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If this thread breaks any rules or is in the wrong forum, please mods, do what you must.
For anyone who doesn't know, Herbalife is a company who makes all kinds of weight loss pills, suppliments, dieting and weight loss stuff, meal replacements and so on.
I really wonder, what's people's opinion on this stuff? It all seems extremely fishy to me with their shady business models and extremely overpriced products.
One of my family members apparently somehow became a Herbalife distributor and it's extremely scary how she is about it. She tries to make us think it's some magical product that will make everyones lives better, cure cancer, all kinds of things. I've tasted the Formula 1 stuff and it tastes all right but makes me feel such that I wouldn't want to drink it every day at all.
I really would be interested to note what people think about this stuff, wether the business is such that I should attempt to talk some sense into her, and so on. I've heard and read everything about pyramid schemes and I'm wondering if anyone has some personal experience.
I also wonder if the products are dangerous etc. I already know that they are insanely overpriced but I've read about them causing liver problems and such.
The protein powder is the most ridiculous thing ever in my opinion, it's about 10 times costier than some normal, perfectly fine ones.
Don't you dare to try to advertise your "independent distributor" sites or anything like that here, this thread should be about the legitimacy of the company, my concerns about a family member, the business model and the safeness of the products, and so on.
I know that this might be a thread that could be locked for one reason or another, but I really want to know more about them because of family involvement and TL.net is the first place I'd ask. If this thread isn't acceptable please close etc. but I hope it's not :/
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The business model should be criminal. The products they sell do nothing, but that is in the fine print. They sell to people who have lost all hope and are desperate for an easy cure. For things like weight loss, that's a bit dickish. For more serious ailments like cancer, it can get people killed when they are wasting their money and time on that stuff than seeking real treatment (especially since time is not on the side of a cancer patient.)
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As with most holistic products it doesn't really matter what the product consists of. Due to the placebo effect as long as you genuinely believe that it will help you, you will find a perceived increase in your health and wellbeing.
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Most vitamins are considered food products and not pharmaceutical products. No FDA regulation nor validation of any claims made by those drugs. Essentially useless products that depend on the placebo effect to convince users of its effectiveness.
As for the business model, its a way for the manufactures to dump product onto a market. You must take possession and continue to do so even if you do not sell a single product. The goal of the company is both getting consumers to use the product as well as recruiting people to push the product.
Not a legitimate business if you do not live in an area with affluent people or really ignorant and gullible people. However, if you do have a lot of dumb rich folks around you, really any business will do well. Ever consider a home blessing business model? The home blessing business model allows you to make money by "blessing" other people's homes. Ever see those dumb floor mats or door signs that say "Bless this home"? Essentially, you will be the one to fulfill that need. Charge $50 a home and you are golden. However, a few pitfalls are religious sect/denomination clashes. Sometimes the homeowner is a mormon while you are a baptist. Once I got into a fight while trying to bless a home. When a couple of guys, they were up to no good started making trouble in the neighbourhood. I got in one little fight and my mom got scared and said "You're moving with your auntie and uncle in Bel-air. I whistled for a cab and when it came near the, license plate said "fresh" and had a dice in the mirror. If anything I could say that this cab was rare but, I thought nah, forget it, yo homes to Bel-air! I pulled up to a house about seven or eight. And I yelled to the cabby "Yo, homes smell you later!" Looked at my kingdom I was finally there. To sit on my throne as the prince of Bel-air.
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Supplements are called supplements cause they can't legally claim they do anything lol.
She's probably zealous about it cause she fell for the talking points they fed her and is just reiterating it back at you.
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On May 25 2011 09:19 itzme_petey wrote:
Most vitamins are considered food products and not pharmaceutical products. No FDA regulation nor validation of any claims made by those drugs. Essentially useless products that depend on the placebo effect to convince users of its effectiveness.
As for the business model, its a way for the manufactures to dump product onto a market. You must take possession and continue to do so even if you do not sell a single product. The goal of the company is both getting consumers to use the product as well as recruiting people to push the product.
Not a legitimate business if you do not live in an area with affluent people or really ignorant and gullible people. However, if you do have a lot of dumb rich folks around you, really any business will do well. Ever consider a home blessing business model? The home blessing business model allows you to make money by "blessing" other people's homes. Ever see those dumb floor mats or door signs that say "Bless this home"? Essentially, you will be the one to fulfill that need. Charge $50 a home and you are golden. However, a few pitfalls are religious sect/denomination clashes. Sometimes the homeowner is a mormon while you are a baptist. Once I got into a fight while trying to bless a home. When a couple of guys, they were up to no good started making trouble in the neighbourhood. I got in one little fight and my mom got scared and said "You're moving with your auntie and uncle in Bel-air. I whistled for a cab and when it came near the, license plate said "fresh" and had a dice in the mirror. If anything I could say that this cab was rare but, I thought nah, forget it, yo homes to Bel-air! I pulled up to a house about seven or eight. And I yelled to the cabby "Yo, homes smell you later!" Looked at my kingdom I was finally there. To sit on my throne as the prince of Bel-air.
This... is the most epic post ever...
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On May 25 2011 09:19 itzme_petey wrote:
Most vitamins are considered food products and not pharmaceutical products. No FDA regulation nor validation of any claims made by those drugs. Essentially useless products that depend on the placebo effect to convince users of its effectiveness.
As for the business model, its a way for the manufactures to dump product onto a market. You must take possession and continue to do so even if you do not sell a single product. The goal of the company is both getting consumers to use the product as well as recruiting people to push the product.
Not a legitimate business if you do not live in an area with affluent people or really ignorant and gullible people. However, if you do have a lot of dumb rich folks around you, really any business will do well. Ever consider a home blessing business model? The home blessing business model allows you to make money by "blessing" other people's homes. Ever see those dumb floor mats or door signs that say "Bless this home"? Essentially, you will be the one to fulfill that need. Charge $50 a home and you are golden. However, a few pitfalls are religious sect/denomination clashes. Sometimes the homeowner is a mormon while you are a baptist. Once I got into a fight while trying to bless a home. When a couple of guys, they were up to no good started making trouble in the neighbourhood. I got in one little fight and my mom got scared and said "You're moving with your auntie and uncle in Bel-air. I whistled for a cab and when it came near the, license plate said "fresh" and had a dice in the mirror. If anything I could say that this cab was rare but, I thought nah, forget it, yo homes to Bel-air! I pulled up to a house about seven or eight. And I yelled to the cabby "Yo, homes smell you later!" Looked at my kingdom I was finally there. To sit on my throne as the prince of Bel-air.
Normally, I would be annoyed by something like this, but this was done just brilliantly, haha. I actually was getting into the whole "story" about you blessing a home, lol. Well played sir.
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On May 25 2011 09:19 itzme_petey wrote:
Most vitamins are considered food products and not pharmaceutical products. No FDA regulation nor validation of any claims made by those drugs. Essentially useless products that depend on the placebo effect to convince users of its effectiveness.
As for the business model, its a way for the manufactures to dump product onto a market. You must take possession and continue to do so even if you do not sell a single product. The goal of the company is both getting consumers to use the product as well as recruiting people to push the product.
Not a legitimate business if you do not live in an area with affluent people or really ignorant and gullible people. However, if you do have a lot of dumb rich folks around you, really any business will do well. Ever consider a home blessing business model? The home blessing business model allows you to make money by "blessing" other people's homes. Ever see those dumb floor mats or door signs that say "Bless this home"? Essentially, you will be the one to fulfill that need. Charge $50 a home and you are golden. However, a few pitfalls are religious sect/denomination clashes. Sometimes the homeowner is a mormon while you are a baptist. Once I got into a fight while trying to bless a home. When a couple of guys, they were up to no good started making trouble in the neighbourhood. I got in one little fight and my mom got scared and said "You're moving with your auntie and uncle in Bel-air. I whistled for a cab and when it came near the, license plate said "fresh" and had a dice in the mirror. If anything I could say that this cab was rare but, I thought nah, forget it, yo homes to Bel-air! I pulled up to a house about seven or eight. And I yelled to the cabby "Yo, homes smell you later!" Looked at my kingdom I was finally there. To sit on my throne as the prince of Bel-air.
for a second you made me feel like reading a baller post ~~ thank you
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On May 25 2011 09:15 wonderwall wrote:
As with most holistic products it doesn't really matter what the product consists of. Due to the placebo effect as long as you genuinely believe that it will help you, you will find a perceived increase in your health and wellbeing.
40% of people is not reason enough to say "You WILL find a perceived increase in health".
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Rob Cockerham at cockeyed.com has a good expose of herbalife... it's more than a few years old now, so hopefully the links are still good.
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On May 25 2011 09:19 itzme_petey wrote:
Most vitamins are considered food products and not pharmaceutical products. No FDA regulation nor validation of any claims made by those drugs. Essentially useless products that depend on the placebo effect to convince users of its effectiveness.
As for the business model, its a way for the manufactures to dump product onto a market. You must take possession and continue to do so even if you do not sell a single product. The goal of the company is both getting consumers to use the product as well as recruiting people to push the product.
Not a legitimate business if you do not live in an area with affluent people or really ignorant and gullible people. However, if you do have a lot of dumb rich folks around you, really any business will do well. Ever consider a home blessing business model? The home blessing business model allows you to make money by "blessing" other people's homes. Ever see those dumb floor mats or door signs that say "Bless this home"? Essentially, you will be the one to fulfill that need. Charge $50 a home and you are golden. However, a few pitfalls are religious sect/denomination clashes. Sometimes the homeowner is a mormon while you are a baptist. Once I got into a fight while trying to bless a home. When a couple of guys, they were up to no good started making trouble in the neighbourhood. I got in one little fight and my mom got scared and said "You're moving with your auntie and uncle in Bel-air. I whistled for a cab and when it came near the, license plate said "fresh" and had a dice in the mirror. If anything I could say that this cab was rare but, I thought nah, forget it, yo homes to Bel-air! I pulled up to a house about seven or eight. And I yelled to the cabby "Yo, homes smell you later!" Looked at my kingdom I was finally there. To sit on my throne as the prince of Bel-air.
Herbalife does not classify as a Food or as a pharmaceutical as per FDA, it qualifies as a "dietary supplement", which has its own sets of rules and regulations that are currently under a lot of scrutiny and debate by the regulatory community.
Needless to say, if herbalife were indeed classified as a pharmaceutical product, the DDMAC would be on their asses like a crack-starved crackhead. The same goes for other, more ridiculous products than Herbalife such as "ExtenZe" lol.
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On May 25 2011 09:26 Rakanishu2 wrote:Show nested quote +On May 25 2011 09:15 wonderwall wrote:
As with most holistic products it doesn't really matter what the product consists of. Due to the placebo effect as long as you genuinely believe that it will help you, you will find a perceived increase in your health and wellbeing. 40% of people is not reason enough to say "You WILL find a perceived increase in health".
Furthermore it prevents people from seeking out real solutions that will provide much stronger and more consistent assistance
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It's Pseudo Science. It's like selling magic beans. It's a scam.
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I don't know anything about Herbalife in particular (personally I'd look into their ingredients one by one, if they even list them?), but once upon a time I decided to look into Stacker 2, which is marketed as a super duper fat burner and energizing pill.
If you look at the ingredients, no that they're not including ephedra anymore, all it is is a caffeine pill. The instructions say to just take a pill after each meal. So obviously, you eat food, and caffeine superboosts your metabolism so that you stay energetic and metabolize most of that food.
I of course never bothered buying any of it, but I did start drinking tea with my meals more often.
Overall, though: don't buy into this sort of nonsense unless you've talked to a doctor about it. Especially based on the business model, it's going to be a complete scam. If it wasn't a scam, they wouldn't need to run things that way.
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in the biggest argentinan "forum" called Taringa, wich has more than 8.6 million registered users and has 250k online rigth now there was an epic post , very long,detailed, where a former salesman explained very precissely how it all was a scam , and how the scheeme worked.
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![[image loading]](http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20100101.gif)
Seriously, whether it be Herbalife, the insta-lose-fat pills, or the Acai Berry stuff, it all uses the whole herbal hype to generate sales.
Of course, you could argue that a lot of the marketing is in the name (as satirized in the comic above)
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oh god this webcomic is awesome
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![[image loading]](http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20110418.gif)
![[image loading]](http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20110423.gif)
User was warned for this post
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On May 25 2011 11:08 Carras wrote:
in the biggest argentinan "forum" called Taringa, wich has more than 8.6 million registered users and has 250k online rigth now there was an epic post , very long,detailed, where a former salesman explained very precissely how it all was a scam , and how the scheeme worked.
Its nothing to elabore to be honest, its just a pyramid scheme mix with the herbal word and some "clever" bullshitting regarding nobel prices and making a messiah of the founer.
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EPT
