[roastpuff]

Hi guys... recently I was invited by a friend to a WFG presentation, and everything seemed legit to me. I really trusted this guy too, and the people I met there were solid, and well-known to my other friends (who were not at the presentation). So, I signed up to become an associate.

However, my mom called me about a day later to tell me that she had done some research on Google, and found that there was a lot of negative publicity regarding WFG. Arguably, people mostly complain on the internet, rarely praising things like this.

This has me really conflicted, because I felt that the people that I've just started working with, and the goals outlined in the Team presentation are good ones and attainable in the long run.

So, I just want to turn to you guys, and ask for your opinion as to the legitimacy and the reputation of WFG.

Thanks in advance,
Diondi

 

[user18]

It's a typical MLM. In short, don't waste your time. There's usually some sort of initiation fee (they have to make money somehow). They put more emphasis on recruitment than the actual product. It's a glorified variation of a pyramid scheme.

I had to sit through one of these "seminars" because of a friend. Told me it was something different. I actually stayed through most of it because I didn't want to embarass him, but now that I think about it, I should have punched him in the face for wasting my time with this crap.

 

[HiWire]

Ditto.

 

[Lazarus Short]

There are bad things happening in the financial world, and the fallout from the real estate meltdown has yet to settle. These people are desperate, but you should stay as liquid as possible. You have money, and they want it, and that's all you need to know.

Laz

 

[ericj]

I will start by giving you the same advice that i gave my sister when someone had her convinced she was going to sell perfume.

First, look for the scenario where you work hard and make no money. Or at least, less than you would have made putting in less effort for the same time at McDonalds.

Second, get an idea how many people are working hard, and how many of them are as wealthy as you've been told you could be.

If you look at those two factors without blinding yourself with dollar signs, you can easily determine whether this is a job or a scam.

The advice portion of this posting is now completed. I will now vent.

WFG - who likely chose their name because the acronym looks just like Wellington Financial Group - is a multi-level marketing scam.

If i had my druthers, the instigators of this and all other MLMs would be behind bars in federal PMITA prison. Anybody who ever made a dime off their 'downline', in my eyes, has committed a crime, and deserves, at the very least, a swift kick in the crotch.

I used to think these people were misguided, that they were just trying to get ahead and scrape out a living.

And then 2002 came around, the software industry went to crap, and people with 4 times the experience i had were begging for jobs paying half as much as I'd been making.

So i ended up doing technical support for a large international internet service reseller who provides internet services for a whole lot of MLM scams.

I worked swings. We'd get these subscription calls starting around 9pm in whatever time zone they were calling from.

The 'salesman' was always the one doing all the talking. Some of them had an aggressive tone, some of them were more controlled, but you could always hear the customer in the background, and you could always tell that they'd been brow-beaten into submission.

Frequently, the 'salesman' would pretend to be surprised that we only accepted credit card payments. They would always get the credit card from the customer and give us the numbers themselves.

Our telephone system was designed to attempt to route a returning caller back to the last CSR they talked to, or at least to someone on the same row - based on the caller ID. Often, these customers would call back about a half an hour later to cancel the internet service they'd just been signed up for. They were always dismayed to hear that they would be billed for the 1st month regardless, and despite having been told they wouldn't by their 'salesman'.

So there's that side of the evil.

The other side was, the last evening of every month, we'd get these subscription calls.

"uhh, yeah, I need to sign up, um, eight internet accounts".

"Will these all be using the same credit card information?"

"uhh . . . . yeah."

These 'salesmen' were required to make a quota every month or they wouldn't get paid, and they'd get kicked out with nothing.

So, they talked themselves into beleiving that signing up multiple $17.50/mo internet accounts was an acceptable way of staying in the game.

Some of them even kid themselves into believing that they could resell the internet accounts.

Multi-level systems are an abusive business model. They prey on people who have hope and on people who are bad at negotiations.

Every single one of them should be burned to the ground and have salt plowed into the earth where they once stood. Every last executive should spend the rest of their natural lives behind bars.

Just my opinion.

 

[MetalManCPA]

My feelings on any of these types of "professions" is that a very small percentage of those who are active do make a decent living. it takes a huge amount of sacrifice and commitment, and the risks are much higher than receiving a paycheck (of course, any job is at risk). These pyramid schemes make it very difficult to climb high enough to actually reap financial benefits, at least from my research on the subject.

The only reason I would even consider a path like WTG is if I had banked a couple of years of salary, and I no other alternatives.