Why are MLMs/ Network Marketing 'businesses' a scam?

[Spongebobette]

This is the 44th thread in a long series about the dangers of network marketing/ MLMs such as Forever Living, Ariix, NuSkin, Arbonne, Younique, Valentus, TS Life, and MANY MANY more!
Posts here will give examples of the lies told by 'top bots' who portray luxury lifestyles in order to lure in new victims and of the other techniques and brainwashing used by MLMs
Over 90% of people who join an MLM end up LOSING money. Always bear that in mind when considering paying money to join!

Omg. I've come to the gradual realisation that Yawn really is a bad person. If you look on her Insta almost every single photo is mainly of her and her kids, husbands and pets are like props in the background. And for her to use cancer as a way of getting CC 🙈🙉

Guys, the thing about her is that if you listen to her speak in person she comes across as really kind and self deprecating and in that way disarms people. It's hard to believe from looking at her social media I know...

To be fair all the FL bots have been using cancer (positivity packs and/or switch deodorant because aluminium) to get CCs. If you look closely the deodorants arranged in a heart with some sample sachets in the middle appears in a few places (being cynical I'd almost think it's that same photo...)

@SputnikBear If only one person entered the raffle then she should have won. That's the problem with Bots running unregulated raffles - they just make it up as they go along

Did Homeschool get a cheque this year?

Who is YAWN?
All my hun bots had gone to ground until i had a tropics one pop up recently :(

Homeschool didn’t get a cheque this year.
I’m not sure if she went to Dallas. I don’t think she did but I might be wrong.

I just need a little rant. My friend who I had lost when she started flogging FL and then I found her again when she stopped flogging it, has now started on Tropic.
I now know four people selling it. I've just seen one of them claim that some ingredient in the serum 'penetrates the skin's deepest layer'.

@SputnikBear If only one person entered the raffle then she should have won
Yep. I’d have been so annoyed if it was me. The prize was £50 of books and there were 50 numbers for sale, but only one person bought a number so she cancelled it and refunded her £1. Judging by her subsequent posts she was furious!

I get so fucking sick of Usborne books. Relative of mine does it and so my mum always feels really really obliged to buy completely overpriced books for my kids from her and it just winds me up so much as my mum knows and admits she knows this stuff's cheaper elsewhere but feels like she "has" to buy something. Then I get it as well because the relative knows my kids are avid readers - but I'm not fucking paying her stupid prices for things I don't want - so we get the aggro from that and it just goes on and on.

She has occasional outbreaks into Younique and now it's fucking Scentsy as well. I don't really give a shit what migraine inducing wax melt you're putting on in your house when you get home pet.

School do a Christmas shopping evening - started off as lots of crafters locally selling their wares and now it's been just completely taken over by MLM shite. Makes it really awkward for me as I refuse to buy from them, but I'm involved in the PTA so have to be seen to go to it etc - I keep gently trying to guide them back to local crafters and businesses but they're obsessed with "oooh we need someone doing books/scentsy/younique" - grrr!

Those pay-to-play raffles are regulated under gambling laws. You need a license. You can report to FB and to Trading Standards... #TeamReport

@ReverseTheFerret: there’s a complaint letter template on TV that explains why MLMs shouldn’t be part of community events. Might be worth a try with the school governors/leadership team?

timelessvie.wordpress.com/2016/06/16/creating-mlm-free-spaces-how-you-can-help/

@Electrascoffee I completely agree with everything you've said about yawn.

I met a nice mum at a course I did 3 or 4 years ago. We became Facebook friends but haven't seen each other much since.
She was selling Avon, then Pampered Chef, body shop, recently Airbonne with thousands of posts. Then today she's back with Avon.
She doesn't have other work & 3 young children I dread to think how much money she's wasted it's such a shame each one is supposed to be her way to supporting the family but she possibly hasn't earned much at all.

School fairs full of MLMs are the WORST!

@Fleebee I’m sure you are right, she’ll have spent a lot of money buying into each business, buying stock or samples, going to so called conferences (NOT cheap, plus petrol and food)
There are also expenses that they never take into account such as buying coffee for a friend when they meet up (for a business pitch), having cards printed etc etc

I feel so sad when I see serial bots; they are so full of hope that the new one is THE ONE

But it never is

Thanks Norma, that makes her post from this morning with photos of her with all her cheques even more ridiculous.

School fairs full of MLMs are the WORST!
I agree.
It seems some in our area have at least half a dozen stalls of people flogging MLM crap.
Someone I know makes their way around every school fair in the area at Christmas and summer capitalising on the fact that schools let local businesses and hobby craft businesses have stalls.

Bot I vaguely now has gone from qualifying for eagle managers retreats and getting lower level bonus cheques twice I think to getting the daim bars for being on track to qualify for tickets for Stockholm. Of course she is crazy excited about this but can't she and her recruits see how far back she has fallen??? I think it must be a sunken costs thing - put so much in that you can't bear to walk away even though that is the best option.

Thanks, Sponge. 🙂

Yes, @Jasperising, I think you are right there.

It's quite cult like too; once you are in, you only interact with others in the MLM, you are love bombed by your upline and told to cut out 'negative' people so your capacity for logical thought is diminished.

I have lost my best friend to Arbonne. She doesn't spam her facebook too much, but there were lots of photos recently that showed her at a conference, and lots of white BMWs outside. Did she have to pay to attend? How does it work?

We very nearly fell out (20 year friendship) because I gave her my opinion on MLMs, even though she asked me to research them and tell her what I thought! I don't really hear from her much, which is a shame. Suppose she has her new Arbonne friends now.

oh yes she'll have been told to get rid of 'negative' people. And yes, she'll have paid to attend. Plus all the expenses.

Arbonne actually publishes an average income statement, this shows how most people don't earn anything at all.

Here's a really good article about it

www.talentedladiesclub.com/articles/how-much-money-can-you-really-make-working-for-mlm-arbonne/

The MLM people are like abusers - isolating people from friends and family so they can manipulate them.

uokhun.uk/2018/09/30/here-are-ten-home-based-mummy-businesses-you-can-shove-right-up-your-arse/?fbclid=IwAR0hqATwE9u_xsWFpZxVCSu0m1iCORGYZSJXieRfe99R9q30u8WfkD-lUDY

Posting this for some light hearted humour

Homeschool did go to Dallas, as she posted a few lives there but she didn't get a cheque