To delete friend who has joined an MLM

[lastqueenofscotland]

A lady I know from work has joined an MLM selling some sort of laxative coffee.
Her FB and instagram are covered in posts for it and about her promotions/trying to get a car etc etc.
She very much fits the profile of people they poach, she’s a SAHM and it’s been a squeeze of late for her.

I think MLMs are poisonous and I hate seeing her posts flogging this nonsense.
AIBU to remove her from my friend list

YouOkHun I've just looked up Lipsense out of interest and find that the lipsticks are selling for £2.99 online! More glad than ever that I didn't bother buying from her. Blimey O'Riley, what a mark up.

Amazingly, she managed to flog one of the lipsticks to one of our Directors. I'd rather crawl through broken glass than try to sell my colleagues overpriced rubbish. You must be right, she must've been panicking. The front loading product rings true too - she had a bag full. Wonder how much money she'd sunk into it?

I know a teacher who lost their job due to using school data to trawl for Arbonne recruits.

Bloody hell that must've been devastating. Was that a wake-up call for her?

I have a girl on my list who has recently started doing Juice Plus, and I just resent that 100% as both a diet plan and a means of income.

People who do juice plus will either have to do it forever, or they will just put weight on as soon as they stop.

It is NOT a long term or sustainable weight loss regime. The only thing that can do that is real changes to your lifestyle that you can keep up forever (i.e. less crap, more exercise). I commented on another friend's status talking about summer saying how I've been too lazy because of the sun, and this girl started inboxing me trying to force (and I mean that) Juice Plus on me. I was polite and said no thank you, as I know the weight will come off now I'm back in a routine (it has), and she just carried on messaging me about the benefits.

Guessing she hadn't met her targets, then.

A perfect example of how brainless these MLMs are, is the adverts they put out saying "A woman eats an average of 1lb of lipstick a year...make sure it's good for you". I've seen that one from Arbonne and Younique huns, probably others too.

There's about 3g of usable lipstick in an average tube, which means they expect us to believe we're eating well over 100 full lipsticks every year! Even the most basic critical thinking skills should put people off these MLMs.

I’d just unfollow her, she’ll realise it’s a load of shite soon and stop. Someone on my fb peddled some shite product or other for a few months, she stopped. Clearly didn’t make any money from it.

I think much of it is confirmation bias - MLM sellers would google "(brand) benefits" whereas I would google "(brand) scam" for example.

While I recognise from both points of view, the potential damage of being scammed is so much greater than that of the potential benefits.

Like I said being a true friend is having concern for your friends and acting on it by flagging that concern, not blindly encouraging behaviour that could result in them being damaged in a financial, an emotional or a physical way.

They are just women, mostly mums, who do not want to go out to work. They want to watch their child grow

Jesus wept.

I have a friend who's just started hawking "Inteletravel". Her behaviour is very MLMish - essentially she's always trying to recruit people rather than selling anything at this stage - but the Internet seems a bit vague on whether or not it's an MLM. I pumped her for info and she paid £142 for the privilege of "training" to be an "agent", so obviously that's the business model, but I couldn't work out much beyond that. Anyone come across it? You seem like the lot to ask

LiterallyCantBelieveIt

The £2.99 ones are ex huns selling old, probably out of date, possible semi used products they stupidly stockpiled once they realised they had fallen for a scam and decided to quit. Better to get £2.99 for a lipstick you’ve spent £25 on than £0 and have it sat expiring in your spare bedroom. It’s terrifying some of the pictures you can find online of reps who’ve spent tens of thousands of pounds on stock that they’ve set up in their garages or basements like a little stock room. Marriages crumble under the stress of a hun accruing more and more credit card debt while bringing in no net profit, loads of huns in their ear saying if their husband loved them he’d support them and is just being negative energy. A mood hoover/negferret. It’s psychologically catastrophic.

They are just women, mostly mums, who do not want to go out to work. They want to watch their child grow

Yes, MLM culture is very heavily influenced by where many of them originated, the Mormon community in Utah. Where it’s strongly discouraged a wife and mother works outside the home. Very fertile ground for an MLM. There’s so much mom-shaming going on: don’t you want to see your kids grow up? Why would you work a 9-5 and miss out on raising them when you can shill lipstick from home?

Ironically the MLM lifestyle even if you’re succeeding at it requires hours and hours round the clock glued to your phone and social media, ignoring the kids, or using them for posts, even to model the makeup. They manage to get mothers who work feeling like they’re betraying their children for going out to a job that pays the bills and then coming home and being present with them. As if sinking into debt while being home 24/7 staring at a screen is preferable.

If you ever watch any of the lives by younique huns there’s a lot of examples of their poor children trying to get mom’s attention and being told to go away, they’re doing a live. Only yesterday there was a post on antiMLM about a hun with two girls around 6/7 and a 2 year old boy, she was on a live and snapped at them to leave her alone, next thing you can hear water running in the next room and one of the girls is trying to bathe her brother. Unattended. These huns would rather be on Facebook live desperately trying to sell a mascara for a few quid net profit than parenting their children yet based on posts you’d believe they’re blissfully at home with them constantly not missing a moment.

@BillMasen Wanted to say thank you for coming onto the thread to share your perspective. As you may have seen, there is a disconnect between how HQ view the organisation vs the actual practices of how people sell. I work for one of the Big 4, which is regulated. There are very high penalties, both for my organisation but also more recently the individuals involved, if they don't comply or behave in a way which is deemed ethical. It's a large global organisation with 100,000+ employees and we're able to monitor this, not sure why Avon cannot do the same? I wonder how/ if companies with an MLM part to their business can be better at regulating toxic behaviours and mis-selling to consumers (eg with FL examples) in the first place?

@QuimReaper Inteletravel is a big scam. Its engine is something called PlanNet Marketing which is a pure recruitment device. I’ve been approached and told there’s no need to try and sell travel as the purpose is to sell the “opportunity”. It’s impossible to make money selling travel and ABTA is going to rue the day it allowed Inteletravel into the fold. If you’re a Twitter user it’s well worth following Inteletravel.con as they call them out very well and obviously have travel industry knowledge (something that isn’t required by Inteletravel).

@alieninvasion multi level marketing.

Unsuspecting souls are recruited to sell dubious, overpriced products on a commission only basis under the guise of running their own business from home.

It's basically pyramid selling where the only way to actually make money is to recruit more poor unsuspecting souls to be a team of sellers under you as their manager and you get a cut of their commission. A few people near the top of the pyramid are touted as the examples to follow to run a successful business. They typically have 'won' cars and exotic holidays on the basis of their 'sales' figures. Recruitment events are run at hotel conference centres and there's usually a manual to follow and you are supposed to contact X number of people every day, etc, etc.

It's a myth and a rip off - the people who spend most on the product are the unpaid people trying to sell it to everyone they know. The sales tactics involve heavy use of social media and boring everyone you know trying to get them to buy the stuff. And trying to recruit them of course.

I work for one of the Big 4, which is regulated

Who regulates you @Maranello4?

Great post @crystalshark

The FRC - Financial Reporting Council regulates UK firms.

I’m waiting for an MLM person to come on and say they are regulated by the DSA ... rather different from the FRC: holding no regulatory powers, lobbying for the MLM industry and run by MLM people. When I communicated with someone at the DSA they didn’t even know the difference between Ponzis, pyramids and MLMs (not much difference I know). Meaningless puppets for spammy outfits!

Oh dear! Yes I think there's a difference between industry bodies - those which are independent - and those which are made up of the companies they represent (eg like the Banking industry was (look what happened there?) and the DSA).

There are people who've have training in accountancy, nursing etc also sign into a code of conduct when they qualify so this also dictates some of the behavioural standards. Don't get me started on the huns who are nurses and do MLM on the side

Urgh, the DSA is embarrassing. Tries to add a veneer of respectability. Pretty sure its only reason for existing is so that huns and MLMs can claim they’re regulated.

I’m actually a bit jealous that I haven’t had any huns on my FB to keep me amused! Although I do have a new potential hun - is Temple Spa an MLM?

I believe Temple Spa is MLM. On the Sounds Like MLM but OK and mlmtruth.org sites there is a master list of MLMs. Temple Spa is sold in Harrods so considers itself to be different (a bit like Neals Yard and Body Shop feeling they represent something else because of the retail side).

To add some balance, I am a customer of two MLMs, but have never even considered signing up, both because I cannot be bothered and there is only one I would consider and a close friend does it already!

One is scentsy and I actually quite like their waxes. I only found it as I was given one of the burners for a Christmas present. From a customer side they are expensive, but I bought a load of samples off ebay after Christmas and I will probably not need any for another year or more as they last so long. However, I can imagine it is hard from the seller side as once people have burners they only want waxes and as they last so long you cannot make the money you need to meet targets.

The other (which seems good) is Body Shop at Home, but that does not seem as much like an MLM to me, but maybe that is because my friend does it more as a hobby than for the income. The products are reasonable prices and are good quality and whilst they can recruit, from what my friend says there is not the same pressure on recruiting downlines (she has one who approached her but otherwise she doesn't want the hassle) and if they do not meet the targets or want to take a break they can and just call up head office to say they want to be active again and they just get added back on no issues.

As for the rest, the MLM documentaries say it all.

@Cornishmaid1 you’ve very much confirmed the problems. Product sales are unworkable if you need a proper income ie to earn the National Minimum wage. How many wax melts does someone need to sell consistently to get a decent commission and what figure are they left with once they’ve taken the expenses and costs into account? This is where the sunk cost fallacy is at play, “I’m invested emotionally, socially and financially in this now but I’m not making money. What shall I do? I’ll move into recruiting friends and family and then the FB community. Or I could hop over into another MLM and see if that works”. You get the wax melts you like but the distributor gets very little out of it, certainly not what she/he was promised. Most people don’t start MLM hoping for pin money, they’re told they’ll get much more, but if pin money is what they do it for then the pressure to recruit is of course less. I’ve met an awful lot of people who when they do some proper bookkeeping realise that they are running at a loss and even their pin money hopes are dashed, and that includes plenty of Body Shop distributors.

Ew, I didn't know Temple Spa was an MLM! They use it in a nice spa near me and I have a couple of things from them. Another disappointment like Neal's Yard, oh well.

When will legislation / regulation be updated to catch up with mlm ‘business’ practise?

A tip for the hunbots though, if you want to avoid people questioning your intelligence, an attempt to use all of the available letters and punctuation is a cracking start.

No one minds the odd typo, or spelling mistake, but the evident lack of effort really does damage your argument considerably.

This. They all sound so thick.