They spent two days over the weekend attending a seminar in Bangkok about a job which they were told involved easy work on the computer at home.
They paid a training fee of B150 each. Jay borrowed B500 from me to cover the fees and any other expenses. Mum gave them B200 a day to cover transport and food on top of that.
They spent the day there on Sunday, and another few hours at an ‘evening session’ the next night.
Both took the day off work so they could attend the second day of the two-day seminar.
When the seminar ended, they expected they would be able to start work for the company straight away.
Wrong.
Ball and Jay came home bearing bad news: organisers told them they would have to invest more than B30,000 buying the company’s products before they could join.
Why did they not say this at the outset, before training began?
Ball and Jay had fallen for a pyramid scheme, they now realise. Team leaders bring hundreds of potential recruits together for a seminar in which successful members of the 'multi-level marketing network' (direct sales to everyone else) get up and talk about how their lives have changed - for the better, of course.
They talk about the smart cars they have bought, the holidays they have taken overseas, and the huge incomes which members of the network stand to earn once they sign up. Pictures of expensive cars, exotic holiday locales, and fat cheques adorn the walls.
Relatively little time is spent extolling the virtues of the products, which can comprise unusual health cures or miracle remedies for ageing, diabetes and so on.
Who cares about what you sell? It's all about growing your network so people under you do all the work.
Mum was disgusted when she heard the news.
‘I fell for one of those schemes once. I lost B40,000 buying their products which I could not sell. Your success depends not just on how well you sell, but the quality of the people you recruit to work under you,' she said.
'At the sales presentations, men in sharp suits get up and tell you how rich they are.’
Needless to say, Mum is not interested in paying out on their behalf to buy the company's products.
Ball is still a believer, but when he heard how much they wanted him to pay, he gave up. They learnt the bad news shortly after midnight. Neither had eaten for hours, as the organisers permitted no breaks.
A long journey home awaited Ball and Jay, who now wonder why they bothered.
'Whether I was cheated or not is not the point...I can't find B30,000, so I have to forget about that idea,' he said.
Perhaps most iniquitous is that these slick sales people urge potential recruits not to tell their families that they are involved in the scheme.
'Multi-level marketing has a bad name...they won't understand,' they pur, while at the same time urging potential recruits not to turn to pawnshops or illegal lenders to pay for their initial B30,000 outlay.
What I don’t understand is how Ball and Jay could spend so long there before they realised what these desperate people were peddling.
I spent a day with a pyramid sales company in Bangkok once. The company sold ginseng juice.
Those people were just as ruthless. That story is here.
PS: I could name the other direct sales company here, but I can do without the grief.
The similarities between the sales presentation which Ball and Jay attended, and the one I visited several years ago in the story above, are uncanny. It's almost as if they are run by the same crowd.
8 comments:
ReplyDeleteAnonymous23 November 2010 at 14:24
It is sad that Ball, with little interest in real work , has been cheated by a pyramid scam. It will be difficult for him to invest again the time and money needed to better himself in the future. He really needs a break and a little of luck.
Fran
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Bkkdreamer23 November 2010 at 18:16
I agree he needs luck. The company which employs him as a messenger at a city bank is about to fold. He has applied to work at a new place, so we will see what happens.
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lance23 November 2010 at 18:38
Dearest bkk...they are doing the same thing in indonesia....exactly...the products are calcium supplements and green tea that suppose to be health cures.....bullsh#t...big con jobs....have young friends like ball and jay in indonesia that told me the same thing and was ripped off!!! a chinese group calling it chinese medicine....all bull...sorry its an old game...being played in bali...i was surprised to read this......btw glad to see you havwe quality time with maiyu lately...glad ball is doing well.......ps tighten the purse strings if it was their hard earned 500bt they might not have went to the seminar
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Bkkdreamer23 November 2010 at 19:02
Why do the products which these people peddle invariably sound so flaky and marginal? Calcium supplements, Chinese tea, gels which can cure anything from ageing to diabetes.
You are right about the purse strings. I would not have given them the money if I had known what was involved.
Jay, who contacted the company, was led to believe they were attending training sessions.
That's nonsense. It was a sales presentation seminar. Training was on offer only for those who, at the end of a two-day ear-bashing, were prepared to pay a deposit to join the scheme.
The hundreds of people attending the seminar was split up into groups on the second day.
Only one among the 10 or so people in the Ball's group was prepared to pay a B3000 deposit.
The rest looked sick when they were told that, deposit notwithstanding, ultimately they would need to buy B30,000 of the company's products to take part.
Earlier, of course, everyone had to pay a B150 'training fee' just for the privilege of listening to a sales pitch.
Attendees felt cheated, angry, and above all disappointed.
The people behind this enterprise are bastards...the very least they could have done was provide a meal or refreshments. Who wants to pay a B150 'training fee' just to hear people spout off?
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Brad24 November 2010 at 04:59
ReplyDeleteThere's no such thing as a free lunch, as they say. They also say, "If it's too good to be true, it probably isn't true." Or something like that.
Upon quizzing Ball and Jay about the upcoming meeting, what information did they give you? I'm guessing it might have been pretty short on detail. It's so often the Thai way to jump at something, thinking it's the answer to all life's problems, and then find out that there's so much more involved.
From my personal experience in multilevel sales, it doesn't matter at all when you join the company. [At least that was the concept of the company I was with; different companies might operate differently, I know.] The bottom line is that those who work--hard work--are the ones who are the most successful. Having credentials and knowing other influential people who also have status and credentials in the community is also what it takes.
Unfortunately, most of my friends and maybe your friends, too, especially Ball and Jay have very little-to-no influence or credibility for selling or recruiting new, influential members, to say nothing of their lacking a Type A personality, having no car, no bank account, and no real business sense. Equipped with those assets and more, it can be done, but even then, it's not easy.
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Bkkdreamer24 November 2010 at 05:29
You said it all in the last paragraph.
They were told they could do all the work from home, on the internet. I imagine this was to consist mainly of enticing unsuspecting types along to sales seminars.
Hardly any of their time would have been spent talking about the product. It's all about recruiting new team members, and the more influential, the better.
I would have been their first sales target, as I earn more money than the average Thai. But I know no one, and can't be bothered with pyramid sales people, so they'd be wasting their time with me.
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Anonymous31 December 2010 at 16:20
BKK, Part 2 of your own experience will not load. Says Blog not found... Take Care
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Bkkdreamer31 December 2010 at 16:47
Thank you for letting me know. Problem now fixed.
One of the unfortunate results of my moving the old Bangkok of the Mind blog to this new address is that all the old internal links were lost, as they now point to blog posts which, at the old address, no longer exist.
I have to update them one by one, and it's a time-consuming task.
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