Damn MLMs

gettem all the time

They should be banned from Starbucks too
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Was she hot?

DL

 

Bwahhhhhhh ha ha ha ha …. It must be a nation wide blitz! I was just nailed at the grocery store! I was buying goodies for a good Italian meal and this guy came out of the blue and said, “You look familiar do I know you?”…I cut it short and told him that it was highly unlikely since my only social outlet was Ferrari Chat. I waved goodbye and was on my way.

PD

 

Have you ever been in an F-car dealership when these guys show up trying to recruit everyone?

What a joke!

PD

 

I've gotten attacked by those people in Barnes and Noble before. I go to B&N like 3 or 4 times a week, though, so now I know who they all are and I dodge them or just leave the store if I see any of them around.

I also was wearing a Ferrari shirt in Best Buy one time, and this dude asked me if I had a Ferrari. I said, "not yet," and he replied that a couple of guys he worked with had them. One guy had a 550 and one had a 360. So then he started talking about Ferraris and it turned into, by the way, this company I work for is great and we're all millionaires and you can be too if you blah blah blah blah blah. Bloody hell... trapped by a MLM ******* that had a basic knowledge of Ferraris. I was beyond pissed.

 

15 years ago I was at the ferrari dealership and some guy comes up with a hail damaged hyundai and said he was part of a big marketing company, since i was young and naive i went. it was amway. not that i would of known the speaker talked for an hour on what cars he had, how big his house was, etc etc never about how to make it. what stunned me is there was 300 400 people there. lets start a ferrari MLM. yall get enough people under me and I will buy myself a ferrari. first everyone paypal me $1000 and I will figure out how it will work later.

john

 

I was going to start the same topic just the other night. It happens to me at least once a week at the grocery store. Can't stand it. =/

 

you know what stops them in their tracks? when they ask you "do you want more?"..."more money, nicer cars, more travel" ..... look right at them and say "no, i have too much now". I'm serious, it stops them cold. their whole pitch is how to "get more". they always ask me....what would you do with more money. I say, nothing, I have too much now, I don't want anymore...........end of coversation.

 

Really... How long have you been doing this? What 3 months.... Humm well did you know that 98% of the people who get involved in MLM are out of it in just over a year? and they have lost all their friends and their money? If you are around in 9 months then please try again...

 

Excuse my ignorance, but what is a MLM?

 

MLM stands for Multi-Level Marketing. The theory under which you will supposedly get rich involves bringing more people into the business. If they come in and generate income, you get a piece of their action. And if they bring in more people, you get a piece of that action as well. So ideally, if all the people you bring in each bring in a few people, after a while there will be this huge pyramid of people under you, and your little percentage of their business lets you retire. In reality it rarely works like that, although some people have certainly made a lot of money from it.

My parents were involved in Amway for a while. Back in the day (this was probably 20 years ago) the idea was to sell Amway products, i.e., the distributor would develop a customer base and supply them with products, which were basic household items (laundry detergent, soaps, cleaners, etc.). And of course, if you brought more people into the business, you got the MLM benefits if they developed more business. But over time it has morphed and now they don't try to get people to sell the products; they just want you to USE the products, and get your inductees to use the products too. This was probably beacuse they realized after a while that the kind of motivated go-getters they were trying to recruit for the MLM side of the business were not going to spend the time to, say, deliver a bottle of spot remover and a pack of Scrub Buds to somebody to make their $1.37 of profit.

The sad irony is, Amway makes good products. We used Amway cleaners almost exclusively around my house when I was growing up and in general they worked as well or better than they stuff you can get at Target. In fact, if I knew an Amway distributor I would buy stuff from him/her, except that I doubt they deliver products anymore. But I'm not going to join their MLM cult just to get better laundry detergent.

 

Amway used to have some citrus bug and tar remover that was great.

I get approached by them at the coffee shop I go to. I can usually spot them by the 1988 525i with personal plates. I asked one if I could just buy a spot at the top of the pyramid so that I wouldn'thave to recruit my friends, he didn't like me anymore after that.

My parents were involved in different ones during the eighties. The only people I ever saw making real money was the group of guys all the way at the top. My parents and the people in it with them were always working it, going to peoples homes at night with their pitch trying to sell and recruit people and never really made anything.

 

A long time ago I almost got sucked into one of these, can't even remember the name now. Actually if you can get in on the ground floor of one of these and they turn out to do halfway decent you can make a lot of money. The problem is the only way to keep making money is to keep bringing in new "recruits" as the old ones lose interest. As soon as you lose one of your big "legs", you are screwed. And, like Amway is finding out the product has little to do with it.

The first bunch of people who got in on Amway were all very rich people in pretty short order. Hard to do now though!!

 

I know someone who has been the classic "Cult" follower for years. First, he had a garage full of soap, then he had a garage full of vitamins (both of which he paid for of course). Naturally, after growing weary of being a warehouseman, he got into a national attorney's referral network. Now he pushes a userious mortgage and insurance product that everybody hates! To this day when I see him, I have to immediately cut him off in order to avoid the inevitable drawing of the circles (accompanied by the starry eyed rap about the now wealthy "Guy who used to drive the Pepsi truck")!

He recently rode in a bus across the desert (with 70 of his "Cult" buddies) en route to a convention where 3,000 more had gathered. I'm sure THAT was a real hoot!

Everybody needs something I guess.

Ironically, he has NEVER quit his day job!

DL

 

One of the guys that came to dinner with us tonight was a MLM guy. I don't think they know how to meet someone and just have dinner without trying to sell. It was so annoying. The girls went to the restroom and as soon as they were gone he started his spiel, which I ended rather quickly. I don't think this one likes me anymore either LOL. I picked up the check so he should not complain too much.

 

LOL!!!! That is a hilarious story.

 

Yes, you can stop them cold in their tracks by saying you don't want any more and you have too much as it is.

 

THE absolute best thing you can do is listen to their pitch, and say this to them:

"Wow! Sounds like you guys are RAKING in the money, is that right?"

"Yeah? That much huh!? Amazing! Tell you what, I'm a huge car nut, why don't you take me out to the parking lot and show me your ride? I bet its incredible! Ferrari? Mercedes? That'll sell me on the business!"

Then they'll either stammer out how they're actually 'on the brink of big things' but haven't reached their 'power sales pinnacle' yet, or they'll take you out to their 92 Acura mumbling about how they're into 'wealth accumulation...'

 

Every month, I pay this group a sum of money. Every month for years I have been doing this. The figure is well into the thousands each year. They 'claim' that if my automobile somehow becomes struck by another vehicle, or some other related incident, a check for a larger amount of money will be waiting for me based upon a plan that I have chosen. Sure it will.

The irony of this is that since day one of driving, I have been incident free. I rely on awareness, defensive of sometimes offensive skills to prevent mishaps. Over a decade of executing these skills had kept myself and my passengers as well as vehicles safe. Oh sure, there's the spiel about the 'other guy' but I have done well to watch out from many of those 'other guys'. If I had camera coverage on my car, I could show you many 'other guys' in action.

Regardless, the point is this, out of all those thousands I send, each Christmas, I get a flimbsy 5" x 6" card thanking me for throwing money at them. No basket of flowers, no gifts, not even a stinking coffee mug. Every month, I get offers of additional ways to throw money at them for things they say will keep me protected. Why do I need protection against hurricanes in California? Now... they want to help me invest my money. That alone makes me nervous since I have my own brokerage through my bank that I make those sort of transactions.

This group, and others like it in the industry piss me off. In a nutshell they are constantly trying to get into my wallet, they never give a face to face thank you when they do, its always by mail printed on cost effective stationary. Experiences of people trying to collect on their sevices are horrific. The money always seems to go in one direction, out of my wallet, and into theirs. What is wrong with this picture??

 

You don't crash enough.

 

"Friend, I want to talk to you about something even greater than wealth...your salvation." (now is a good time for the hand on the shoulder thing)