MLM Bot Watch 16 - Chat about the Scamalasmical cultic racket of MLMs Forever Living, Juiceplus , Ariix, Younique, (insert name of Utah MLM here) now including hunpreneurs, cheese, posts from eyes

[stopfaffing]

Botwatch
botwatchblog.wordpress.com
www.facebook.com/liestopper/?fref=ts

Timeless Vie
timelessvie.wordpress.com
www.facebook.com/timelessvie

Eyes Blog:
mlmtheamericandreammadenightmare.blogspot.nl

Hommetepreneur:
www.facebook.com/hommetrepreneur/

Yikes. I should have put Botwatch of course.

I guess I'm just going to have to put up the relevant links again.

After lunch that is.

Anyone can use the Bot Watch piece however you like. Print it, copy and paste it, link to it. Do what you want with it! Get the message out there.

Well yeah oc. My initial drop was just gonna include a business card with links to TV, Botwatch, Eyes blog etc and some links to other resources but maybe it is an idea to have a set pack for letter dropping an area being targeted by MLM recruiters, hmmm maybe posters or leaflets for notice boards as well?

I should have linked to it then! Here it is- botwatchblog.wordpress.com/2016/03/26/people-who-care-about-you-are-worried/

Feel free to borrow, copy and paste, link, print out, use however you wish...

I think people are best off doing what they feel comfortable with, ambler. I do think that a body of material from different sources would be good though.

Could anyone advise me whether you have any sort of legal 'grace period' in which to change your mind if you've signed up? (As when eg a double-glazing salesman cold calls and catches you unprepared.) I've always wondered about that .....interim ....time when the distributor has left the 'prospect's' house and they're starting to have serious doubts about what they may have done.

I created a shorter URL for the Toobusy link. This makes it easier to place a link on paper/business cards etc for people to copy.
tinyurl.com/ha6sgxw
Any long links can be shortened at this site tinyurl.com

cozietoesie You've got 14 days to cancel any consumer contract under UK and European laws.

ec.europa.eu/consumers/consumer_rights/rights-contracts/index_en.htm

This is why 'MLM' racketeers (and their attorneys) have drawn up take-it-or-leave-it contracts which have arbitrarily defined their signatories as 'independent: distributors, business owners, ' etc. and thus, they have sought to take away their signatories' statutory rights as consumers, by means of a deception. In reality, since they have been used to dissimulate and commit fraud, countless millions of 'MLM' contracts have been effectively worthless. No matter what Bots might claim, no one can have ever signed an 'MLM' contract as a result of his/her fully-informed consent.

I guess I was specifically thinking about the Doorstep Selling Regulations.

So a case has never been taken under them?

If you buy goods or services from a 'MLM' Bot, in theory, you have the same statutory rights as a consumer, as if you'd bought from a shop. In reality, few members of the public have bought anything from 'MLM' Bots.

ec.europa.eu/consumers/archive/cons_int/safe_shop/door_sell/sur10_01.pdf

There is a an extraordinary document which was drawn up by legal academics at the request of the European Commission. This is a review of Door to Door Direct Selling legislation in European States. However, the document is fundamentally flawed, because, in its opening pages, it accepts without challenge the inaccurate definition of 'direct selling' fed to its authors by Direct Selling Associations, and their own legal representatives. In other words the contents of the European Commission report was largely-controlled by 'MLM' racketeers.

www.wfdsa.org/library/?fa=pyramidselling

The misleading submissions made to the European Commission by the so-called 'World Federation of Direct Selling Associations,' form part of an overall pattern of ongoing major racketeering activity.

BTW, In a telephone conversation I had with Prof Hans Micklitz (who cordinated the European Commission report on Direct Selling legislation), he admitted to me that he had very little understanding of 'MLM,' and that this was the most difficult task he'd ever undertaken as a professional academic.

I asked Micklitz how could he expect ordinary people to be able understand 'MLM,' if he, a legal boffin, couldn't, but all he could do in reply was to snigger.

I have to say that, despite his qualifications, Prof. Hans Mickliz was one of the most dim-witted, and morally bankrupt, individuals I have ever spoken to regarding 'MLM' cultic racketeering.

Thanks, Eye.

I would find it difficult to imagine that there could never have been people - however well manipulated over the coffee - who haven't shut the door behind that ex-friend/distributor and thought to themselves 'Whaaattttt'?

That feels like a period of 'interest'.

cozietoesie Perhaps the biggest joke in all of this, is that, although it once was prevalent, door to door, direct selling (aka peddling) has virtually died out in countries like France, the UK and the USA, but 'MLM' recruiters are quite literally everywhere.

When's the last time anyone on these threads actually bought consumer goods on their door-step from an authentic door to door, direct seller (ie. a salaried, or non-salaried, commission agent who makes his/her living from regularly retailing goods, and/or services, to the general public for a net-profit, based on value and demand? ).

The European Commission legal Boffins were actually paid wads of tax_payers money to waste their time drafting a report about a form of enterpise that they were shown no quantifiable evidence to prove it actually still significantly exists, except in 'MLM' fairy stories.

Yet, when I spoke to Hans Micklitz, he simply couldn't understand why I found him to be just another useful idiot in the ongoing 'MLM' tragicomedy.

Just watched the EV video stopfaffing linked to. Excellent advice and would be great if it could be added to TV? I found it really useful for reasons I'll post below.

I've heard of people moving from one MLM to another. I envy their stamina rather than their logical thinking.

I first became aware of FL when my lovely brother tried to recruit me. It was bizarre as I am so not the right sort of person to do direct selling. I was marked as a hater and lost my brother for 15 months. When he stopped, I only knew because I watched his FB page and all things FL stopped, I made contact, didn't mention FL (amnesia in these circs is best) and we are in a much better place. But he has started another one and has tried to get me to buy products. He knows I don't want them and can't afford them but it's almost as if he can't stop himself

Also in his early FL days, he admitted that he knew that someone he was trying to recruit wouldn't be any good at it. I like to think it was the pressure of his upline that made him do it. Rather than him being a bastard...

stopfaffing Thanks for the info with regard to kindle. I did give that a try and my kindle says it wont allow pdf downloads.
Not to worry I am ploughing on through reading it on my laptop ,

Unfortunately a few new bots have arrived for me. 2 x JP and 1 x FL. New mums, perfect targets sadly. We even have the baby sitting with the aloe gloop pictures

Day, that's a pity. Have you had a look on your amazon kindle site for further advice? I can't remember exactly how I managed to create a kindle email , I just faffed around for a while and it happened.

Once you have your kindle email you can email all sorts of documents to your kindle. I get a regular newsletter that I copy and paste parts onto a microsoft document and send to my kindle. Handy to read anywhere now.

I was marked as a hater and lost my brother for 15 months

It's not just the money is it? This is why MLMs are so harmful. And it's the "pressure of his upline" until he becomes that upline too - but then it really the fault of FL who created these incentives in the first place. The incentives are so strong to recruit it's just no wonder thousands of unsuitable people are signed up. Actually, ALL people are unsuitable, but some are more vulnerable than others.

Yes, the self-gratifying 'MLM' controlling-scenario slots straight into the brains of a certain type of vulnerable person. They need to believe that it's true and once they have gone a certain distance down that path, it becomes very difficult to turn back.

Exactly twunk . I cannot think of many other jobs that lead to people alienating so many family and friends
In fact, in that sense at least MLMs are certainly cult-like at best, if not cultic
(Fwiw I agree with eyes analysis that they are essentially cults, but am resigned to the fact that it is going to be very hard to get that line of the story out into the open)

throwingpebbles 'MLM' cults exhibit very specific characteristics many of which are shared with groups that have eventually turned violent. For obvious reasons, observers have tended to focus only on violent cultic groups, and they have overlooked the fact that these same groups existed, sometimes for decades, in plain sight.

Cults have tended to become violent when their leaders lost their monopolies of information, and they faced being held to account. As the leaders' psychological state deteriorated, the behaviour of their adherents became more and more paranoid, and extreme.

In the UK, the mainstream media has been generally reluctant to use the word 'cult,' but in other countries, the cult phenomenon has been widely reported in the media. In France, the tragedy of the 'Order of the Solar Temple', brought the cult issue to the fore.

There has never been a recognised expert in the UK concerning cults. Various charalatans have tried to expand into this intellectual vacuum.

Toobusy (great name ) thank you for that link, it's great.

My bot-friend messaged me on Facebook today telling me about her new venture. Didnt take long

I composed my most sympathetic and non-negative-sounding reply to go with your link but she's already replied saying that she has done her homework and "I can assure you that this will improve mine and my family's life in the long run with some hard work."

Interestingly she also said she's read that link already.

Can't decide whether to try again or give up. I really really don't want her to get too badly burned

I doubt she really has already read it, I'm afraid - or not in its entirety and without comment. Not given when it appeared. That may be a standard reply they've been told to give to anything sent to them.

You've done what you can.