multi-level marketing Gimmicks

[Matt]

I am a tax professional and I see these scams several times a year. The are happy because they can write off a business trip to Anaheim and go to Disneyland. I try to explain that they still have to pay for it and it is only a deduction and not a dollar for dollar credit. I am surprised that they cannot see through the BS and they pay thousands of dollars in inventory and start up fees but moan when I cahrge them for the extra forms on their return. They are also very unorganized and have no clue about the tax laws. The people selling the programs offer incorrect advice.

^^ That's hilarious that they think they can deduct 100% of the expense.

 

[facePuncher7]

Man do I have some material to contribute once I'm at my PC.

 

[BEER]

Lol, I restructure mortgages for a living and saw Primerica on a borrowers tax returns today, she's made a grand total of about $200 since 2011 - I wonder what that breaks down to an hour?

I couldn't do it. This was years ago. My friend [at the time] had won a huge settlement after he got hit by a drunk driver while he was on his motorcycle. Multi-million dollars.

Someone sold him on Primerica as a way to continue income. He had so much faith in Primerica that he blew all of his money on shiny shit. His accident was about 10 years ago now, and the last I heard [about 3 years ago], he was broke and working at a 7-11. And still trying to sell people on that scam.

 

[erhnamdjinn]

So I received a text message from my long time college buddies and they invited me to a sort of get together at a hotel like a reunion with my other college friend

So after a few minutes of some chit chat about what we have been up to with our lives since leaving college, they started talking about MULTI- LEVEL MARKETING




At first I thought that he was just talking about his job and stuff but it seems they only invited me so they could sell their shit to me.

It is really annoying since I already know what they are up too and they are just looking for more investors to their "group".

They all sound like any other multi-level marketing agent like showing how good their lives are and how one of their colleagues got "rich".



After a few days my girlfriend told me that her high school friend did the same thing to her invited her to a party only to offered some partnership in some dubious Marketing scheme.

And just a few days ago another one of my colleagues from college who has never contact me since like 10 years ago suddenly sent me a PM in Facebook talking me into joining in Multi level marketing just of the bat.

kinda disrespectful since he just posted a short canned message to he probably sent to all his friends in Facebook and a link to their crappy website.

To his credit he is being honest with his intentions unlike some of those "friends" who invites you to a party just to sell you "things and stuff".

So I am wondering is this kind of thing prevalent where you live? I have cousin in who lives in SoCal and they have the same gimmicks liek they would even bring one person who got "rich" sort of as a testimony how could their business works.

Lmao I was about to make a topic on this, because ive been seeing so much mlm on my fb feed. Ts your in the Philippines right? Let me guess that business is Royale. Cant belive governments allow stuff like this to happen. Its basically pyramiding with products for sale.

 

[ShinkanPo]

Lmao I was about to make a topic on this, because ive been seeing so much mlm on my fb feed. Ts your in the Philippines right? Let me guess that business is Royale. Cant belive governments allow stuff like this to happen. Its basically pyramiding with products for sale.

Yeah I am in Manila I haven't heard of the company Royale but what my friend is talking about is a company affiliated with some Chinese investors it also has a Chinese sounding name.


I don't know if they are legit or a scam it seems all of this Multi-Marketing schemes are a scam anyway.

But weather a scam or not what annoys me is how they lure people into their "proposals" .

I am talking about supposedly close friends taking advantage of you and deceiving you and using your time for their own gain people now a days are more shameless than ever before.

 

[IIIIIIII]

yeah, that's messed up. friends shouldn't get involved in business together. if it doesn't work out, the friendship is destined to fall apart.

 

[ManiacTroll]

"At first I thought that he was just talking about his job and stuff but it seems they only invited me so they could sell their shit to me. "

This actually made me laugh out loud

Me too. Weird ass people.

 

[Damien Karras]

I remember meeting this cute girl at a coffee shop a few years ago. She walked in, I smiled at her, she smiled back, she sat at the table next to me, I initiated conversation, I added her on facebook and we agreed to meet up once more at the coffee shop a few days later.

So I get spiffy for a first date, wear that nice cologne, and when I arrive, I see she's already there with some tiny asian 20 year old kid (I was in my late twenties) with his laptop. She says hi to me and introduces me to her friend Tom. She then asks if I want to have a seat.

So Tom opens up his laptop and launches a pdf file about some cable and internet distribution company, but he barely talks about the product and instead goes straight into how I can help out my family save money while I make a ton of money. He then tells me Donald Trump tried to buy them out but the owners said no so that HAS to be a legit company.

Of course I know what it is, and I call him out on the MLM scheme. This kid literally never even heard of the term MLM or pyramid scheme so I had to explain it to him. Meanwhile the girl is just sitting next to us and listening in as though she was being trained. He tells me he's making X amount of money and travelling to Atlanta and California for business meetings all paid for by the company and bla bla bla. I kept saying I wasn't interested and after about a half hour of him not letting me be I raised my voice and told him I had no choice but to be impolite and ask that he leave me the fuck alone. He immediately closed his laptop. He tried to engage in small talk afterward but it was too awkward and he left.

The girl looked startled and as though she was afraid of me. I told her I was disappointed in her and that these schemes will burn her money supply dry. She would post these really generic motivational quotes and videos and after about a month I deleted her from my friends list.

MLM's are like a cancer. I don't care what anyone's anecdote of their personal experience is. If they made money, fine. But know that an exponential amount of others lost a shit ton of money and friends in the process.

 

[facePuncher7]

I've had quite a few encounters with companies like this.

I'm going to write a butt-load about my encounters too, because I hate these companies and the people that get involved with them, and this is a form of venting for me.

MLM ENCOUNTER #1
--------------------

Spoiler

I consider myself fortunate to have encountered this kind of thing early in my life, not that I ever felt under threat of being deceived into a scheme of sorts, but just being made aware of its existence and seeing what desperate people will believe has been helpful.

My older brother got convinced to buy into Amway by a friend of his when I was still a teenager and he was maybe 23-24.
The friend had inherited a small fortune (we estimate $1.5-2mil) after his father passed and decided that the best thing to do was to purchase a massive amount of Amway crap, novelty status items and to hold extravagant functions to pitch the idea to people.
I was in the privileged position to watch my brother, his friend and several others gradually go broke whilst making outrageous claims about their earnings and how monumental (emphasis on the MENTAL) their business was becoming.

Bro's friend is now completely broke, works in a fish and chip shop and lives in his mothers house with his slum rat girlfriend at the tender age of 35.

MLM ENCOUNTER #2
-------------------

Spoiler

This one actually saddened me deeply.

A friend of mine in highschool lived with his father and they ran a painting business together.
It was clear that they worked hard, didn't have much but were trying hard to make things better and were very good, genuine people.

At some point someone must have gotten into the fathers ear because he started telling me how the future of painting was going to be glow in the dark paint. The main use for it was to paint the ceilings of childrens rooms with stars and moons etc, although the pitch involved all kinds of claims such as the patterns of objects in the paintings having remedial qualities that helped troublesome children sleep better.

I started to hear all the same talk, "partners", "never work again" and all that jazz.

Watched him send himself broke before I moved away, apparently he had to take out a loan for the buy in, which included enough gear to get 5 teams up and running. Ended up with no partners, no actual sales and a spare room of his house just full of useless tins of glow in the dark paint.

I couldn't tell you what shape the family is in post-MLM, and I feel I might be happier not knowing.

MLM ENCOUNTER #3
-------------------

Spoiler

I put an ad out last year as a boxing coach, 1-on-1 sessions, basic stuff.

Got a bunch of replies, picked up 2 steady clients out of it, worth the effort for that but what else came with it was a slew of calls from various health food/product based MLM groups. They always called showing immediate interest in the boxing and then rather blunt segues to their products. Their over-enthusiasm and bluntness made them easy enough to spot for the most part and I would just hang up on them, but one did (shamefully) catch me out.

Got a call from a guy who said he was a professional footballer who also worked for Good Life (big gym franchise) and was interested in having a boxing coach come in to run some classes here and there, wanted to meet up for a chat.
Conveniently there was a fitness industry function on so I got an invite and said we could chat there.

What I turned up to seemed like a regular industry mingling event except the guy was 5'9 at most, couldn't have been more then 75-80kgs and looked nothing like a footballer, just a brittle little man, and he eventually got around to saying he had a Good Life membership but didn't actually work there.

After mingling with people for a bit everyone sat down for a presentation which ended up being a 20 minute spiel about HERBALIFE!
The whole thing was like a car crash, horrifying but I could not look away. People would take turns coming up to tell their story about becoming rich through this scheme which would then be followed by all of their peers clapping and cheering them on, which eventually convinced the more susceptible in the crowd to join in the excitement.

There was talk of new cars and boats and extensive holidays whilst "the money just kept rolling in".
At the end of the presentation there was a short bio/memorial/moment of silence for the Herbalife founder who had died (Googled on my phone while I was there, death by suicide).
I also managed to find out through Google that they had been forced to change structure a number of times to avoid being labelled a ponzy scheme, and the current head of the chain was on the run from the law for other reasons.

Anyway, talk wraps up and in unison each representative turns to the person/s they've invited and asks if they'd like to discuss a business offer with them.
I said yes, ended up in a room with the "footballer", 2 indian girls who had clearly been convinced and also an elderly man who looked like he got off at the wrong stop.

As soon as the door closed I started asking about the structure of the business.
The guy explained it loosely but seemed out of depth so I pushed - "Isn't that a pyramid scheme". He insisted it wasn't and drew my a diagram to explain, which I pointed out WAS A FUCKING PYRAMID.
I got a bit aggressive with him and blasted him for wasting my time and leading people on. I got more worked up then I meant to and finalized it with "No wonder the owner fucking killed himself!" and stormed out.

Anyway, Herbalife products are all sugar water and I am a man that needs protein, fuck them.

 

[ralphc1]

An old friend of mine got into one where they sold gold coins. Each person had to sell to 5 others who had to each sell to 5 more. I had to do the math for him to show him that every person in the city would have to buy in before he would make a dime.

 

[CC's left foot]

I had a friend do this to me. Needless to say I was fucking pissed. He lost most of his friends through those shenanigans.

 

[CC's left foot]

I was desperate for a summer job (18 in 1990) and got sucked into Selling Cutco Knifes. So ashamed, it embarrasses me to this day. I read the ad in the newspaper and showed up for the interview. Amazing! I was immediately hired and was training that day! Yay!

I distinctly remember the "partner" who happens to drop by at some point during the training. Acting like he was just returning from making a sale.

Trainer asks him, "Hey *****How did you do today?"

"Great, Sold $700 to my last customer. Going to make $200 in commissions. Too Easy! $1,000 so far this week and it's only Wednesday"

Wow, I thought. This is great!

To get started, I had to buy $150 worth of knives for a start up set... Sucker

I managed to harass my family and some of their friends for a few weeks until I gave up.

My grandparents bought a complete set. Seeing those Cutco knives in the their kitchen was like a badge of shame. I felt like Ralphie in the Christmas Story, wiser to the world and one step closer to being the cynic and skeptic I am today.

I never asked my Grandparents about those knives... they never said much about them. Grandma would sometimes comment how nice the knives were. A little part of me died each time.

Fortunately they were decent knives

ouch... I got suckered into coming to one of their "interviews" one time... once I found out it was selling knives I bounced.

 

[ShinkanPo]

I remember meeting this cute girl at a coffee shop a few years ago. She walked in, I smiled at her, she smiled back, she sat at the table next to me, I initiated conversation, I added her on facebook and we agreed to meet up once more at the coffee shop a few days later.

So I get spiffy for a first date, wear that nice cologne, and when I arrive, I see she's already there with some tiny asian 20 year old kid (I was in my late twenties) with his laptop. She says hi to me and introduces me to her friend Tom. She then asks if I want to have a seat.

So Tom opens up his laptop and launches a pdf file about some cable and internet distribution company, but he barely talks about the product and instead goes straight into how I can help out my family save money while I make a ton of money. He then tells me Donald Trump tried to buy them out but the owners said no so that HAS to be a legit company.

Of course I know what it is, and I call him out on the MLM scheme. This kid literally never even heard of the term MLM or pyramid scheme so I had to explain it to him. Meanwhile the girl is just sitting next to us and listening in as though she was being trained. He tells me he's making X amount of money and travelling to Atlanta and California for business meetings all paid for by the company and bla bla bla. I kept saying I wasn't interested and after about a half hour of him not letting me be I raised my voice and told him I had no choice but to be impolite and ask that he leave me the fuck alone. He immediately closed his laptop. He tried to engage in small talk afterward but it was too awkward and he left.

The girl looked startled and as though she was afraid of me. I told her I was disappointed in her and that these schemes will burn her money supply dry. She would post these really generic motivational quotes and videos and after about a month I deleted her from my friends list.

MLM's are like a cancer. I don't care what anyone's anecdote of their personal experience is. If they made money, fine. But know that an exponential amount of others lost a shit ton of money and friends in the process.

All them really sound the same when they are promoting their stuff yeah they are like cancer not only because of their scams its also about the culture they are promoting of potentially screwing your friends and family members either intentional or unintentional.


Aside from duping people they are also annoying and promotes the idea one can get rich without to much hardwork.

They imply as if working 8hours or more a day is bad.

No wonder a lot of people don't stay in one Job for more than a year this days.
and people can't keep businesses open.

 

[bcordova]

I can honestly say it tore my family apart. My dad got big into Amway. He actually gained some success. Success meaning he was speaking a lot in front of a lot of people for barely any money. It's basically a cult. They prey on poor people, which we were, so some people can get rich. My dad still to this day believes he will get rich without working his ass off.

 

[Hank The Tank]

A chick I used to be good friends with is promoting beach body shakeology all over facebook, it drives me crazy. She married a rich family and popped out a kid real fast, and posts on facebook like this "How would YOU like to earn money from HOME and support YOUR family!! Sign up for my beach body class today!!"

I get angry reading it, she has no back round or knowledge in nutrition or fitness and is acting like shes supporting her family when its total bullshit because her husbands family owns its own large car dealership and she just stays at home.

I should delete her, but I think I enjoy the anger sometimes, it reminds me of the stupid that exists.

oh and btw, cutco knives are dope. My real estate agent bought me some after I closed my first house, I love them, I would never pay full price for them though.

 

[ShinkanPo]

I've had quite a few encounters with companies like this.

I'm going to write a butt-load about my encounters too, because I hate these companies and the people that get involved with them, and this is a form of venting for me.









I started to hear all the same talk, "partners", "never work again" and all that jazz.

Nice post, that story about the Paint Job is really sad.

Base on the replies here it seems that exploiting a persons tendency to look for an easy way out is one of their tactics, and so it indirectly promotes laziness.


Their common catch lines, "Work 3hours a day" -"You can quit your dead end job.

To the point that they make it sound that having a real Job is bad.

 

[Damien Karras]

I used to work at a call center and you would have a bunch of people put themselves on "not ready" to answer their phones or they would be making phone calls during their breaks nonstop. Not to sound racist or anything, but they made up of 95% of the explosives at the work place.

Turns out they were all in MLM schemes and were running their "businesses" while at work. They obviously tried to keep things hush hush as they were not allowed to promote their business at the workplace. But I got close to one guy I worked with and told him about wanting to start investing and planning my finances. He told me he had a side gig and that this job was just temporary as he was planning on going full time as a financial planner within the next year. So I told him we should set up a meeting and we can go over things.

About a week later we meet at a restaurant and he brings his wife with him. We sit down and he immediately tries to recruit me. Actually the first thing he does is he asks me if I owned an infinite amount of money, what would I possess? I was like "uhh... a nice house, a wife and a few kids, a car, go on family trips..." For those who know me well, I am not a materialistic person at all and I don't care about money as long as I am living comfortably and enough to support a family, I am golden. Then he tells me "ok so be more specific. A house in the Hamptons? A lamborgini? Trips to Aruba and Fiji?" He then tells me he's going to be a billionaire one day and will have things like this, and that I can too which was his segue into..wait for it... Primerica.

Now this was my first introduction with MLM schemes as I had never heard about them before. So I was invited to a Primerica meeting. In walks in this guy with a preacher's aura and starts the "rah rah rah" chants. And then this other fat greasy looking guy walks in and starts talking about how much money he made this past week and how many people "signed up" to their financial services. So I go up to this guy after the meeting and I ask him how it works. I was genuinely interested in learning about financial planning like how mutual funds, RRSP's, stocks, etc. worked. He shrugs his shoulders and says "Pshhh I have no idea. All I do is I get them to sign and I hand it over to head office and their accountants do all the work. My job is to get them to sign and recruit more people"

That's when I knew it was a scheme. I would NEVER entrust ANYONE I didn't know with MY money. I am so glad I went to the meeting before signing anything. The only reason I didnt' sign any documents was because I wasn't sure if I wanted to "start my own business" or if I just wanted them to handle my finances. Both would have been a huge mistake.

I scowl at anyone I know who tries to lure me in their MLM's and I am not afraid to let them know what I think. Another lady I worked with tried to get involved with Monavie juice distribution claiming it is a miracle product. She even said it cured her arthritis in her knee and that it worked because of their patent which makes their acai juice different from everyone else's. The patent is... get this... the juice is made only minutes after the berry is picked. Wowwwwwwwww

Anyways, this happened not long after the guy tried to lure me into Primerica and so I was full on predator watch (At this point I had done a ton of research on the internet about MLM's and their predatory tactics so I was also quite primed). I ended up making her cry at work which I felt bad about afterward. It's like I destroyed her dreams or something. Her and her husband had invested a ton of money into it and she claimed they made a huge return but it was her husband who handled all the money so she really didn't know. I then found out they divorced a year later and they were about to declare bankruptcy.

 

[greygoose]

Hah, I got sucked into the Cutco thing too during one summer when I was 17. Felt like a dbag trying to pawn this shit off on friends and family. I quit after a couple of weeks, but I wound up gifting my set that I bought to my parents. Those scissors are pretty durable, you know, since cutting pennies is something we all do on a regular basis.

 

[ShinkanPo]

I used to work at a call center and you would have a bunch of people put themselves on "not ready" to answer their phones or they would be making phone calls during their breaks nonstop. Not to sound racist or anything, but they made up of 95% of the explosives at the work place.




I destroyed her dreams or something. Her and her husband had invested a ton of money into it and she claimed they made a huge return but it was her husband who handled all the money so she really didn't know. I then found out they divorced a year later and they were about to declare bankruptcy.

Here in my country some MLMs don't have a catchy corporate sounding name like Primerica.

Some claim they are a start up detergent brand or an importer of cheap cosmetic products.

And there are some which are really looney like selling herbal medicine claiming they can cure "AIDS"

 

[ElKarlo]

Wonder if getting into AMyway in the 80s or so was where it was at? Seems the upstream people are all from that era.

Not in Amway, and I think MLMs are crap. But at this point, it def is a crowded market, and 100% not worth getting into