Ok this is a 2 day story that started yesterday while eating some food outside this food place on campus.

(Trust me read this entire post its completely worth your time hahah, and read the links so you're more aware)

This kid rolls up and we started talking about just whatever. I figured he wanted to give me a flyer or something college kids do that shit all the time, or talk to me about some cool band. Well we just ended up talkin about whatever, military, and all this.

Well eventually he kept mentioning this "business" that he started. So i finally ask h im about it. And hes like yeah sure i'll tell you about my business. Its basically like marketing for big companies. And at this point i'm like this isn't some pyramid scheme right? (Chuckling mostly joking) And he was like.. uh... no. Kinda laughed back. But little did i fucking know.. haha

So he starts telling me about all this bullshit about how he gets paid to shop on the internet at all the retail websites. Basically kinda getting rebates at every store that features this little deal they have with these businesses.

I'll go more into this "business" in a minute. But eventually he says hes gotta go cause hes gotta check when hes working at the place i got food at and he asked if i wanted a brochure (i said sure why not, i'm interested to see how this all works out) Oh i didn't tell you of course you guys know he started telling me about his business and i started completely ripping apart the entire thing logically and was making him look really fucking stupid. Anyways hes like usually i give out brochures but i don't have any on me. Hes like if you give me your number i can give you a call and set up a time you can come by my house for like 10 minutes and i can better explain the whole thing and give you a brochure. (mistake on my part here) Although the lack of better judgement.. i finally caved and was like sure (i wanted to know more about what kind of crazy fucking scheme this kid was into) so he gave me his number too and we departed.

Well i saw him tonight about it haha. He and a friend (friend being the guy who brought him into the scheme) talked to me about it. The other guy whips out a brochure starts explaining how people make money in america (different ways to do it) as if i'm fucking stupid. I had to keep going yes i know, i'm pretty well aware of how this shit works haha. Like economy, marketing, word of mouth and all these types of things. So anyways this is more or less what he told me.

Basicall you buy shit from these companies and get rebates. But obviously you won't make any money buying shit so what happens is you tell OTHER people to start buying at these websites and you tell them hey i can get you these discounts too or hell you can start your own business and start to make money yourself. So after awhile of telling customers to shop at these places online they use your number or whatever so they track how many people you've "told" to shop or do this thing. Eventually you start to receive money from i dunno these companies and or this "mother business above you" for word of mouth advertising. They call this business ownership that they have a franchise like thing. I can see how they say that.

One of the catches is these guys shop for EVERYTHING online. Including groceries and healthy and beauty products. Such as tooth paste, hair gel and all that and get a larger rebate and bonus for telling OTHERS to do the same thing. (buy from this main store, and possibly become a business owner). And this company gives you a little bit of money for "advertising." And after x amount of months then x amount of years you begin to make more money and become profitable because you've told x many people about this money making business idea.

After this whole speal (trust me i kept my mouth shut about blasting them, i was having a hard fuckign time not laughing at them) i got a business card with some websites and what not to look this up on the internet.

THIS is the company thats doing all this.

Quixtar. The number 1 "mult-level marketing" business.
Wikipedia Link

I've done some background research on this company and they're technically a legal and legit business but basically have a not so obvious approach to pyramid scheming.

Now that you've seen that READ this article. This is nearly exactly what these kids were telling me.

BTW they work for ltd TEAM. Thats the marketing thing.

In this article they mention these people work for "TEAM" and i imagine its the very one and the same.

Article bashing Quixtar and TEAM

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http://www.livejournal.com

there you go.

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are you tying to do this now, you cunt-head!!! just kidding

But...is this kid works for this compagny or he is like a spokes-men lol?

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I actually read all of that, and I think I may be interested in joining.

Hey, at least they weren't trying to get you to sell Cutco knives.

"Buy this set of knives off of us for 500 bucks and sell it to your senile grandmother. Then she'll tell her friends and they'll tell their friends..."

Everyone has a line of bullshit. Capitalism is fucking retarded.

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Its a sick twisted form of capitalism which purely is derived off people "desperate" for making money and give them dreams of making mass amount of cash which is bullshit.

CannibalXampire you're fucking useless.

These people are more or less pawns from this company who basically make them come and bring people into their house and these siminars they go to every week to birng more and more people into this scam of lies and deception.

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I did that shit. Then I found out my neighbors knives worked just as well as the Cutco ones. All they do is get you to sell to your parents and then most people dont get any more appointments after that. Who would want to subject their friends to a salesman? FUCK THAT!

I heard there was a class action lawsuit against Cutco. I wonder how it's going.

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It probably went through. I vaguely remembering hearing about this knife thing.

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Both opinions are correct.

I don't know if you remember this but my friend's friend's friend(lol) was going to get involved with a seemingly pyramid scam after watching an infomercial. I actually saw the infomercial a few days later after I heard about it and it explained NOTHING about what you were to do...just that you "could" make a lot of money. Her proposal was to give this company a sum of money(I forget what it is...$600 maybe?)...and then the only way she could make money is buy recruiting other people into this bullshit.

Christ, they are almost as bad as the Mormons.

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That is most definately the standard definition of a pyramid scheme. Which is highly illegal in america. (for obvious reasons) This other one i guess is kind of in a loop hole state. its just ridiculous.

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Yeah, it is really bad. Especially exploiting the poorer folk. I don't know if this girl ended up going through with this though.

haha, my dad bought these cheap ass knives from this younger guy about two years ago. One of those cunts that go to businesses/houses and shit to try to sell them garbage products. I'm assuming it's similar to this "Cutco" company you guys were talking about.

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Bahah!!!You just did what they wanted!!!!

I talked to someone in the Orient that got into one of those. I can't remember the name of the company though. He kept telling me how "wonderful" it was. When I told him I wasn't interested at all he stopped talking about it. We'd been talking a long time before that so it wasn't like I was replying to someone completely off the wall. I don't do that. He said it wasn't a pyramid scheme, but it sure sounded like it to me.

Something you should have gotten a red flag on was the phone number/address thing. tsk, tsk, If you choose to meet someone don't do it at your home. Do it in a public place preferrably with a friend. He had nothing but word of mouth to give information about it so that would be suspicious to me.
Even the lady and her daughter that used to sell homemade candles door-to-door I wouldn't let in my house. If my ole man's tv came up missing he'd string me by my tootsies! lol

Thanks for posting that.

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I read the original post but I have to say, I was a lot more concerned by the fact that you met a man who talked to you for a bit then invited you to his house.

This would strike me as the behaviour of a mentalist and I would have politely declined and left.

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send me a grand...i swear i'll make you rich!

My bad. I thought he'd said that the guy went to his house. Still not a good thing.

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I heard about this stuff. They often refer to it as network marketing. Basically, a pyramid scam in a different form. Really, you can prob benefit greatly if you have the silver tounge and can persuade people to take action on it. Get in early and get rich quick!

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I thought this is what America was all about anyways. I can see how these kids are wrong tho, just playing off peoples ignorance for them to make a quick buck.

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I only found this post interesting because you used the word "like" to explain all the dialogue.

A guy did his final speech on this company in my last year's COMM 1010 class. Ha, he went through the entire pyramid sceme too....even gave diagrams.

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i would have been more interested if this was about nigerian royalty who needed a place to store their money :P

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To you go to college? haha this guy is like 20 21.... And THATS how college goes haha.

Trust me i'm a hell of alot smarter than your average joe blow.

Trust me even though he may have thought i was "interested" i most certainly was not, and was more evilishly curious about it than anything. I mostly wanted to debate the whole thing haha.

See thats the thing lb i didn't tell him to come to my house. hes like we can meet at your house.. my house out by the dining hall.. I was like we'll go to your house. See i chose that on purpose. So he doesn't know my house, and i know his. I know his phone number. Trust me i'm fine haha.

Remember guys investigating is like 99% of my job int he marine corps.....
Granted "spying" on american citizens is illegal for the government... haha so i'm definately not doing that...

And powersof fuck you!!!! So is i use the word like when i get excited...

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So like what would you have done if you went over there and those two guys raped you because they were homosexuals. Haha, i could imagine the name of the thread you would have made. "definately fucked by Pyramid butt pirates"

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Trust me i thought about it.

Theres 2 answers for that. First. I'd love to fucking see them try. I really would.

and 2nd. Theres nothing you can prevent would could happen. That could happen any time i go to anybodys house, so why be so paranoid to prevent possible good things in life?

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Pyramid schemes are only profitable if you enter them at the very earliest stages of it's inception, and I mean very early as the number of participents needed in order to make a profit grows according to a power law. In other words, if you enter at the nth level of the pyramid and you need to "dupe", for example, 5 other people into entering the scheme, then the required number of new entrants into the scheme before you see a profit is 5 to the power n+1. In this example, if you enter at the 8th level of the pyramid you need just shy of 2 million people to join the scheme before you see a profit (by the way that's on top of the 488,280 unfortunates already in the scheme).

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Yeah i read a website that was explaining that whole process. It basically was saying like the top 3 maybe 4 levels might be profitable. Then showed the bizzilions of other little levels and how many people it would take.

Next time i see this guy or talk to him, i'm gonna shoot him straight. I'm gonna be like man you seem like a pretty cool guy, You are aware that you are in a highly contraversial pyramid scheme thats been highly documented for years and is only legal because its in a loop hole right? haha. See what he says.

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Yea i would call him out on it too. I hate gray area business, the law cant decide if its correct business practice or not. Try to find out if his somewhere near the top i highly doubt it though.

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Doesn't anybody find it the least bit suspicious that he starts a thread in which he demands your attention, then proceeds to talk to you about Amway? This is just a new marketing strategy! Next thing you know you'll be spending all your money buying crap to make tmfreak a little bit richer! It's just like McDonald's organizing the protest against themselves over their decision to recall the McRib or Santorum's self-criticism pamphlets from a far left perspective! The same principle at work! He gains your trust by clearly differentiating himself from the pyramid schemers and then, probably in another thread, passes on some info about where to shop, and next you know you're fucked in debt! Don't listen! Exclamation point!

No!! Don't listen to him! You shouldn't join up with Quixtar!!

By no means am i saying Quixtar has an amazing line of bath and beauty supplies cheap because they cut out the middle man. Theres almost no way that a company could have non-name brand products that are as good if not better but cheaper!

Quixtar!Quixtar!Quixtar!Quixtar!Quixtar!Quixtar!Quixtar!Quixtar!Quixtar!
Quixtar!Quixtar!Quixtar!Quixtar!TEAMQuixtar!Quixtar!Quixtar!Quixtar!
Quixtar!Quixtar!Quixtar!TEAMTEAMTEAMTEAMQuixtar!Quixtar!Quixtar!
Quixtar!Quixtar!TEAMTEAMTEAMTEAMTEAMTEAMTEAMQuixtar!Quixtar!
Quixtar!TEAMTEAMTEAMTEAMTEAMTEAMTEAMTEAMTEAMTEAMQuixtar!
Quixtar!Quixtar!Quixtar!Quixtar!Quixtar!Quixtar!Quixtar!Quixtar!Quixtar!

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I'm pretty sure pyramid schemes are illegal here in the UK, although I don't profess to in any way being a legal eagle (or pigeon for that matter).

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They're probably illegal there. They're certainly illegal here. But it's not hard to find loopholes around vaguely defined business practice laws.