It was a fun summer filled with road trips, parties, and easy sign ups; there was a moment, though, where I felt like a bright and nearly blinding fluorescent lightbulb turn on about a foot away from my face.

I was over at my friend's place with his recruiter from Toronto (drove a nice BMW, hung out with the guys who were renting lambos). At this point I had been in for about 3 months, my friend 6 months, and the other guy over a year. They convinced me to message a highschool friend a 30 minute drive away that I needed to see him. When he asked why, I was told to say it was important, that I needed him to trust me, and that he needed to come right away. This was considered an effective method, and their argument was if I wanted to experience their success, that I needed to be willing to do what they were willing to do. I acquiesced.

Well, being the friend that he is, he made the trip and was ambushed in my friend's basement for 30 minutes. To his credit, he nodded, listened, and thanked us for our time, then promptly left. I felt absolutely filthy throughout the convo and couldn't even make eye contact.

This was about 7 years ago, and we hadn't talked since. I actually messaged him recently out of the blue to apologize, and in a crazy coincidence he had actually been thinking about that moment recently as well. He also apologized, for not working hard enough to get me out of a s**tty situation.

Mind you, he wasn't even a particularly close friend, but both of us had a brush with MLM and I took the bait while he ran. I told myself that I was too smart to fall for some bulls**t, and that I was in this only for $100 or so a month, and that I was a few sign ups away from becoming like those guys.

Of course you find out later that when everything buckles, those "successful" guys are stuck with leases they can't afford, and everyone is just left dazed and confused.

Anyways, it's been many years since, as I mentioned, and it was an important lesson: don't ever consider yourself too smart to get swindled.

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Katchen

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My client who tried to recruit me to Nuskin has a PhD and is a scientist at Stanford. You don’t have to be dumb to be drawn in to these scams.

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Anyway, I had just started college right out of high school. Was going to an art school (i know, bad idea) and was looking for a job to do between classes. Classmate of mine mentioned CutCo, so I naively went in for an interview.

Few points to know. I had no previous job experience at all, the “office” was in the next town over, and I didnt have a driver’s license at the time, let alone a car. My freaking Mom drove me to the interview. Got the job anyway.

So I get the CutCo bag of stuff to show off and was sent on my way to harass my relatives. I thought that I was only doing example shows to them, practicing for the real deal. My Dad and StepMom even bought some knives (no idea what happened to them though, last I saw they used a different set). Once I run out to people to bother, i start running into problems.

Problem 1 was i didnt sell anything other than that one set. Problem 2 was i hadn’t gotten any other people to talk to. The “pyramid” part of my pyramid scheme wasnt working real well. Problem 3 was the straw that broke the camel’s back apparently. I couldn’t get to the weekly meetings because my mom refused to drive me across town every week (she had a long commute).

In the end I got a call from my “manager” telling me he was basically letting me go and I needed to turn in my swag bag. I told him I couldn’t get to him so he had to come to me. Later that day he rolled up, o gave him the bag and that was it. Dont think I ever got my cut from the knives I did sell either.

The real kicker was k didnt even realize it was a MLM until almost a decade later, browsing this very sub.

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Kimi Tomminello

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😂😂😂 I went to a cutco recruitment meeting back when I was 20 or so. It was ridiculous. I'm not selling knives out of my car like a weirdo snake oil salesman, thank you!!

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One of the first jobs I took out of college was one, and to this day I cringe thinking about it. Looking back the reg flags were easy. At first the interview process was so fast and the recruiter didn’t even really say much about the company, just about how much everyone could make (as a new college grad I was blinded by the idea of making money fast). I quickly realized this was not a real job when we were tasked with walking territories to sell energy and we had to cover all expenses. the whole goal was to sell energy while also building your “team” who would then sell energy for you while you just collected money. Didn’t sell anything that week? No pay check. There was literally a week where I got a $30 paycheck... if it wasn’t for my GF loaning me money at the time (which I eventually paid back) I would have had to move back home. I grew so sick of the people and the scam I found a new job as fast as I could. When I did, I never even told the other place I was leaving. Only one person reached out asking where I went, told them I found an actual job.

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I was at a Starbucks one time before work and a random guy starts chatting me up. I'm a pretty friendly person so I engaged in small talk. Pretty subtly, we start talking about work and then passive income. Soon he starts telling me about how he vaguely generates passive income and that we should keep in touch and meet next week to discuss further but in the meantime I should read this book call "Business of the 21st Century" by Robert Kiosaki.

I kinda was intrigued but also very suspicious so I went with it cautiously. I did read the book and we met up again next week, I figured I was already this invested, I may as well see what it is he's trying to peddle. Upon our second meeting, he tells me a little bit more and invites me to a private meeting with his business associates (at one of those nice conference rooms at a nice apartment complex, could've been a hotel, it was in the evening). Keep in mind, this whole time, he hasn't told me the name of his company or really anything too specific about this venture. He tells me to dress up, once I get there, I see everyone dressed up really nice, looked like a formal party but without the o'dourves. They brought out a few speakers, who honestly were excellent speakers, and finally after all of the feel-good motivational talk, then drop the name of the company and it's Amway LOL and how it's changed their lives for the better. After the presentation, I had to awkwardly tell the guy who tried to recruit me that I wasn't interested and GTFO of there. I like to tell people that I purposely sat through an Amway presentation so you don't have to.

TLDR: Was buying coffee at Starbucks and a random guy tries to recruit me to join Amway.

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This will probably be buried but my sister got really deep into Amway a few years ago. She was like 19 and a sophomore in college and her friends from her church got her involved. (Amway is/was apparently very popular with the people practicing her religion in our area and everyone was joining).

They told her it was a job interview, so she shows up at this Starbucks for this “interview” where she basically left with no less than 6 books on leadership and entrepreneurship and a new “business”. And would not stop telling us how rich this guy (her up line) Danny is.

First big red flag was their “meetings”. They would rent out a specific, more upscale restaurant for the night and somehow pay the staff to stay ridiculously late. These would commonly last from 8pm to 3am. They would learn how to be leaders and the up lines would tell them how rich they were and then tell the downlines how rich they would become if they just worked harder.

Within 2 months, Danny had convinced my sister to drop out of college “because college is a waste of time”. He got her a job at a call center, decided what her monthly bust get was, and picked out an apartment and two roommates (who were also his downlines) for her.

She would go to monthly meetings with Danny to “discuss her finances” where he would tell her how much money she needed to put into this scheme for dues and “growth”.

Everybody around her started realizing how sketchy this was except for her and my mom told our entire family not to buy from her in the hopes of stopping it, but instead she just kept putting more and more money into this. She went to several of the big national conferences. They gave her music to listen to and of course more books to read.

We told her that Amway actually meets criteria for a cult and I showed her so many articles online about it and she told me that the people who lost everything and went bankrupt just didn’t work hard enough. She also kept telling us about how Danny was 28 years old going to retire young 30 and “had a house with 6 bedrooms”, but always left out that he shared and rented that house with about 8 other people. It was crazy how deep she got.

Finally she started to butt heads with her roommates and decided to move home. After about 6 months of the family constantly telling her it was a cult and a scheme she finally slowed down in the meetings. She got a better job and a new car and realized she couldn’t pay the dues and other fees and still afford everything she needed so she just stopped it all, but still tried to sell whatever [stuff] she had bought as inventory. But she’s totally done with it all now, I think.

Danny still comments on her social media sometimes and tries to reminisce about her business and Amway meetings. It’s really weird. He also tried to recruit me every time he saw me even though I made it very clear that I was not interested as I was going through chemo and other major health stuff at the time. Also, unsurprisingly Danny never retired from his real job, I think he’s 33ish now and still lives with a massive group of people in a rented home.

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A good friend joined World Financial Group also known as WFO. I told her off the bat to avoid it – major MLM scheme that preyed on family and friends. She of course, ignored my advice and went all gung ho. I told her that if she wanted to keep the friendship – please don’t ever ask me to join. And luckily, she didn’t.

She attended a whole bunch of seminars and even went on a trip to the US – a very expensive trip for her and her guy. Paid out of pocket. I think she even had to pay for training and some of the seminars too.

Then one day she just stopped talking about it. I assume she grew tired of it and gave up on it. MLM scams encourage asking friends and family members to participate. I fear not to bring it up again as I’m just glad she stopped going to those meetings.

[deleted] , Marcos Luiz Photograph Report

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I ‘work’ for Cutco when they were on my campus like any other job/business. It paid 17/hr.(much higher than anything a work-study would give me). We had a group interview where we were asked to write down everyone we knew. Then we got a lot of we were doing home demos. Hours wasted. I did however got three appointments and were paid for them(minus the four weeks it took to mail me)

I quit after there was an article saying that the student government at the college banned them forever coming back.

TL;DR broke college student dumped by Vector/Cutco. If any job says you can set your hours or require you to call people.....it’s a scam.

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In 2017, a new MLM was all the rage in our state. I was approached by at least 5 people and all of them were my friends. One of them asked me what my future plans were and i told him I'd probably get an MBA and the guy demotivated the s**t out of me saying how he knew people who had MBA's and were unemployed or working minimum wage . Thankfully, i didn't get roped into the whole "being financially independent" bulls**t.

Side note: The guy who told me that i shouldn't get an MBA degree, loaned money to many people who wanted to get into this and obviously they couldn't pay him back, which got him into a lot of debt and sadly,last year, he took his own life.

So if you're reading this, if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.

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My dad used to be in a group of principle enrollers used for these. He did Excel, metabolife, herbalife, primerica, YTB, and zurvita, along with others i can't recall. He and a few others would come in, pump up the numbers early, show off their checks to get more people in, then bolt for the next scam when market reached saturation.

I say this as a huge warning to anyone looking to get in. My dad was one of the top guys in the south at most of these, and he died broke with only his family and one friend at his funeral. He burned every bridge he'd made getting people in these things. These companies leave you out to rot, even their best people. If you're lucky enough to get in on the ground floor (fyi, you're not), you can make a living until they decide to close shop or sell off, which will leave you unemployed. Otherwise, you are a pawn in a scheme designed to fail on its largest supporters.

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I didn’t take the plunge, but I researched getting involved with Usborne Books after my mother’s friend’s daughter asked us to one of her online parties. I love books and am an advocate for literacy, so this was right up my alley.

I bought tons of books/activity sets and attended a lot of the online parties. The first red flag was that I stopped getting invited to parties because, despite spending about $100 on books each month for my kids, nieces, and charity, I wasn’t making her enough money and in fact was costing her money by not throwing parties myself or taking her up on being a consultant. I bought about $1500 worth of books in just over a year, yet I cost her money? Okay....

I’m 150% a hermit and know next to zero people to “hey hun...” into their inboxes. So any party would be small and I’d fail hard at “networking marketing.”

They are very closed off on how their system works, so I was still unclear as to the pyramid scheme nature of the company until I researched it on Reddit. It still surprised me as I didn’t think that books could be an MLM product. They seemed so passionate about literacy and quality. The videos all show a family friendly atmosphere. I saw the brand in Schools, libraries, and bookstores. I could buy direct without a consultant or with one if I chose to.

It just seem so legitimized. Yet it showed up on MLM lists and the consultant I worked with seemed so frazzled in trying to get people to also become consultants. She was a new SAHM of a special needs child and this was her way to contribute to her hard working husbands income.

I haven’t seen many horror stories as compared to other MLMs, but the red flags were there. It was just hard to decipher because of how legit it seemed (seen in schools, stores, and libraries).

I almost honk that’s what makes this one so potentially dangerous. It flies under the radar and seems legit enough to be able to get involved.

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Roxy Eastland

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2 years ago

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*Almost* honk

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A friend of mine got into Mary Kay and was always trying to have parties and get us to host parties so she could sell her stuff. She invited a few of us to one of the regional directors' house and it was one of the most bizarre experiences I've ever had. Like many people have mentioned, this woman did nothing but brag about her lifestyle and how much money she's made being a part of Mary Kay. She kept asking all of us if we were going to sign up with her to start selling and was so pushy about it.

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I peddled life insurance for about 4 months. I let go from my real job and decided it was ok because I would make big money with the MLM [stuff]. Like I said, 4 Months. That's how long it took to run out of money and realize it wasn't working.

The real redflags ran up a few months later when a few friends from high school passed on. I was sad because they were great people, and I checked my messages with them and the last thing I said to them was the bulls**t lines to get them to come play idiot with me at this stupid MLM. One of my best friends growing up lost his grandfather and fell into a really dark place. I was so blinded all I cared about was whether he would join our kool aid party and move to Guatemala with us. He was basically suicidal and I was a horrible friend.

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I joined Primerica, I didn’t see any red flags at first but small ones started popping up.

Like my team leader telling me to basically live outside my means to make people think I was doing really good and then they’d join and then I’d do really good.

Or finding out all the contests ran around recruitment and not sales numbers.

I left as soon as I realized, even put my name and number on the do not contact list.

Blew a lot of money trying to make that work only to realize I wasn’t going to make any money without f**king my friends.

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I’m a slacker but oh well.

My ex boss brain washed me into Hempworx. I was very skeptical about cbd working for anxiety. I had tried everything and nothing worked. It actually worked surprisingly. This was before the big hemp boom.

So my dumbass paid the 20 bucks and luckily that’s all. I thought it was rather weird that my manager kept pushing me. Talking about “Running your own business.” My mom had her own business before she died. I knew it wasn’t “my business.”

After trying other cbd products and getting better deals I basically saw they were exploiting people. Charging too much for their product. I was very back and forth most the time. The thing is it helped me and it did work. Just a lot of terms were thrown around that seemed off. So I basically paid 20 bucks and never sold anything.

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I attended an "Interview" for a MLM. It was selling pots and pans. I sat in a room full of about 10 people. The "Boss" walked in with a stack of resumes and said "here are all the people who wanted to be here. But you made the cut". One dude was around 75 years old. I remember thinking something was off but I wasn't until later I realized what was happening.

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Cyndielouwhoo

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2 years ago

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There's a hilarious King of the Hill episode with this same kind of mlm and tries to fake her own death to get out of it.

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Sigh. My father has spent the last 30 years going from one MLM scam to another. He's literally tried dozens of them. It never seems to occur to him that the fundamental model is a flawed; he believes it's because he didn't meet the right person or (to my and my siblings absolute fury) his children didn't give him the support and/or help he needed. He literally has cashed in his second wife's pension for some [lousy] car-selling scheme that lasted all of three months. He walked away from an incredibly lucrative career in logistics to lose tens of thousands of dollars over the decades.

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There was a company called United Games that I had a short stint with. It was clearly advertised from the beginning as multilevel marketing, but the reason I jumped on is because they did a good job giving it a different feel. I’d gotten in because my friends dad has a number of side gigs that he’s managed to make profitable, had recruited me, so I trusted his judgment. He jumped much later than I did, and counted it as a lesson learned.

The product was a game called FireFan, which was basically real time sports betting against your friends with in game tokens. As an “affiliate,” I had the opportunity to recruit players with an affiliate link, and in turn I would profit off of them playing. Tokens were worth ~$1, and for every token purchased, won, spent etc. by someone who was linked under me, I would receive something like $0.15. Before the game launched, we were also encouraged to sign up other affiliates, and we would get something like $.05 from every token action someone linked below them got.

The game concept itself looked promising, and was set up to capitalize on a real opening in the market, but red flags popped up really quick. First, there was a $50 initial investment for all the usual BS reasons. We weren’t allowed to tell anyone how much we were making, commission rates would get changed suddenly and without any announcement or even a notice.

I noped out fast. The first day the app launched, it was buggy, unoptimized, and the servers crashed because too many people were trying to play. (First game of the official NFL season) some people held on for the next few months, but the app didn’t get better, and benefits (if they really existed) got worse.

The company eventually shut down, I imagine they took the money and ran. It’s hard to believe they invested much into the product itself based on how it turned out.

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I'm not a ex mlm member but have had some experience with Anyway, figured this story was worth sharing, this was when I just graduated high school and have very little if not no knowledge at all about these stuff, so im a pretty ripe target for them, better get them before they know better right?

What happened was i went to a mutual friends place to get a haircut and he spent the duration of the haircut chatting with me about amway and invited me to go to their convention kind of thing which just happened to be that night, and i agreed.

The whole thing was weird as f**k, I didn't need to know about pyramid scheme to be proper weirded out, the entire thing started with some "origin story" video about 5 minute long. Then several important people came on stage and addressed each other as brothers & sisters, there was a lot more subtle weird stuff but it's been a long time so I only remember the main few things. After the service we were split into groups and there came a few leaders who went around asking all the newcomers what we have learned that day, what insight we have gained.

After that we went to a nearby café and there came another guy, looking back now basically his job that day is to be the role model, he drove an expensive car and throughout the entire conversation everyone is CONSTANTLY talking about how he has the highest sales, how successful he is, how everyone aspires to be him. I was also given a ton of information about 2 year plans, 5, 10 years plan if I joined them and became part of the family. So yeah that was my experience, I happen to get another job shortly after so I turned down any further invites but I doubt I would have went anyway. The entire thing smells like a cult

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I had a guy that I worked with that tried to recruit me into one of these pyramid schemes. He and his handler came to my house and gave me their little spiel and I told them I’d think about it and get back to them. The first red flag was that they both lived in the same city as me but they had a rental, and not a fancy one at that, some economy sedan. The second red flag happened at work. The guy who was trying to recruit me had logged into his bank account to check his balance while I was coming into his work area. His account had $68 in it, which told me that he most certainly couldn’t afford the lifestyle that he pretended to have. Especially, because pay day was only three days prior.

Scam_Time Report

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I did Amway for 7 years. It became my full time income during my 4th year. As I climbed the pyramid ladder so-to-speak as a new platinum I was given information that wasn’t available to people in the lower rung.

I quit after that I realized that the people in the upper rungs were truly corrupt.

It was hard quitting especially the income it provided me paid for all of my expenses. I had to go back to a regular job which amway people hated.

But I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

The system is literally full of higher ups who are liars.

Some have good intentions but are just idiots so they just keep following the so-called leaders.

Most use their knowledge and position to manipulate those outlined in the sentence above.

WWDB for those who know.

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When I was in university, I was looking for work opportunities to get some income coming in.

I saw in the local newspaper classified for an ad that basically said 'Looking for Casual work, call this number'. I called and then they brought me for an 'interview'.

Turns out it was for a company called CutCo and it was to be for a door to door salesman for Knives. The 'interview' was a group one where the main person spent 2 hours telling us how awesome the products were and that they could cut through a shoe and still sharp enough to cut through a tomato effortlessly.

Then we each went in for a one on one interview (there were about 20 of us there), there I was told congratulations you've got the job and we need you to come in for these three training sessions. I kept thinking to myself 'ok, I've had job interviews before, this seems super weird I'm getting the job now'.

It was then they said that before the training I had to purchase my own set of demonstration knife sets at a cost of $2kAUD. It wasn't so much a red flag but more of, I don't want to go door to door and I don't have $2k to buy these knives, that's why I'm looking for work.

Didn't show up for the training sessions, ignored about 12 phone calls then never heard from them again.

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I was 20 and dumb. Working a job who notoriously only offered 13 hour weeks so naturally I was hurting for cash. A former church goer frequented the place and one day offered extra work but they wouldn't specify with who. Me being naive and desperate obliged them one Thursday. We went to a rally almost 2 hours away and it was for ACN. After the pitch these five people, including the churchers, ganged up on me and said I better hurry and front $500 for my new business because (coincidentally) a promotion was to end at the end of the month, which was two days later. I fronted the money but I knew it was hairy when they pitched the exact same rally, verbatim, the next week. Plus, they were offering phone and internet service packages that were absurdly outdated and unfair (packages you'd get in the early 2000s). Even encouraged us to hound our family members for a s**t bundle. I didn't have the heart and kinda stopped going to the rallies. It embarrassed me by having fell for it, and my family for being subjected to it. It fell out of favor and months of MIA they contacted me to offer putting newly signed people under me. I told them no thanks. I also looked at those churchers a different way thereon. Also helped solidify my atheist foundation.

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I had a sweet Avon lady in my office and when I changed jobs I missed some of their stuff, so I decided to sign up myself. My "team leader" and the other girl she was leading were so freaking pushy about making me run a full Avon business and quit my job, I immediately felt like I had signed up for a cult. Bounced and blocked their numbers within a month.

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F**king BeachBody. Had a friend who’s been doing “great” on it. Recruiting left and right making lots of money and it is so easy to do because “everyone wants to be healthy and lose weight.” It’s fine if you just use it for the workout videos for yourself but having to be the person to reach out to random people and be like, hey you're fat, come pay loads of money for this s**t and oh yeah you can have a huge discount if you become a coach too and recruit other people and scam them also. It’s all bulls**t.

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The Deez

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2 years ago

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I think BeachBody is the only MLM company that has products that actually WORK, though. And I know that their promo videos are legit, as far as "before and after" because I actually know a guy who was in one of them! He used P90X and got in fantastic shape, then went on to be cast in one or two of the other work out videos. As for the whole "Become a coach and get a discount" thing, I never wanted to do that; I just used the videos!

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I never joined an MLM but years ago I went with a friend to a meeting for WorldVentures. His friend had told him he was having a get together with a few friends to talk about a business idea he had.

We walk into this packed apartment and immediately are ushered to the couch where another friend and a neighbor are also sitting, surrounded by a bunch of strangers.

They start playing a video about WV, and a couple of people come up to talk about all the money they're making with it. At various points, the strangers in the place all clap and cheer and I'm looking around at them thinking "What the f**k is going on here?"

It felt surreal and bizarre, rehearsed and fake. We weren't told we were going to be shown and entire presentation, so that was off-putting. I felt tricked being invited.

The presentation ended and all the WV strangers left immediately. The neighbor politely declined joining and left. The other friend asked what made this NOT a pyramid scheme, and the host proceeded to draw out A PYRAMID explaining how the business model worked, the whole time insisting it wasn't a pyramid scheme. The friend also politely declined.

Me, having seen the red flags in 1) being lied to about what we were doing, 2) the fake clapping and ludicrous claims during the presentation, 3) the way you needed to pay up front to join, and 4) the f**king pyramid drawing, also declined.

The idiot friend I went with happily wrote a check to join like the god damn moron he is. He really thought he'd be able to get tons of friends and family to join. In the end no one wanted to, because everyone could see from a mile away it was a scam.

We've since stopped talking so I don't know if he's still in it or not, but I did end up getting to tag along on a trip to Dubai with him because he needed to go on trips to help his sales pitch. Was a fun trip but the WV group activities were just as annoying and cult-like as the meetings.

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When I was a freshman in college, I got suckered into joining Quixtar (Old name for Amway, I guess).

Didn't stay in it long. Only ended up out 300 bucks or so. I was put under a lot of pressure to travel out of town for all these "retreats" and s**t. I refused to make time for it and quit taking calls from any of them after a while.

Also all of my friends were smarter than me and refused to sign up as a downline. Quite a few people wanted to buy products, I think it would have been ok if thats all I was expected to do, push product. But thats not how these things work...

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I had joined Cutco (selling knives), because I was told it was a standard salesman job. Sounded legit enough, but in the initial training I was told to just sell to family and friends. Problem was, I didn't have many such contacts that lived in the area. But since I was already "hired", I figured I would give it a go. Still, I started looking for another job.

Of course, I ran out of contacts within a week. I don't know if this was their policy or just my recruiter's technique, but cold calls/messages were discouraged. So I had no potential customers, and no idea how to find more.

When I asked my recruiter for help, he just suggested asking my original contacts for more referrals. However, I knew it would just be a nuisance to them and a waste of my time, so I didn't accept his advice. That's when I knew my time with them would be short.

I sold maybe one knife set, and a few random pieces, but nothing more. Fortunately, I didn't have to invest in a demonstration kit, so I actually made a tiny bit of cash. However, it was only $300 or so for about a month's worth of work. Once I found another job, I quit. I had no idea what an MLM was until a few years later.

TF79870 Report

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At the point that I was introduced to the MLM that I got involved in, I was aware of what a pyramid scheme was, but I was an edgy teenaged kid, and figured that I could play the ruthless business-person, and start make some cash, ethics be damned. I had friends who were drug dealers, so this seemed relatively tame in comparison. I'd just bounce around on social media like linkedin and facebook, and find middle-aged housewives to rope in, and f**k it if they ever get their money back, I'll make bank. The thing that got me out (aside from maturing a bit and realizing that mindset was kinda f**ked up), was just the difficulty in maintaining it. Even if you're a malicious actor, MLMs take a while to ramp up and return investment on. Even after I filled up my first 4 recruits, getting those people to do the "work" to recruit more people was nigh impossible. Turns out most people aren't good salespeople, especially when there's no actual product to speak for itself. I made my money back, but just barely, and when I did, I realized that I had dumped a LOT of hours into it, only to make my own $250 back, and screw 4 other people out of theirs. However I thought it was going to work out, I didn't actually do the math, and when I took a moment to realize that getting literally any real job would have paid more and had a better effect on the world, I cut my losses, and got a job at a movie theatre instead.

Subject1337 Report

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I was a junior in college and had just transferred to that school. I didn’t know a single soul at that place. One day in my German course this bud invited me for coffee. I told him I just started the semester there and had a hard time meeting people.

He immediately said that he’s a having a get together at his place tomorrow and I should come to meet the gang. I was thrilled. I show up at his place and him and another gentleman are wearing suits. I was a bit puzzled. This other guy showed up and I could tell he was a bit confused too.

So they started their pitch. It was for a brand new company called Quixstar. I immediately was turned off because it had all the components of a pyramid scheme. I didn’t join. They were asking for 100 dollars right there.

I ended up meeting people in my dorm and eventually got a girlfriend. The other guy stopped talking to me when I expressed no interest in Quixstar.

brunop52 Report

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If you land a place at any sort of marketing or sales firm, they second you hear “Smart Circle”, get out. They’re the biggest pyramid scheme I’ve ever come across. They typically target younger college aged men and will have you work 50-70 hours a week selling their products door to door.

ChandyTheRandy Report

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My parents bought into an MLM when my dad was out of work. It was a decent amount of money they invested in order to get the product to sell. It was actually pretty good business for us for a few years. It was a home insulation product that actually worked fairly well so we were having success getting customers. But then the parent company violated our non-compete area by allowing another company to buy in and operate in our highest profit region.

The company was also supposed to send out a sales specialist and marketer to help us get the word out about our product. They never sent anyone. Big red flag.

My parents filled suit against the parent company and ultimately the company settled by agreeing to pay off the difference between what my parents paid and how much they had sold (we got to keep the profits from marking up the price as well as our labor charges). My parents won the ability to sell the rest of the product as well. My dad found a full time job again shortly after that and over the next 2 or 3 years we managed to sell and install the rest of the product.

Overall, my parents ended up slightly net positive and it was a good experience for my parents, my brother, and me. I kind of knew it was an MLM right from the beginning, but my parents were excited and the work kept my dad sane so I didn't push the issue. We weren't gouging our customers so no harm as far as I can tell.

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Kimi Tomminello

Kimi Tomminello

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2 years ago

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Sounds more like a poorly managed business venture than an MLM, honestly.

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Some really good friends of mine and my wife's got sucked into the Arbonne cult. We hung out and had fun nearly every weekend. Once Arbonne happened, every time we hung out turned into a sales pitch full of straight-up lies. Me, and my wife are mostly introverted home-bodies, so when they'd give us the "we know you'd do great at this!" nonsense, it was straight-up insulting. Both my wife and I are already decently successful, so I always wondered how they thought preaching the "financial freedom" line would work on us. It's so predatory how they try to recruit people.

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Brin Hauptmann

Brin Hauptmann

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2 years ago

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A former colleague is in the Arbonne cult and it has overtaken almost every aspect of her social media. I've just unfollowed her but it's alarming how deep she's in this thing, constantly evangelizing and pushing the "financial freedom" nonsense. Granted she's made her way higher up so she's doing better than the people below her, but it's really obnoxious how it overtakes ever aspect of these peoples' lives.

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Within the first week everyone but two people had quit. Week after week, everyone was quitting. One chick drank 24oz malted alcohol drinks every morning before we started. We worked 12 hrs a day for 5 days, and 7 on Saturdays.

I literally made 40 to 60 dollars a day at the most, and had to use my own gas to drive all over the metro area to try and sell my product. That meant maybe 30 to 45 dollars to live on a day.

All our stuff was on consignment, so one day when I was doing an alright job at making sales (70 or 80 dollars profit, about 250 in all around sales dollars) and left my wallet on the sidewalk and someone snagged it off the ground. I also had christmas shopping money I had barely managed to save, so someone got away with 400 cash that was mostly not even mine.

I had quite the mental breakdown, never went back to the office that night. I called in for 2 days (with inventory still in my car) and finally went in on day 3, gave back the remaining inventory, and explained the whole situation. The manager was actually pretty great with it, she said she would only require me to return 50% of what I owed back to her MLM. Thankfully my partner at the time helped me with that. I also quit right when I was able to pay her back. she definately expected me to not last as long as I did and was sure I would be quitting.

I've never worked so hard for so little, and never understood how someone could end up being lucrative with a business that no one lasted in...

gardenkweenPNW Report

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