Friend taking the piss with home business

[Magicnumbers]

A good friend is supported financially by DH and has recently decided to go into one of these multi level marketing beauty businesses. It's set her back quite a lot to buy all the products.

Suddenly her Facebook account is full of adverts and I have had the sales patter for these products every time we've met.

Keen to support her, I bought a couple of things. They were okay, but really expensive. I have politely declined to buy more but I still keep getting messages from her asking if I want anything more. She's done this will loads of friends in the area and she's so lovely but at least one person I know has shut off contact after a hard sell to recruit her too.

Now there are posts on Facebook with photos of her with her young DS on all these walks and out at clubs with hashtags and captions like "do what you love" "work from home" "would never miss this time with my boy" etc, right next to posts saying "who can help me reach my target this month? Just need two more sales of x product?". This goes to working parents who don't get to take their children to the same things she goes to with her boy because they are working- but she wants them to use their earnings to keep her in business, then posts (slightly smug) stuff like that.

To stop myself from getting more annoyed I have hidden her feed on Facebook, but (a) is she being unreasonable/insensitive and (b) should I try to say anything to her? Am I being crap in not supporting her more? She's my mate, I want her to do well, but this feels like the wrong way of going about keeping friends.

My SIL has just started with Arbonne
Hashtag crazy on Instagram, at least 10 or 15 of the things.
I had a look at the products and they are ridiculously overpriced. £17 for some baby body lotion!

I'm collecting links etc to send to her to try and educate her about MLMs....

Arbonne brought me out in a rash, was given a sample to try, now avoid the mum in question.

Do you include Avon in these? I have a good friend selling Avon, she's not the pushy type, am quite impressed with some of the things.

Avon sort of sits in a more grey area than the absolute straight forward pyramidy scams.
They are all an ill-advised way to try and make money. but Most of the really dodgy ones have their head office in Utah, and very strong links to the Mormon church.

This is a really interesting read. I had a franchise for 8 years. Nothing like the previous mentioned ones. But a lovely business that was flexible with my family & allowed me to earn decent money. We were encouraged to be successful by being the best at what we did & having dignity & integrity. I'm cringing to admit I did out the odd it's Monday & I'm working from home in my pj's post, but that was 10 years ago & I was the only one posting that then. Sadly I had to give up my business due to ill health but I'm better now & I work part time doing shifts to fit in with family life.

I have been appalled by how these people sell there products. I comment on a friend post & someone I have never met send me a friend request. I look on their page & I see what they are selling. They are all doing it because they are told to market that way.

I've managed to deflect most of the ploys to recruit me by saying, no thanks I've been self employed & employment is the way forward for me. I also say no thanks to the products simply by saying I've found what works with me so I'm going to stick with it. I'm also well aware that people either leave the company very quickly, don't manage to leave the full time job they were planning to do, or manage to alienate everyone. Now I'm off to read that post!

Anyone else remember the buy a paper heart mlm in about 2000. Thousands of people conned into buying a heart drawn on a bit of paper. You then had to sell them to friends, etc. You just could not get through to people not to risk their money.

I fucking abhor this whole MLM nonsense. Back when I was starting uni, my girlfriend at the time found herself being caught up in all of this via an old sixth form mate of hers.

I objected obviously but 1. the sheer level of optimism they continually manage to induce in fresh recruits is something else entirely, and 2. she wanted to pay me some form of rent for living in my house (despite me telling her that there wasn't a need), and those vultures managed to convince her this was the way to "get rich quick".

It was heartbreaking. She spent practically all of her part-time salary on these products/seminars/goodness knows what else, and tangible numbers aside, her whole life started to revolve around these new "friends" who constantly tried to get her to recruit me as well. We couldn't even go to Disneyland without the whole thing turning into some sort of thinly-veiled Facebook advert!

Worse still, when she wasn't getting any results, some gold-class twat actually had to audacity to tell her that it was all her fault and that she just wasn't dedicated enough. So what did she do? SHE QUIT BLOODY UNI TO DO THIS FULL TIME. I couldn't do a damn thing and it made me so incredibly sad to witness how destructive something like this can be.

Just frustrating, really.

MLM Is a modern day scourge and Facebook makes things ten times worse. We had a neighbour who did a variety of these in quick succession. We just paused her on Facebook and politely ignored her messages. She wasn't so pushy as to guilt trip us personally and eventually lost interest. She is now doing something marketting services to other businesses so is at least out our grill in this respect.

This is also a good read and sums up why i hate MLMs because they aren't only a con but they prey on the vulnerable
qz.com/1039331/mlms-like-avon-and-lularoe-are-sending-people-into-debt-and-psychological-crisis/?utm_source=atlfb

As others have described, I had a work acquaintance who started buying into these. Shelled out huge sums for various things. Arbonne, Younique. These companies take advantage of people with low self-esteem and in turn helps them alienate their friends. Sad situation with cult like appeal. Eventually many drift away from these companies. My acquaintance didn't want to hear our warnings. I was firm and never bought anything. Not sure what else I could do at the time.

The link up thread is the best read I've had in a long time!

Just returned home from a family gathering, I am the youngest sibling of five. Four brothers and me, I am 51 so not a baby by any means but I am feeling like one right now and I need a reality check.
I will try to be brief: my sil whom i get on well with when we see each other which is very infrequently has just told me that my mother who has been dead for 17 years thought at one point that I was gay. And had asked her what she thought. Please don't shoot me down,I don't give a hoot about what people are. My mother however meant this in a very derogatory and predictable way- not confirming to her idea of what a young woman should (mainly) look like. I'm really upset but I'm wondering if I am being unreasonable to be pissed if with her for being insensitive to tell me this after all these years..?

Ziggy65 Sorry to hear about your upsetting evening and the emotions it's, understandably, evoked. But you'll get a better response by starting your own thread.

Urgh. Remember women should "uplift, empower and validate each other" by selling mascara and lipstick. Never mind those of us who work hard and have worked hard to get to where we are. They're a woman with a catalogue, not business owners. My friend of years did this. I was deleted from her life because of my negativity apparently.

They're a cult. Plain and simple.

My friend does this.

She appears to be quite 'high up' with a gaggle of followers.

She's always being outgoing & vivacious & could sell ice to eskimos.

Claims she's enroute to her first million.

we're just supposed to ignore her INCREDIBLY rich family, trust fund & parental handouts

Earlier this year, She was at a recent significant event of ours & met some of our friends.

Geographically they are not close so wouldn't have met previously.

She has always been utterly charming & makes friends easily. I've always loved & admired this about her and naturally everyone enjoyed her entertaining company over the course of the event.

A short while after once all firmly requested as FB friends, She proceeded to message them all on FB asking them to come to an evening regarding it all. She was going to travel the 2hrs south to hold a session (just so happened to be in our area).

One of these friends of mine lives in the US & had only been able to attend our event as it coincided with a visit home.

Naturally they all messaged me saying they didn't want to go but didn't want to offend her etc......

I sent a breezy message along the lines of thanks for the invite, not really our thing & btw K lives in Florida!

Snippy reply back and been 'off' with me ever since.

This was a friendship spanning 30+yrs btw........

It's all rather sad

I've got friends that sell it all, JP, Younique, FL. One is a 'business fairy' @ Just For Tiny People

They are all intelligent, sensible women, I cannot see how they get sucked into this shit

We may know the same person! I barely use Facebook- just a way to stay in touch with friends from overseas. Then an old colleague's friend added me and my page is covered with pictures of whiter teeth and longer lashes. They then asked if they could use my Facebook page to grow their business by posting so others could see. I haven't responded. Pages and pages of The Beauty Lounge - which equates to some mascara and cellulite cream. If I now unfriend her, I'll offend her mother.

YANBU. I have a friend on FB who sells for an MLM. The constant "so #thankful I have the flexibility to work around spending time with my babies/sister/hamster etc" are so irritating. Especially when she's ignoring her kids to post half hour long live videos of her getting "made up" with them trying to get her attention in the background, or posting icky memes about how her company empowers women . She also kept it a secret from her DH for the first few months, as he could smell a scam wasn't that keen for her to get involved, and was asking us all not to tell him.
I got a message from her a few months ago asking if I fancied getting the kids together for a play date. I thought it was quite sweet and felt a bit guilty for seeing if we could postpone for a few weeks. A few days later, a bot friend of hers tags her in some photos on FB up on stage at one of their marketing events at the weekend. On the screen behind them was a table obviously suggesting ways to attract potential customers and one of the suggestions was "message someone to ask for a playdate". Exactly the time she'd contacted me . Needless to say, I didn't accept any future invites.

@crumbs1 you can just "unfollow" her so you can't see her posts but she won't get any notification that you've done it.
I did that with a friend who was flogging something - diet shakes. She lost a fair bit of weight but was also doing heAlthy dinners and working out 4x a week. Anyway she stopped flogging the stuff after about 6 months (I was still checking her page occasionally) so I went back and followed her

I love this 'en route to a million' stuff, when I'm down to my last few ££s in the bank before payday I'm still technically 'en route to a million' 😂😂

The paper hearts thing came in different guises but was often known as Women Empowering Women. It WAS an unveiled, pure and simple pyramid where you paid your £200 or whatever and once you'd signed up 8 people you'd get double the money back. I remember sitting at work with a pen and paper desperately trying to show a colleague why "investing" her money was such a bad deal. These types of schemes are now illegal in the U.K..

MLM is different as there is a product so they get around the "pyramid" aspect. But in other ways they are just the same - the people at the bottom and middle losing money, a few people at the top making money.

I think Avon and Phoenix Cards are different in that they aren't are focused on recruiting and the "build a team Hun" ethos. My mum did Avon way back, had her round, regular customers and the products don't cost the earth.

I can easily see how people get sucked into MLMs as they prey on women who don't really want to work when their kids are young and fall for the spam about making thousands sitting in the sofa. It's not until they're inside the scheme that they see it for what it is.

She's been told to make a list of every single person she has any contact with. Friends, family, school mums, even the dentist and hairdresser. You're on her list. She'll keep asking you until you very firmly tell her to remove your name from her 'who do I know' list. Just tell her very assertively that you don't buy products, you don't want your Dh to buy her products 'for you' (she'll message him at valentines/birthday/Christmas and say that you were looking at her stuff and really liked something), and you're not ever going to be in her team. There's so many other gullible people on her list that she won't have time to mess around chasing you about.

I can't understand how seemingly intelligent people fall for this crap. It's not like everyone doesn't roll their eyes skyward at the mention of foreveruniquealoelivingbabe MLMs yet school fairs are inundated with people trying to sell this crap. Their stalls are all deserted. I wonder why?

I have now unfollowed her, but there was someone on my FB like like this. Initially we became friends through a mutual friend. We went to her house and she did my eyebrows as she had her own salon. She then got into younique, I went along to a couple of events she held but I never brought anything. She gave me a free mascara, hoping that I would rave about it and became quite annoyed when I told her that I think my usual £7 Maybelline is better. She then started posting about how she is SO close to winning a cruise, if she could just sell those final 2 lip glosses etc... She then left younique, despite being so close to a cruise! She joined another company and again got close to a holiday and suddenly left and made a big announcement about going back to younique! She then set up her own business relating to weight loss, the final straw for me was when she posted a picture of some steamed veg and chicken, accompanied by all the hashtags about a dream body etc...I had to unfollow before I commented that she must have had 2 dinners that day as 3 hours previously I had seen her in nandos!