A pyramid scheme... RIGHT TO MY FRONT DOOR! YAY!
Posted: Wed Apr 27, 2011 9:34 pm
Today, an actual Pyramid Scheme came right to my door… !!
How awesome is that!?
I think that people like me must be the worst type of people to try to induct into a pyramid scam.
I’ll lay it all out for you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MonaVie
Here is the group that weaseled its way into my wife’s family, and sent a representative to our door with her poor old aunt in tow.
The presentation was about an hour long. We knew going into it, that it could only be something shady, and it became evident very early on that we were right. For 45 minutes, we had no idea what it was that they were trying to sell to us. Only that it involved self help, health, and building a team. Towards the middle, some mention was made of their extensive list of motivational and self-help lectures to be found on CD and book. (motivational packages to be sold at around 200 dollar a pop). It was only later that we discovered that the end product seemed to be the selling of “health drinks” or “energy drinks” (30 dollars a bottle… HA! Selling like hot-cakes, I’m sure.) which allegedly could cure almost any disease you could name.
Effectively, they were selling snake oil. Man, how I relish that this actually went down in my house…
But, here’s the beauty part. They went to great lengths to push down the notion that you would actually have to sell any of this health juice. What this was REALLY all about, and how you REALLY make money, was by building a team. You get more and more team members on board with you, then you get those team members to get more people on board
(reminding you of anything? /\ ) and everyone contributes to the team’s success. Just how they contribute was left to our imagination, as they made no effort at any point in this process to get us on board with actually selling the juice. It was all about how we could be on this team of go-getters who are somehow, somewhere generating money and success for eachother.
It got to the point that I had to stop them and ask what exactly was meant to be driving the income. Was it the juice? Was it the self-help materials? This was dismissed with a quick admission that the health juice was meant to drive sales, but “that’s not what we are concentrating on.”
We were just supposed to get on board with this exciting, Dynamic new team model ( I won’t get into the details, but it was a pyramid scheme, drawn in a strait line, rather than in that red alarm shape we all know means bad business).
She didn’t like us. We asked too many questions. We doubted the business model. We doubted the price point of the health juice. We cast suspicious eyes on the motivational packages. We asked for FDA verification of the health juice’s claims. We doubted how two tea spoons of some acai could equal 13 servings of fruit.
The whole time I was sitting there, one word kept rolling in my head. Scam. Scam. Scam.
I held my peace, for the most part. Restraining my urge to shit on the whole thing from ten feet up, instead just asking those needling questions that earned me red-faced insistence that the team would indeed generate money, and that nobody would be asked to sell juice…
Haha… wow.
I can’t believe I have to explain things like this to people. Don’t join a pyramid scheme.
How awesome is that!?
I think that people like me must be the worst type of people to try to induct into a pyramid scam.
I’ll lay it all out for you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MonaVie
Here is the group that weaseled its way into my wife’s family, and sent a representative to our door with her poor old aunt in tow.
The presentation was about an hour long. We knew going into it, that it could only be something shady, and it became evident very early on that we were right. For 45 minutes, we had no idea what it was that they were trying to sell to us. Only that it involved self help, health, and building a team. Towards the middle, some mention was made of their extensive list of motivational and self-help lectures to be found on CD and book. (motivational packages to be sold at around 200 dollar a pop). It was only later that we discovered that the end product seemed to be the selling of “health drinks” or “energy drinks” (30 dollars a bottle… HA! Selling like hot-cakes, I’m sure.) which allegedly could cure almost any disease you could name.
Effectively, they were selling snake oil. Man, how I relish that this actually went down in my house…
But, here’s the beauty part. They went to great lengths to push down the notion that you would actually have to sell any of this health juice. What this was REALLY all about, and how you REALLY make money, was by building a team. You get more and more team members on board with you, then you get those team members to get more people on board
(reminding you of anything? /\ ) and everyone contributes to the team’s success. Just how they contribute was left to our imagination, as they made no effort at any point in this process to get us on board with actually selling the juice. It was all about how we could be on this team of go-getters who are somehow, somewhere generating money and success for eachother.
It got to the point that I had to stop them and ask what exactly was meant to be driving the income. Was it the juice? Was it the self-help materials? This was dismissed with a quick admission that the health juice was meant to drive sales, but “that’s not what we are concentrating on.”
We were just supposed to get on board with this exciting, Dynamic new team model ( I won’t get into the details, but it was a pyramid scheme, drawn in a strait line, rather than in that red alarm shape we all know means bad business).
She didn’t like us. We asked too many questions. We doubted the business model. We doubted the price point of the health juice. We cast suspicious eyes on the motivational packages. We asked for FDA verification of the health juice’s claims. We doubted how two tea spoons of some acai could equal 13 servings of fruit.
The whole time I was sitting there, one word kept rolling in my head. Scam. Scam. Scam.
I held my peace, for the most part. Restraining my urge to shit on the whole thing from ten feet up, instead just asking those needling questions that earned me red-faced insistence that the team would indeed generate money, and that nobody would be asked to sell juice…
Haha… wow.
I can’t believe I have to explain things like this to people. Don’t join a pyramid scheme.