"It will change your life" (page 2)

Paralipomenon

Did this company stress that buying their life insurance was a crucial part of a sound investment portfolio?

I was getting a hard sell from a friend of my wife who had her first training call with us. Her sales teacher was an elder so it was all okay, as I was told.

Well this guy was trying every slimy sales trick in the book to get me to sign up, it was actually embarrassing my wife's friend. My rule of thumb is to never sign any paperwork for a purchase or investment without sleeping on it. I told him this at the start. He kept pressing me to just sign up and I could cancel later, risk free.

Eventually I had to drop the pleasantries and thank him for his time. I could see him eying the "information packet" that he gave us and knew he was trying to think of a way to ask for it back.

He was really pushing the sales aspect of it and likened the company meetings to witness meetings. I don't think he realized I was a fader and that was just the final nail in the coffin.

This sounds like the same company. Were they loosely affiliated with the Citibank conglomerate?

Odrade

Descender: Same situation for me, different company. I could barely afford to buy food, and got talked into "investing" $1200 by a JW family that had kind of become like a surrogate family to me (at 21.) I had to beg, borrow and (almost) steal, to get that kind of cash. Not long after they kind of weren't very much "family" anymore, because of course once I received my "materials" and discovered it was a pep talk on 8 tapes and a freakin' workbook, I just couldn't pitch that to anyone.

I later received a few phone calls from the attorney general, looking for people who had been taken in, but not made a dime themselves. They were putting together prosecution, but since I still believed the JWs were the "truth," I declined participation since, obviously, I couldn't treat my "brothers" that way (ie: sue them.) Stupid me. It would have been nice to get that money back, or at least a little non-monetary payback. It took me 16 months to pay it all back I was so poor.

Meh, I learned a lesson, that's for sure.

darth frosty

Was this primerica?

neverendingjourney

Sounds a lot like Amway. Some people really close to me were recruited by them. I got to sit in on the sales pitch, but I flat out told them I wasn't interested. It sounded just like JWism. I believe they had three meetings a week and three conventions every year. The company became their life. The people making the pitch seemed completely brainwashed. Instead of selling everlasting life in a paradise earth, they were selling the hope of wealth and financial security. Their weekly meetings were all about reinforcing how valuable the company was and how they would be wealthy soon if they just persevered. The guy making the pitch carried these tapes that he would listen to over an over. The similarities to JWism were uncanny. It creeped me out, frankly.

Hortensia

I make it a point never to participate in or purchase from any MLM organization. To me they are a combination of a Ponzi scheme and a cult. Bad news, no matter how you look at it.

carla

Margaret Thayer Singer talks about these 'business' type cults in her book, 'Cults in our Midts'. All kinds of cults not just religious in nature. Some people have had to sue their employer because they made the employees attend meetings or conventions of cultish groups claiming to improve the workplace.

"It will change your life"