[...] Ambit Energy Ignite Energy [...]

[...] has lost some of its luster as many have tried and been burned by pyramid schemes such as the Ambit Energy Company opportunity. By the way, “The Office” show starts new episodes this Thursday, April 10 [...]

Going with Ambit was the worst mistake I ever made! I was lured with cheap rates of 10 cents and I didnt hestitate, especially since I reside in one of the hottest areas of Texas. My rate is now at 16 cents after only 3 months, its a robbery.

I agree with Susan. I signed up BOTH of our houses with ambit last May of 2007, and enjoyed only paying 12.99 for a year. Glad I did that instead of paying 5-600@month in summer per house! Will stay with Ambit as I can get the best cost of anyone else I have seen. And Ambit IS NOT A PYRAMID!!! Those are illegal! MLM is much different than a pyramid. Amway used to run off a pyramid structure. Don’t know and don’t care if they still do.
But, if you want to spend extra money for your electric, then go ahead and sign up with someone else. If you want to save money on your electric, then take a serious look at Ambit. They will have the lower prices you can find anywhere in this higher-priced market. Savings may not be as great as they were last year, or the year before that, but you can still save moneywith Ambit. Check it out!

We have been a customer with Ambit Energy for a few months now. I did my research before we signed up and I was very impressed:) I love saving money and I am! Like, if I see a gas station selling gas for $3.69 a gallon and next door another gas station is selling gas for $3.64, you bet I’m filling up at the gas station for $3.64, am I right?! As a customer, I like the fact that this company is part of the better business bureau, Shell Energy partnered up with this company, they are licensed to guarantee me savings or else they would lose their license from the state. Also, since we believe in “Being Green” these days, they also offer Green-ecertified plans to reduce the environmental impact of the energy we use. I think if my kids future in the world they will live in. I love the free hotel stay thanks to Ambit Energy, we’re planning our next trip to Hawaii! I signed up 5 of my family members already so that I can go on a free cruise with my hubby! I do this with my credit cards, build up points:) It’s your choice if you want to save money or not. It’s America and a great country we live in, freedom of choice and big dreams shows great results! Look at those other counties, who sell oil to us. They make money out of us! I say keep our money in the USA! So people be smart, do your research about the company and know the facts. These days a lot of ppl put blame on companies that they have no control over the customer’s action/decisions. If they pay month to month or miss a payment, then it’s not the companies fault, it’s your fault. Pay your bills on time people!

OH, AND BY THE WAY I SENT MY BILL ON TIME 5 DAYS BEFORE THE DUE DATE FROM HOU. TO DALLAS AND THEIR TRYING TO TELL ME THAT THEY DIDN’T RECEIVE IT UNTIL 15 DAYS LATER? YEA RIGHT! 15 DAYS IS LIKE SENDING SOMETHING TO CHINA!! SO BEFORE YOU TELL PEOPLE THAT ITS THEIR FAULTS FOR NOT PAYING THEIR BILL ON TIME MAYBE YOU SHOULD TELL AMBIT TO BE MORE SUFFICIENT IN RECEIVING PAYMENTS AND POSTING THEM!!!! AFTER ALL, WE THE CONSUMER DON’T HAVE ANY CONTROL OVER THE ELECTRIC COMPANIES ACTIONS/DECISIONS EITHER, AS YOU CAN SEE IN MY EXPERIENCE WITH AMBIT.

I assure you I don’t work for the competition. I WILL tell you that I WILL NOT have anything to do with any company that structures their sales like a pyramid game. Wake up! Pyramids are rip off scams.

It’s difficult to tell who’s lying, but throwing around 8th grade words never made the case stronger in the long run. Grow up – state your case – and move on. Nothing to see here folks . . .

I have not been able to get anyone on the phone with Ambit. This company is crap. Yes, they price gouge. I’m paying 18.8/kwh, whenever just 2 months ago it was 14.4. Tell me how that is NOT price gouging?
Anyhow, I have tried over and over calling these people and end up sitting on hold for 30 minutes after going through the automated system. WTH is up with that?

This is the best entry on this entire site concerning pyramids. I consider this the Holy Grail of pyramids. No one has disputed this entry.

A pyramid scheme is a fraudulent system of making money which requires an endless stream of recruits for success. Recruits (a) give money to recruiters and (b) enlist fresh recruits to give them money.

A pyramid scheme is called a pyramid scheme because of the shape of a pyramid: a three dimensional triangle. If a pyramid were started by a human being at the top with just 10 people beneath him, and 100 beneath them, and 1000 beneath them, etc., the pyramid would involve everyone on earth in just ten layers of people with one con man on top. The human pyramid would be about 60 feet high and the bottom layer would have more than 4.5 billion people!

A diagram might help see this:

1
10
100
1,000
10,000
100,000
1,000,000
10,000,000
100,000,000
1,000,000,000
10,000,000,000
Thus, in very short order, 10 recruiting 10 and so on would reach 10 billion, well in excess of the earth’s population. If the entire population of earth were 5 billion and we all got involved in a pyramid scheme, the bottom layer would consist of about 90 percent of the planet, i.e., about 4.5 billion people. Thus, for 500 million people to be WINNERS, 4.5 billion must be LOSERS.

In a straightforward pyramid scheme, a recruit is asked to give a sum of money, say $100, to a recruiter. The new recruit then enlists, say, 10 more recruits, to give up $100 each. In the simplest example, the recruiter keeps all the money he gets from his recruits. In our example, each recruit gives up $100 in exchange for $900 ($100 from each of his 10 recruits minus the $100 he gave his own recruiter). In order for no one to lose money, the recruiting must go on forever. On a planet with a limited number of people, even if the planet is as large as Earth and has almost 6 billion potential recruits, one runs out of new recruits rather quickly.

[...] other MLM electric companies in Texas are, Affordable Energy, Ambit Energy, and Zurvita [...]

Hi everyone,

I can understand how some are angry at Ambit while others like Ambit.
I guess it depends on several factors. If Ambit is like most start up companies, their customer service is lagging because they never expected such rapid growth over a short period of time.

Over the past 5 days, I have researched and located several who are
in Ambit as Consultants. The contact info was not valid for most, none
that I was able to call because if I found their phone number they would not talk to me about Ambit and the one person I did locate that I was able to talk to on the phone had stopped promoting Ambit due to a lot of work and not much income.

This is his progress with Ambit:
Joined Ambit Jan. 18 2008.

Mar 8, 2008
57 consultants and 120 customers.

Note: none of his customers are in Illinois. They are in Texas and New York. Illinois had not opened yet.

Mar 10, 2008
Now has 60 consultants and 124 customers

Apr 29, 2008
108 consultants and 226 customers

May 31, 2008
145 consultants and 335 customers – he said about $600/month

He was off to a good start as far as I can tell but he said it was a lot more work than Ambit leads you to believe.

I don’t want to judge Ambit but none of those I tried to contact were
still working the Ambit opportunity after 3 – 6 months of building a decent start.

I’m not knocking Ambit. I don’t know anything about them personally. But I do see a lot more dissatisfied people than happy people when it comes to Ambit.

I have checked Ambit out. They are legit from a legal standpoint. After looking over both Ambit and Affordable Energy, Affordable Energy is the winner hands down. Ambit may have expanded beyond Texas faster than Ignite or Affordable Energy but both Ignite and Ambit seem to be more of a competition between ex-Excel Top Dogs than a business their Consultants can trust.

In my search, (I wish I had saved the link) a report from an independent source showed Ambit slipping backwards and losing ground in the Texas energy market. If Ambit is treating customers and apparently Consultants the way that is described on this forum, Ambit
will need to regroup or get left behind. Also, once Ambit receives a certain number of price gouging complaints, the atty. general will step in and it can get very ugly then and rob all their Consultants of the income it took them months to build.

I also saw people that had been waiting months for Ambit to switch them. With Affordable Energy, its easy. Just fill out the online application and you are switched. With Ambit, the Consultant needs to
acquire the application and take care of it.

I have researched the BIG 3 – Ignite, Ambit and Affordable Energy. Both Ignite and Ambit have too many internal struggles both within each company and between the two companies themselves for me to get involved with either. Their one-ups-manship attitudes toward each other seems to blind their business sense or else the problems mentioned on this forum by both customers and Consultants would be minimal.

As for Affordable Energy, I have found them to be a standard company with no back stabbing to a competitor company. They do have some issues which is to be expected with any start up company experiencing rapid growth. However, AE is increasing their customer service abilities as they grow.

I had my finger on my mouse almost ready to click to join Ambit when I heard about how many were unhappy with Ambit. I was interested because I can see how being at the forefront of Ambit (or any energy
company) when it moves into a new territory is where you want to be.

Based on my finding, Affordable Energy is poised to surpass both Ignite and Ambit simply because AE is a traditional business focused on building its business and not focused on a competitor’s growth or what a competitor is doing.

In regard to customer and Consultant complaints, I haven’t seen but a couple of minor complaints about AE. I haven’t seen any complaints from their Consultants. This is not to say there aren’t any. I’m only saying that whatever the complaints are, the complaints are not significant enough to make their customers and Consultants angry enough to blast AE on these forums. And if AE was going to get blasted, it would be very apparent which is the case with Ambit.

As a note to those on the forum and anyone reading this forum thinking about joining one of these three Energy providers, I am interested in Affordable Energy after researching the TOP 3. I
was needing more information about AE so I called them to ask a few questions. The customer service person I talked to said my questions could be better answered by the President or their Marketing President. I was surprised when I answered my phone and the President of Affordable Energy was on the other end.

I’m not telling anyone which of the three Top companies to join or not join. I did my research just to satisfy my curiosity because this type of transformation of the energy industry is starting and can’t be stopped just as the transformation of the telecommunications industry happened and proceeded forward even with the monopoly the then current telecommunications companies had on the industry.

Once the Federal Govt. steps in and deregulates an industry, the deregulation moves forward regardless of who is standing in the way.

Though I am stating for the record that Affordable Energy stands out as a leader compared to Ignite and Ambit, there is money to be made.

I’ve been online for a few years and I’ve made around $800 a month but I’ve never hit the BIG TIME. The energy deregulation can take anyone that applies their self to it any where they want to go financially in life.

This is my point.

I don’t need to get involved with the he said-she said argument between any of the Top 3 companies. But I suggest you use it to your advantage.

Its similar to what Bill Gates did with Microsoft. Bill realized that the Big Dogs Apple and IBM were his competition in the home computer industry. He was smart enough to realize that instead of fighting it out with these two powerhouses, he could let them fight it out and no matter which one was the winner – he wins too!

So Bill let them fight it out. During this time, Bill focused on designing and creating a computer program that these two giants would need regardless of who won the battle of the home computer industry.
You see, no matter who makes the computer, the computer does not work without a command program to tell it what to do. Thus Microsoft was created and it worked out better than expected for Bill. Both Apple and IBM took their share of the market creating two income sources for Microsoft and the rest is history.

This is how you can use the Top 3 to build an income and you win no
matter what happens.

Build an income in two of them. Based on my research, Ambit is better than Ingnite but not by much so just take your pick. I suggest you choose Affordable Energy as your main program.

Start with one and add the second one once you get the first one up and running. For me, I might set a goal of $500/month before I added the second company. This way I can use the income from the first to quickly expand the second energy company unlike the first one where I had to pay for it out of my pocket.

You can distinguish between which energy provider a person is calling you about by using two different contact phone numbers. This way, you’ll know which energy company someone is calling you about by which of your two phone numbers they are calling to reach you.

As each company expands to other states, just expand with them. Your two phone numbers sort your customers so you know which of the two energy providers they are calling you about.

The advantage is, regardless of which one of them fail, you still have your income and you now promote just one energy provider. Unless a few months from now a new energy provider appears that is worth your time and effort. Also, by using this method and building an income in two energy companies, it is very possible you will end up with two incomes instead of one.

I wish anybody good luck with whatever company they decide to join.

At this time, I haven’t joined any energy provider. Ambit is here in New York but I’m not thrilled about them. Affordable Energy is my choice when I do join an energy provider but AE is not in New York yet. When I talked to the President on the phone, I was told AE is in the process of expanding to New York.

Any one in Affordable energy is welcome to contact me to discuss AE.
It will also give me a chance to decide who I would like to join under. Support is how incomes are built.

newtrend@yahoo.com

explainit: what an excellent research you made; it’s so such an accurate depiction of what this business is all about!

I joined Ambit about two months ago as a consultant. I’m one of the top producers at my current job and none of my skills have worked when it comes to convincing people to join with ambit. $429.99 start up fee is really a stretch and ridiculous – no matter how good of a persuader you are. I hate the fact that this money is used to distribute it to my up lines whom don’t give a flip about you. I have signed up some customers who used less than 500 kilowatts in a given billing cycle and they get hit with a fee of $10 when you consume less than 1000 kilowatts per month – what a handsome rip off. I have been contacted by these customers ( which happen to be friends of mine) to cancel service. Not only do they get hit with a $10 fee but as a consultant I also don’t get any residual from customers who use less than 500 kilowatts. I left ambit last week and have a big portfolio of prospects to enroll under Affordable Energy. Now I can sell residential and commercial from a local Houston company that will pay me around $4-6 per customer monthly residual as oppose to $.50 from Ambit. What an ideal company Affordable Energy is!!! I met face to face with the founder and he’s really looking out for you and me, and not keeping it all for himself. A $99 initial fee is the reasonable amount I was looking for to recruit and grow my organization.

Please contact me if you have any questions about my face to face meeting with the founder consultant at gilmer.svm@gmail.com

Onedeep,

With any electric provider you should always call your TDSP pole and wires company first and ask them for the recorded meter reading since they are the companies that read your electric meter. In the Dallas area it is Oncor electric delivery, in the Houston area it is Centerpoint. They can email you the exact kwh of usage.

Since the TDSP is the company that reads the meter they are the ones to call first. The data they send the retail electric provider is then put on your bill. If that data is wrong and the provider put it down on your bill as they received it the blame is on the TDSP company.

This could be easily resolved by calling your TDSP company and getting the usage data for the meter read dates on the bill you are having an issue with. You can then send this data over to Ambit Energy and end this problem a little quicker.

I would save all correspondence with Ambit Energy as when and if you file a complaint with the PUCT you will have evidence on what you tried to do to resolve the issue with your retail electric provider before complaining to the PUCT.

Chances are by sending the data over to Ambit Energy you can get this issue fixed right away. This is only my opinion and what I would do if I was in your situation.