Pyramid Schemes
 

My "friend" set me up by sending me to one of those prepaid legal shield hotel seminars.

I guess I understand that the only way to get people to go to these is to fool them.

I've been fooled like 5 times. Someone you're acquainted with calls you and says that you've just gotta come to this meeting right away...

Then you sit there for 2 hours listening to a guy tell you how to become a millionaire by getting others to work for you.

Should I aggressively confront him about sending me to this naivety convention?

Or should I just never talk to him again?

I would elect option B.

And burn his house down.

If you can get you buddies to invest, you'll reach the top of the pyramid. That's when you really start seeing money roll in. It's all about motivation! Aren't you motivated? What the ****s wrong with you?

You know who else ran a pyramid scheme? Those guys in Egypt, but that was thousands of years ago. Their little scheme did not last long though although what they built did.

Pay the deposit and hold on for the great ride!

Really? You do know the old fool me once, fool me twice thing, right?

I was kinda surprised he admitted to that.

They know you're black and don't know you have any money right?

Hint: Friends don't do shit like that to each other.

After I realized I had been duped, I sat down next to a cute girl that I assumed had been tricked into attending as well. Right as I was about to commiserate I noticed that she was in on it as well. She laughed and clapped with perfect timing. She knew all of the jokes. And she just happened to have an extra pen and notepad so that I could take notes.

Bingo

Yeah, I never saw this one coming. I attended class with this guy a couple of years ago and he never struck me as "one of them".

He texted me today and said he found a business partner that might help us get some movie equipment. All I needed to do was meet him at the sportsmen's lodge in an hour...

Why wouldn't you just get up and walk the **** out once you realized what was going on?

The FREE gift!

Did you get a shot of her boobs? If so, we're waiting...

Such a good question sir.

I think it's because I was raised in a single parent home. :shrug:

Tell him you'll show up if he blows you in the parking lot.

This would seem like a perfect time to stand up and pull a cartman....

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One of the original moderators of this site is a millionare many times over running these things. Some people got it and some don't.

You just need to quit hanging out with Luzap.

My grandparents have made a shit ton of money over the years selling Prepaid Legal. That kind of work is hardly my style but it is possible to be successful with the program.

The last time I got caught up in one of those deals, was when "a friend" envited me out for coffee one night. I thought it was kind of strange and my WTF meter was starting to go off. When I got there, he starts in hot and heavy on the Amway pitch. I stood up, shook my head and haven't talked to him since. That was 20+ years ago. Others have tired, but I can smell those things coming from a mile away and don't bite on their line of BS.
Anyone that doesn't have the nuts to talk to you outright, about their "great deal," is a pile of crap and a waste of my time.

I don't understand why some of you are so negative about this stuff. The Ramada conference room is where billionaires are born.

She could be an accomplice, you know?

I wonder if he noticed she was in on it as well...

If there was only some way to tell what he was thinking...

We've all fallen for this stuff. I once let a vacuum cleaner salesman into my house, and the guy wouldn't leave. Even though I ended up getting a free vacuum out of the deal, it didn't work on blood stains at all.

The absolute worst are the door-to-door home security people. My dogs do a good job of running them off

Anyone who buys/subscribes to prepaid legal deserves the fate they receive

I had a fraternity brother who was a couple years younger than me ask me to meet him for lunch, because he wanted to network and ask me a couple questions about my job.

I assumed it was because he was a year or two out of school, and was either looking for advice while job hunting, or even looking for job leads. Of course I obliged. It was just lunch.

Well, my job at the time was laid back and sales oriented, so I showed up in jeans and a button up to a Panera. I went in fully intending on paying for the dude, and ready to help him out with his job hunt.

I show up, and he's in a full suit with a briefcase, and there's some other dude who is in a suit, standing five feet away, obviously having a fake phone call which would allow my buddy to give me an "intro pitch" and then "bring in the big guns."

Me: Uh, hey, Eric, what's up?
Eric: (nervous) Hi! Thanks for meeting us!
Me: We still having lunch, or...?
Eric: Yes! I will take care of it. Get anything you want!
Me: I'm fine, I got it. Was there anything in particular you wanted to talk about?
Eric: I just wanted to find out about your current job, what your benefits look like and how your financial planning is going?

Turns out he had just started with Northwestern Mutual, and set up sales meeting. His boss, or lead, or whatever... was just this total douchey, condescending knob that I can only imagine threatened him into duping his friends and family into sales pitch meetings. I laughed at him, and told Eric that he's better than this company and its BS sales tactics, and to give me a call if he wanted to ever talk about life, or looking for a real gig.

Haven't heard from him since, but he switched jobs about 3 months later. Hope it was worth it.

I fell for this once and paid $500 to become a member. Tried to sell the shit and couldn't sell a single effing unit, not even to family and friends. This is when I decided I was not a good salesman and would never do sales EVER.

Good decision, I love my job and career as a Network Administrator.

It seems to me that the best sales technique would be for a family to come home from an outing and discover the salesman waiting for them in their dining room.

Yes, that outcome would be the best because there would be one less annoying door-to-door salesman in this world

I applied for one of those jobs before without knowing it. It's sneaky how they get their employees, too.

I got a phone call... saying "Hi, we're from [company], and we've been referred to you as a great customer service guy."

Really, from who? "I don't have that information, sir. But we're looking for some people with good customer relations and sales experience. Would you be interested?"

Is it flexible? I'm a college student and I could use another job on the side. "Very flexible."

What's the job? "Meeting with clients and creating sales opportunities."

What am I selling? "I'm sorry?"

What product or service does the company sell. "Oh, you'll get a full explanation when you get here."

So I go. Suit and tie, as instructed. It's upstairs in this decent looking office building near midtown KC. As soon as I get there, there's this loud, happy music playing, and a lot of people talking and socializing. I'm college-aged, and I'm not noticeably younger or older than anybody in the room. Brunette comes over and grabs my arm and instigates conversation.

What is this? "Oh, we just like everybody to be comfortable before we get into it."

I know, but what are we doing? "We have a very organized way of letting you in, so I'll just let the presentation do it."

I tell her about myself, she laughs the whole time, sympathizing with my concerns over college and the job market. Assures me that she was in the same position (although I believe I'm older than her) and tells me that this job was the way out. I look around and notice they're having one-on-ones across the room just like the one I'm going through.

So we finally have a seat, and they launch into it. They speak at breakneck paces and they're talking about exponentials and a bunch of stuff that is barely understandable. They talk about how difficult the job market can be, and hell, how difficult jobs can be in general, and how glorious financial independence is, which is why they want to make this job easy. They go on to say that we're selling to a huge demographic of middle- and latter-aged folks, a booming economical treasure chest, to be sure.

They have a video they played, too, and included talking heads saying nothing about the product but instead things like "hooray for financial independence" and people dancing in palaces and shit. Only about 25 minutes into the presentation did anybody say anything about the product we were selling -- some fountain-of-youth creams and drinks that you usually see in late night infomercials.

The speaker says something about how people who care about how they look can try medication and "all its crazy side affects," or they can try our product and watch the results.

They then congratulate you, wish you the best, and hand you a pad and paper to essentially sign yourself over to the job. There were about five others with me, again, all the same age, and they started signing. I couldn't help but look at the display product and think everything was a crock of shit.

I put down the pad, I get up. Dead serious, two people politely step in my way.

"What's up?" This doesn't feel like my scene, I don't think I want to do this.

"Why not?" I just really, really don't. I'm gonna take off.

"Well--" says one guy, before the other one interrupts him and allows me to take off without any more hassle before, I guess, I threaten to make a scene and scare off the other applicants.

There are quite a few jobs out there like that that feed off of the bottom tier of college-aged folks. I might recommend the job to a high school graduate who didn't want to do college but was good with sales, but even then I think I'd just be like "go get a job at Borders, man."

The print industry is booming!

I had a ****in gypsy show up at my door once trying to get me to subscribe to some magazines. she wouldn't go away. I told her if she didn't get off my front porch I would go in, get my gun, shoot her in the face, and then tell the cops she tried to break in. she told me to **** off and left.

I probably would have shut the door and gone back to whatever I was doing.

But threatening to shoot someone in the face sounds efficient.

It certainly sends a strong message

That's not sneaky at all. I mean, you even noticed the glaring red flag of "Hey, we've heard you're great! What? You want to know how a company you've never heard of heard about you working some crap minimum wage job? Uh, we can't tell you! That's doubly great that you just told us that you're a desperate college student though!"

So how much money have you sent the Nigerian prince?

Like half of Manhattan got sucked into Quixtar when I was there. I had probably 50% of the people I knew try to sell me into that shit and even more baffling is how they'd get psychotically pissed when I said no.

That and the ****ing losers that go around selling overpriced magazine subscriptions so that they could win a trip to Cancun or somewhere.

LMAO

You're a panzy.

LMAO

well, it seemed to work. I suppose " i'm gonna shoot you in the face, and then when I'm done skull ****ing your lifeless corpse, I'm gonna call the police and tell them you tried to break in" would have been more efficient

I read through this whole thread wondering why its a prayer request.

If you had fallen victim to the same scheme 6 times, you would be asking for prayers as well. :D

He's praying for a better brain

This reminds me, would any of you guys like to buy a set of Cutco knives?

God help me

I had another salesman come to the door the other day asking if anyone talked to me about construction for this new internet service. I lied & said yeah, my wife did.

He immediately switched gears & started in on switching over to them. I pointed @ the NO SOLICITING sign above the doorbell he just rang.

He said thanks & turned around & left.

Most times they just say they didn't see the sign. I don't usually answer the door anyways, I'd be pretty easy prey, prolly easier than elderly. :(

Does anyone else get cold calls for stocks? I occasionally get those at work, and I figure it's because I'm listed as the company owner.

Who on earth is going to buy stocks over the phone? I don't get it. I guess they're trying to get you to open an account with whoever they are, and it's always someone I've never heard of. So I'm going to send you $10,000 just because you found my phone number? Really?

It seems to me like anyone who buys stock is already going to have a brokerage account, and getting a call is just weird.

The last call I got, the guy tells me he's got a hot stock, and says, "What kind of business are you in?" I said, "Market research. Have you ever done any research on why cold calls aren't a good business development tool?" He said they were great and he gets all sorts of business from them, so I told him I'd let him get back to work.

Now, I was kind of shooting from the hip, and I really don't know. Does anyone here do cold call sales, and does it actually work?

I have mentioned this very thing on here before Kevin. Their favorite line, "remember me, we talked a couple months ago and you told me to call you back, and I told you about ****. Have you been following it? I have a better opportunity right now!"

I haven't let them past the first 4 words in years. ***click***

It works at the bar.

Door-to-door:

I think I posted about this before, but my wife works from home all day long. As such, she has had to frequently deal with these bastards. Her usual ploy is just to not come to the door. Unfortunately, she's had some cagey ones that lurk around until she answers the door for the FedEx man (we get frequent packages delivered) then spring themselves on her. She had real issues getting rid of these guys in the past, even allowing them to get inside the house then being unable to get them back out of the house without buying shit from them.

I finally got a chance to show her how it was done with a home security asshole. I was around back working and heard the dog go crazy only to come around front and see my wife talking to this young ADT rep (or some home security door to door douchebag). He's trying to tell her that they want to put in a "free" security system for us, and he's steadily working his way to the door, trying to get inside the house to "show her how quick and easy it is for them to install."

I walk up. "Hey man. What's up?"
"Oh! I was just talking with your wife about our great security offer and how we're trying to make inroads into your neighborhood and how we're willing to do this for free..."
"Free? How much a month."
"No sir. It's free. We're trying to promote our brand in your neighborhood, and a sign in the front yard will do that, so we can offer this for..."
"How much a month, dude."
"No sir... our installation is totally free."
"So you're telling me that there is no monthly fee?"
"Well..."
"That's what I thought. Not interested. Bye."
"But sir..."
"Leave. Now."

I think between that time and the time I went nuts calling the police from the creepy cleaner salesman who complimented my wife on our back yard and addition (which isn't visible from the street), she's finally figured out it's best just to shut the door in their face.

I've got a better idea. Meet me at the Ramada Inn conference room in Overland Park in two hours and I'll tell you about it.

imagine your wife is a single parent. now imagine how many single parents there are in america. ya. ching.

There's no requirement to be polite or even civil to a pushy salesman at the door. Especially somebody that elbows their way in to my home without being invited, I have no patience for that.

Step 1. Tell them to get off your property.
Step 2. Call the cops and report them for trespassing.

Someone inviting themselves in when your wife is home alone, I wouldn't have any sense of humor about that shit. I consider that a safety issue that I would take very seriously.

If you are sure the guy is straight, give the guy a long hug, for extra points have a roll of quarters in your pocket.

Yup. That was the talk we had after the cleaner salesman who was creepy as hell (see comments about the back yard), but still managed to get into our house. I went absolutely ballistic about it (I often exhibit the wrong emotion when I'm scared for my wife) and was pretty freaking angry with her. Also called the cops and went ballistic with them warning them about these creepy bastards when they said they couldn't do anything about it without a complaint about them while they were going door to door. I eventually calmed down enough to explain to my wife that it scares the shit out of me that these creepy ****ers are able to get into our house with her here alone in the middle of the day.

I think that impressed upon her that it wasn't acceptable. Then when the opportunity presented itself with the home security salesman, I was able to show her how to get rid of them.

ACTUAL TEXT

"Friend": Are u busy?
Idiot (me): Hey what's up
F: What's your schedule like tonight?
I: Semi open, what's up?
F: I want you to meet up with one of my mentors whose helping me build my film production co
I: what time?
F: Sportsmen's Lodge 12825 Ventura blvd studio city at 7pm
I: I'll let you know
F: let me know now within the next 20 minutes. I want to know if you're in.
Idiot (me): ok dude, see u at 7

He's still calling me. Looks like I don't have the luxury of passive aggressiveness. I gotta tell this guy off.

Prayer request

ROFL