I've been sucked into forever living!! Why do I feel like the bad guy?

[KindergartenKop]

Recently an acquaintance emailed me to ask if I could 'help' her by trying a few products and giving her some feedback. Being the nice person I am I agreed. When the bag of samples turned up the penny dropped and i realised that she's trying to sell them to me (I'm naive I know!). I thought id just buy a little bubble bath. Its fucking 14 quid! No way. I'm sending the bag back and pleading eczema. Does this whole company operate by guilting friends and family into purchasing crap quality at ridic prices?

it's breath-takingly cynical isn't it?

I have THREE forever living Facebook bots!! It's a minefield out in Facebook at the minute. My excuse is that I'm pregnant so I don't want to swallow your aloe gel or rub it into my sensitive skin either!! With keep an eye out for brainwashing of closest fl friend.

It's funny you should mention that lastuser because Ms FL has pictures of a Mercedes and other luxuries on her "dream board" with pictures of FL products and positive quotes and a big piece of paper saying "don't give up" they seem to have completely brainwashed her

Totally agree that forever living preys on the vulnerable. I think as well that it's easy to criticise the individuals (and my god do the forever living Facebook statuses get on my tits) but actually we should be targeting our wrath at the organisation and methods that draw these people in and encourage them to buy the start up packs give up their day job and try and hard sell shit products to their friends and family etc. the people I know who have done it are both rather dim and naive and have poor social awareness. It was obvious to me that forever living is a scam but there needs to be more awareness raising and better protection for people

Apologies in advance as I've had to skim the last few posts so this may already have been discussed.
"CCS" - yes, Cash Credits - are used because the business is global. So the idea is that if I lived in France and had done 25 euros of business, and my friend who lives in Australia did $AU40 of business and our mutual friend in the UK did £30 of business in any one month, we'd struggle to compare the values due to the different currencies.
FL uses the CC as their global currency value, converted from local currency, so all the bots can compare their achievements.
So my 25 euros of business in France may be 20 CCs, and my friend in the UK has had hers converted to CCs from £, if she has done 40 CC we can see who's doing better sales wise.
Sorry,very clunky explanation but am in a rush.

Will be back later to go on about effing bee pollen and #amazingFLlife

throwingpebbles that is a fair point. i'm glad this thread is here so perhaps? maybe? anyone considering an MLM will reconsider.

I really hope it will help raise better awareness about how these schemes work.

Also I have to confess to being brutally honest with a friend when she messaged me about the "wonderful products" she was selling that would help my sons eczema. I told her I had come across forever living before and I didn't rate their products or their business methods. It put a stop to any attempts to sell and, thankfully, we are still friends

My FLbot is about to explode with "exciting news"....so shut the fuck up dear some of us have real jobs also with exciting news but don't care to share it every day

Mi5 my FL bot was ready to explode too. It's so weird that they all clone the same lingo it's like stepford wives scary stuff

I'm finding this thread really interesting. I have one JP, two FL bots and one Utilities Warehouse pusher. I've unfollowed them but look sometimes out of sheer nosiness as to what their latest tactic is.

Does anyone know if there's some facebook tie in to push these products? I have no FL, herbalife, yoonique or other friends but, amongst the posts my friends have liked or commented on which turn up on my news feed, suddenly #buythiscrap is featuring prominently, so I am being made aware that friends of friends are buyingthecrap.

So is the sudden appearance of #buythiscrap because they're paying fb, or because fb know I've been on this thread and have misinterpreted it as an interest in crap? Or just a sign that buyingcrap is generally becoming more widespread?

I've been following this thread and I get zero mentions of FL on my fb. I get Younique but only via my "like" of the village fb page, cos the woman posts stuff on there.
I get Pampered Chef because a friend sells it but she only posts stuff like "made a fab cheesecake tonight" never asking people to buy or even mentioning she sells stuff, no #buythiscrap or #lookhowrichiam etc.

So no, it's not fb following this thread.

It's obviously down to how you choose your friends!

I'm more curious how this thread has gone so far without anyone from forever living coming to explain how wonderful it all is and how wrong we all are and how they really truly do it because they love the products and they love helping people fulfil their dreams ........

I still haven't got any pyramid bots on my fb but I have noticed someone trying to push stand up desks with treadmills attached, perhaps that is going to be a thing? I don't get how you could do this, concentrate on what you are doing and type anything readable at the same time.

I'm more curious how this thread has gone so far without anyone from forever living coming to explain how wonderful it all is and how wrong we all are and how they really truly do it because they love the products and they love helping people fulfil their dreams ........

I think this thread will definitely be known at a higher level and all the FLBot's have been told not to comment or be influenced by our "negativity" and those not "supporting your dreams".

We should do a pretend "interest" email to one of our FLbots to try and get some more info....??

I can't with mine as she's fallen out with me for being 'unsupportive' of her dream

xenu - 1. Read at least 15 minutes a day from a book on the "tool list"
Does anyone happen to know what books are on the "tool list"? Are they just about Amway?
I'm not wanting to join Amway or FL of course, but wouldn't mind doing some motivational reading, if that's what the books are. I'm thinking along the lines of "Win Friends and Influence People" type books?

My Flbots are hysterically excited about spending the weekend in London working. They are saying about working "on their own terms" but being sent to some seminar in London at the weekend is hardly what I consider my own terms.

So far this week one of them has spent her days having lunch and taking photos of said lunch, doing bootcamp, getting spray tan. However, she's been working every evening since last Friday, and will be away all this coming weekend, either leading a business "promotion" at a hotel 40 miles away, mentoring her existing minions, or doing an online group meeting. So it seems to me, she's got to be spending less time with her school age DC! Would love to see her petrol bill too....

GinSoaked:

AFAIK The books are, as you say, usually ""Win Friends and Influence People" type books". "RichDad/PoorDad" etc, With a profit attached. Plus books by distributors of course (for an early example of the tools scam try "Fake it till you make it" by phil kerns - one of the first critics - his upline diamond suggested he would sell loads of his books at the events.

The major profit is on tapes, one per day at $5 (cost to make 50c?).I occaisionally buy them on ebay when cheap enough (2.99 for 4 delivered :) ) as I like the culty elements. They can be "triggering" tho, so often the tapes are recorded from seminars, where the staged leaders say sh*t like "we followed the system, even when we in debt; but we maxed out that credit card for DreamBuilders weekend and then our business really started to move", Of course, the dupes in the audience think that the events are training when they are in fact indoctrination with a profit, and the poor "business owners" keep going until they get fed up or bankrupt.

Thanks Xenu. My FL friends are definitely reading books like those because they're quoting from them incessantly
Interesting about the tapes. I think one of my friends has some DVDs that she's bought at the seminars she's attended. ie, a dvd of the seminar she's just seen
The Success Express event in London this weekend, tickets are £22 or £25 each. Friends are going on about it as if they've never been to London before and it's a perk of the job to be going to the event.I bet none of them admit they've had to BUY a ticket for the "opportunity" to attend!

Not forgetting that my friend is in the north west, so petrol to London and back will be a bit more than £50. Parking, lunch, and event ticket, she'll have spent over £100 on this training day alone. Bet she doesn't mention that when she gets her pay next month!

I have reported my previous post and asked for this thread to be moved to Money Matters, there is so much good advice on here i hope it can stay.

Exceedingly disappointed that my FLBot has gone quiet, and am also that i deleted my last FLBot on the grounds of being 'explosive'

Now stalking my local FB boards and there is plenty to be had. Sadly one lady has given up her job in Waitrose (another John Lewis bot? ) to 'follow her dream'

Someone posted on the local page for advice on her daughters hayfever, the FLBot recommended Bee Pollen - thankfully someone (probably on this thread!) jumped in to say NO do not do this - it could be counterproductive

God its scary!

What yoonique (or whatever it is?)

Have they always been this cynical? I actually like Tupperware stuff (does it even still exist?) but is that sold/marketed in the same exploitive way? And I remember my mother liking pippa dee parties (which I'm sure must have folded by now). Is the health/fitness sector particularly bad?

Tupperware and Avon have been around for ever and I vaguely remember Pippa Dee too. Whilst I've never been keen on sales events disguised as parties, certainly the business model comes across quite differently to that of the cult-like MLM organisations like FL and Amway.

Basically, the former exist to sell products and the latter to sell the organisational model. People who did Avon and Tupperware sold you stuff and encouraged you to host parties (for which you got various discount-based incentives). They didn't, and don't exist to rope in hundreds of downline victims. Certainly the friends of mine that did (and still do) Avon/Tupperware and Body Shop didn't want umpteen other people trampling on their turf since their own sales would be affected. Whereas FL and the like can only function at all by the constant recruitment downline. Recruitment that is utterly cynical as can be seen from those sadder threads on netmums and elsewhere.

Ah okay that makes sense - & I guess is true of some of book ones as well.