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Waterslide Industry Lobbyist posted:My mom just started working for an MLM selling prepper food to Mormons. I think she is actually making a decent amount just selling the food right now, no Facebook posts about it yet at least. She's been super busy sending out orders because the church leadership is all about preparedness right now, more so than usual. I think she has a decent shot at making some money if she gets enough time to start recruiting people but she seems to be doing it just to stay busy at home as my step dad is making enough to support them. It's a choice market. Mormons tend to keep three months to a year in food for their family so they can last between the beginning of the End Of Days and the Second Coming of Christ and are constantly rotating food out of that bunker pantry and putting it into community. The LDS church itself keeps a community pantry for it's followers, both for the Apocalypse but also personal emergencies and charity, so there's always a constant flow of food coming and going.
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Mar 31, 2015 05:25
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WAMPA_STOMPA posted:I came across some letters that the FDA sent to doTerra and Young Living, two health-style MLMs. Apparently they claimed their cinnamon bark oils and whatever could cure ebola, autism, cancer, multiple sclerosis, and similar diseases. The FDA was not happy. My mom is starting to get into the Young Living essential oils scam. Right now it's pretty innocuous, she just bought a couple bottles from a coworker, but I can tell she's getting roped in. I sent her that story about the ebola curing oil and she just said something like "oh, well that's not the type I got, this one really seems to work". When I asked what "work" means exactly, she said she just got over a recent illness while taking it* (along with doctor-prescribed medication for that illness). The annoying thing about "essential oils" in particular is, even if you can prove every medical claim made about them and their story of origin is false, the fallback argument is always "well I just like how they smell/how they make my skin feel, stop being a knowitall". I mean, there's stuff out there for a fraction of the cost of these tiny bottles that both smell better and make your skin feel better, but what do I know. yeah I eat ass fucked around with this message at 08:04 on Mar 31, 2015 |
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Mar 31, 2015 07:58
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Krotera posted:From what they tell me (I've never done MLM) a lot of MLMs start by flattering you a lot, and then bring in a culture where you supposedly have to attend lots of meetings and buy lots of products to get anywhere. They set impossible expectations and then blame you for not MLMing hard enough when you don't meet them. So if you come into Mary Kay or something saying "I want to do two hours a week" they'll say sure and privately tell you that most people can't, but they think you can -- and then they'll tell you you need to keep a stock, you need to sell to everyone you know, and you need to attend a bunch of dress-code mandatory meetings a week to learn the rules of the trade. Moridin920 posted:Then they just prey on people who are low income; college kids, working families, etc. People who don't really know any better because they have no experience with money in the first place (because they live paycheck to paycheck usually). I haven't finished reading the thread yet, but this was my experience. I won a Mary Kay makeover in a raffle - I was aiming for the dog bed, I didn't even realize there was another prize. My friends are pretty spread out and none of us really wear make-up, so nobody came over for the "party" thing. The woman was nice and seemed rather new to it all, and she relied heavily on flattery and complimenting me. Lots of little things, like, "Your lips are such a beautiful color already, adding this would just give them that little extra oomph to really make you dazzle!" and poo poo like that. She did learn quickly to not push the fancier stuff on me at least, and skipped entire things that I obviously was never going to consider. I'm also a poor, and borrowed cash from my dad to get the one thing I did want (this cooling gel stuff for my eyes). She tried to push me a little into signing up, and I was too polite and said I'd think about it. She came over a week later for a playdate with our dogs and really tried pushing it on me, pointing out how welcoming everyone is and I'd make all of these friends, I didn't have to sell much at all, blah blah. I got free stuff out of listening to all of the talk, but seriously, I didn't have a single friend who was willing to come for a free makeover and I lived with my Dad, who the hell did she expect me to sell things to? After that she called me a few times, trying to get me to come to their special parties and poo poo, but I blew her off each time.
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Mar 31, 2015 08:02
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raditts posted:^^^ That's very rude, grandpa
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Mar 31, 2015 09:48
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I lucked out having parents immune to this poo poo. My father got sucked in to 2-3 MLM meetings by accident after believing they were legitimate interviews many years ago when he was shotgunning job offers. Anyways, yelling at the top of your lungs: "All you people are full of poo poo and a bunch of scamming fucks." kind of gets you escorted out of the 'office' or whatever pretty fast. What about For-Profit Colleges? That poo poo is basically an MLM except it's syphoning loan money from the federal government and banks since student loan cannot be discharged. For-Profit Colleges get their sweet sweet tuition money, and in return students get classes where the professor only shows up 10% of the time to teach the class, useless loving degrees, and no practical training. Best one I've heard of so far was some LPN or RN (nursing) programs run by University of Phoenix that managed to graduate students without ANY clinical experience or labs to learn clinical techniques AT ALL. Yea, people with nursing degrees that have never even placed an IV, got their hands on ANY hospital equipment, or done any kind of practicum...
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Mar 31, 2015 12:05
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Dont forget the supplement ones are amazingly bordering at illegal. Our finger blaster omega 3 super nutrient is amazing. Its packed with the antioxidants of 100 peaches, the calcium of 35 glasses of milk and the omega 3s of 200 tuna cans. omega 3s can make you smart Calcium makers your bones strong Antioxidants fight cancer. *fbo3 is a supplement and has not been evaluated to treat or cure any diseases. Joe you wanna talk quick about your personal experience with finger blaster? Yeah, ive been taking fbo3 for a year now, im cancer free and my wife schlobs my knob daily because my dick grew 3 inches.
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Mar 31, 2015 13:43
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Avalanche posted:Best one I've heard of so far was some LPN or RN (nursing) programs run by University of Phoenix that managed to graduate students without ANY clinical experience or labs to learn clinical techniques AT ALL. Yea, people with nursing degrees that have never even placed an IV, got their hands on ANY hospital equipment, or done any kind of practicum...  Google shows me nothing, have a link?
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Mar 31, 2015 14:39
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tater_salad posted:Dont forget the supplement ones are amazingly bordering at illegal. What they'll do, is they'll make a video of someone saying they took some product and will not name the product but will say what is in it, and that it cured their cancer. Since they don't name the product, they get away with it. Of course they run the risk of people who watch it and want to try it buying OTHER products that contain the same thing, but it still helps to sell THEIR product. It's unethical, immoral, and just something only true scumbags would do. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_49PUYgw-E That's a copy; the original video has been deleted. It didn't have any text on it like the copy above, but it did come from people associated with Xango.
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Mar 31, 2015 14:58
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protip: US slogan is not E pluribus unum its caveat emptor hth
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Mar 31, 2015 15:03
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tater_salad posted:Dont forget the supplement ones are amazingly bordering at illegal. Yeah, my uncle got in on some supplement bullshit called Le-Vel. Had to drop him from facebook because all of the bullshit posts about how it cures absolutely everything and it's the best no really seriously you should try it. The part that sucks is that he apparently knew a dude that was pretty much near the top of the pyramid that got him hooked right at the start. He called me asking my advice before doing anything and I tried to talk him out of it but he wouldn't listen to reason.
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Mar 31, 2015 15:50
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WAMPA_STOMPA posted:I came across some letters that the FDA sent to doTerra and Young Living, two health-style MLMs. Apparently they claimed their cinnamon bark oils and whatever could cure ebola, autism, cancer, multiple sclerosis, and similar diseases. The FDA was not happy. That's why the smarter scam artists are careful to never make direct claims about what the product does. Like how Airborn "boosts your immune system" which sounds nice but doesn't actually mean anything. They supplement this with their good ole fashioned small print which states how none of the statements have been evaluated by the FDA and their product is not designed to treat or cure any disease.
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Mar 31, 2015 15:52
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muscles like this? posted:That's why the smarter scam artists are careful to never make direct claims about what the product does. Like how Airborn "boosts your immune system" which sounds nice but doesn't actually mean anything. They supplement this with their good ole fashioned small print which states how none of the statements have been evaluated by the FDA and their product is not designed to treat or cure any disease. I had a dude try to get me into Amway once. He was absolutely convinced we were going to be rich because we were good at selling computers to middle class people at Circuit City. Also, for anyone wanting to know: The difference between MLMs and a real job is that a real job pays you some sort of fixed income. Even when I was cold-calling for sales I had a base salary + commission.
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Mar 31, 2015 16:30
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a few years ago me and some friends were trying to shoot a web series (yup) and some dumbfuck one guy knew offered to pay for a boom mic and sound equipment as long as we agreed to go to some mlm presentation for whatever stupid loving poo poo he bought into but he had already given us the money and i never went to his stupid poo poo and we got our sound equipment and made our garbage webseries so guess some dumbfuck is a loser twice over
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Mar 31, 2015 16:40
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Dirty secret.. I was in an mlm once.. someone I knew needed a "second leg" for their triangle (ITS NOT A loving PYRAMID) so they paid all our dues and orders etc.. I still tried it.. realized their pay systems were shady and intentionally confusing using points not dollars that the whole thing was a back patting cult of vultures trying to get more people there to fill their triangles so they could finally live off the fruits of others labor so you can set and forget it. The meetings that you had to pay for were full of poor suckers in their Sunday best (still not great) and 2-3 successful guys 1 with a 10 year old merc with vinyl that the company bought this car for him. *all I needed to do was screw 100s of people. We were asked to lie about sales on the tax reporting sheet that made sure you werent hoarding things in your basement (all of our stuff got sold to the pwrson above us) Why do we charge you to sign up? Every business has a start up cost, tim hortons, McDonald's and even your own business has a start up cost, this is your business and it has its own start up costs. I wish I was scummy enough to make one of these there is a new one every day and they get 1000s of people to part with money. I always wonder how many people believe in it vs how many at the top are just scammy assholes.
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Mar 31, 2015 17:02
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tater_salad posted:I wish I was scummy enough
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Mar 31, 2015 17:04
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The thing about people higher up in MLMs is they mostly don't realize they're scammers. Everybody they see shuffle through and fail did so because they weren't skilled enough and didn't work hard enough. That means the ones who are making real money are the hardworking brilliant ones
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Mar 31, 2015 17:34
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When did everyon itt learn about pyramid schemes? I don't remember it being covered in personal finance class in high school, which seems like a natural place, but my parents taught me about scams when I was a kid. Wondering how many people who fall for these things just don't actually know what a scam is.
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Mar 31, 2015 18:54
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Is Mary Kay a MLM? My cousin got loaded selling that poo poo.
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Mar 31, 2015 19:04
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One thing they'll do is tell you they are "training" you and "growing your business" by making sales to your friends and family- they'll give you a better sales commission contract for each sale they get paid for if you refer people to them. Then they've bled you dry of friends/family and ignore you, and not tell you how to get licensed for insurance sales or registered with the companies whose products you are selling etc, so you can't earn any money yet and don't know why That's usually when you're sent to GOLD STAR TRAINING which is a fat guy yelling at you in an unconditioned warehouse, and if you go to the bathroom or leave early you're fired
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Mar 31, 2015 19:20
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dog buttz posted:Is Mary Kay a MLM? My cousin got loaded selling that poo poo. I think mary kay and avon are thr least lovely ones honestly.. there are folks looking to buy that and are usually an easy sell. Market america is a huge mlm but there's not a lot of poo poo people want to buy and you need to shove it down their throats. A lot of those phone service ones or nutrasuticals or snake oil ones are sukker bets where you bug your friends. Even stuff like partylite or Tupperware is decent becsuse you have parties etc.
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Mar 31, 2015 20:23
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tater_salad posted:I think mary kay and avon are thr least lovely ones honestly.. there are folks looking to buy that and are usually an easy sell. Is it really a party if the whole point is to be sold things though? I would feel uncomfortable
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Mar 31, 2015 20:45
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Tezzor posted:The thing about people higher up in MLMs is they mostly don't realize they're scammers. Everybody they see shuffle through and fail did so because they weren't skilled enough and didn't work hard enough. That means the ones who are making real money are the hardworking brilliant ones amway can't fail, you failed amway
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Mar 31, 2015 20:47
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Young Freud posted:It's a choice market. Mormons tend to keep three months to a year in food for their family so they can last between the beginning of the End Of Days and the Second Coming of Christ and are constantly rotating food out of that bunker pantry and putting it into community. The LDS church itself keeps a community pantry for it's followers, both for the Apocalypse but also personal emergencies and charity, so there's always a constant flow of food coming and going. Imagine my surprise when I'm invited back to my date's apartment. She's Mormon so what the hell is really going to happen? She makes popcorn, puts on a movie and pulls out the Mellaleuca products. gently caress me.
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Mar 31, 2015 21:00
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tater_salad posted:I think mary kay and avon are thr least lovely ones honestly.. there are folks looking to buy that and are usually an easy sell. That was big in my hometown in the 80s. People usually broke even or came out a few dollars ahead, so better than a typical MLM. However, they also wasted tons of time throwing non-stop parties and going to stupid meetings so I'm pretty sure they could have taken a one day a week job, done less work, and got paid more money.
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Mar 31, 2015 21:02
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Busta Chimes.wav posted:When did everyon itt learn about pyramid schemes? I don't remember it being covered in personal finance class in high school, which seems like a natural place, but my parents taught me about scams when I was a kid. Wondering how many people who fall for these things just don't actually know what a scam is. i'm pretty sure that my mom just told me never to take a job that i had to pay to get, i don't think she used the phrase "pyramid scheme" specifically
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Mar 31, 2015 21:10
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Yawgmoth posted:Please do this but also make it incredibly carcinogenic, vapers are the most insufferable retards I think people love to rail against vaporizers/e-cigarettes purely because they want to be cool and manly, honestly, and no other reason. It's about as loving dumb as when people used to bitch about someone wearing ear buds, followed by someone wearing bluetooth headphones, and what has started before they're even in mass production with google glass. If you don't like that stuff, fine. I don't even smoke cigarettes at all myself, but I find it utterly insufferable when someone tries to act like a bad rear end because they burn their tobacco and want to bitch about the "old ways." Honestly I think everyone who does this about any new tech is well on the fast track to being an old man screaming about "KIDS THESE DAYS AND THEIR MUSIC." ED: I would be entirely happy if most smokers changed to vaporizers, they are way more pleasant for bystanders, too. You prefer burning your tobacco, more power to you, but it doesn't make you even a centimeter better. Blazing Ownager fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Mar 31, 2015 |
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Mar 31, 2015 21:10
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Blazing Ownager posted:I think people love to rail against vaporizers/e-cigarettes purely because they want to be cool and manly, honestly, and no other reason. It's about as loving dumb as when people used to bitch about someone wearing ear buds, followed by someone wearing bluetooth headphones, and what has started before they're even in mass production with google glass.
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Mar 31, 2015 21:15
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Many years ago, when I was let go from my job, a "friend" stopped by to recruit me for an MLM. He described the organization as somehow different from a pyramid scheme. "Horizontal loading" is how he smugly described it. Whatever the hell that means.
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Mar 31, 2015 21:16
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tango alpha delta posted:Many years ago, when I was let go from my job, a "friend" stopped by to recruit me for an MLM. He described the organization as somehow different from a pyramid scheme. "Horizontal loading" is how he smugly described it. Its like a square but wider at the base than at the top and only 3 sides. Stop working for the man just work for yourself! Be your own boss! No worry you have no job and have to pay to join us! Come to a meeting ill buy ya a ticket. The reason you are driven to bug your friends is because you need 2 people at least under you to keep the Chain going.. MORE PEOPLE! I will move to this topic once in this thread and be done  Vaping helped me quit smoking... not everyone who vapes is a fedorad twat blowing clouds at the store from their robo cock. I vape in smoking areas and only talk about it when approached.. I even dread it when other folks are at my local shop because the get all  about it. tater_salad fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Mar 31, 2015 |
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Mar 31, 2015 21:29
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I was once a teenager barely making enough money for gas working at a bridal shop when I get an offer from a man in a suit (!) to work for him because he liked the cut of my jib. I met him at a Starbucks on the other end of the city where he tried to rope me into the Primerica insurance scam. I actually brought one of my friends with me (she lived on that end of town and we hung out afterwards) and we sat through this pitch. I remember him at the end commenting on our drinks and he mentioned something to effect that he only had water in his tumbler cause Starbucks was so expensive! What a rip off Starbucks was! Join this super great Primerica business that apparently doesn't pay enough to it's employees (independent contractors I mean) to buy a frappachino at a Starbucks. My job at the time was helping ladies wiggle into dresses and floofing out the petticoat and I still made more than this fool. I guess you can lease a Beamer for a month, but that takes a big hit outta your coffee budget. That and the sage advice my mom gave me of "if they won't pay you during your training period it's a scam" got me outta that pretty quick. And totes re on the Young Living oil scam. I got a relation that sells that and some Mary Kay esque thing called Mango Passion or Rumba Fruit or something else forgettable. I once sorta called her out on the bullshit of it being able to cure breast cancer and she told me that allopaths don't have all the information. An allopath is what scam artists call a real doctor it turns out.
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Mar 31, 2015 21:38
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I've considered getting into business selling "Do-it-yourself" Homeopathy kits. I figure, yeah I'd be making money by exploiting incredibly gullible people, but maybe if I did it right, for every dollar I made, I'd cause other homeopaths to lose 10. I think it all balances out from that perspective.
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Mar 31, 2015 21:48
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I don't have a single lady friend that isn't into scentsy, avon, doTerra, or some other poo poo 
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Mar 31, 2015 22:00
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:I've considered getting into business selling "Do-it-yourself" Homeopathy kits. I figure, yeah I'd be making money by exploiting incredibly gullible people, but maybe if I did it right, for every dollar I made, I'd cause other homeopaths to lose 10. I think it all balances out from that perspective. Wel you are a doctor on an internet forum.. ive also thought about this but cant be scummy enough . Homeopathy is another thing that makes me wonder the scamming to actually believe ratio
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Mar 31, 2015 22:08
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I took a speech class as part of my general ed requirements last summer. One of the women in the class managed to twist every topic for our assigned speeches into a sales pitch for Young Living Essential Oils. The scary part is that she's a nurse, so I strongly suspect she tries to con the patients she treats into abandoning their meds for her snake oil.
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Mar 31, 2015 22:54
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Are those sex toy parties kind of like MLM schemes now? I've been to one in my life and at the end she tried to recruit some of us. Everything was overpriced and kind of stupid. Edit: Do they still have Tupperware parties? Tupperware is legit I'd buy some
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Mar 31, 2015 23:42
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I don't know whether to laugh or cry or what, but my mother spent most of the 80s and 90s doing poo poo like this. Pretty much if anybody smooth talking promised her a way to get rich, she would get all over it. Avon, Tupperware, Mary Kay, Fireworks, Real Estate. She even tried her hand selling cars. The worst, most laughable part, was that she's a horrible shrew who (STILL!!!) can't go twenty minutes without telling somebody that they were wrong, or rude, or crude, or going to hell. Literally the worst personality type for a salesperson that you can imagine. She would get so hung up on the potential rewards, she never stopped to realize that the products don't come with customers built in, and she didn't have any friends and her family lived on the other side of the country. Which is really pretty sad. She tried so many times, in some cases multiple times with the same products, and she never ever didn't lose money. (She was also very much sold on the "God will bless you 100-fold for whatever you give as offerings above and beyond your tithes" with televangelists, so there went even more money!). At one point, she did one of those Business Opportunities in the paper, selling Fireworks over the summer as a franchise for somebody else who was seriously over charging for the wares. She went and forced me into it, when all I wanted was to get a job at Taco Bell just around the corner. All these hot, lovely 12-15 hour days driving to the other side of the city to work in a broken down old gas station for 8 weeks, I ended up making less than I would have made in 3 weeks of 8 hour days at minimum wage. That was the shittiest summer! The really bad part is that she graduated from a top school with an accounting degree and could have gone for her CPA and actually made real money, and if she'd taken even half of all the money she threw away on these schemes over the last 30+ years, she might be prepared for a comfortable retirement in 7 years, but I guess that was too hard. Can't wait to see all the debt she's going to try to leave me in her will.
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Mar 31, 2015 23:45
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i can't believe people still fell for it after the baby was born, it's like Malcom's not in the middle anymore you fuckwads, it's Dewey in the Middle now
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Mar 31, 2015 23:59
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Shnooks posted:Are those sex toy parties kind of like MLM schemes now? I've been to one in my life and at the end she tried to recruit some of us. Everything was overpriced and kind of stupid. Yeah but the party ones tend not to be cultish. Maybe mary kay or avon because they are big usually those ones yoy can get away with just selling some stuff to folks at work. If you do a party youll make some okay cash because people feel obligated to buy. Amway market America young living, mellaluka etc are high on the crazy scale.
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Apr 1, 2015 00:01
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Monstrous Dooklord posted:i can't believe people still fell for it after the baby was born, it's like Malcom's not in the middle anymore you fuckwads, it's Dewey in the Middle now if anything it made Malcolm even more in the middle
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Apr 1, 2015 00:07
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guys, guys, guys. it's not a pyramid, it's a triangleFortuitous Bumble posted:an MLM for selling encyclopedias door to door. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2503040 (you'll need archives access to view this but it's worth it)
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Apr 1, 2015 00:22
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