Why I'll never try another Multi-Level Marketing company.

The year is 2011, it's mid winter.  A friend of mine calls me and asks my opinion on a part time business he's thinking about buying into.  My interest is piqued, so I ask him a little more about it.  He says he's still learning about it, but explains to me what it entails.  It sounds interesting, so I ask him a few more questions.  Telephone service, to start with, then some other services that everyone uses everyday.  I'm getting a little more interested and ask if it's expensive.  He tells me it's $500 to join.  He has yet to invite me to one of 'those' meetings, he hasn't asked me to join, nor if I even would use the services.  He simply asked my opinion.  Well, before I knew it, I went to his house to see a presentation by one of the 'top performers' in the company, and before the night was over, I was sold!  I was going to be rich!  This was the easiest thing in the world!  All I would have to do is tell some people about the company, get a few of them to sign up, and all my money troubles would soon be a distant memory!  The crazy thing is that I completely forgot the old adage "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is."  How could I go wrong? 

First thing's first.  I had to convince my wife... she wasn't convinced, but let me go ahead and buy into it, anyway.  I can't believe how excited I was when I first joined!  $500 was all I needed to become ridiculously wealthy.  Well, I used $500 from our savings account to sign up... and then I was told to go ahead and get the Back Office, a handy website that would allow me to track all my future success, track my down line, track all my customers, learn more about the company and how to present it, blah, blah, blah, for a mere $30 per month.  Oh, I would also need to buy a $200 video phone- of course, that could wait, if necessary- and I would also need to have the digital phone service for another $30 per month.  Oh, and I would also need to give up my cable television and go with satellite TV, breaking up my bundle and costing me another few dollars per month.  All told, I think I was already into this company for almost $1000 (I didn't do it all right away, but most of it within the first couple of weeks).

I was still excited.  These professionals were going to show me how to talk to people, how to make calls to friends and acquaintances, how to handle rejection, etc.  The very next day, there was a top performer from Maryland coming down to do a special presentation- a business meeting.  Before the meeting started, the guy that signed me up sat down with  me to do the 'start-up.'  He explained a lot of things to me, but the one thing that stood out at the time was when he told me how people would promise to come to your meeting and then not show up.  They'd always have an excuse: I had to work late, the car wouldn't start, my liver fell out (he actually said that, in a joking manner).  Then he added "You know ACN is the number one reason for livers falling out."  We got a chuckle out of that.  I was still in a state of euphoric happiness... I knew that I was going to be the exception.  I was going to stick with it until it Worked! 

I was excited when the Team Coordinator (that's the level Brian has achieved, about 4 levels above where I was) told me that I would do a PBR (Private Business Reception), on Tuesday, 5 days from now.  Cool.  I started calling people the next day and my first PBR had 2 people show up, neither of whom joined.  Nor did either of them sign up for my services.  Oh, Well.  I started working on my next PBR, scheduled for a few days later.  One person showed up for that one.  And the next one as well.  No one showed up for the next one.  Now I was starting to feel a little frustration. What was really very little help was my mentors asking me questions like, "What are you saying to them?" or "Don't try to explain it to them." or "Let's do some role playing and I'll show you how to get them to your house."  BS.  None of those things worked.  What did work, for a minute, was the presentation I did via three way calling.  Actually, I initiated the call, then brought in the person doing to presentation.  It worked!  I got my first representative!  I was excited again.  I also had a line on a few more people that were likely going to sign up.  Well, once I got my new rep all signed up, we scheduled their first PBR, but they cancelled it at the last minute.  They rescheduled it.  And cancelled that one, too.  I asked them if they needed any help and they said no, but they were going to be doing a PBR at their church- more excitement... and subsequently, more disappointment.  They didn't seem to be moving at all.  They began to avoid my calls and I couldn't get any informationfrom them.  I heard form them less and less. They eventually stopped returning my texts and I couldn't get a hold of them at all.  Too bad.

I never heard from them again.  My own enthusiasm was waning now.  I was encouraged to go to the weekly 'training' where I would supposedly learn to do what I was already supposed to know how to do.  For this privilege, I paid $5 per week. Backing up a little to when I first joined, I was encouraged to sign up for the international event in Charlotte, NC.  BETTER SIGN UP NOW, IT WILL BE SOLD OUT!!!! I really couldn't afford it, but I decided that I'd go.  I roomed with someone else and we split the costs three ways.  My trip cost me $150 for the convention, and $165 for the gas and room.  I also ate pretty well while I was there and spent about $150 on food and drink.  The day we got back, I was hounded about the next convention that was scheduled for San Jose, CA... "Have you signed up for San Jose, yet?"  Don't wait too long, IT WILL SELL OUT!!  (I heard that same exclamation for each of the conventions.)

It was shortly after the first convention I went to (I should say ONLY convention I went to) that I started realizing what was happening to me.  I took a step back and realized that the reason they keep you so busy, so entrenched in 'the business' is so you won't start thinking for yourself too much.  You see, once you start thinking for yourself, you see it.  The Big Picture.  Everything happens so fast, everything is structured to keep your brain focused on the prize, and not on the effort.  It was fun, at first, meeting people who'd made a few $Million in this business.  It was cool seeing the founders who had the dream and put it into action.  It was even cool to think about how I was going to make it work for my wife and me.  But the more I thought about how they kept me 'engaged' the more I realized they didn't want me thinking too much.  Thinking is dangerous.  It was about this time I started avoiding the phone calls from my up line.  I simply didn't want to be hounded about having a PBR.  I simply got tired of having to answer the same questions to the same people. "Is there anything I can do for you?", "When are we going to have another PBR?", "Is there anyone I can talk to for you?"  It simply got tiresome.

I still wasn't ready to quit.  The company made the services better and the money better every month.  Bigger bonuses for signing up new reps, new and additional services.  "Maybe this month" I kept on thinking.  I lost a lot of sleep doing this 'job.'  Some nights, when I should have been sleeping, I would awaken to thoughts of "Who can I call?",  "What if I can't get anyone to sign up?", etc.  I was losing sleep and it got old.  It ceased to be fun, but I still wasn't ready to quit.  I made it clear to my mentors that I would not break my cell phone contract.  period.  When the contract is up, I'll look into getting my cell phones through the company, not a moment before.
August of 2011, I called the company and set up my new cell phone plan.  My wife and I decided on the new Verizon phone, and we were able to get it through this company.  It was a new cell phone, so we paid full price for it.  We also bought the warranty with it, as we were told, it would be "the same warranty that you had with Verizon."  All told, it cost me just shy of $600 for these phones.  Of course, my mentor was telling me I should also get the air card and anything else I could get for the business, as it all would help me make money (as if spending $500 to make $25 is 'making money').  Well, I didn't go that far.  We got our new phones and all was well.  We were using Verizon phones (I've always had Verizon, I like them, I realize others don't or have their own favorite, that's not what this is about), using Verizon networks and paying our bills to Verizon- albeit through this company.  Life was good.  Until my wife's phone started acting strange.  It would cycle on and off repeatedly and she couldn't get it to stop.  We took it to the Verizon store, where the techs were very friendly and professional.  They looked the phone over and tweaked it here and there, and gave it back.  It started cycling again.  We took it to another Verizon store.  They tried something else that didn't work.  Then I called Verizon directly to see what I needed to do to get the phone fixed or replaced.  This is when we found out about our warranty.

First of all, Verizon sent us a replacement phone.  They also told us that we would have to go through our company to do any further service on it, because we didn't buy it from Verizon.  I was a little upset.  We were told, and the company touts the fact that you get service through you phone company, not through ACN.  I took that to mean that I could return my phone to Verizon and there would be no problem. After all, that's what I learned in training over the months.  Surely an upstanding, well established company like ACN wouldn't be putting out false information to their customers, right?  OK, So I'll just call the ACN customer service line and figure this out. I called the custoer service line and the representative, who was clearly reading her responses form a computer screen, informed me that I would have to put in a request for service (RFS) and I would have to do that via the website that she gave me.  No amount of my explainations seemed to help here.  I was talking to a woman that obviously did not speak English as a first language, she was clearly not going to do much to help me- a representative of this company- resolve the issue with the phone.  So I pulled up the website she directed me to and found out the following:
1) I would have to send an email to the warranty company explaining the problem with the phone.
2) I would have to wait an unspecified amount of time while they made a determination as to whether the problem was covered by the warranty.
3) If they agreed to cover the phone, I would then have to pack it up and ship it to them.  They would then fix the phone and send it back.  My wife would be without her phone for several weeks (potentially).

This was completely unacceptible to me and was the issue that finally pushed me out of ACN.  I made a decision at that point that I could not, in good conscience, ask my friends or family to join this organization.  They obviously do not take good care of their customers.  I thought I was done with the company at this point.  I called them to make double sure that they were not going to auto renew my annual membership ($150).  They assured me that I would not get charged and that was that.  So I thought.  A month goes by and as I'm checking my account, I see a charge from ACN.  Hmm, what could this be?  We have phone service for another year or so, so maybe that's it.  My wife confirms that the charge is NOT for the phone, it gets paid from a different account.  The only other thing it could be for is the Back Office.  So I called the customer service line the following day and was told that my Back Office was charged. They leave that account open,  "in case you change your mind."  I informed the representative that I had told them previously I was not renewing, which she confirmed over the phone, as they had put that into my account information and they assured me there would be no charges.  The Back Office is a separate account that you have to specifically tell them to cancel or they leave it open.  So it looks like I'm out $30 more. I was charged for an item that I couldn't use, even if I wanted to.  I tried to get into my account but the splash screen informed me that I had to "Renew Right Away."  There was no option to go to any portion of the Back Office. Customer service told me that my only option was to fax them a grievance letter.  Apparently, this hi-tech company doesn't get emails.  Go figure. 

If you've read up to this point, I would like to point out that my intention was not to disparage ACN.  Of course, the more I talk about it, the madder I get, so it may sound disparaging, and maybe it is.  But it wasn't my intention.  I have no problem with the MLM system.  It can work, but I could no longer see myself putting in the time and effort that it requires.  I grew tired of people that I was trying to call on the phone ignoring my calls.  I saw the somewhat successful people in my area putting in a lot of hours, dedicating their lives to this program and having very little time for anything else.  I could no longer see the brass ring; all I saw was people dedicating their lives and a good portion of their personal resources in the hopes of becoming one of the (very) few that make it big.  And by 'big' I mean "Quit my job and do this full time" big, not "Oh look, I got a check for $12." 

Poor customer service and not living up to the standards of what I expected are what really pushed me over the edge and made me want out.  The disappointment in not seeing any success is what got me thinking about getting out.  This type of work is not for everyone.  You seriously have to embrace rejection.  I'm not very good at that.