Complaint Review: Red Bull North America/Creative Concepts Of America - Santa Monica California

In October 2005, my husband saw an advertisement by a company named Creative Concepts of America, offering a business opportunity to purchase Red Bull vending machines. He very carefully checked out this opportunity and even conversed with Robert Sorensen, the legal counsel for Red Bull, who told him that the only way to get Red Bull Vending machines was to go through Creative Concepts of America who had sole rights to sell the vending machines.

My husband used his teacher retirement to purchase five (5) machines. After many delays, he did finally receive the machines in January 2006. Although CCA had positive encouragement that the machines would be easy to place and that they should vend 20-25 vends a day on average. My husband has been in vending for over 10 years and understands that this is in no way a guarantee of how many vends a machine would give. He ran into obstacle after obstacle trying to place the machines "we have a sole agreement with Coke, Pepsi", etc. He was able to place the machines at some hotels, a bowling alley, a commercial college, etc. However, the machines only averaged about 1 vend a day. In April of 2006, Red Bull canceled their contract with CCA. CCA then offered to buy back the machines at a great loss. My husband arranged to ship the machines back to CCA (CCA was to pay for half of the shipping, but they were paying the shipping up front). CCA was to issue him a check for $5000.00 payable within 24 hours from the receipt and inspection of the machines. The remaining balance was to be paid in equal payments of $200.00 per month per machine. The machines were received by CCA by the May 12, 2006 deadline that was called for in the buy back agreement. Red Bull had sent a letter saying that they "would entertain a buy back" but they would not commit to anything until after the May 12 deadline that CCA had given on their buy back. After many phone calls and a runaround, CCA finally wired $3000.00 to our bank account on or about June 8 or June 9, 2006. This was nearly a month after they were supposed to send us $5000.00. Shortly after this, we were not able to reach anyone at CCA by phone. On June 22, 2006 we finally faxed a letter to them asking what was going on...no calls returned, could not even get a "live" operator.

On June 29, 2006 we received an email from CCA stating that they were in the first stage of bankruptcy!!! There were hundreds of people all across the USA who had purchased these machines and a lot who "sold" them back to CCA and now they were going to file bankruptcy six weeks after they received the machines back? We along with hundreds of others filed police reports with the Ft Lauderdale Police Department (where CCA was located). The police report states this was "theft by deception". The FBI, the Secret Service and numerous other government agencies have been involved in this case.

Red Bull is denying all responsibility for this situation. They told the BBB that they had a "hands off relationship" with CCA. I have a copy of their redacted contract with CCA and it looks to me like they were supposed to have a pretty tight reign on CCA. I received an email this evening from Ilene Eskenazi, Esq who states she is general counsel for Red Bull still denying any responsibility for

the deception that Red Bull gave in telling prospective vendors that CCA was reputable and that to get Red Bull vendors, one had to go through CCA as they had sole rights to sell the machines. In this email, she refers to the vendors as

"Creative Concepts Vending Machines". The machines have the name of Red Bull on them, not Creative Concepts.

Hundreds of people have lost their life savings due to being mislead by Red Bull North America. One lady was a young widow who's husband had died suddenly leaving her with 4-5 children. She used life insurance money to purchase machines thinking she would be able to support her family. She did not even receive all the machines that she paid for.

I would think any reputable company would want to do whatever to keep their good name in the business world. Red Bull refuses to reach any type of amicable

conclusion to this matter.

Buggdbyndbelief

Roscoe, Texas

U.S.A.