in neighboring markets to network and be a resource to each other. The fact that they are very secretive and controlling about there distributorships is suspicious. Their claim that they do this because the distributors are just too busy to be bothered is B.S. Relationships like that could be vitally beneficial to your success (and their's!), so them discouraging it sounds fishy.
  When Bob Lambert told me in mid-July that the soonest they could send me a representative to set up my 16 accounts would be within 60 days. Being anxious to not have to wait that long to get my business up and running, I suggested that he let me accompany a rep while they are setting up accounts for another new distributor so I can see first hand their approach and strategy. Then I could come back home and get started without delay, but said absolutely not. I of course offered to do so at my own expense (travel), but he said no.
  It definitely does seem that they clearly operate with the intent to isolate distributors from each other because they don't want us comparing notes and plotting to expose them for being a fraudulent operation.

• Dont buy into Pet Corner, out right liars. Bob lambert is the owner. He is scamer. Do not send a check to these people. Read Below
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  Press Release
  COCONUT CREEK MAN PLEADS GUILTY TO MISUSE OF NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION SEAL
  January 27, 2012

  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

  Wifredo A. Ferrer, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida and Allison C. Lerner, Inspector General, National Science Foundation, announced that Edward F. Elliot, 67 of Coconut Creek, Florida, pled guilty yesterday afternoon in Federal District Court in West Palm Beach to charges of falsely making and forging the seal of the National Science Foundation, an agency of the United States, and knowingly using and affixing such fraudulently made and forged seals and facsimiles upon instruments, documents, and papers, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 506(a)(1) and (2).

  U.S. District Court Judge Daniel T. K. Hurley accepted the guilty plea, and set sentencing in the matter for April 12, 2012, in West Palm Beach, at 4:00 pm. The defendant faces a maximum statutory term of imprisonment of up to five years.

  According to court records and statements made during the hearing, from as early as December 2010, a Deerfield Beach-based company, Pet Corner International, LLC (PCI), at which the defendant served as Operations Manager under a series of false names, including Ted Godfrey and Ted Lambert, marketed distributorships to individuals interested in selling a line of pet supplements for dogs offered by PCI. On PCI’s website, and in various promotional manuals and brochures, the company asserted that its products were produced in a laboratory audited and inspected by the National Science Foundation. This fraudulent claim was buttressed by the use of the seal or logo of the Foundation on the site and in the promotional paperwork sent to potential and actual distributors. In court, the government indicated that at least 62 contracts were signed by distributors between December 2010 and June 2011, the period during which the false claims were publicized by PCI.

  According to court documents and statements made in court, Elliot used two fraudulent identities and was the individual principally responsible for preparing the promotional material referencing the Foundation.

  The National Science Foundation, an independent federal agency established by Congress in 1950, is variously mandated to promote the progress of science, and to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare. The agency meets this mission by funding approximately 20% of all federally supported basic research conducted by America’s colleges and universities with an annual budget of approximately $6.9 billion. The National Science Foundation neither tests consumer products, nor audits and inspects private laboratories.

  Mr. Ferrer commended the investigative efforts of the Special Agents of the National Science Foundation whose investigative efforts resulted in the charges in this case. The criminal case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Watts-FitzGerald.

  A copy of this press release may be found on the website of the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida at http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/fls. Related court documents and information may be found on the website of the District Court for the Southern District of Florida at http://www.flsd.uscourts.gov or on http://pacer.flsd.uscourts.gov.

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