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

999 replies

KindergartenKop · 03/06/2015 20:27

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?

OP posts:
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ChickenLaVidaLoca · 21/06/2015 15:08

Can anyone link to the netmums thread?

lastuseraccount123 · 21/06/2015 15:47

i love this blog: www.pinktruth.com/

it's about mary kay, but it talks about other MLMs as well.

Bambambini · 21/06/2015 15:59

this is one net mums thread

There is also a much longer one. It is non stop trying to recruit new people. Netmums (I think) generally has a much less affluent, younger mother pool of posters than Mumsnet. Some have said they are shy and don't have much friends or family etc. These products are expensive, I feel sorry for young mums getting sucked in, who do they think is going to buy these expensive products?

I think Violalion from the other day probably came from one of those threads.

lastuseraccount123 · 21/06/2015 16:12

this thread is famous Grin

CamelHump · 21/06/2015 16:16

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Eyespying · 21/06/2015 17:00

Here's an article containing a pretty devastating questionaire for FLP believers.

mlmtheamericandreammadenightmare.blogspot.fr/2015/06/forever-living-products-flp-cult-secte.html

And here's an open letter to US regulators who are supposed to be investigating another major MLM, Herbalife.

mlmtheamericandreammadenightmare.blogspot.fr/2014/07/robert-fitzpatricks-open-letter-to-ftc.html

Some Herbalife victims can be seen on this video, but it seems that most MLM victims stay silent.

xenu1 · 21/06/2015 17:13

Eyespying - that's great info, many thx!

£30 just for a ticket
(plus, as you say, all the incidentals. There are booksellers/cd sellers galore there as at any event and these are selling to a fired-up audience...)

It was at the O2, and (according to the link) it was a sell-out. O2 Arena capacity is 20k. That's £700k for starters! Note that "normal" events (pop etc) are not that much more expensive (Roxette is £42) and they are honest commercial events; designed to make money, where the acts are paid...

xenu1 · 21/06/2015 17:21

So if you're making £700k from the UK success event (less the hire cost, of course, but the pop groups will pay that as well, and expect to make money!) there's a lot of profit for the very top. Enough for a freebie trip or two to the company resort in Cancun? (and you can get a week in Cancun for £1.4kpp?)

And onstage its all hard-sell for the next event - "do you want to be free?", "I see my children all the time" etc. etc.

Eyespying · 21/06/2015 18:04

Xenu1 - Every time I see video footage of one of these MLM rallies, I can't help thinking of the 1930s Germany, where 'politcal' rallies generated fortunes in ticket sales for a handful of party leaders, and vast extra profits were also generated by the sale of publications and recordings - all of which kept telling party members how superior they all were and how they were building a future paradise.

lastuseraccount123 · 21/06/2015 18:40

I also had a Stella & dot friend. I thought S&D wasn't as bad as the others, but it turned out to be the same.

Initially, it was fine, and i bought a few necklaces from her (i mainly wear them to work). but i made the mistake of mentioning i might consider ahving a party. then the constant bugging started, what dates would suit, blah blah blah. she was pretty pushy, because apparently to keep her customers she needed to have a certain number of parties (or something, not sure the exact details) or she would 'lose' her customers to her S&D upline. so there's the same push to recruit people either to sell or to have parties all the time, just like FL. this was a professional woman who'd decided not to go back to work so she could spend more time with her kids - the usual victim of MLMs.

she's now left S&D because she couldn't make a living out of it and i guess she wasn't making the required amount each month. it's really soured me on S&D as well.

LittleMissStubborn · 21/06/2015 18:59

I am guessing the 'holiday' isn't really an holiday at all. Just a whole week to 'motivate' them.

Mygardenistoobig · 21/06/2015 19:18

Just come across this thread. Last week I accompanied a good friend to a party, turns out it was a forever living party. I had never heard of them so was looking forward to buying a bit of bubble bath and body cream.

No way when I saw the price. The consultant bored us silly talking about her life blah blah blah, 20 minutes later she was still talking, this time about how her partner had had an accident at work blah blah blah.

10 minutes later and she is still talking about her dcs ailments and how by drinking this product ( which incidentally cost about £40) it helped them.

Then she tells us about how , as a mum, it is hard to get a job blah blah blah.

Do any of us want a party?
Do any of us want to work as a consultant.

It was so bad and boring that my friend and I picked something from the brochure made our excuses and left.

She hadn't even gotten round to showing us the products.

The poor hostess hadn't got chance to socialise.

I will never ever go to another one.

LittleMissStubborn · 21/06/2015 21:28

Actually underneath all the jesting it is really sad, My FB/FLbot is convinced that this is her passport to happiness and being able to give up her job. The kids think she is wonderful, her partner and family wonderfully supportive. There is lots of 'you're doing the right thing, hun' and 'you're following your dream' going on - all from fellow FLbots of course. I just hope it does work out for her- and if it doesn't (as will most likely be the case) that she comes out of it ok.

LittleMissStubborn · 21/06/2015 21:32

I'm wondering as well do the uplines set their 'sights' on certain individuals, perhaps giving them more of their time, ones that they can 'mould' easier and more quickly than others. I can just see her upline really sucking her in and wondered if this was the norm.

throwingpebbles · 21/06/2015 21:40

I agree *littlemissstubborn" in fact after reading this I wish that I had tried harder to warn my fb forever living bot when she was fairly new to it and tried to recruit me. At the time I was just furious with her for trying to make money out of me whilst suggesting she would be doing me a favour by recruiting me to her team. I could see how flawed the whole set up was, but I didn't actually realise quite how badly they exploit and manipulate their sales force. It has totally taken over her life and personality and she had alienated a lot of people and left a decent job and career. From Facebook you would think she was doing quite well but she basically is funded by her parents (and she is in her late 40s) (I know them better than her! Their house is full of the forever living products they feel compelled to buy, and they are always paying for her holiday/ car to be fixed etc)

DreamingOfTheBeach · 21/06/2015 22:03

Has anyone just seen the FL post in the weight lose section on here?
Someone putting a link to their FL selling page!

MiscellaneousAssortment · 21/06/2015 23:47

Oh no please don't say Stella & Dot are pyramid schemes too??? They seem more like Avon being focused on the products surely?

I have a friend who does S&D and she doesn't seem pushy at all..,

Thereyouarepeter · 22/06/2015 09:15

Just making my way through the netmums FL thread and it's really sad seeing all the people who obviously really commit to this to build a better life for their children only to realise there is no hope actually making any money from the products.

What I'm surprised by is that no one comes on to the thread and says "um...its a pyramid scheme guys..keep clear".

ChickenLaVidaLoca · 22/06/2015 10:05

That netmums thread is quite sad.

throwingpebbles · 22/06/2015 10:52

Yes the netmums thread really bothered me, people are really being exploited.

Just thinking, but by abbreviating to FL rather than Forever Living, aren't we making it harder for people to find this thread? Or have misunderstood how Google etc work?

Eyespying · 22/06/2015 11:13

This is the crystal clear warning given on 'MLM The American Dream Made Nightmare' - and it applies to all companies offering 'Multi-Level Marketing Income Opportunities,' including Forever Living Products.

More than half a century of quantifiable evidence, proves beyond all reasonable doubt that what has become popularly known as 'Multi-Level Marketing' is nothing more than an absurd, cultic, economic pseudo-science, and that the impressive-sounding made-up term 'MLM,' is, therefore, part of an extensive, thought-stopping, non-traditional jargon which has been developed, and constantly-repeated, by the instigators, and associates, of various, copy-cat, major, and minor, ongoing organized crime groups (hiding behind labyrinths of legally-registered corporate structures) to shut-down the critical, and evaluative, faculties of victims, and of casual observers, in order to perpetrate, and dissimulate, a series of blame-the-victim closed-market swindles or pyramid scams (dressed up as 'legitimate direct selling income opportunites'), and related advance-fee frauds (dressed up as 'legitimate training and motivation, self-betterment, programs, recruitment leads' etc.).

TalcumMucker · 22/06/2015 11:25

Have just read the NM thread, it's really sad to actually read posts from those involved in FL who are struggling because they were exploited and sold a lie.

There's another FL thread here that's been dead for a while but been brought to life last week by a FL defender. Think they must have come from NM as this thread gets a mention there.

Throwing Forever Living is mentioned in the thread title so I think people should be able to find it ok.

MarthasHarbour · 22/06/2015 11:28

I have just read the NM thread too. It is so Sad i am really struggling here as i know my DSis could be one of those posters.

There is ONE voice of reason on there and her advice is spot on, it really goes into the crap that they have to deal with. Nobody has come on to challenge her, i think they are deliberately ignoring her and hoping she goes away as she is throwing negativity onto the board!

cruikshank · 22/06/2015 11:32

I have an acquaintance (he was a mob wars friend - yes, I used to play mob wars - don't judge me) on facebook who's always posting about the latest get rich quick scheme he's into. It seemed harmless enough until the day he took early retirement, which is when I read between the lines of his posts and realised just how much money he was ploughing into these companies. He has now got his girlfriend pregnant, and his posts are getting increasingly desperate; he has even started talking about what money he has lost, and how he can't afford the baby and he's shit-scared of what is going to happen ... but still he won't stop doing what he calls 'investing', and he is blatantly begging other people to join him so that his family won't end up out on the street. It's like it's become a compulsion for him. Even though he can see that his 'investments' haven't paid off, it's like it's just a fault with those particular companies, but if he keeps on doing what he's doing he's going to hit the big time soon. It is deeply, desperately sad to watch and I should imagine there are a lot of people like him out there.

SymphonyofShadows · 22/06/2015 11:50

I didn't realise that Stella and Dot were a party selling company. I got a bracelet by them for my birthday from a friend but she has never mentioned them and has a very intense full-time job so she must have got it at a party rather than flogging it.