To be left broke and humiliated after an mlm

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I didn’t think I’d be rich but I am cringing at my Facebook ‘memories’ and pretty sure everyone was laughing at me behind my back.

What’s wrong with the Body Shop? There stuff is good

An "old" but nice, acquaintance texted me out of the blue. Having seen many of her motivational selling facebook posts, I was instantly suspicious but took her "how are you?" message at face value. It took 4 further messages before it came. But come it did. I inwardly grinned to myself and have consigned her to the "don't ever bother with again" bin.

A friend of mine did Arbonne beauty - I think that’s what it was called. Her posts were cringe but she’s out of it now. The latest one I’ve seen doing the rounds is the fake perfume one.

@WitchesGlove It's not really about the products themselves, I love Bodyshop products, its about the way they are trying to recruit women to sell for them, and when I mentioned Avon in my earlier post, they are deliberately targeting poor women and young mums, ie older pushy women in big cars driving around my estate, actually looking for women and girls to pressure them to try and sign them up.

I used to sell Virgin Vie make up via a party plan thing. I know now it was a mlm and I am so grateful it pre-dated social media. I was one of the lucky ones and did ultimately make money... but makes me cringe when I think of what a twat I must have been

diet coffee aloe vera stuff there is no end to it and social media ramps up the pressure. we have someone in our town does Body shop she has got a woman who owns a cafe to let her have demos etc in her place puts me right off going in as you know she will be round asking if you would like to see what she has for sale buy draw tickets etc. if i wanted Body shop stuff i would go to the shop not buy it when all i really want is a cup of coffee

Loads of people I know, mainly work colleagues, are doing this kind of thing. Tropic skincare seems to be the most popular one round here at the moment. I have been invited to at least a dozen FB groups. I either dont respond to the invite or join and then hide the posts as I am too much of a wimp to actually tell people that I fundamentally like what I actually think of all this crap. I've never bought anything though.

I have 1 or 2 on my fb.

What strikes me is the posts about ‘just placing last min orders now if anyone wants anything- such a busy month for orders!’ yet their page has been a constant stream of posts and raffles and games with absolutely no interaction, not even a single like on most of them.

One of the mums at school has recently had a baby and is now spamming me with Body Shop invites. I feel sorry for her because it doesn't appear to be successful, she is upping the ante, including her kids in product photos, keeps saying how amaaaazing the bath bombs etc are and seems desperate. Like a PP says, if I wanted a Body Shop product I would go straight to the shop. It is terrible how women with babies and young children are targeted and manipulated into selling this shite. The market must be oversaturated now, how many extended family members can you flog to?

Yes neonglow, that's what I mean when I say she's getting desperate. Loads of 'things are great' posts but no feedback or activity from any customers.

Is tropic skincare and make up an mlm as well?

@backaftera2yearbreak Yes!

An American woman who's in the same Facebook group for children with a disability added me as a friend after I commented on one of her posts. Ah that's nice I thought but soon discovered she's in an MLM. She's selling some fat blaster stuff and she posts 4/5 times a day saying about how great her life is now she works from home and she got paid early and she's being flown out to here and there for all these awards etc. To be fair to her she actually has lost weight and now enters body building competitions but I think that's probably more to do with the keto diet and going to the gym constantly.

I do wonder if she's really as happy as she says she is. Tbh I do sometimes think god that does sound ace but then I remember if she was really so successful at her business would she need to post all day every day on Facebook about it.

An example post from the other day:

'HAPPY HALLOWEEN 🎃

I mean....I’m just a tad bit FREAKING excited over here.

There is a once in a lifetime opportunity and it ends today...on one of my fav holidays! Christmas and Thanksgiving come first of course!

There was a time, a very short time where I thought opportunities would just come to us and we’d just have instant success. Looked so easy for everyone else.

Doesn’t work that way friends. I learned it really fast. You can have an opportunity right in front of you but if you don’t grab it and hold onto it you basically just say “NAH, I don’t like to be successful.”

LAST CHANCE. I know you have been curious!! Send me a massage or leave love below. Be the heroine of your own dang story. Don’t give anyone else the glory (unless it’s God) or let them be the reason you don’t take advantage of an opportunity.'

I have a friend who does body shop and I do buy off of her as she is cheaper than the shop or website but she has got into doing raffles especially for the Christmas advent calendar. So far she has probably done 6 or 7 of them and now she has started doing raffles for the gift sets.
She can’t be making any money on it apart from her commission from buying the stuff herself as if the calendar is £45 she sells 45 tickets at a pound each. I am getting to the stage I just skim past all her Facebook posts now as I have no interest in raffles for stuff I don’t want in the first place.

Just delete the posts you made from your FB account.

That's what I think too cheesy.
My workplace is fairly big but there are literally dozens of people all flogging the same stuff, and we are in quite a small semi rural town. I reckon it won't be too long before there are more sellers than buyers.
I realise the whole point of MLMs us that money is made from having downstream sellers and the fees they pay for their stock, but surely somebody, somewhere has to be buying at least some of the shite to make the model work? Not that I would shed any tears if all these companies collapsed but I do feel for vulnerable people who get sucked in basically because their day jobs don't pay the bills.

she has got into doing raffles

She needs a gambling licence for that. She won't have them. You are not allowed to run a lottery or raffle for non-charitable purposes without a licence. Bur the hunbots don't care. Anything to claw back some of the money they've lost.

No she doesn’t have a license. She does keep it all to her private body shop group so I could block but she is a nice person and I don’t want to hurt her feelings by pointing out all the raffles are just so irating.

Argh. A good friend, very smart woman had been selling this tropic stuff. I’ve only just clicked that’s what it is

What’s wrong with the Body Shop? There stuff is good

It's an exploitative way of using people to sell products. If you want to make money selling bodyshop products, get a job working for bodyshop which gives you entitlement to holiday pay, a pension etc.

When Bodyshop sets up a shop in a new area, they will look at the size of the local market and the competition.

However, the 'consultant' blurb for Bodyshop says "One of our Regional Managers had a turnover of more than £17million last year – the sky’s the limit. " No, the sky is not the limit. I'm not sure how the £17 million is calculated, but if somebody made £17 million last year, that means that the market could well be saturated.

Once you’ve registered you’ll be able to buy your Beauty Kit for £49 (worth over £220) containing our best selling products and business tools.

Presumably £220 is the retail price which covers the cost of employing staff and other overheads. Of course a retailer buying stock should pay much less, and £49 might be good value if you split the cost with your friends and just share out the products, but that isn't a business, it's just paying the wholesale price. As soon as you start trying to sell the product outside your immediate circle you are competing with the Body Shop website and shops and every other consultant. There is a finite number of people who want to buy Body Shop Products.

However, if Body Shop is like other MLMs, they aren't selling the product they are selling the dream of a business, and will keep pushing 'consultants' to buy more and more stock, regardless of whether it can be sold.

By the way, if any of these bots boast about having (what always seems to be) white Range Rovers, inferring they have been given them for excellent sales, they haven't - they are paid for monthly by the bot.

I've had a few friends do the younique and Bodyshop selling, I just ignore and wait for them to realise what a load of cobblers it is. Recently another friend has started up with Utility Warehouse, I'm not sure if it is an MLM but definitely thrives on pressuring friends and family to sign up, which earns the seller commission. There seems to be a fair amount of brainwashing going on with lots of motivational events to attend showing how amazingly successful you can become doing it. I'm steering well clear. I'd be interested in others' experiences of this.

I know someone who is an area manager for body shop. She manages nothing. She tries to sell product and she tries to entice more people into selling. There is bog all area manager about it. In the real world she would struggle to get a basic retail job never mind a management position at any level

Mac don't have an MLM arm. If you read the thread, people are referring to how Mac do a personalised pallette which one of the MLMs is claiming as something special that they do.

I have someone on Facebook who does Younique (worst of the bunch). She's a lovely lady which is why I don't remove her but my god.

They're pretty sneaky with it. She posted a selfie the other day with tears rolling down her cheeks about being "obsessively grateful" because of the incentive Younique were offering which would "change her family's life" alongside a photo of a car. Cue people commenting "Oh wow" etc.

As it turns out, Younique were doing an incentive for a small cash bonus that can be used towards buying a car. Not an actual car, like the post leads you to believe.

Same with the holidays. They go on about all these amazing holidays Younique offer as incentives but fail to mention that you have to pay for your own flights plus everything once you're there.