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 Funkygrad
Musings
MLM scam |
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Ultra Senior Member
Total Posts: 3322 |
Just got this in the e-mail today. I can only agree with the first part, that MLM (Multi-Level Marketing) is really a scam. The rest of it is just another form of the same old crap. Say what you will, but most (if not all) of it is just sugar-coated bullshit. I know 'cos I've been burned before and I am ashamed to say that I even tried to get my friends into it.
One word of advice: DON'T DO IT, MAN. Seriously. It'll bite a huge chunk out of your wallet, and even worse, waste a whole lot of you time. If something's too good to be true, then it probably isn't. If you want an alternate source of income, give private tuition.
quote:
Greetings!
You are receiving this letter because you have expressed an interest
in receiving information about online business opportunities. If this
is erroneous then please accept my most sincere apology. This is a
one-time mailing, so no removal is necessary.
If you've been burned, betrayed, and back-stabbed by multi-level
marketing, MLM, then please read this letter. It could be the most
important one that has ever landed in your Inbox.
MULTI-LEVEL MARKETING IS A HUGE MISTAKE FOR MOST PEOPLE
MLM has failed to deliver on its promises for the past 50 years. The
pursuit of the "MLM Dream" has cost hundreds of thousands of people
their friends, their fortunes and their sacred honor. The fact is
that MLM is fatally flawed, meaning that it CANNOT work for most
people.
The companies and the few who earn the big money in MLM are NOT going
to tell you the real story. FINALLY, there is someone who has the
courage to cut through the hype and lies and tell the TRUTH about
MLM.
HERE'S GOOD NEWS
There IS an alternative to MLM that WORKS, and works BIG! If you
haven't yet abandoned your dreams, then you need to see this. Earning
the kind of income you've dreamed about is easier than you think!
With your permission, I'd like to send you a brief letter that will
tell you WHY MLM doesn't work for most people and will then introduce
you to something so new and refreshing that you'll wonder why you
haven't heard of this before.
I promise that there will be NO unwanted follow up, NO sales pitch,
no one will call you, and your email address will only be used to
send you the information. Period.
To receive this free, life-changing information, simply click Reply,
type "Send Info" in the Subject box and hit Send. I'll get the
information to you within 24 hours. Just look for the words MLM WALL
OF SHAME in your Inbox.
Cordially,
Deborah Broussard
brucofreestore@hotmail.com
P.S. Someone recently sent the letter to me and it has been the most
eye-opening, financially beneficial information I have ever received.
I honestly believe that you will feel the same way once you've read
it. And it's FREE!
This message was edited by synapseman on 08 Aug 2002 09:55 AM
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Very Senior Member
Total Posts: 449 |
Well, I have never been burned before, but I myself have always never believed in MLM.
Now, before others start on the point about my disbelief in MLM even without trying it out, I'll quote what a friend of mine said to me once.
"You don't have to try chilli to know that it's hot and your tongue can get burned"
Same logic applies here. I've already had friends who tried to do MLM schemes on me. When they start saying that they have a good offer for me, the alarms start going off. They give promises of giving you benefits, and that you could actually reap in more when you introduce more people into the scheme. The denials would come in when I claim it's not as different as pyramid selling.
Well, maybe to those who are in support of MLM, they truly believe in it. I can't refute on that point, but I would still advise people to think twice before they jump into the bandwagon.
In my opinion, there is no such thing as easy money. You reap what you sow. There might be people who would quote 4D or Toto as easy money. But is it really easy money? Calculate the probabilities of striking the jackpot, and tell me how easy it is.
For now, I'm safe from such things. Friends who tried this out on me have received my rebuttals in their face, with no restraint whatsoever even in the name of friendship.
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Very Senior Member
Total Posts: 709 |
I started a thread something like this last time back. The thread is here.
I too told my friends off when they tried to bring me into it. Its too good to be true and you need all the luck you can get.
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Member
Total Posts: 56 |
Yes I agree that there is no such good things. Some time ago my auntie also asked me to join and she promised alot of benefits from it. It certainly sounds good with all the money coming in. But I feel uncomfortable doing this kind of things and you even have to pull in 6 friends in.
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Very Senior Member
Total Posts: 490 |
Guess what? My BZ1001 tutor is part of this MLM business. She ended up recruiting a lot of people from my tutorial class. They have since tried pushing their sales pitch to others from the class and the faculty. It is said to be different from the pyramind model because unlike the pyramid model, you have to promote and sell a product eg. magnetic mattress. HOWEVER, during the sales pitch, hardly any mention was made of the product. They were aggressive in pushing the benefits of the MLM business model and the whole idea of recruiting people and more people and more people...
You will only benefit greatly if you are high up in the pecking order. What if one day, nearly everyone in Singapore is on MLM. Who's going to sell what (or for a matter of fact recruit whom?) then?! Forget that BMW that you have been salivating at, it's time to earn some real dough down to earth style.
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Ultra Senior Member
Total Posts: 1028 |
Your Bz1001 tutor would make money and get promotions based on how many people she has recruited and how many mattresses they sold. She would then get a cut from their commission or sales, if she is 'high-level' enough. This MLM thing is good only if you can influence people. Yep, had a pal which was into MLM too. Want real dough? Work. Or invest.
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Senior Member
Total Posts: 236 |
Hi all, I do not quite agree with u guys here sayin that mlm is a scam. As a matter of fact, I juz joined one of the mlm company after some serious considerations. Defintely, the promises of the gd returns will attract me but besides that i m also attracted to their promise of residual income.
In mlm business, I dun really agree that you are earning easy money. Look at the amount of time and effort u have to put in tryin to convince and persuade people to join. U will need to work equally as hard as ur full time job if u r really bent on earnin big bucks in mlm.
For ppl who are doin mlm, I must say that they r a bunch of ppl who has the vision, courage and wisdom to try something new. Look at franchising, 50 years ago, no one is supportive of it and ppl even call it a SCAM. But look who has the last laugh now.
In life, opportunities are all around you and its juz a matter of whether u r taking advantage of it and grab it first. All of us are gd copycats and 95% of us are copying the wrong ppl for the wrong reason. We juz assumes that it is correct to just find a normal 9-5 job upon graduation and spend our life in this way. but we are juz earning temporary income here and this kind of job only provide us with income creation. In order to feel finanically secure in our later part of our life, it is correct to find a job that creates wealth and mlm defintely can provide us with that. Mlm is a combination of expontinel growth and franchising. Its potential is defintely going to be great in this decade. If u hv been building sand castles in the air, then all work is not lost yet, juz build the foundation below which mlm can provide for u.
Guys, if u keep opening the door that lead u to where u r nw then ten yrs down the road, u wil still be living the kind of lifestyle u r living nw. Be more open minded coz the brainis just like a parachute and will work only if it is being opened up. Dare to dream, Dare to be different if u dun wanna end up like the majority of the 95%. Also be wise and choose the mlm company wisely! 
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Community Chief
Total Posts: 1023 |
quote:
Originally posted by z3_roadster:
Dare to dream, Dare to be different if u dun wanna end up like the majority of the 95%
It don't find it very daring to be different when 95% of my friends around me are doing MLM?
I also don't find it appealing to end up like my MLM friends, who strive so hard but find it impossible to earn any real income at the end of 6 months. And the only belief they have left is the perceived happiness they thought they are having.
Come on, MLM is just any other marketing sales job, perhaps more difficult because you don't have an explict marketing campaign to package your products. If you already know you aren't cut out for sales, why jump into it?
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Very Senior Member
Total Posts: 478 |
Lets not forget you could potentially loose all your friends, plus your relative's respect when the scheme crashes. Is it really worth the money you earned?
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Senior Member
Total Posts: 236 |
Wat I meant by the majority (95%) refers to people who are holding onto a job with fix income and have to scrimp and save for their entire life. The rest of 5% of people can refer to people working in the insurance sector, real estate agent.
I m not trying to argue that mlm is good. It has all to do with your past experiences and how open minded ur mind is. If u belong to those type who believes that money can only be earned through the hard way then defintely you won't buy the mlm idea.
Personally i see mlm quite similar to ppl holding jobs as car dealer or insurance agent. I believe u guys have friends or relatives working as insurance agent and have approached u before but did u guys drift urself away from them due to that?
mlm is defintely workable! Amway is a gd example for illustration. It has over 2.5million distributors in over 75 countries. Nu Skin is another gd company. The bottomline is choose ur company wisely and dun criticise mlm if u have burn urself before in it. The reason why ur friends failed might be due to several reasons, their upline is not dynamic enough, product or even could be that ur friend isnt puttin in enough effort. Mlm is not a quick way to get rich scheme, u have to put in effort. If u work as and wish u wan then dun ever dream or hope that u can earn thousands of dollars from it. Hence when these bunch of ppl dun see the attractive returns they are supposed to get then they will slowly lose heart in it and condemned that mlm is s scam. I have quite a number of friends around me who are doin fine in mlm. The reason is that they had chose a gd company, a gd leader to work with and care for their downline, product.
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Community Chief
Total Posts: 1023 |
I never said MLM was bad. I'm saying that it's a sales job and people who aren't cut out for sales won't do it under MLM as well.
And yes, I shun away from insurance friends & relatives who are too persistent.
And on a separate note, I think MLM plays more on the minds and emotions of the sellers than anything else. The sellers are also the users of the product. I work part-time for a event organiser who organizes events for NuSkin and other MLM companies. I've come across many many people who are religiously devoted to MLM. During their events, they sing the Nuskin song, dance the NUskin dance and view the beauty products as some super powerful drug. On one instance, I was distributing a sample drink sachet for the company during one of its events. And it's just a plain fruit drink. I've got people coming up to me and ask how many times they must take it a day?! Duh, they are treating all their products like God. Sounds scary? I'm scared.
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Ultra Senior Member
Total Posts: 1231 |
Hi, I have myself been exposed to the hard selling tactics of MLM through a friend recently. Well, she is not exactly a very good friend of mine; in fact we haven’t met for months. One day over ICQ, we were talking about how we wished to start our own business, and she suddenly said she is in the business dealing with "bio-science" products, and is doing pretty well, she said she would like to rope me into her "business". I thought why not, its good to increase my options, and on courtesy I should at least meet her to hear her out, if she was sincere in roping me in.
What turned out was obviously another MLM scheme, and I won't mention the company name here. Luckily I had done my homework on MLM before I went, so I wasn't that easily convinced by them. I just acted blur and tried to be diplomatic when her friend (some seniors of hers) spoke to me. They were very persistent and first started explaining how "network marketing" (a term with nicer rings to it) works. Well, of course they omit to say that the moment I sign on that dotted line, my friend who pulled me in stood to gain a handsome commission. Next they tried to sell it to me from the selling point that they will provide me training opportunities, and that I will become a better person for it! On top of that, the number of influential people I will get to meet. Oh yeah, I do not see myself going through all that training (you can call it brainwashing if you like) just to be sitting people down for a few hours selling to them the merits of joining an MLM, and how it can “change their lives”! Finally they tried to find anybody they could, with any link with me, past NTU grads, people of same interests. The whole talk took 4 hours!
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Ultra Senior Member
Total Posts: 1231 |
My own opinion of MLM can be viewed from 2 ways, the cold perspective and the hot perspective.
I shall start with the cold perspective; undeniably, MLM is just after all another business model, in that it removes many levels of the value chain in bringing products straight to the final consumer. An argument I have heard during the talk I had, and I feel is quite sound, is that often in conventional marketing and business models, a sizeable chunk of what we, the final consumers pay goes to advertising, especially the promotional costs of hiring to famous sportspeople or celebrities to endorse their products. This is an unnecessary outlay of expenditure from the consumers’ point of view, money that could be channelled into other more productive uses. They however justified the high prices of their products (like some miracle drugs) as having to pay a premium for the research done, and they claim to be serving a niche market. As a business student myself, such a perspective is flawed as how "niche" can it be when MLM propagates itself over many networks, households, and HDB aunties, its just the same as mass selling.
From the hot perspective however, we are talking about friendship, about kinship and "guan xi". I am concerned that MLM itself can be seen as deceptive advertising of some sorts, which is unethical. Before I raise a furore by MLM die-hards with such a comment, I wish to substantiate what I meant by referring to it in such un-glowing terms. In our free market economy, whether a product sells or not is a testament to the product quality and its perceived functions for its target consumers. For example, brands and manufacturers have to compete for shelf space just so that they can sell their products through supermarket chains like Wal-Mart. Of course, we do not always assume that the buyer is not misinformed, or deceived by deceptive advertising. However in MLM, product quality may come secondary to say, friendship or kinship. The sway of a relationship between buyer and seller is the main selling point of the product, not the product itself per se, allowing a greater chance that the buyer can be misled by persuasion. Of course, if things ever turned ugly because the buyer was not satisfied with the product, it can ruin friendships and kinships. If the product is such a success in the first place, it will do just as well in the open marketplace. While not exactly implying that the MLM model sees people earning money at the expense of their friends and relatives, I still find it disturbing where sometimes the line between relationship and the need to make money can be crossed. Secondly, I have something to say about the clan-ish nature of MLM, whereby the top performers and high-flyers are like worshipped by the thousands below them, believe me they hold their leaders in such high regards they confer titles upon them. Corporate culture may be the buzzword of the modern day corporation, but this is taking it to new heights yeah?
In conclusion, I can only say that MLM is a legitimate business model, though I do not agree with or endorse it. Like it or not, is a matter of personal judgement. It sure has its flaws, which I pointed out, but we should not be too critical of our friends who have bought into that idea. It should after all be seen as a business proposition, not a whole new way of life which my friends in there sees it. These are just my opinions. No offence intended.
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Ultra Senior Member
Total Posts: 2177 |
I think the MLM people have found a new group of prey: fresh graduates without permanent job. I have been approached by quite a number of friends who so friendlily talk about how I can earn more money in the free time between my part-time temp jobs.
I am very surprised by the types of things they try to sell me or get me to sell in their MLM scam. All kinds of things imaginable: aroma therapy, water purification systems, magnetic mattress and pongpong juice (I thought I was told that pongpong is a poisonous fruit back in primary school?). One guy even mention to me something like magnetic wrist strap that claims to be able to improve the er-hem potency of men. I have yet to figure out how is magnetism related to the sexual performance of primates but that is outside the discussion of this topic.
One common trend I notice among these "contacts" is that they always talk as if money is easy to earn, life is so simple and they earn more in their part-time MLM job than their full-time perm job (if any). I even have a junior who try to rope me in. Who are they trying to bluff? If this is true, why don't they switch to MLM full-time?
I rejected all of them, not because I cannot allow my friends or aquaintances to earn money out ofme, but because I feel things are not as ideal as they claim. Call me stupid or whatever you like, but I think there is no such thing as free lunch. I doubt the existence of easy money.
This message was edited by predator on 27 Aug 2003 12:11 AM
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Member
Total Posts: 90 |
A lot of it boils down to which company and product you choose to get yourself involved in. My mom is in MLM i resisted her ideas for 2 whole years and finally i realised the system that her company is dealing with is seriously worth the time and effort to invest in. A lot of times people compare MLM to a normal job. But if you compare it to starting your own business it would be easier for you to see the benefits.
There will always be certain paths or schemes that work for certain people. Make sure your character and what your goals in life matches what you choose, then irregardless of what "unethical" or "unpopular" path you stick to you'd still worship it and say it's the best. coz only you know yourself well.
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Ultra Senior Member
Total Posts: 1028 |
Ok, me cousin is an ML-er (full time) and here's my observations.
1) People have assumptions that it's an easy way of making money
This is fake. MLM is a way of making big money, but in the beginning money is simply hard to come by. You rarely make money in the beginning unless it's by direct selling. Me cousin worked for 2 months without pay (first month cheque - 5 bucks) and only now she's getting a few hundred dollars a month.
2) You have to degrade yourself by selling questionable items
Some items are questionable, some are not. It's the company.
3) A high level is achievable by everyone
True, but 90% of the people fall out because they cannot afford the time and to keep going without any visible payment. Everyone can do it, but not everyone will.
4) You have to spend money on training materials
True, most MLM companies tout their own training materials. Many people spend tens of dollars on training materials monthly.
quote:
One common trend I notice among these "contacts" is that they always talk as if money is easy to earn, life is so simple and they earn more in their part-time MLM job than their full-time perm job (if any). I even have a junior who try to rope me in. Who are they trying to bluff? If this is true, why don't they switch to MLM full-time?
That's a total lie! When my cousin tried to rope me in, she was not even making any money. I signed up anyway because I liked the vitamins her company was making.
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Ultra Senior Member
Total Posts: 1118 |
I guess we still have to be open to this concept since it is a viable way to earn a living or do your own business. It can be the same as any other kinds of occupation, and i do believe that for someone to succeed at MLM, they would still have to work hard, although the earlier you join and the harder you work at the beginning, the easier it would be for you to succeed.
Was also approached for some MLMs in the past, and they are mostly questionable, but i can't dismiss all since there were some which were quite good, just that initial investments can be quite daunting. For those who feel that they can stand starting work without much pay or even having to lose out for the first few months, by all means try. Except that in the world of MLM, there would be winners who win big, and losers who may lose big or small depending on how much you put into it. Its a gamble in a way, so please consider it carefully, although the odds are truly unknown here.
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Member
Total Posts: 80 |
Its funny how MLM has taken off in Singapore. I'm sure that many of us have different opinions about it, but i do agree its a scam. Its funny how they address themselves by "rank" in the heirachy.. i.e. u sell a certain amount of stuff, u get promoted to "Duke" and then to "prince.. " blah blah blah. Granted MLM sounds good, and looks good on the business card which states Business Owner. Some guy was trying to recruit me into his MLM thingy selling the aromatherapy thingy... and well, he was a Business Owner of 2 businesses. Earns a couple of K a week.. but interestingly none of his businesses are pte ltds.. So i'd just say, stick to normal job with a normal company. Or worst come to worst give tuition. 
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Very Senior Member
Total Posts: 449 |
Good statement. Then why do people participate in MLM, and claim it's good money?
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Ultra Senior Member
Total Posts: 1028 |
That is because it may jolly well be the truth. If you can build a large enough network of people using the products, the money is definitely good. If you build a network of a 1000 people buying a $5 dollar product monthly, you would have a steady stream of income from commissions. And with recruitment being exponential (1 recruit 2, 2 recruit 4, and so on, in an ideal world), it has potential to be big money. But you won't be making money until the 4th month or so because you would be spending all your money on training materials and seminars.
Unfortunately, greed, unreal expectations, lack of persistence,the wrong company and inablity to take rejections do play a part in destroying MLM-ers.
This message was edited by SunFire on 28 Aug 2003 12:53 AM
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posted
Thu 08 Aug 2002 09:55 AM
posted
Fri 09 Aug 2002 12:26 AM
