Mavi:

It seems that people might "make their million" playing the lottery too.

MLM schemes often seem like little more than a lottery.

At any rate you are free to spend your money in whatever way you wish, within the law.

But you might want to keep in mind that many MLMs over the years have been exposed as scams and at times prosecuted or shut down by federal regulators (for example Equinox).

See [www.culteducation.com]

The odds for a payoff may be better playing the slots in Vegas.

FYI-- No one has said that Herbalife is a "cult."

See [www.culteducation.com]

Note that this same disclaimer page is linked clearly at the database section about Herbalife.

Mavi,

I see that you value the notion of choice.

We all make choices, some informed, some conscious and some unconscious.

Am I correct in suggesting that you believe that responsibility is 100% that of the person exercising choice?

Is there an ethical responsibility on the part of a vendor or MLM organisational representative to fully disclose so an inquirer can make an informed choice?

Responsibility and ethics are a two way street.

Is selling a hope or a dream designed to trigger a "would be" distributor, fully disclosing?

A comment on the notion of being positive. It is fine to be positive but not at the expense of being blocked to reality. Acknowledging both positives and negatives is a more balanced approach.

Being positive all the time and refusing to see things otherwise is a new age myth often adopted by MLM training schemes to keep people motivated against the odds of sellling overpriced goods loaded with incentive overheads.

Oz

I dont think that when it comes to scam that it is a person's 100 percent reponciblity because they fail and loose large sums of money

because the scamers dont fully inform the scam-ee

for example: What if an employer guarentted you a job where you will be selling houses to earn millions and by buying houses and reselling them with pictuers of nice houses, boats and happy people

sounds fair???? a chance, right?? Well lets say he/she did not inform you that these houses need serious renevating in order to be livable, and hundreds of thousands put into them and they in are slum nieborhoods and you paid 30x what they actuly worth to get these houses off thier hands and you could never get your money out of those houses because the neighborhood has gone bad or it was severely damaged by fire.

Now is that fair?? This example is based off of a scam that actulaly exists
I dont know the name..but there are several companies doing it.

Alot of these scams and even mass marketing cults work like this...promicing millions with pictures of fancy boats and big houses and happy people while in fact they dont intend to "pay out" but luring [u:cee27584a3]victims [/u:cee27584a3] with intant success into a situation where they are totaly uninformed of the real objective of the buisness.......screwing poor people or people in debt out of what money they have left to the buinesses advantage..(in that case gitting rid of unwanted, or unlivable houses while making some extra pocket cash)

So is it really a chance or a hook, line, and sinker?

It's been a little over a month now since I saw a commercial about the promise of earning a substantial income working from home. "Just go to this website now" the commercial said. So I did and I went as far as I could without asking for a "Decision Package."
The next day the phone rings and sure enough, it's the (owner) sponsor of the website I visited.
"Wow" I say, "You guys are good."
After our "brief" initial conversation I decide to have him send me the decision package. It costs me $12.99 U.S.
Of course the decision package sounds wonderful, what else would it sound like?
Several calls ensue after that initial contact. I have many questions. Now I know it's Herbal Life. So now I'm researching Herbal Life on the Internet. What I'm finding initially sounds pretty good. I manage to track down a couple who sell Herbal Life in the city in which I live.
The initial sponsor quit calling on me, guess he gave up because I didn't make the quick decision to sign on and/or maybe because I told him I made contact with someone local.
I've only talked over the phone with the local couple and they seem really nice, not pushy at all and have answered my questions to my satisfaction.
So here I am on the eve of signing up to be a distributor and for some reason I decide just one more time to go on the net to do some more research and BAM! I find this website.

I can only thank the Good Lord for: (a) somehow pointing me to your website and (b) for organizations such as yours who are sharing valuable information to an unsuspecting public.
People, the truth is, I saw that commercial at a time when I was feeling beaten up financially. It worked on me because I wanted it to work on me.

I'm not suggesting MLM doesn't work. It works for a few. I'm saying do your homework. TEST ALL THINGS! Be prepared to spend alot of time, effort and money. If after all that you decide to sign up and it doesn't work, don't complain.

I've learned alot about Herbal Life, it's founder, it's past, it's present status and where it's going. Some good, some bad. At the end of the day I've chosen not to pursue it for several reasons, two of which are: questionable business practices and quite simply, I'm not prepared to make the commitment. . . and lastly, remember the old saying, if it's to good to be true . . .

Watch out for things with teeth. Any one of them can bite you if you are not careful.

I think some of Herbalife is okay, but the marketing is my issue. I have lost some money due to misleading marketing practices that are worded just enough to be legal.

That decision package website is what got me. Watch out for misleading info. if you get a return call!!! YOU DO NOT HAVE TO SPEND MORE THAN $80 TO APPLY BUT CAN GET THE SAME STUFF [u:cdd3cda1b0]AS IF YOU DID[/u:cdd3cda1b0]!!! My bad experience leads me to tell you that if you decide to do Herbalife as a distributor [b:cdd3cda1b0]ASK[/b:cdd3cda1b0] WHAT COMES IN THE START-UP KITS AND [hint] [b:cdd3cda1b0]IF YOU CAN GET THESE THINGS LATER IF YOU CHOOSE.[/b:cdd3cda1b0]

I did my homework and was still 'duped' into getting products I did not have too, DUE TO PREFORMATTED SCRIPTS WHICH ARE USED and are hard to follow. The products have some good benefits, but I did not have to buy them. Keep in mind that this is the result of a call back from a [i:cdd3cda1b0]decision package site visit[/i:cdd3cda1b0]. I have no way of knowing about anything else. And if the site owner is the same guy that I talked too, no name to mention, [b:cdd3cda1b0]log off[/b:cdd3cda1b0].

Save your money if you go through with this company, and ask questions. Also, don't try anything without second opinions, doctor's approvals and the such. Inquire about refund policies as well.

Herbalife has a deeply troubled history, which has included some nasty lawsuits.

See [www.culteducation.com]

Its founder Mark Hughes died under strange circumstances.

See [www.culteducation.com]

Herbalife went through Sweden a few years ago after collapsing in the US. Some people I know were constantly pestered by people they knew to buy into the scheme. To me it seemed very much like a scam. But then there dot-com scams were still rising then, too, which I also spoke out against.

I met two people who bought into the scam. One broke even, the other lost a fair chunk of change.

From what I recall reading on the herbalife packaging, it was mostly forms of sugar. The markup must have been outrageous given the retail price of corresponding quantities of vitamins, minerals and sugars. The marketing spiel seemed also to prey on folks with a lack of high school level science. "this country's soil is deficient in selenium ..." Any soil anywhere on the whole Earth is low in selenium...

The main product, IMHO, was the spiel.

it was a total waste of time for me too. I broke even only because they screwed up and only charged me half of the cost of my supervisor order. So I just worked a year for free!

Herbalife is a total scam. I got involved in Tokyo through a branch called something like HV international. I responded to a misleading classified ad in an English magazine which stated something to the effect of "international company looking for recruiters, salespeople, marketing experts, etc" No mention of Herbalife whatsoever. I submitted a resume and got a telephone response. The guy wouldn't answer any direct questions but quickly lined me up for an in person interview with one of his associates. The interview was in a deluxe suite at a hotel in Tokyo Disney Resort. I was indirectly led to believe that this was the kind of accomodation a person working in the company could afford after just a couple years, when in fact it was really a hookup from the girl's rich boyfriend who was unaffiliated with the scheme. Basically I got suckered into it.. I had my doubts but the lavish digs and the attractive girl who was also a health expert influenced me heavily. I boought the expensive start up kit and was told I'd be interviewing other people who were attracted to the classified ad. Despite the fact that I was interviewing for the company i was still kept in the dark about exactly how it all worked. Whenever I voiced specific concerns I got rebuked by the guy at the top of this branch of herbalife and reassured by his associate that "he makes 9,000$ a month on this so he knows what he is doing" That seemed to be the end all argument stopper.
So I allowed myself to stay in the scheme for about a month interviewing people who were mostly down on their luck trying to eek out a living in expersive tokyo.. all foreigners. All direct questions were deflected and they were led to believe that they'd be getting a postition in sales, or marketing, or event management. Technically none of this is a lie, because if you are an inventive member of the Herbalife team you would do all this.. so that is the catch. That is how they justify misleading people because telling someone that they are getting into a career in recruitment, or management after they pay for the costs of their starter kit is not technically a lie...it just misleads people into thinking their are going to have a stable desk job working as one member of a big etablished company. When people asked about salaries a standard response was something like "well that depends on your ability, but a lot of guys in this area are making 5,000$ a month and the big guy is making 9" Maybe not a lie, but never were the words 100% commission mentioned.. the idea was to give the impression of a salary.
After a while the spell started to wear off and the ethics of the whole thing were chewing a hole inside of me so I finally quit with a lengthy email citing all of my problems with the organization and its decieptful practices. One of the things that shook me out of the spell was going to a Herbalife live event that they use to pump up the crowd and pull in new recruits. It may have had that effect on me had I not been through the whole evangelistic church scene in college. The whole event was almost EXACTLY like an evangelistic revival. They even played a loud, techno version of amazing grace right before the keynote speaker kicked off the event... Herbalife the savior??

I was financially devastated by Herbalife. Herbalife was my first online HBB venture and I was naïve and trusting at that time as far as the HBB industry goes. I started out with a large sum of money since I was going to treat this as a business & I unfortunately got involved with a group who sold me on their proven marketing system and guaranteed me a ROI. I bough into everything they told me to do since these people were claiming to be professionals and were supposedly doing this full time. I bought around $3000 worth of product since this put me at the 50% commission level which only made since and then I gave them around a thousand for their marketing material several times and then put in thousands into their proven marketing. I did not get the results I was told I would and when their marketing failed they gave me call me leads which is not what I had spent my money on. I confronted Aaron Hill about this & he gave me the run around and more lies. By the time I called it quits 6 months into it I was between $12 and $13 thousand dollars in the hole & I had made $600.00 from my time and money spent.

I was told that I did not do this or that and was instructed to have product parties to recoup my money. Aaron Hill told me to get my neighbors, friends & family together & have a skin care party to try and sell them an expensive skin care package since he had done this and made a good profit. I could NOT believe what I was hearing. I come from a sales back ground and was in shock to the suggestions from my sponsors and over all unprofessional atmospheres these people operate in. I felt that I was taken advantage of, lied to and I can say that it was the worst online venture & experience I have ever come across.

After all of that I gave it one more shot with a couple direct sales compensation plans rather than the MLM & I have been full time ever since. I was told that I was not doing things right on the phone when I was with Herbalife but as soon as I got out of the clutches of those rip off artists I was making money????? All I can say is that Herbalife is a nightmare for anybody who really wants to make a living online and if you are serious about making a living check out the direct sale companies. I made $30,000.00 this summer & you can make money online if you are serious & if you had a bad experience with Herbalife don’t let it close the door on your dreams.

Kevin Thomasson
GWS Marketing: 760.466.7356