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

I have a friend who is relentlessly flogging MLM cosmetics and some diet stuff. A lot of her friends have become seriously pissed off - if she asks you a simple question or to meet up you can never be sure whether it's a ruse to try and sell you something. So sadly a lot of people are guarded or avoid her. It has damaged her friendships which is sad.

She has been doing it for at least 5 years and it's actually quite worrying that she still believes her variety of schemes will pay off. If she had invested the same money in re-training I'm sure it would have been a better investment.

She is always posting on FB - in the manner described upthreaf. Quirky funny posts (cat videos), uplifting inspirational quotes and then hook you in trails to get you to buy stuff. It's quite desperate. She is often uploading pictures of her and other MLMers saying what a wonderful time they are all having at conventions and meetings.

Out of sympathy a mutual friend did buy some of her cosmetics and it made her skin flare up horribly.

I haven't blocked her but it has put me off seeing her which is a shame. It's obsessive and desperate.

@drum123 Is it Inteletravel?

a drink of orange-what is that?

quimreaper, yes it is. I've looked up the CEO and he's been interviewed by a few travel magazines. It sounds legit when you read the articles, but it definitely seems like MLM to me. Happy to stand corrected if you have any information about them.

How can ANY trsvel agent "job" be legit if you need no qualifications, no experience, no interview, no assessment of the very basics like your ability to speak English and add up?

All you need to join any MLM is cash. That alone should have people running for the hills. Have you ever seen an advert for a proper job saying it will take anyone at all, they don't care about experience and qualifications?

I think also that's part of why it appeals to so many people. if you didn't do well at school, haven't got a degree or A-levels, have struggled to find a job, only have experience working minimum wage, unskilled jobs you can see why the ideal of a role with "manager" in the title and which promises much more money than you're earning draws you in. Also you probably know other people doing similar, who are quite happy to lie through their teeth and tell you that they're doing well.

People who are better qualified aren't necessarily savvy either. I know someone who does Arbonne, she's a qualified vet. Very switched on academically and sailed through uni but is rubbish at critical thinking. Absorbs facts and regurgitates them brilliantly but can't question what she's being told. Never worked anywhere which wasn't a vet's, and not involved in the business side of that at all. She might be able to ace a Maths exam doing calculus or whatever, but doesn't understand that profit isn;t the same as turnover. She's contstantly posting about supporting other women and being there for her kids, and what a great lifestyle Arbonne is giving her. Nothing to do with her proper 2.5 days a week as a vet, or her husband's job as a GP.

Is it Inteletravel?

The one my friend has got involved with is I-boomerang. Seems to focus on top end resort holidays mainly in the US so not much traction in the UK or Europe yet. I think my friend is hoping if she's in on it all now before it "takes off" she'll make loads . She pays like £80 a month to sell these holidays but god knows how many she actually sells and whether shes breaking even. Well actually, I know the answer to that

Comedy gold this thread its cheered my morning up

I've seen the inteltravel one recently. She is very careful not to mention that's who it is, I don't know if that is a tactic?
The actual recruitment of that is by a 'partner' company called planet travel and is pure pyramid. No idea how they get away with it.
The holidays also aren't ATOL protected, who the fuck is booking holidays through these people?!

@GeraldTippett an Iboomerang bot tried to pitch upthread but was deleted by Mumsnet (good). It’s super dodgy and is run by someone who was involved in a full on Ponzi scheme and something called Organo Gold which went tits up last year I think and lost a lot of people money. Your friend is heading for a fall for sure.

So is anyone recruited by PlanNet Marketing to “sell travel”. Inteletravel has already fallen foul of a big tour operator. If you’re a twitter user it’s worth following Inteletravel.con as they are clearly travel industry experienced and call them out well.

Oh there was a finance one a few years ago that was all dressed up as 'women supporting women' - I think it was some sort of insurance you were supposed to flog to other mums at the school gates. Went tits up quite fast.
Not all the 'mumtrepreneur' stuff was MLM, a lot of it was cupcakes and twiggy gingham shit, and all the glossy magazine profiles conveniently left out the fact that Hedge Fund Hubby was providing all the money to keep the hobby business afloat.

If you are unsure if a “business” is an MLM then ask yourself - does it rely on selling stuff or recruiting people? If it’s about the recruiting then it must be an MLM!

Think about it - you invent an amazing product. You start selling it, it becomes popular. Do you:
A) Employ people to sell it for you and pay them a wage and possibly commission? Therefore keeping the lions share of the profits for yourself. Maybe work hard to get it in shops so it’s sold that way?
B) Get other people to “start their own business” selling your products and have them recruit as many people as possible to sell it? Tell them they can make a fortune! Where would your profits be if they were genuinely selling the product? Charging them to sell your product, attend seminars, make sure they are forced to buy your product. Yup, the money is there now...

I had a very intelligent friend. She’s a solicitor by day. She got sucked into the utilities warehouse malarkey. She changed all her utilities over to prove how amazing it was! 4 years after she was still tied in to higher prices and could do nothing about it! Her poor mum switched all hers too! Thankfully, no one else did!

The same friend then took up with Juice Plus. In fact, both her and her husband did! Constant posts about how delicious it was and how well they were doing. She stopped talking to me for 6 months for not buying any from her! She came to her senses after about a year. She just doesn’t talk about it now. No idea how much she lost...

@GeraldTippett I’ve recently spotted that IBoomerang thing when someone was trying to recruit people for it. The marketing is pretty slick. I can see how people get sucked in. The owner must be making a mint out of all the £80 per month subscriptions!

think about it - you invent an amazing product. You start selling it, it becomes popular. Do you:A) Employ people to sell it for you and pay them a wage and possibly commission?

Add to that - you interview people, make sure they are a good fit with your brand, are as enthusiastic about your product as you are, in the UK legally....

The problem is that if you're a business person but not terribly scrupulous (looking at you, president Trump) then you know that actually being at the top of a MLM is the way to go. None of those pesky employer responsibilities like paying NI or sick pay. You're not taking any of the risk.

Those products are so dangerous, I would have no issue unfriending someone promoting them.

I do feel sorry for the huns of younique, scentsy, the mental lipstick one etc. Because I think they genuinely go in thinking they can just sell make up and it's so shamelessly targeted at mums. But for some reason I haven't quite connected in my head the travel agent ones really piss me off.
I think it just feels more blatantly misleading. Also potentially screwing over people who spend a huge chunk of their annual spare money to go on their 1 family holiday. Just feels really gross to me and that's aside from the obviously MLM problems.

I have an older friend like that.

I do feel sorry for her, because she's had a hard life. Difficult/abusive parents, moved abroad to marry a man who turned out to be an abusive headcase, has had a number of severe health traumas, which could easily have finished her off, moved to a new part of the country, dragging new husband and teenage kids, to take up a "too good to be true" job, which exploded dramatically after about 9 months.

Really, she's a prime target for these MLM scams. She's lurched between soooo many over the years. Just off the top of my head, she done teas, nail varnish, candles, perfume oils, necklaces and wax melts.

At the moment she's hawking the necklaces and wax melts, hosting online "parties" than seem to go nowhere, and is just trying so hard to be enthusiastic about over-priced stuff that no-one ever wants.

If it bugs you, just snooze her for 30 days, or unfollow. She'll never know.

What get me really annoyed is how they go on and on about how family friendly it is as though actual, reputable companies aren't.

A hunbot on my Facebook went to the Younique conference a few weeks ago but had to leave early because of a family emergency. She went on for days about how amazing it was to work for a company that allowed her to be there for her family.
I really wanted to point out that any decent company would allow you to leave a conference for a family emergency and you'd probably be getting paid for that time!

Ive not seen any poonique or juice plus on my fb feed for quite a while but the travel agent one has started popping up....

Why did the Bodyshop go mlm? It used to be such a nice (real) shop in the 90s.

Do they still sell the same products?

I'm so pleased that so many people are wise to these horrible scams. Those who are at the top of the pyramid might be raking it in, but they're also ruthless moral vacuums, dressed up as 'business coaches'.

Not MLM, but some people did do well in the 1980s with weight loss products.
I've heard a rumour of a woman ( friend of friend ) who became very rich flogging this stuff, but it's the only one I've ever heard of and I'm old!
She either was just very lucky or , being a new product , she just got the breaks or it's just an urban myth.
Mostly it's all a scam and best avoided.

I've thought about this all night (well not really but)...I really think that somebody has to photoshop an advert featuring a Z-list sleb, encouraging us to try their 'drink of orange'.

I removed a friend from all social media and then from my life after months of her and her husband going on about Juice plus about five years ago. She did lose weight and looked great but has now put it all back on after no longer selling it.
Her husband was the worst; on and on about Juice plus, then a utility one and then something called Ariix. He's now into bitcoin apparently. They as a couple appear on tv to talk about being married but not living together (each to their own). As his Facebook bio, he has something like 'future bitcoin millionaire, star of the small screen'.
I had known my friend for over 40 years; I didn't buy into any of their get rich schemes. The final straw was when she wrote on Facebook that were you even a good parent if you didn't give your child juice plus chewables, and how much they had helped their child with additional needs.

The hunbot lies get me...a friend went all out on Forever Living Aloe-shit-yourself-thin-Vera and said how she had 'started her business' snigger so she could give up her job and spend more time with her (school aged) kids. I saw her at work not long after so she'd literally made it up.