To be loving finally having a MLM friend...?!

[WineAndTiramisu]

After reading so much on here about all the MLM shite, I've finally got someone on my Facebook who is doing some coffee weight loss thing, her posts are hilarious!

Anyone else keeping their MLM people on their feed just for the comedy value?

Neals Yard launches an MLM aspect to the business a few years ago, but it was well and truly established many years before that.

I do love the stuff, and having a consultant locally makes it easier to get now as the shop that sold it here stopped selling it some years earlier.

From my extensive, and I mean extensive research, the are three types of MLM sellers:

The new recruit, freshly brainwashed, absolutely convinced they have found a way to reach finial freedom and genuinely want to help people. Usually to help people find paid work around their children, and starting to get more frequently, something to help manage their illnesses. They are sucked in, at least a few hundred pounds invested and are desperate for sales.

Type two is someone who has realised they might have been scammed, but they are skint, have lost at least a few hundred quid, sometimes thousands, typically a single mum with a child at least one child under 4, and just need to make their money back. These are the people desperate to recruit. They are only half convinced of the scam so don't find it too unethical to recruit more people.

The third. The fucking uplines, the very term indicates it's a pyramid scheme. They go out and knowingly recruit women who they know will not be successful. (Any one working on MLM knows the sucess rate is 93-99%, and only a further smaller fraction is actually earning a full time salary, let alone making millions) These are the enablers and routinely explore people for their own finial gain. Yes people make few quid a month. BUT as these figures are taken from income statements the companies produce, they don't include costs to the distributor or "IBO", like business cards or stall hire. So on paper you could earn extra money, but what about costs?

Also do you tell tax credits your running a business now and are projected to earn thousands by month 3.. no you don't...

So who is paying for all this madness? The poor is paying the biggest premium...

Does anyone remember when the paper hearts were being sold - all you got was a piece of paper with a heart drawn on it

I've got a friend who has recently come out of her second abusive relationship, and unsurprisingly suffers from a variety of mental health issues, and very low self esteem.
She's got herself involved with Juice Plus, and is now trying to get all her friends involved.
A couple have bought from her, but the product is essentially shite - you do lose weight, but only if you "combine" their super duper wonder capsules with a calorie controlled diet and cut out basically everything that makes you fat.
It's ridiculously expensive as well.
I have told her I can't buy it because I'm allergic to some of the ingredients- but dubious but I needed a quick excuse.
It's a nightmare trying to be supportive when she is insistent on trying to push this crap on to you. I know she's short on cash too because dickhead ex is holding back on child support so I want to support her, but not like this. I'm worried she's vulnerable and that for some people these schemes are actually dangerous.

WineSlob my friend is EXACTLY as you describe. And I met her upline at a party she organised. It was a Juice Plus party, you can only imagine the shits and giggles.....
She was the whole package, designer clothes, flash car, bragging about her holidays in Barbados, all paid for by this wonder product, apparently....
She was incredibly charming and friendly, but made me feel quite uncomfortable, she was very in your face, really annoying.

FizzyCherry - that's a horrible situation, it's a shame she doesn't realise she'll probably lose money

I had a woman I had never met before in my life, try to recruit me to one of these things in the toilets of a fucking motorway service station once.

How desperate are they?? I was washing my hands after doing a wee and she was trying to get me to join up to her amazing scheme.

fizzy if I met you in real life and told you about my 9-5 job, declared my income and bonuses and went on to tell you about all of the amazing stuff I have bought, Andy the three holidays I have taken this year. You would think I was a cunt right?

But apparently this is normal, and often falsified by MLMs to recruit you. I feel they have a flash car, it's leased by the company and if they don't meet sales targets it gets taken away.. so of course they will do everything's they can to get you to join their team..

Sorry so many typos! Angry response!! Hopefully you get my gist!

Lost my friend of 18 years to younique. I criticised it after trying to support her but finding it all a load of shit. Her fb was nothing but make up crap and about her y sisters. Unceremoniously dumped from her life after I said it wasn't a business.

I get married this summer but decided not to invite her. She's been brainwashed and this is just the last in a long line of various fascinations since she stopped working. Her first mlm but I've lost her to it.

I've got 3!!

Two younique and one forever living.

It's tedious. But luckily they make their own party pages, add me, and I just remove myself and then tick the box that said prevent further adds to this group

Just so people know up thread when I said sucess rate is 93-99% I meant failure rate! I reported my own comments and asked for it to be edited.

I had a juice plus one but got shot of him when he started insinuating that it was 'curing' his daughter who has special needs.

He was senior management in retail, jacked it in to flog juice plus but is now back at the same company albeit as a minimum wage shop floor worker.

I dread to think how much money he's lost, I've heard rumours that he remortgaged the family home to cover his losses.

It's the best my OH can do to have a shower in the morning and he only wears aftershave on a night out, he's more of a Lynx Africa kinda guy. But his cousin added him to her Younique selling page.
He merely commented "What in God's name is this shit, and why do you expect me to buy it?", assuming his cousin would see the funny side.
She didn't.
She blocked him on FB and he got a load of stick from her mum, his aunt, about trying to ruin her daughter's business.
They can joke and banter about most things usually, but not this, it seems....

TheSecret that's awful just goes to prove how dangerous some of these schemes are. I really would like to hear from someone, anyone, who is making a decent living from doing this & still has friends

My old boss now does it cos she's a 'yummy mummy' . I'm waiting for her to try and recruit me. She's slowly started to like EVERY post I do

Friend of mine from uni tried to recruit me. She used to sell forever living and used to rave about the gels and shakes for weightless. Now she appears to have sacked it off and does slimmingworld and has dropped about 6 dress sizes (she looks amazing for it) makes me think that forevers weight loss crap doesn't work at all.

I guess people do (or did) make money from it, but I think you needed to be there at the start. I also don't think it's realistic unless you have a lot of female friends with a good income. The stuffs not even that cheap. You can't just tap the same 5 mates up for stuff every month.

I remember going to an AMWAY meeting - yonks ago, back when the dinosaurs were still alive. (To give you an idea HOW long ago, they were trumpeting about being one of the first Companies on the INFORMATION SUPER HIGHWAY. Never heard of it!!!) One of the pioneers of MLM. Myself & my brother sat through this load of old tripe, trying not to laugh. One lady with glasses was given a go at their "all purpose surface cleaner" It made everything gleam! She sat there for about 10 minutes trying to get the smears from her lenses, all the while exclaiming how utterly fabulous the product was.

The guy holding court was a diamond geezer (not a great guy, just "Diamond" level) & talked it up - of course - saying how much money he had made & how all we had to do was "Picture the dream!! To live the dream!!!" "Test drive cars! Try on expensive clothes!!"

We saw the guy in the car park as we were leaving & wet ourselves when we saw what an utterly shit car he was driving, right old banger. Clearly didn't want to take the Bentley out that night!

Only went to make up numbers, on the forced suggestion from a client twat aforesaid client "pictured" the dream by taking a speedboat out for a test drive. If I was that salesman I would have been utterly fecked off.

Now everyone who knows me, knows that I am a marketing dream. Tell me its's fabulous (hair stuff, make up, skin products) I'll get caught up in the hype... Until I try it for myself & realise it's snake oil. MLM though, I thought had died long ago.

Sorry - complete tangent, was the MLM thing that fired my synapses.

chips slimming world has some questionable practises too, after all it's not like the local meetings aren't run by the woman you see at the school gate and by run by a qualified dietician or anything...

You pay £25 a month to be weighed weekly, and to be told loads of shite.

But nothing about true nutition, such as ensuring you get enough carbs, protein and fats a day. Whilst making sure you are in a calorie deficit.

Instead they make their own convoluted system, and if it doesn't have a syn rating your not eating it..

SW Is a place o! But thats a different thread..it does have lots of similarities to MLM though!

*Sw is a pile of shit

I haven't done either, so not really qualified to comment - but everyone I know who has 'done' SW or Weight Watchers regained the weight they lost 'on plan'. This to me says it all. I've also heard a large aspect of the meetings (WW in particular) is to flog the merchandise.

misses point of thread

Does the diet coffee work at all? I think it must be a load of rubbish, but a FB friend raves about it with photos of decreasing stomachs everyday. My brain tells me it's crap but she's brainwashing me enough to wonder.

@WineSlob, I would normally raise a judgmental eyebrow at SW as well, but I think she's basically stopped shovelling large volumes of food down her throat and combined it with exercise.

Since SW relies on repeat visitors I doubt they care if it works. Probably makes more sense for you to stay fat. If your not overweight your not going to stay are you?

I have several,
Younique
Stella and dot
Acti labs
Herbalife
Coffee slimming bullshit
Occasional 'nail wrap' parties promoted by these people for friends etc
The hashtags make me cringe
#workingmybusiness....wtf does that even mean.....
I tolerate it because they are good friends and it's their personal pages and I don't want to lose contact with them and they are not pushy with me about it.
I support them in their business venture by staying friends with them and if something genuinely caught my eye for a good price makeup or jewellery wise I might buy it (not very likely I'm a bit of a high end ho). But they know not to harass me or I just blank them.
It's a shame the companies prey on people like this (young mums who just want to earn round kids etc )

I watched Betting on Zero last night, the documentary on Netflix about Herbalife. Terrifying stuff really, especially about them targeting the most vulnerable, and the amount of money people lose. Ironically, today on Facebook a Herbalife "nutrition club" has been launched in my area. Coincidence?? Or are they watching me through my smart tv...

Is Scentsy MLM too?