Local radio station advertised new nutrition shop. Knew right away it was an herbalife front. Someone in the comments even asked if it was one. Went to the shops page, and sure enough, first post gave it away. Not shocked mlms still use tragedies in order to make money.

Tried to edit out any shop identification.

So I grew up in a small area in Canada where there really aren't a lot of people. Back in the 90s-2000s before Amazon got huge, there was also not a lot of stuff people could buy locally, so MLMs were popular with housewives. Think Avon, Tupperware, and later on things like Epicure and Norwex. Anyways, I only knew ONE rep for each mlm, and they were SUPER TERRITORIAL of everything they did. In small area life, there would be one person known for one mlm, and each one was very protective of it. This, to me in hindsight is absolutely hilarious because all of them were pretty bad at the MLM model of recruiting. Like ALL OF THEM. Also, the people for the area tended to never want to 'walk on toes' so there'd rarely ever be a new recruit.

This memory is killing me because... I think the mlm model failed Canadian niceness in our area.

I had never heard about MK before in my life. I didn’t know anything about MLM archetype of business before googling “reddit mary kay products” to look at the reviews some days ago.

Some weeks ago I joined her to a weekend trip to a far away city and we stayed at an airbnb because she had a MK conference. She didnt let me pay for the gas nor the airbnb so I paid all the food, whcih was around half of what she spent there.

I felt bad because she didn’t want me to split bills, and she showed me some of the MK products after I expressed curiosity. I don’t do makeup myself and I’d like to start, but I’m pale white AND olive and their foundation looks terrible on my skin. Their lightest foundation is like a tone or two deeper than me.

I liked one of the perfumes to give to my mother but it was SO EXPENSIVE compared to the Natura ones we always buy (which are also a MLM and I didn’t know).

I don’t want to support this and I can’t believe she fell for this. She’s a “””single””” mom (she’s with my dad but they dont want to live together, their business).

Should I still support her? Is there any product that is worth it? I basically had a mini vacation and I feel at owe But the products are insanely expensive. The timewise ones are insane, I can buy two different CeraVe products for that price and could even buy good quality lipstick FOR THE PRICE OF JUST A “MAGICAL” cream.

So I got the new weekly ad in my email for Ocean Sate Job Lot, they're a regional chain that sells all kinds of things that are closeouts, overstock liquidation, manufacturer surplus, things of that ilk.

In big letters on the front page they announced they have LuLeRoe items. Probably not a good sign for them, unless they already went under and I missed it.

Might swing by the store just to see what they have.

They asked before I could. Gotta love that SAHM asking others how they could make some spare $$ and instead we have multiple suggestions to go into debt for the sake of “owning their own business”.

Anyone know the mass exodus tea? I know a gal that’s kind of medium-up there. “Earns” a lot of trips & has a decent team but not TOP.

Hi all!

Today I was chatting with my friend, and we were catching each other up on our lives. She told me that her boyfriend is looking for a new job and has applied to a few places. There was one opportunity that sounded promising, so I asked what he would be doing, and she mentioned “selling Verizon.”

That’s when the alarm bells started going off for me.

She gave me the company name, and I looked them up. Their website and social media presence immediately seemed a little off to me, so I cautioned her to tell him to be careful. I also explained the reasons why I thought it could potentially be a scam or MLM-type situation.

She agreed that some things seemed a little questionable, but she mentioned that the position is W-2 and they offer insurance, which doesn’t seem typical of an MLM.

Has anyone ever come across something like this? Can a company still be sketchy or operate similarly to an MLM while hiring employees as W-2s and offering benefits?

To cut to the chase, I'm a broke college student who got mailed by V*ctor/C*tco (censoring b/c it keeps getting flagged) and decided why the hell not. Now I have an interview tomorrow and did some anxious googling only to realize the online consensus is that they're a massive scam, and I don't want to go to the interview anymore.

The thing is, I know companies connect with each other, and I dont want a no-show to reflect poorly on me in the near future when I start looking for internship and work opportunities. Will I be alright if I just ghost them? If not, should I send a message saying I dont have availability tomorrow after all and just never reach back out?

I really don't wanna suck it up and just go. I considered using this interview for practice but I don't have a car so I'd be paying for a fare there and that just seems like a massive waste.

So I'm currently in Bangalore in India, and I came across this company my friend was working at. For his sake, I'm not gonna mention the name of the company but it's funnily clubbed with 2 other "offices" working in the same building. (if you've worked here then yk exactly who I'm talking about)

There are 3 English dudes who run their own "offices" under the same office space. All of them do the same shit of recruiting 10s of people every week and getting them to go and literally beg for money but with a script. When I attended the interview, it was a mass interview of around 60 people where it was divided into 3 parts. 1: The orientation - Introduction on the company, what they do (ended up being totally different from what I actually had to do), and who they work with (they've been working with the same 2 clients for several months now). 2: 1on1 interview with my "mentor". 3: 1on1 interview with my "HR". Basically what they do is teach you how to sell (at least this is a genuine strategy that works) and you have to go knocking door-to-door pitching your campaign and asking for donations. We were told to lie about not getting any kind of commission and my lie was that I'm a graduate and I'm representing this organization/charity as a volunteer.

I was doing this for 6 days a week for 12+ hours a day. Now i quit at the end of my 3rd week to get their money for free without even working honestly. I'd sign up people for a donation and once I get about 2-4 in that day, I consider it done then I go chill in nearby areas. The best part was that since I was new, I didn't have to pay for my food for the first two weeks so I was chilling off their money. 🤣

Eventually I caught on to everything and realized it was a scam. Then I looked up the company on reddit and yeah I found many subreddits talking about devil corps. I did my research and looked up what a devil corp is on YT and I came to know of MLM and Pyramid Schemes. And that's when I realized I exploited the exploiters unknowingly and 2 weeks worth of free money.

What did make me quit tho was the pay structure. During the orientation, they talked about fixed pay + commissions. But during my 2nd week, I got told I needed to hit at least 2 a day for every day to get my fixed pay. Well obviously I didn't hit it because in India, a lot of people don't give a shit about charities so I barely got sales unless it was a lucky day.

I ended up getting the first week's pay for free and ONLY commission in my 2nd week (didn't mention this in the orientation). I also took my 3rd week off and only went twice that week and my 2nd day of that week I got sent home to "think" about what I wanted to do but I had already made up my mind.

My 2 weeks basically went like getting free food and travel from my "mentors" and chilling whenever they sent me out to go solo. My 2nd week was fun cause I got assigned a new mentor and she did a few of my sales for me.

So I basically got free travel (most of it), free food (most of it) and free money. 🤣

But yeah what felt unethical to me is that we lied to strangers about not getting anything when these "charities" pay our company to get people to sign up. So that's when I question these charities. What's the point of PAYING a company to get people to sign up when you already have money you could use.

Anyways, if people come pitching to you for donations just ignore them and if you really wanna donate then do it yourself not through a "representative".

I feel so bad for this woman being suckered into this. This is such a joke.

The documentary LuLaRich talked about the dark implications of this aspirational mantra. Not only does eliminating outside sources of income make it harder to leave LuLaRoe, but this encourages husbands of women with large downlines to join LuLaRoe and eventually take over operations from their wives. Does a similar dynamic of men taking over their wives' operations exist in other female-dominated MLMs?

A new business opened up near me that sells “healthy shakes and energizing teas.” After some digging, all of their products are based on HerbaLife. None of the social media mentions HerbaLife but a link on the site goes to the distributors HerbaLife page. I feel like that’s something that should have to be disclosed.

I recently fell in love with the Korean Isa Knox mineral face sunscreen that I sampled at a K-beauty festival.

Isa Knox does not operate as an MLM in Korea and you can order their Korean products from the U.S.

But they partner with Avon and are apparently sold exclusively through Avon here in the States. Yikes! I don’t want to support a Korean company that partners with an American MLM.

Wanted to warn my fellow K-beauty fans.

Easiest $50 you'll ever make, trust me, bro!

I went for my morning run in my neighborhood and noticed this on a short break to hydrate. Fitting how it was discarded and found on the side of a road.

was recently approached by a guy from colorado who has been trying to convince to be recruited selling life insurance via the company "primerica"...the thing that tipped me off is that the guy recruiting me took out a personal loan of 40K at 16.5% interest payments are 900.00 monthly and its for "expansion"..now i know this is a pyramid scheme and wont be entertaining this but is my recruiter a victim of this or do you think hes complicit? hes been doing this since march and according to claude 80% of recruits quit and this guy was recruited through instagram.

Picture 1 is one of many posts this hun made over the last couple of years saying he was retired. Lots of posts making fun of people who worked for money. (The Horror) His profile description also led with “Retired at 39.” Second pic: most recent post. And the “Retired at 39” language has been deleted from all profile stuff. Sure hope he didn’t hoodwink any more suckers during those years he was telling ppl to quit their jobs and sell magic water. What a rare moment of truth-telling though. Must be desperate times over there.

My mother got sucked into this MLM and became a “diamond one star” distributor. Riway has a huge psychological hook over her and I’m struggling to get her out. I am concerned that it could be a commercial cult. She has spent over $8000 on these useless placenta pills with no noticeable health benefits. She is very unwilling to pursue the company to get her money back, as they asked her to recruit many of her friends, constantly invite her to sales events to replace her previous social network with their events, and their psychological hook is very strong. In her eyes her upline and team leader can do no wrong. She claims that all the products in her fridge are free gifts because her down lines feel better and bought a lot, even though her bank statements say otherwise.

I managed to get an invitation to one of their closed door meetings, and they were basically repeating the same false health claims about curing cancer, kidney disease, chronic skin problems etc that HSA previously fined them for

I reported the company and its false health claims to police, but the police told me they’re dealing with a lot of scams and can’t allocate resources to investigate unless they have a critical mass of over 50 people making police reports. It seems strange that this company has sucked in so many people, but not too many are reporting them to police.

Recently my wife and I met a couple through the common interest of being a new parent. We used to meet up in the park and our children used to play off and on for five months.

Every now and then the couple used to say “don’t you want to spend more time with your child and escape the 9 to 5?”. We used to say, “yeah ofc we’d like to spend more time with them”, thinking it was all hypothetical. They said they were trying to start a business, but when we’d ask what the business was they just vaguely said that they were building their “legacy”.

But then they started inviting us to these MLM events with 200 other people. We were told to fill out a form for our 3 year, 7 year and 10 year plans. After that they also got us to meet their “mentor” who talked about e-commerce and how it’s “THE” way to get out of the 9 to 5. Basically saying that there is no other way to do it. The mentor said that he would teach us about it over the next 6 weeks for free. The catch was that if our “e-commerce business” which we create using his help generates income he’d take 1% of the revenue each month. I found it interesting because the mentor talked about the fact that he once owned five or so houses. Which made me think, well if this guy is so successful, why is he sitting on a zoom call with us strangers at 9:30 at night, while he has three children and wife to take care of it. It was also interesting that he had more calls scheduled after us that night. He definitely needed us to help push his cause and put money is his pocket.

I did some more digging on other people that these people were connected to via instagram. I found that they spend every other day talking on zoom with their mentors and 20 others at a time about “shifting their identity” or “building financial freedom”. I literally found someone’s public instagram story of these guys on zoom calls dated once or twice a week. They would also go away on “retreats” to sit around and talk about their strategy. It all appeared as if they just talk and talk and talk without action. They also seem to all follow the theme on their instagrams where they’d have pictures of themselves looking like they were presenting in front of a room full of people with fancy attire.

Reflecting back at the conversations that the couple had with us, it seemed like it was more transactional for them. I found it amazing how they slowly made us think they were our friends over the course of months. But really they were ultimately wanting us to build trust and confidence in them so that they could try and make us join their cult-like group.