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Legally, multi-level marketing businesses are not classified as pyramid schemes. MLMs sell product. Some of them have been around for generations and are well known and very successful. Pyramid schemes have no product. What they do is dupe and recruit and shuffle money around until the pyramid collapses. They are illegal but always available somewhere for starry eyed people.
Legally, multi-level marketing businesses are not classified as pyramid schemes. MLMs sell product. Some of them have been around for generations and are well known and very successful. Pyramid schemes have no product. What they do is dupe and recruit and shuffle money around until the pyramid collapses. They are illegal but always available somewhere for starry eyed people.
Yes, they do. Which is why after you warn them once, you drop it.
I have to laugh at your college educated comment. I went to college, do you think that makes you smart?
Smart maybe in your line of study, but not in life.
The smartest man I even knew was my father, he barely got of HS. He did quite well for himself and was very well read.
I have a cousin who is a well educated with advanced degrees, she has made incredibly bad financial decisions.
Your comment reminds me of a story a friend of mine told me who is a teacher. There was some concerns regarding child abuse with a student and her mother, another teacher commented "Oh I don't think so, the mother dresses so nice".
Don't equate a formal education with being smart, they don't always go together.
And don't loan her any money.
Some people really can learn from books.
Some learn by doing,
And some of us had to pea on the electric fence.
"MLMs sell product. Some of them have been around for generations and are well known and very successful."
Garbage! They are very successful at duping people into joining. Most will buy-in and then sell to all their friends and relatives, but burn out and lose their investment. Amway distributors con their people into buying all their motivation tapes and DVDs as well, convince them it's the road to success. They make more money off of that crap than from their products, milking their minions is the real business. They sell dreams to desperate people.
Ok. So is this different from Rodan and Fields, 31, MaryKay, Norwex, Cabi, Discovery Toys, Silpada Jewelry, Pampered Chef, and the original, Tupperware? Where you have a party, and everyone knows they're there to buy stuff from you at a huge markup and it probably won't be great stuff (except Cabi and Norwex), and they go to the party anyway?
I say let her do it. Just don't go to the parties.
IMHO, this isn't like Amway where you are tricked into going to a party you think is a purely social event and then it gets hijacked into a sales pitch with no warning.
The world's worst was Glen Turner's Koscot Cosmetics/Dare to Be Great, which set the low standard for MLM/pyramid schemes.
I was shanghaied into attending a meeting in 1968 by a friend of my mother's who told me were going to a "tea" to meet a new friend she thought I'd like. Instead, we went to a un-airconditioned armory in August where I underwent an attempted brainwashing that the Evil Empire would covet.
I was bombarded with pie-in-the-sky schemes and couldn't even go to the ladies room without someone following me in there to yap at me through the door. I finally walked out the door and started walking down the road (we were way out in the country). My mother's friend did come to get me and took me home in a cold silence (which I really, really appreciated....the silence part, I mean). At one point, I was almost ready to sign anything to get them to stop team-tagging me and leave me alone. If I had had a cellphone back then, I think I would have called the police and said I was kidnapped.
I tried that once, some years ago. I won't name the company but you had to order stuff every month. I think the biggest check I ever received was $15.00! What a sham! I got out but fast!
I have been for the better part of the week trying to encourage a friend to get out of a pyramid scheme . Yes it is called plexus and I have sent her several links to people who have been scammed by this company and what does she do ? she asks her distributor if these links are true ? what do you think they are going to say ? Oh no of course not . Now this is a woman who is college educated and is fairly smart I would say and yet she fell for this crap . I have warned her and shown her proof positive that she is a victim of a pyramid scheme . I think a lot of time people make their own trouble . Is there anything else I can do to help her I fear she is going to get in trouble with this . I just cannot fathom how guiliable people really are ?
You have a good heart, OP.
But people who are motivated by greed usually have to learn the hard way. I had a friend who believed he could beat the futures market if he just bought the "right" system. He owned five properties, all heavily mortgaged, none of which he lived in. The last I heard of him he had convinced his father to hand over his life savings. He no longer had any money of his own, all gone to playing the market.
I think the question is, will you two be friends after this? She may avoid you out of embarrassment. My friend just quietly disappeared.
I have been for the better part of the week trying to encourage a friend to get out of a pyramid scheme . Yes it is called plexus and I have sent her several links to people who have been scammed by this company and what does she do ? she asks her distributor if these links are true ? what do you think they are going to say ? Oh no of course not . Now this is a woman who is college educated and is fairly smart I would say and yet she fell for this crap . I have warned her and shown her proof positive that she is a victim of a pyramid scheme . I think a lot of time people make their own trouble . Is there anything else I can do to help her I fear she is going to get in trouble with this . I just cannot fathom how guiliable people really are ?
Is she of a retirement age? If she is she may be considered elderly and elderly are considered a vulnerable population and there are many protections in place. You could anonymously report what is happening to her to your state ombudsman or an agency that works with seniors. there were several links online that I listed below.
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