To be disappointed by this 40th birthday gift from my friends?

[bdaydisappoint]

Basically, I've known this particular group of 8 friends including me since school (almost 30 years now!!) and I'm the last of the group to hit the big 40. We had a lovely socially distanced picnic in the park yesterday where they excitedly gave me... a gift box full of Tropic stuff.

One of the girls has recently become a Tropic ambassador and honestly, she's become quite obsessed. It feels like every conversation winds back to Tropic somehow and she keeps asking everyone if they'd like to host pamper parties (so much fun and a great chance to catch up with wine if nothing else! ). I dislike all MLM type selling on principle so have always excused myself from the parties (all via Zoom in this covid-19 world). However, I haven't outright told her I'm not interested, so tbf she won't know my true feelings on it.

There's two reasons I feel a bit let down. Firstly, it's just so generic and impersonal. For all of the other girls' 40ths, we've tried to give gifts personal to the birthday girl in question e.g. the gin lover got a fancy gin masterclass, the musical theatre fan got tickets to a West End show (obviously these were pre-pandemic), the avid reader got a book subscription etc etc. A skin care set just isn't, well, 'me' really. I'm not especially into beauty stuff and I've never expressed a desire to try tropic. Secondly, it just irks me that my Tropic selling friend has probably got paid commission and this might be the main reason for the gift choice. It's not about the money (knowing how expensive Tropic stuff is, I think they've actually spent a lot! ) it's more the lack of thought considering we've made an effort to do personal presents for everyone else. And also having MLM products forced upon me when I've been actively avoiding them!

AIBU and a horrible, terrible and ungrateful friend? Or am I right to feel disappointed by this? For info, I tried not to let my feelings show and did thank them all. In the end, it was a minor blip in what was otherwise a truly wonderful day.

@YouokHun

Yes they think they’re buying a really special item which will be donated to a good cause *@auntieElle*. What they don’t realise is that the MLM probably keeps about £16 of that as they sell them at such a high price to the distributor. Lots of MLMs have been doing this throughout Covid19; Arbonne, Tropic, Body Shop, Avon, FM World. If you look back in local FB buy/sell and community pages during the height of lockdown you’ll spot the posts. They usual say “I’m looking for people to sponsor products to say thank you to (insert good cause). Forever Living did this with their cancer care packs. Breast cancer is lucrative stuff Hun!

These sort of examples are why I can’t take any MLM rep’s behaviour at face value.

I've seen this in my local groups. I ignored and moved on. Interestingly, I noticed the most recent ones have had very few comments, whereas previously a good number of people would have said something about how nice it was.

I noticed my local Tropic reps “fundraising” to buy hand creams for the NHS back in April. It didn’t seem right to me but I couldn’t work out why. They weren’t asking for a specific amount, just to “give what you can”, so I don’t know if Tropic HQ had just asked them to collect donations from their customers or if they’d been asked to colleagues donations to pay for each hand team (e.g. each hand cream costs £20, so donations of £100 would buy 5 hand creams for the NHS). If they were doing it that way then I would assume that the reps got commission on each hand creams which is NOT on. But to give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe they were just asked to collect donations and were then sent hand creams to distribute and commission wasn’t involved. (I bet it was though).

However, the Tropic reps then get to look all generous by donating the creams to the hospitals when actually they haven’t put a penny towards them as the customers have made all the donations. That’s a bit shit. And it’s not even like the company were doing it out of the goodness of their heart or they’d just have donated the hand creams without asking for donations to fund it.

Exactly @Jdhshekr but also even if they didn’t take commission every one of those purchases made with donated funds goes towards the “ambassador” hitting personal targets. Later on in Lockdown a lot of MLMs started doing more donation of product from HQ which was a bit more above board but most of this was a response to the criticism from anti MLM people, some charities and people who noticed it and felt it didn’t stack up, so a bit of a cover up. I have a copy of an internal Arbonne email to senior distributors describing the charity thing as “useful“ and to tell distributors to carry on but don’t get caught. Interesting isn’t it that people tied up in MLM felt it was OK. That’s the power of brainwashing for you.

@YouokHun that's something I've seen a lot of too. Trying to flog their stuff under the guise of "a good cause".

Our local shop did something similar. He joined up with our village's Covid Care team who were basically a group of volunteers who got together and offered to do the shopping and deliver it for all the vulnerable people on the streets that they had been assigned to. The customers would call in their order to the shop, pay over the phone and the volunteers would go in the shop each day, be handed the shopping lists and they picked and packed the shopping for delivery. Some were even shown how to use the till so they could scan everything in if the person was paying on delivery. So this shop managed to get over a dozen free workers every single day to pick, pack and deliver to all his customers and all the new customers that had to shop there if they needed the Covid Care team to help them out.
Clever shop owner made a mint under the guise of being charitable and working with the Covid-19 volunteers. Shame his shop is the most overpriced one in the village too.

By the sound of her the rest of the group didn’t get a say in the gift either.

@Eviecol - can you go away and stop promoting a company you clearly work for. You've already been asked. That's not what this site is for.

@Eviecol . I'm not sure you are aware, but Mumsnet prohibits posters promoting mlm companies of any kind.