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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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MissBattleaxe · 25/06/2015 09:54

Hey mine did that too! I'm sure they all get a memo "This week- photograph your laptop on a park bench" "next week post an inspiring message about dreams"

MarthasHarbour · 25/06/2015 10:13

I am currently trying to engage in non FL conversation with my FLBot. I am getting lots of PA responses. She knows I am on to her! Grin

Jossysgiants · 25/06/2015 10:22

eyespying I have watched this video- this woman seems to be the poster girl now for FL. It's fascinating really. The all white outfit was a nice touch.

Fluffycloudland77 · 25/06/2015 11:22

I didn't watch it all. She was a police officer though, they get fab pensions.

I wonder what fl pension plan is? Obviously zero.

Eyespying · 25/06/2015 11:54

Jossygiants -

The author of MLM The American Dream Made Nightmare has this to say about the video:

Beyond Emma Cooper's further, revealing confessions regarding her own previously-delicate mental health, one of the most interesting aspects of her tearful purity and light Singapore performance, is her detailed claim about her '1600+ person downline,' conducting '£1.7 million annual turnover'.

In other words, this is evidence that obedient 'FLP' participants are duplicating the classic 'MLM' system in the UK, and handing over around £1000 ($1600) per year just to get the products. Since the general public are not buying 'FLP' products based on value and demand, this £1.7 million figure (if it's true) has to be the sum total of annual contributions of all the 'FLP' participants beneath Emma Cooper in her own section of the 'FLP' pyramid. Classically, these unlawful losing invetment payments (based on the false expectation of future reward), are being laundered as 'lawful sales (based on value and demand'). However, this means that all the people beneath Emma Cooper are also claiming their own share of the same unlawful losing investment payments to be the 'lawful sales turnover' of their own 'downline groups'.

Self-evidently, these accumulated claims are puerile nonsense which does not stand up to intellectually-rigourous examination.

BeccaMumsnet · 25/06/2015 12:00

Hi everyone - we're really sorry for not having moved you over yet! We'll do this immediately. Having looked back at the original request to move the thread, we reckon we'll pop you all in Money Matters. Please do shout if there is a more preferable topic.

TreadSoftlyOnMyDreams · 25/06/2015 13:14

I met an FLbot at a fitness class. Apparently the aloe stuff does wonders for post gym knackered knees....

measles64 · 25/06/2015 13:28

Don`t get me started on the Arbonne squeeze. Guilting new Mothers into spending a fortune on baby products Angry

lastuseraccount123 · 25/06/2015 15:41

mine is doing hers tonight, there was just another plug for it. Stay tuned...

also, did you know 80% of women who earn over 100,000 pounds are NETWORK MARKETERS?

of course there's no source for this claim.

xenu1 · 25/06/2015 16:03

Hi

To add to eyespying's great links. Here's another success story (remember that the audience PAY to listen to this stuff!)

from 7mins 20 secs "what changed? I attended every success day/biztraining"

Note "you have to change"? Its "life-changing experience"

The rest is prospect, prospect, prospect... Speak to 3 people each day; distribute 200 cards each week... wow!

For some oldschool MLM flimflam the famous "Pigs don't know pigs stink" from Amway.

its long tho; slag off normal jobs, blame the victim, boast of wealth, sneer at "normal outsiders" - then the hardsell (buy tapes/attend meetings) kicks in at 2hrs 7mins

FanFuckingTastic · 25/06/2015 16:07

Their sales pitch to employ new victims - ahem... distributors.

nickyforeverliving.flp.com/opportunity.jsf

xenu1 · 25/06/2015 16:13

To add to
the presentation piles on the prospecting drive. At 19.m 50 secs we get onto "Retailing". That in fact means personal use "Replace everything in my house with FL products". This is classic MLM-bot styleee. The dupes' houses are full of the cults products, and no-one ever retails.

She's pretty slick, tho! :)

Quietattheback · 25/06/2015 16:46

Then name of the company kind of says it all though doesn't it?

Forever Living... It's just a repackaging of the fountain of youth/holy grail myth isn't it? If you are pure of heart and follow the steps then untold riches are yours. Don't follow the steps, don't believe and your fucked... And it's all your own fault.

Eyespying · 25/06/2015 18:13

Excellent insight, Quietattheback -

For 'positive thinking': read 'blind faith'.

MLM can also be described as a repackaging of the Faustian bargain - the infamous deal with the Devil.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deal_with_the_Devil

MLM frauds take their worst victims body and soul.

ChickenLaVidaLoca · 25/06/2015 18:13

She is brilliant. But I can't be the only one to rolleyes when she said her dad always taught her it's better to earn £100 the right way than £1000 the wrong way.

Eyespying · 25/06/2015 18:54

Since this tragically misguided young women is obviously from a Moslem background, I wonder how the wiser members of her family, and of the wider Moslem community, view her FLP activity; for a quick Google search reveals that there are growing concerns about MLM spreading into the Moslem world.

www.google.fr/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=multi%20level%20marketing%20islam

MLM has already been banned in Bahrain.

mlmtheamericandreammadenightmare.blogspot.fr/2015/02/bahrain-bans-so-called-multi-level.html

MI5agent · 25/06/2015 20:39

Thanks MumsnetBecca I think Money Matters will be more appropriate.

Is there any 'risk' with this thread? hoping you can read behind my question without me putting too much detail

throwingpebbles · 25/06/2015 20:41

I have wondered the same MI5 ...
Am just glad it has lasted so long and hopefully educated a few people
My guess is that FL are too dodgy to risk doing a "she who must not be named" if you get my gust

throwingpebbles · 25/06/2015 20:42

Gist!!!

Eyespying · 26/06/2015 12:17

No need to worry here - Why should there be any 'risk' involved in describing groups like FLP and Herbalife as fronts for frauds, when even their bosses (secretly) admit that they are fronts for frauds?

mlmtheamericandreammadenightmare.blogspot.fr/2015/06/world-class-herbalife-hlf-liar-michael.htmlthey are fronts for frauds

Eyespying · 26/06/2015 12:24

The link I gave above, contains an error and doesn't open, so please try this:

mlmtheamericandreammadenightmare.blogspot.fr/2015/06/world-class-herbalife-hlf-liar-michael.html

ChickenLaVidaLoca · 26/06/2015 13:56

Can't imagine FL would want the bad publicity.

TheNameIWantedIsTaken · 26/06/2015 15:04

I'm sure they don't Chicken but is this not just forum users discussing their opinions? Wink

Eyespying · 26/06/2015 15:49

No, this thread is certainly not 'just forum users discussing their opinions.' This thread actually contains important evidence which the bosses of FLP don't want in the public domain. It shows that an alarming number of people have witnessed the essentially identical sudden, and radical, personality change occuring in friends and relatives who have got involved with not only Forever Living Products, but also with various other MLM companies.

Plenty of forum users have looked at this evidence and worked out that groups like FLP and Amway are cleverly disguised cults which, in certain circumstances, can completely take over the bodies and souls of their most vulnerable victims and remove every penny they've got, or that they can beg, steal and/or borrow

Way back in the comments, a useful link was posted to an article on The American Dream Made Nightmare.

mlmtheamericandreammadenightmare.blogspot.fr/2013/02/forever-living-products-flp-is-mlm.html

This article describes in great detail, the same sudden and radical personality change that forum users have witnessed, and then traces the history of MLM. However, the author warns right at the start of his article that:

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,' etc.).

ChickenLaVidaLoca · 26/06/2015 15:59

I meant they wouldn't want the bad publicity of a legal challenge. MN is obviously very popular, but probably not that many people have read this compared to how many might hear about a protracted legal battle.

I wonder if this would be a suitable subject for an MN campaign?

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