It's not just Vac's, knives and such. I got pulled into a mortgage lending co. a few months back. Basically, it was a pyramid disguised as an MLM. Same diff. to me.

I've tried real estate before and mortgage lending, so I liked the idea of helping people, especially with the lending crisis coming up. Well......they wanted me to start with my friends. No, I won't give you people a list of my friends because that is a sure fire way for me to lose my friends. I kept asking anyone around to explain the products we were selling and couldn't get a straight answer. The whole point was to really to get more people to sign on as Reps., not sell mortgages.

Their idea of training was for me to attend weekly "Hallelujah" sessions and then take an experienced Sales Rep to my friend's and family's homes and listen to them pitch while I said "Isn't that Awsome!!" FU!!!!!!

Oh, BTW, we were expressly taught during the "hallelujah" meetings that it wasn't a good idea to sign up anyone with ANY mortgage or lending experience. Seems to me it was harder to con someone with the slightest idea of what they were suckering folks into. I wasn't conned and had enough within two weeks.

Thing is, I feel bad for the ones who tried to sign me up. These are a couple of decent folks who really are just trying to help other folks out. But the Co.'s sales practices are just beyond belief and in the end these decent folks are going to get blamed for screwing over their friends and family when in all reality they are getting screwed over even worse.

I actually sold Cutco Cutlery myself. I worked for a marketing firm around my area... actually 45 mins away from my house but whatever... I drove my own car up there 3 times a week for "calling hours" or "success" meetings. UGH. I LOVE CUTCO!! The knives are absolutely the highest quality knives I've ever used before in my life!! They're lifetime warranty too... When I worked for cutco you made your own leads. YOU set up appointments with the people you knew and they would offer you other leads. They weren't required. I too was trained to point out the bad points of their "best knives" they brought out to challenge my cutco. But honestly some of them were so true I couldn't believe some of the rusty, swollen wooden handled knives I saw. I would NEVER have a knife in that condition... eww... So either way... I still recommend cutco to everyone i know, they are expensive but are well worth the cost... bc knives on average can cost 15-20 bucks a pop for a higher end walmart choice and they only last about 2 years... so in 10 years you've blown 100 bucks on one knife... spend 80 on this one and you'll never need another one again. It just made sense...

Anywho i guess what i'm trying to say is, I've worked for a marketing company with questionable employee treatment but it wasn't hard pitched sales, or at least I wasn't. I tried to make it a comfortable easy going, laughing at silly things type of demonstration. I even let people "borrow" my knives to try them out for a few days before committing to buying them. I got a lot of sales this way because when I came back they didn't want to give them up so they ordered some or even just one. Either way I was happy and had NO feelings of guilt or feelings that i just scammed someone.

He wants to quit... He said he's finishing out the week so he gets paid for it and then he's DONE! *phew* I'm glad...I mean we might have to survive on ramen noodles for a few weeks or a month whatever but at least he'll be home TO EAT!! argh I've never hated someone else's job more than this before!!

*sorry if this goes from one end to the other... it's one of those days*

Nope. But it did bring it to the surface so it was a bit of a stronger smell. Hubby ended up deploying a couple months later and I went back home to TX. We had to replace the carpet in that room.

Isn't MLM just the more polite way of saying "pyramid"?

An MLM is supposed to be more dependant on the product being sold, and you get a bonus if you happen to get more salespeople. But most of your income comes from Selling. Pyramids are completely dependant on signing up the next one under you and them signing more people up and so on. With an MLM, you could stop signing up more people and still make a living on what you are selling.

The difference is slight. It's kind of like the diff. between selling a Kirby which is a very good product (I've had one) and selling carpet cleaning services where your room is left smelling like pee.

If this mortgage co was focused on selling mortgages and not on signing up reps., it would have been an MLM. It's focus was on signing up more reps, that's a pyramid.

If you say so, Operator265. I have absolutely zero interest in getting into being a sales rep, be the operation on the up-and-up, borderline or downright crooked

Yeah, I really stink at sales too. I've tried it with legitimate real estate, mortgages and cars. It really takes someone with a special talent and ability not to take things personally. It also seems to change many people. It would be hard not to compromise your principles when it comes time to put dinner on the table. Although, I'm still at a job I hate for the same reason.