In a story that must have people howling in the halls of Apple, Oracle and Google, a case study on Microsoft.com is unwittingly promoting a company which has been accused of operating a pyramid scheme targeting people in south-east Asia and Africa.

When GoldQuest International Ltd. upgraded to Microsoft Windows Server 2003 operating system and Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 it gained a robust, scalable, and easily managed Web application platform for its e-commerce business. The site’s improved availability is responsible for an annual revenue increase of US$10 million, and is saving GoldQuest US$82,000 in annual IT expenses—equivalent to a reduction in IT costs per dollar of sales of 25 percent.

This page on Microsoft’s website explains how Hong Kong-based GoldQuest International Ltd made big savings by moving to Windows Server 2003. The page proudly trumpets GoldQuest’s achievements and “500,000 active customers in 120 countries”.

“GoldQuest has grown into a ecommerce powerhouse, generating 70 per cent of its $200m annual turnover online,” the page gushes. Microsoft claims it has saved the company $82,000 a year in IT costs and helped it increase revenue by $10m a year.

The only trouble is, GoldQuest has been accused of operating a form of pyramid-scheme targeting gullible folk in some of the world’s poorest countries including Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Sudan, Bhutan, Iran and Tanzania.

The company, based in Hong Kong, sells “commemorative” gold and silver coins. But people are encouraged to gain commission by getting more people to sign up. If you can sell coins to two other people, who in turn must recruit two more, then you start receiving commission; ergo a pyramid.

As of this writing, the above link to the GoldQuest references on Microsoft.com was still live. To see how quickly the Redmond-based behemoth can respond click here.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 26th, 2005 at 11:45 pm by Insider and is filed under How Not To Succeed In Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.