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Redditor's who were stuck in a pyramid schemes, how did you get in, what trapped you, and how did you get out?
- I almost fell for a pyramid scheme. It was a job for Metro Public Adjustment as 'Home inspector'. The night before my first day of training I was reading the pamphlet they gave me and it said that in order to graduate from the training program you had to hold a seminar at your house and invite 8 of your friends. Each of the 8 people you invite has to give the names of 8 other people to use as referrals. Immediate red flag, after some googleing I learned that the job was just a MLM pyramid scheme.
— was__
- I didn't get completely sucked in, but a friend of mine tried to get me involved with Amway.
I was at a point in my life where I was trying to start my career, and my professors were telling me "network, network, network..." So, as an eager college student, I was just saying "Yes" to things. A friend of mine and i were talking about getting internships, getting jobs, it's so stressful, this and that; then he tells me that he's joined a business group thing that I may benefit from. He framed it the right way for me at the time, so I said yeah, I'll check it out. "Cool, there's a meeting on Tuesday."
So Tuesday night, I show up.
The thing is, I got a weird vibe from the very beginning. I felt so stupid; they weren't *telling* us who they were, what their purpose was, or anything. I felt like everyone else in the room knew, but I didn't. Was I supposed to just know? I just rolled with it. These people were just trying to get people so *excited* about something, without even telling you *what* you're getting excited about. I went to the first meeting and this guy just talked in circles, on and on about how McDonald's is successful because of X and Coca Cola is successful because of Y and *you* can be successful like that too because you're a like minded individual, and we see potential in you, otherwise you wouldn't be here, you can make your dreams come true.
My friend asked me how I felt about the whole thing. I just kind of gave some "uh, yeah, it looks great" response. I was too embarrassed to admit that, actually, I had more questions than answers; the most important question being, "So, what *is* this?"
I went to another meeting a week later after being encouraged to listen to some CD's of people who "went platinum" or whatever. I didn't listen to them, but my friend asked about them. I forget what I said, but I made up some bullshit answer like "oh, yeah *him*, he's great, really gets you to think."
Now this is where things started to get even weirder. This second meeting, was the same speech as the guy from the week before. Except this time, the guy claimed to have been a dentist for a long time. He said "now that I follow these methods, I no longer had to deal with people's spit all day."
This didn't make any sense to me. A dentist, isn't this typically a 6 figure job? I still have no clue what this is, if it's a network, or a job, but if they can't even tell me what it is, I can't imagine it's going to bring more success than being a freaking dentist. But he was talking about dentistry as if it was a "dirty" job where he just deals with people's spit.
I ignored the red flag and a week or two later I was at that guy's house. Except, I don't actually believe it was his real house. It was me, my friend, and a couple other people, and we were at this courtyard house that was furnished with the absolute basics, and considering much of the street was still under construction, this was probably a model home. I guess the message was supposed to be "look at this *awesome* courtyard house.... You could have this...." We were being encouraged to call friends and family to get people onboard, and given a script to read from. I didn't end up calling anyone
My friend started selling their energy drinks. There was a funny incident where he tried to sell them to another friend of mine, who was blind. My blind friend, he tried it and hated it, and made an awful face (he doesn't have to read facial expressions so naturally, he made a disgusted one, probably not realizing that he was offending our Amway guy). Our Amway friend, of course, looked *pissed*, but what are you going to do? Tell a blind person they can't make a face? It was priceless
Edit: clarification
Edit: oh! I forgot about the time that they invited me to stay after their second meeting (the one where I had to listen to some rich dentist bitch about his woes). They made it seem like they were choosing you or something, like you were being invited to be part of something exciting. It was a slide show. They showed pictures of themselves at various events. Just a bunch of selfies and pictures with supposedly prominent people. But the most cringe-worthy part of all of this was the guy doing the slides. He was **scream cheering** as he was going through the photos. I can't exaggerate this enough, he was like **WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!"** at every picture. I guess this was supposed to convince us that the people in the photos were celebrity-status or something, and that was his way of trying to getting us excited about it. I was actually embarrassed for the guy.
— spaghatta111
- I sold Jamberry nail stickers. My friend's sister-in-law started selling them and convinced her to have a party. She put a sample on me and it was awesome and I loved it. It really is a great product. So my friend signs up to sell it. She immediately starts making money doing it, so I signed up, too. It was something like a $150 buy-in, but then you have to pay for business cards, emery boards, containers, etc. My friend just kept saying "All of those expenses are tax deductible!" So it seemed okay at the time. But I'm horrible about keeping up with receipts so, while totally my fault, I didn't ever get to claim any of that on my taxes. I sold a few sets, started making money, but felt pressured to re-invest in more Jamberry so I wasn't actually turning a profit! Plus you're supposed to mail tons of samples to people, so that cost a LOT of money in packaging in shipping (you sent a Jamberry sample, an alcohol pad, a tiny emery board, etc. for free). I also am terrible about forcing people to buy stuff. Even to this day, I think Janberry itself is a great product, but it's hard to be pushy to your friend so you can make money.
A month in, she convinced me to go to a corporate seminar weekend so we drove a few hours, bought a hotel, and spent the weekend in trainings. That's when I realized it was a total cult. Women bawling their eyes out at the company founders walking by. Women crying telling how Jamberry saved their lives. It was super uncomfortable for me to watch. It felt like I was around scientologists. Then they had "blind bags" to buy of messed up Jamberry they were selling at a discount. So there went more of my money. Yes, I willingly spent it. But there was a ton of pressure of "This package is SO discounted you'd be crazy not to buy!" So you fall into it because everyone is fanatic about how exciting it was. But you didn't even know what you were buying until you paid for it and opened it! And they were all somehow defective, anyway. It hit me that no matter how cool the product is, it was a giant pyramid scheme. They didn't care about you.
On the drive home, I had so much buyer's remorse - for the trip, the defective stickers, the entire MLM investment. I stopped selling it and am still embarrassed I pressured my friends.
— likelazarus
- It wasn't me but it was a close friend and she's still involved but now she sells make up instead of Tupperware or candles.
I think she follows the pattern of a lot of people who get sucked into theses things. She's a stay at home mom, and now that her kids are in school, I think she's bored and wants to have a career and has some how convinced herself that these scams are her way to a career.
I bought stuff the first time to be nice but I have just stopped responding to her invites.
— PM_ME_TINY_DINOSAURS
- I almost got trapped into a pyramid scheme when I was a bit younger. My boss did *It Works* and I needed extra money to buy a car. She jumped at the opportunity and hounded me about joining for months. She wouldn't stop calling me, texting me, messaging me on all social media. Regardless of how many times I told her no, she didn't quit. I've never experienced anything like that.
— choosysusie
- Got involved in Vector Marketing (Cutco) over a decade ago.
As is with most of these, it isn't really a 'scheme', just a business model designed to hurt the employee and not the company.
A buddy of mine did it as a second job, recommended it, I was 'interviewed', then had 3 days unpaid training and had to buy a sample kit of knives (supposedly worth almost 500 but we 'only' paid $130)
Here's the thing. It wasn't THAT bad. At least at the time, no ongoing fees, or other things you had to buy. You would have to find all your own leads, and you would either get commission or a flat fee if you did a meeting but didn't sell.
But basically, unless you were rich already (or your family was) it was HARD to find leads. The product was pretty good, but HOLY HELL IT WAS EXPENSIVE.
Finally, I just....stopped scheduling appointments. Funny thing is, I still have the blades to this day. I just couldn't ever get the leads necessary to sell $3000 worth of knives to someone.
— KMApok
- My neighbor. He was doing great doing telemarketing and his wife worked at a restaurant. She got roped in by a bar tender into a pyramid scheme and then so did the husband. They made money the first month or two by cashing in their relationships and came to the conclusion the could quit their jobs and work for themselves.
I was warned to never give them an opening. Each time there was a lull in conversation, they went in for the sale. I think they had to make a pledge or put money down because they were under a lot of pressure.
One night my brother and I heard them fighting (common) and when we were mentioned by name loudly, I knew we were in for it. She was demanding that he get us to sell for them and not to take no for an answer. So the husband comes down to visit and he try several avenues about us being our own boss if we work for him selling his shit product. We sent him home. Then the fighting started up again. It goes quiet and we hear him slowly make his way to the door, psych himself up and knock. This time I didn't let him in the door. Repeats, and the third time I just slipped him a $20 without saying anything and close the door.
So here was the worst part: The product was prepaid dental coupons. Like gift cards, but for specific procedures for a small network of dentists. You had to diagnose yourself or predict exactly what you needed.
By the time I moved there the couple had sold everything, their cars, furniture, everything. The two bedroom apartment had been turned into an office with papers on the floor in stacks surrounding the two phones. They had to be driven everywhere because they lived in the suburbs with no public transportation.
She kept pushing and the husband took a management job doing telemarketing. He was fired from that after 3 months because he kept trying to sell dental coupons on top of the product and pushed employees to sell dental coupons for him.
— DarrenEdwards
- Job search out of college, a hiring manager at a very prestigious company in my field said he wanted to interview me for a job. I prepared for 1 week for a job interview in the job I asked about. We met at the location/time he told me to, but it was not the office of the company, it was a rented space where a dozen other people were waiting, and we were given an Amway presentation. After it I asked about the job I applied for at the other company, and the hiring manager said "We'll talk about that when we meet next." I asked when we could meet next, and basically he said we'll meet next once I've sold Amway subscriptions to 10 people or something like that. I was extremely desperate for the other job, and I knew nothing about the field, nothing about multi-level marketing, so I got a little deeper in. It wasn't until I tried to sell a subscription to my brother that my family explained how this is a giant scam. I basically just stopped talking to the hiring manager and never did anything involving the Amway thing ever again.
— sanguinepenguin777
- statistically, by the logic of the pyramid scheme, most of them got out by cutting their losses
— chilipizzafries
- After my dad sold his restaurants in the early 70's he got bored after a while and ended up becoming part of an MLM called "Bestline Products". Soap / detergent related products, all super concentrated.
As I remember what trapped him was their appeal to his vanity that the people who bought in on this were way smarter than the average schmuck. In any case whatever psychological tricks these folks use worked perfectly on him.
He bought thousands of dollars worth of product, signed up a number of friends but neither he nor any of his friends ever went out and sold any of it. We ended up using most of the stuff over 10+ years, and really it was a break even proposition for him financially from what I calculated. It also didn't suck having free laundry detergent and other cleaning supplies through college.
I particularly liked the air fresheners, which were incredibly flammable. You could easily get 4 feet of fire off the cans. We had cases of the stuff and as a teenager my friends and I would have real life flame wars near the creek in our neighborhood.
— DallasITGuy
- I never fell for a pyramid scheme, though last week someone tried to get me to fall for one.
A crush from high school messaged me on Facebook and we agreed to go out for drinks. It turns out that we were actually meeting up with 14 people and a rep for the pyramid scheme "World Ventures".
Basically how they get people is by promising the world (literally in this case) and have answers to any potential questions. They also flood the victim with "data" that they move through so fast that you can't properly analyze it. Their speech is filled with "ifs" and "personal stories". They also say "only an idiot will refuse this."
I also have a friend who was a rep for this scam and the rep speaking knew him as well. When the time to seal the deal came, my former crush asked me if I would sign the contract. I told her no and that it was a huge con that ruined my friend's life. He literally lost all of his friends and family because of him screwing them over. She refused to see it though.
My friend got out when he saw the personal cost to his life rather than the financial gain. He had to pay some fees to leave.
— thebearsandthebees