Fair warning, MML folks are also trying to get to you via Twitter, if you get an E-mail that Qivana or teamqivana is following you, block them.

@theblackdog: *MLM

Time for coffee.

I remember the feeling of nausea and betrayal that came over me when a car club member stood up to address our meeting and unexpectedly started into a sales pitch for long distance service from some MLM sales company. Fortunately some other members spoke up and cut him short. Man that was uncomfortable.

[www.tni.com]

Don't forget Noni juice scammers

I have this guy that keeps trying to get me to buy his crappy juice drink and then "buy" into it. It's 700 dollars to be a "dealer" then you have to buy cases of the drink for 40 dollars a pop and then try to sell these things as profit?

Who's buying a 5+ dollar energy drink?

mary kay, avon, pampered chef, stampin up.... I feel so violated.

@EdnaLegume: but you can win a Pink Cadillac if you sell enough Mary Kay!

@theblackdog:

That's okay - he could've said the MMA folks were trying to recruit you - which would bring about a whole new set of concerns.

But I like Arbonne's and Avon's products. :( At least Avon has a catalog you can order out of. You have to go through one of those creepy women to get anything from Arbonne.

skanikingmike: LOL You're better off just buying the d--- Cadillac your self. It's cheaper.

I honestly don't see how smart well-educated people can fall for these things, but I know several that have.

Cutco is one of the worst for sure, taking advantage of college kids with their 'make money on spring break' posters all over campus promising 13 bucks an hour... Pure rubbish, the worst part is they have a halfway decent product.

When I was young a friend tried to get me into Amway. Though I was unable to find any obvious flaws in the pitch I eventually turned it down for 3 reasons:

1. For all the talk about how easy it was and how little time people could devote to it and still be successful, it seemed that Amway was all these people ever talked about. All their friends/acquaintances were in Amway, they were always either talking about the Amway meeting they just came from or were planning the next Amway meeting they were going to go to.

2. That the more successful members were constantly selling motivational books/tapes to the newer/less successful members seemed to give the entire enterprise the feeling of shyster and mark.

3. Finally and most tellingly, when I asked my friend how much HE was making, he looked at me as if I should know better, and said in a chiding tone that that was personal business. I agreed out loud and apologized but I was thinking "But you are asking me to JOIN your BUSINESS! That is absolutely relevant information! I knew then I wasn't going to join.

[www.pinktruth.com] is an awesome website full of ex-mary kay...employees? sellers? i dunno.

but it's very interesting, really shows how they operate.

The worst thing about MLM schemes is how they destroy relationships. I hate having people who I considered friends trying to use me for personal profit. At this point the moment someone asks me if I would like to be my own boss I just cut ties with them for six months and then try back to see if their little fad is over. Sometimes the relationship never recovers. I had a friend I hung out with twice a week for years, who I considered a very close friend, who tried to get me involved in a deal selling water softeners (yes, I'm serious, an MLM selling Water Softeners). I kept trying to change the topic whenever we would hang out, but it was always about the water softeners. Finally I gave up and I honestly haven't seen that guy in six years. Hope the 'small business' worked out for ya bud.

@EdnaLegume: MLM is one of the biggest scams in the universe. How unbelievable that in this information age people still fall for this gimmick that everyone will become financially successful hawking products no one wants or needs.

The average MLM prospect ends up buying their own products just to break even, as 90 percent of the population already knows what a scam these sales pitches really are.

I had a friend get scooped into the energy "juice" craze that whipped through recently. He tried for about 5 minutes to get me on board... I told him as much as I value our friendship, to never try to get me on board for a pyramid scheme again. He insisted it wasn't a pyramid scheme but quit trying to get "sell" me on it. About 6 months later we were watching some TV and an amway commercial came on. I asked him how his "business" was going... He said the Pyramid toppled and he was left 1000 dollars down after buying a bunch of crappy juice.

... Poor guy. His wife seems to do okay with her passion party thing she throws. All the ladies in our circle of friends love going to those...

I accidentally got roped into one of these abominations in Columbus, OH. In retrospect, I should have known what I was getting into. Always watch out for phrases like, "Hands-on experience with clients" since "hands-on" equals "door-to-door" and "clients" equals "people who slam the door in your face".

I had a great first interview with this company, which said that they provide marketing services for Time Warner. Since they said they do business with a major player such as Time Warner, I thought that it was a more legit business especially since their office in Columbus was quite attractive. However, the second "hands-on" interview was a four hour door-to-door excursion. I wouldn't have worn my suit (and I would have brought a gun) had I known I would be walking through crumby towns trying to sell people Time Warner cable.

Live and learn.

There is a social networking equivalent of MLM (almost now that I think about it, there are no upfront costs or things to buy ongoing). It is called [ZenZuu.com] . It is like facebook or myspace, but they claim to share back the ad revenue with you. You get people to sign up under your name and share in the revenue they generate. I think it goes down a few levels as well, so there is a definite upstream and downstream. If you decide to check them out, sign up with the link here for kicks.

There is a guy I walk my dog with and he bugged me for months to sign up under him. I finally did just to satisfy him, but I warned him ahead of time, I had no friends so it wasn't going to do much good. I find the idea at least interesting. I expect them to fail, but who knows.

Good to see that you linked it to your profile

Most people view Amway as different from your Pampered Chef parties. With Amway, the "party" you get invited to is just to convince you join Amway have your own parties to convince people to join Amway and buy their junk. Most people I know would view an Amway party as tacky and would be offended if their friends ambushed them with a party. But the very same people throw these stupid pampered chef or cosmetics parties and think nothing of it. Part of these parties is to get your hapless friends to order something (looking for the cheapest thing in the catalog), and half is to convince people to hold their own parties in order to generate income.

Both are the same in my mind. MLM at its finest. Very few people actually make money.

Yeah, we've got one out here called Melaluca, which is essentially like Amway, and a bunch of those "Sell alarm systems in the summertime" places as well. God, I really need to get the hell out of here...

@Urgleglurk: I know I've seen quite a few of those "Mary Kay" monsters out here in NJ.

They seem to pick on the uneducated who think they're smart.

@Matt Palmer: You can see the starter kit on eBay after you've decided not to sell them anymore. You're almost guaranteed to make your money back and then some.

@salvatorecondegni: er... make that *sell the starter kit on eBay*

I knew a suburban Dad who lost everything to Amway. He was sucked into the Amway hype and left his job to be a full time Amway rep. He spent more on books, tapes and seminars than he could ever make back in commissions. Like most reps he didn't want to sell to end users, he wanted to be at the top of the pyramid directing and taking a cut from others. The last time I saw him his wife and kids had left and friends were avoiding him.

I went to one meeting at his house before I knew what he he was up to. He was not so subtly following the play book, counting heads, and removing chairs from the room so that some people would have to stand.

@Matt Palmer: Those knives are dangerous to people like me who shouldn't have razor-sharp knives. My ex sold those (well, tried to sell them) for a summer.

@gparlett: Right there with you. It seems like everyone I bump into that I knew in High School has started one and is trying to recruit me. They all have the office depot business cards with some company name that they thought up on the spot. I avoid them at all costs.

I've always thought of this sort of thing as a stupidity tax. It's like those people who send you checks asking only that you wire 90% of it onward. Pure stupidity tax.

I'm surprised to see a dearth of MLM defenders here.

The easiest way to differentiate a barely-legal pyramid scheme (Amway, YTB, etc.) from a legitimate MLM (Avon, Tupperware, etc.) is to look at the sales emphasis.

If most of your training and expected sales is sale of "the business", it's a worthless pyramid.

If the focus of your training and sales is on actually selling stuff at a profit to real customers that aren't involved with the company, then it's likely to be an actual, legit, business.

@ChrisC1234: Greed is a nasty creature. I have a friend that was in an MLM cult - once he finally listened to some people he got out. Now he tells people the only way to make money in an MLM is to start one.

@Skankingmike: Ughghgh. My evil father-in-law sells this crappy Noni juice. He has fake large-type brochures printed up saying it's proven to cure cancer. Then he takes it around retirement communities (where half the old folks have or have had SOME type of cancer, and the remaining old folks are terrified their cancer is coming soon) and sells cases of the stuff. Some of them have Alzheimers and can't even tell you what day it is. Many of them are just so happy to have a visitor they buy the damn juice. And to add insult to injury, he tries to get them to join the Mormon church after he sell them the juice. He's been "banned" from two nursing homes. Now he has to stick with "active retirement communities" where nurses are not supervising. He is just evil.

When a friend starts pushing crap like this on me, I avoid them like the plague and it usually spells the end of our friendship. They won't listen to you if you try to tell them they made a big mistake (Kinda like Christians) because they have sunk too much money and faith into it (tithes and faith for Christians or any religion).

@dbshaw: Number two on your list is where quite literally all of the money was being made by the high level Amway distributors.

There is an ungodly amount of pressure to purchase books, tapes, and attend seminars and there is little or no return on that "investment."

In fact, the first time I ever heard of mandatory binding arbitration was almost ten years ago when several large Amway distributor organizations forced arbitration agreements on people so that they couldn't be sued once folks wised up and realized they spent tens of thousands of dollars on motivational materials and didn't get shit in return.

I'm not one to usually use bad language, but fuck Amway.

@TheObserver: For what it's worth, there are people who make a decent living on Mary Kay. But those are the people at the top of a pyrami-, er, multi-level-market. The lady driving the pink caddie had to have accumulated $4500 per month in wholesale orders for herself and her team. And that's just to have a free lease on the car. To actually own it, they need to make something like $100K in wholesale orders.

But, about 10% of MK consultants are doing that, because there are 100,000 pink caddies out there. I would imagine that it's a 40-hour a week job to sell $9000+ worth of makeup every month, team or no.

@Skankingmike: ...and then continue selling it ad nauseum

My girlfriend got mad at me when i told her that the Mona-Vie drink was a MLM scheme, and that the business model only makes since for the guys on the top of the pyramid. I explained to her about the faulure rate of first time "salespeople."

She said I shouldn't be so negative.... pff.

Speaking of which, there's a good reason why the biggies of the MLM world aren't going to die any time soon. They've got China. But since Chinese regulations on MLMs are tighter, they actually have to put out a bit- corporate has to fund TV commercials, print ads, etc. so you don't have to scrounge up customers yourself. And they don't encourage these "party" things either- I've been discreetly offered a business card while waiting for lunch at a restaurant, I've seen an Avon shop (of course stocked with actual products- I guess someone's making money), but never a "party".

Which brings me to one point- why is the US so lax on these things?

I like the commercial they run saying they have over 3 million people running their own businesses, and over 7 billion in sales. Meaning their average business does just over $2k in sales a year. And this is what they advertise, not even talking about franchise fees, the cost of your time, the cost of people like me laughing in your face, etc...

@Skankingmike: "win" as in they pay the lease for you...Kind of like Arbonne and a Mercedes.

@Matt Palmer: I knew one person who sold them. They had a set themselves. They were very good knives, but I would hate to try to sell anything door-to-door

@snowburnt: My boyfriend was a Cutco rep for a few weeks when he dropped out of college. I think he sold one set total. To his mom. They're awesome knives though.

@dbshaw: I knew people doing Arbonne and Nutrilife (or something like that...not amway, he had part of his sales pitch devoted to telling you it wasn't amway).

They had a primary job that they were doing pretty well with, but they spend 90% of their time doing stuff to succeed in their MLM. I couldn't help wondering what they'd do when they got fired for time-theft.

Actually the Nutrilife guy (who was constantly yelled at for wearing this gaudy pin that said "I lost weight! ask me how!" around the office did get fired. The last I heard he was on unemployment.

@Matt Palmer: Protip: If you get a job interview letter from "Vectrix," that's the parent company of Cutco. Just throw it out.

@acarr260: Sharp knives are actually safer than dull ones.
@ salvatorecondegni: I signed up for cutco just to get the starter set for 150 bucks instead of the 600 dollar retail cost, though you have to have a manager that will sell it to you at cost, most of them mark it up, but still below retail so they make a profit.

I once was stuck sharing a hotel room with a Quixtar (ie, Amway dot com) guy. We were there siteing out a Salt Lake City China town. The first thing he told me was that "it's so great, you don't have to sell it." Then he spent the next three days trying to fucking sell it as I was trying to sleep. I wanted to slap his fat face. At the end, I forgot my tact and told him exactly what I thought about him, his so called "independent business," and what he was doing with his life. He had sold his hardware store to hawk it..what a shame, at least that provides something useful to the world.

@EdnaLegume:

MonaVie is another snake oil MLM brand.

@squinko: I actually don't count Avon as MLM so much. Especially since they at least have a legitimate product. That and Tupperware dealers from the past.

@gparlett: My friend's Facebook page has turned into a NUSKIN garbage science ad spam extravaganza. I really don't know how to tell him he is alienating us.