I told my counselor at LAWL that I purchased Take Off Juice off EBAY and she said it was illegal for me to do so. She also said it was illegal to sell LAWL products on EBAY.
I casually mentioned that it would cut her commission and her jaw dropped! She didnt know that I knew they make a commission. She said the commission was only .02.
She said that I must have LA lites and their Take Off Juice. So I have decided that I will not be 'forced' into anything. I will say NO and just do the Take Off my way: Hollywood Diet drink and South Beach Diet bars or Slim Fast Bars. Tough, if they do not like it. It's my choice and my money!!!

Yeah that's crazy! My COD definately wasn't to happy about me saying that we bought off ebay. So I kinda blamed my DBF. I said he did it as a gift. Ha! He didn't but then it wasn't my fault that he did it. hahahahah! I guess I am a good maker uper. Ha ha! So just say someone bought them for you... just say oh I felt soo bad but I couldn't refuse the gift! He he!

I can't imagine it actually is "illegal," as generally when a person buys something they have the right to sell it to someone else, unless they signed a contract specifically promising not to. However, her telling you it is illegal, when it isn't, might be. If she is telling you a lie, in order to put pressure on you to buy from her, I would think that could be considered fraud. I think I would point that out to her, if she suggested it again.

That's why I didn't stick with LA weight loss. I couldn't afford to do it in addition to the bars and the supplements and they wouldn't leave me alone about it and were constantly pushing me to buy other things. I didn't really feel like I got "counseled" on how to make better food choices or how to cook something but more like I was going to a sales meeting every single time I had an appointment and I was the "target". I regret not being firm about that since I basically stopped going and I lost the money that I paid up front which was around 800 dollars to get started I think and no weight loss to show for it. Later after I stopped going, the center I was going to got shut down under some weird circumstances that were never really all that clear and I got various of reasons as to why when I questioned about it and tried to get my money back and I basically was given the run around. I didn't realize they got commission. Now some things I remember really makes a lot more sense.

It's not illegal to sell their products on ebay, believe me. I have sold many! You just can't sell their plan, that's all. I messed up once when selling take off, and said the plan was with it, meaning what to do with the TO. LAWeightloss must have been watching it, because my auction was automatically cancelled!

I luckily got all my bars before the center closed, and am selling them on ebay!

This is exactly how I've been feeling. I feel that the counselors don not really not much more than the average person about nutrition and healthy weight loss. It seems as though they would take it upon themselves to become more educated in these areas in order to help the clients.

I refuse to spend any more money than I already have to get started, $400!

Trust me the people on the diet know more about nutrition then the children at the centers (on average) we just do not make the best choices, so here we are. I do not miss my COD. Those little girls drove me nuts! I mean really, if I ate an extra veggie serving that was the cause of my not having lost? I do not think so. I have lost almost 30# and I let myself eat as many veggies as i want in a day. I just do not let myself have any extras on them.
And the pressure was upsetting. I would celebrate if the center was too busy to counsel me. Yeah, no hard sell today! WW never did that stuff. Sure you had the option but the price for the bars is ridiculous. Way over the top and prohibitive. Encouraging people to take out credit for them? Really! The bars are so expensive that you are forced to go into debt to stay on plan? Are they trying to teach us good eating or bad credit practices! Shame on them.

They tried the hard sell with me too. I told them I couldn't afford it so they suggested the Care Credit. I told them I didn't want any more credit cards or loans to pay off since I was anticipating moving in a year and wanted to keep my credit rating high. She tried to tell me that it wouldn't hurt it. I finally told them no. The next time I was there I told them I was using the Luna or South Beach diet and of course, I was told that I wouldn't lose any weight. My weight loss hasn't changed since I switched. It took me 3 WI before someone would tell me the plan without the lites. I stopped going - my contract runs out this week anyway. I told them it was fair that since I only wanted to lose 20 lbs that I paid the same as someone who had more to lose so I upped my goal to 30 lbs so I would get 15 weeks instead of just 10.

Plan 2 no lites.

You know what's sad about this whole thing? That it IS a good plan, diet, way of life. It's something doable and reasonable (the food plan, not the COD prices). But it's the pushy sales the paying upfront, the staff that's often questionable - it's all giving a good plan the bad name

I've done WW, I've done Jenny Craig, I have even done South Beach, and I know - LAWL is the only one that makes sense and works... Yet I still felt better about counseling and qualifications at Jenny Craig or even WW than I feel here

Well, I think this is a good indication as to why PURE shut down and why a lot of LAWL (like mine) shut down as well. You can have the best plan in the world, but if you focus on sales rather than support, it's not going to work. We were really blessed to have some really good counselors at our local shop. They really focused on counseling rather than selling (although Liz and I bought the bulk lite deal so I guess they didn't have anything left to sell us), and really seemed to care about where we were as far as our weight loss goals... Because Liz struggled so much, they spent a lot of time going over her plans, consulting the home office dietician and in general being really supportive.

That said, the office had their fair share of inexperienced kids who only knew how to sell.. Since they didn't really have anything left to sell us (stupid us), they didn't have anything of real substance to share with us, support-wise...

I'm so sorry that your experiences were so negative. My COD had some wonderful helpful (older than me!) counselors. Some of them had lost a lot of weight themselves, so they knew the plan, and knew the challenges. There was one or two really bad ones though, so I know the feeling of being hustled instead of helped. The counselors do get a 2 - 3 percent commision. Mostly they are making close to minimum wage besides that, so they are not getting rich off from us. I held off buying things until I was with a counselor that I wished to keep around. Reward the ones who are great...

My center is pretty great too. I have rarely been in there an been unhappy. They do try to sell, but they also take no for an answer. With that being said, I don't go in there much. I would rather hang out here.

I go to my center 3x a week. It's definately all about the counselors. I like all of them except one. She talks really fast and always makes me feel like we're in a hurry.

The other 3 I meet w/ are fantastic. They can be hard on me, but I usually deserve it when I get scolded.

Sorry for butting in, I was a former center manager for PWL and I think that in December of last year on the service agreement it stated that it was illegal for clients to resell the products as well as the plan. It's not illegal to buy the stuff but as of December of 06 it was illegal to sell it. Does that "not for resale" label mean anything? I know the company had an issue with a former employee who went into a few different centers and bought $5000 worth of product with a bad check with the intent to sell it on ebay and they tightened things up after that. I don't know if the LAWL contracts are worded differently though.