Multilevel Marketing: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Here's a good rule of thumb: When your boss goes out of his way to explain to you why exactly the company is not a criminal organisation then the company is probably a criminal organisation.

just wanted to come back here to say that this segment literally saved me from signing up with an MLM today. heard the pitch, it sounded innocuous at first, then recognized the signs from this bit. wasted two hours of my time, but i got out before they got any money out of me. i mean this very sincerely: thank you mr zazu.

This episode helped me and my husband and couldn’t be more thankful! We almost got sucked into Amway right around the time this came out. After everything I’ve learned since then about Amway and other MLMs, we seriously dodged a bullet.

If you have to pay in order to stay "employed" in any of these MLM Companies, then you aren't an independent contractor, you are the customer.

'I'm not going to swindle anyone. I lost but no one else is going to lose because of me.' - God bless that woman.

That woman in the documentary clip is a FUCKING HERO. Holy shit that was moving. She said "I lost everything but it stops with me". That takes real, genuine, toes to tip courage and character.

A college professor, whom I respected deeply, tried to lure me into one of these. After he was laid off by the university (after teaching for 35 years, with a 40-year-long career in all of the best companies), I assume that he got dragged into these due to his severance pay. He then started contacting his formuer students with a "great job opportunity". As he was a dear and credible professor, many accepted to meet with him. I was one of these students who gave him the benefit of the doubt even after countless red flags during his pitch. At the meeting, he brings a second person (his "partner") who starts spewing all of the clichés, talking a lot but without saying anything. I just said I wasn't interested and left. Then I warned my college colleagues about what had happened. Two friends later told me this professor tried to recruit them a couple of weeks later. I feel sorry for this professor, to be honest. Disregarding all the awful ethical implications of recruiting former students to a pyramid scheme, it must have been extremely difficult for him after he was laid off.

This video popped up in my recommendations today, and I felt compelled to comment. I watched this the day it came out five years ago as a naive 23 year old, having heard of some of the companies but with no understanding of what an MLM was or how they operated. About a month later, I was approached at my job by a girl about my age asking if I was interested in "helping people". I thought it was some kind of volunteering gig at a food bank or homeless shelter; it was Amway. I'm usually a big pushover, even with people I don't know very well, but because I'd watched this video, I knew enough to be suspicious of this girl and to ask the right questions about the company, the products, and how they operate. I got away from that interaction without an ounce of the guilt I usually feel for being firm or for denying my people-pleasing nature. Thank you John Oliver and the Last Week Tonight team for helping to protect a young 20-something from making a horrible mistake. ❤

These poor salespeople will never understand. Because you're not arguing against their logic. You're arguing against their hopes and dreams.

I live in Utah, and it really sucks when you think you're making a new friend, and they just want to recruit you into their cult. Not that cult, the other one.

I got sucked into MLMs in my life and I'm so glad I'm over it. I used to gravitate towards health and wellness" MLMs. Melaleuca, Noni Juice, Market America, and narrowly managed to dodge Kangen water. I eventually ended up legitimately going into the fitness and health industry through getting a bachelor's in exercise science, nutrition, and certifying as a trainer. My heart sank at an MLM training for a weight loss product when the instructor (supposedly a certified health instructor) literally told the class that "muscle turns to fat". It was downhill from there.

Coming to this very late but it's brilliant. Here in Bulgaria, someone I know conned me into buying a stupid box of those Herbalife pills. He simply opened a new container, pulled a pill out and told me to try it out, then charged me the equivalent of 25 dollars for a useless product. There's another loss that's not mentioned, that of relations, friends and acquaintances who get pushed to accept a product or a scheme they don't want and go right off the seller.

I think Norway has the right approach: any business where 50% or more of the revenue comes from recruiting more members is declared an illegal pyramid scheme. Practical, easy to understand, fair, and reasonable.

"Multilevel marketing" is to "pyramid scheme" what "enhanced interrogation technique" is to "torture".

I had a friend in college who maxed out her credit cards because of Mary Kay. It's scary because I found out by just being invited to a "make-up party"; they aren't even honest about it being a sales pitch. I literally thought I was just going to get makeovers with my friends (maybe that was a bit naïve, but I was only 20), and I felt really uncomfortable when I realized she was selling the makeup. Even though I knew the company was BS, I still bought a few things despite the fact that I don't wear make-up on a regular basis because I felt like a crappy friend if I didn't.

Please do this again, my middle age mother has become obsessed with this crap and is buying boxes and boxes of candles. I've told her it's a scam but she won't listen.

2 minutes in, and it's starting to sound a lot like a pyramid scheme

You really need to do an update to this story - COVID has let these MLMs run wild and the unbelievable volume of stealth Herbalife ‘nutrition’ cafes with shakes/smoothies and “loaded” teas is terrifying.

As a desperate college graduate some 15 years ago, I joined GNLD. The sales pitch was so perfect that I borrowed the registration fee (about $50 at the time). Lucky I realized after registering that "being my own boss" would cost me 10 times as much to buy shit I'd have to start selling to everyone in my village. I miss that $50.

My cousin lives in a poor developing country. her mother is constantly sick, and my cousin is trying to complete her nursing degree so she can take care of her mother and three younger brothers. recently my mother told me that my cousin has become a businesswoman! And she sells stuff! "Oh!" i said. "She makes and sells her own products?" "No" she answered. The conversation stopped there and I didn't give it another thought. Fast forward a week and I dust off my account on facebook only to see my feed filled with posts from her telling everyone how amazing this company is, and that you simply MUST join! Post after post, trying to convince others to join the "family" and "sisterhood". I don't speak her language so I contact my mother and inform her that my cousin might be involved in an MLM. Turns out my cousin had taken a bank loan to afford the "starter pack", shes trying to sell her products but every potential client thinks it's too expensive. She said she did this because she wanted to help her family, she is the breadwinner of her family. I'm FUMING and so SAD that she got herself involved in this. But she is the target for these companies, she is young, poor and dream big.