Yeah, that was definitely a misrepresentation, and I’d be annoyed in that case, too.
I knew when I bought it that if it cracked or broke under normal use (and within a certain time frame - 2 or 3 years, I think?), I could get another one. I’ve always been pleased with the Pampered Chef products.
I love to get invited. I love party lite and tupperware and I am actually a consultant for Creative Memories (scrapbooking stuff.) If only the ladies around here were the type for naughty nightie or sex toy parties. I may have to host my own 
They are especially fun to have as bachelorette parties!
I like that you can play with the products far more than you ever could in the store. Want to try those gadgets? Grab one and go for it! Want to sniff the candles out of the wrapping? Knock yourself out. Want to write with the pens or see how the cutters work? Grab a piece of paper. If I was in the store and did this they would kick me out for sure.
I also don’t like a hard sell. I never do the hard sell. At my shows I let people play with the stuff and we spend most of the time talking about kids and husbands and food. People can play with the products and show off what they’ve done in their books or peek through mine for ideas. If they want stuff that’s fantastic but I’m not going to berate them into buying stuff. The one thing I hope people take away from my presentation is photo safety.
I feel the same way. Hate those things, hate the pressure to buy, really REALLY hate being invited under false pretenses. Personally, I wouldn’t invite your co-workers. It can’t cause you problems if you don’t do it.
You know SDMB men get invited to Tupperware parties too and we rarely get a forum to share our feelings. You’ll be hearing from my attorney. 
Mind you the only one I’ve gone to was hosted by blues singer/former porn star Candye Kane so I suspect that having the hostess whip her jubblies out to compare to the erotic cake made in her honor is not typical. YMMV I did buy some stuff but admit it may not have been entirely for the merits of the product.
I emphatically agree.
I have always said that if you want to get rid of a lot of friends in a hurry, you should be a party hostess.
I’ve only attended the ones of very good friends and even then, only once. There is an obligation to buy especially if you yourself were a hostess. “I bought at your party” you buy at mine" type of thing.
I find that overall, the products are waaaaaay overpriced, plus you get charged sales tax and shipping in some cases (if I recall). Why on earth would I want to do that when I have the internet?
That’s my attitude. I don’t mind being invited, and I’ll go if I think there might be something I’m interested in buying, but I certainly don’t feel obligated once I’m there if I turned out to be wrong.
Crap, we went to a Pampered Chef party a couple of months ago and haven’t seen our stuff. There weren’t even naked boobs at this one. :smack:
That sounds like quit the classy affair – more like a gallery opening than a “selling party”. And it seemed to follow the same rules actually. Schmooze, meet the artist if your are so inclined, appreciate the uniqueness of the artwork. If you are a collector or there is a piece you particulalry enjoy, you can discuss an appropriate selling price with the curator later.
I wouldn’t put it at in the same category as the standard tupperware party.
I’ve heard of Toys in Babeland before - it’s supposed to be a great shop.
I was pretty pleased with what we found, though kind of disappointed in the porn. I went to buy my husband some porn for Valentine’s Day, and it was all either vampy, cheesy, or just so hardcore it looked painful.
I imagine that a sex toy party would be more fun because you’d have a group of people to laugh at stuff with. Though my friend and I did have a chuckle or two over the boobie-shaped tub stoppers and flashlights. 
A gazillion years ago when I had my first apartment and was still new and looking to make friends in the area, I was invited to a party by a girl I knew from my flying club. I was really excited - someone actually invite me to a party! Yay!
That’s when I first heard the gospel of AMWAY. :eek: :mad: So much for making friends.
Since then, I’ve attended a few Tupperware galas and bought a few things. My sister hosted a Home Interiors or some such - what crap they displayed!! And my aunt dragged me along to a home decor thing that was also crappy - I felt sorry for her because she truly didn’t have any money to spare - she bought the absolutely cheapest thing there, and it wasn’t all that cheap.
Last few years, tho, I’ve been spared. Parties are for socializing, not for shaking down your friends for money.
What do you have to do to host a sex toys party?? That sounds like fun!
I like some of these parties (Pampered Chef, Body Shop, Mary Kay) and avoid others (Longaberger, Scrapbooking). I don’t feel obligated to go, but if I do go, I feel obligated to buy something. That’s why I have a crappy, way-overpriced Longaberger “pie carrier.”
I did once go to a pretty cool jewelry party. Everyone who came brought a bottle of wine. We ended up drinking all of it, then calling my husband to take us out. We went to the local strip club and, while we women were in the section where there are guys stripping, my husband went over to the women-stripping part to wait for us. We all had a great time and my husband now encourages me to go to all the product parties.
Put me in the “can’t stand 'em” group. I just went to a Mary Kay party last week (I’m waiting for my $33 worth of lipstick and some other little thing that I forget). I feel cheap if I go to one of these things and don’t buy anything - that’s more my issue than the hostess’, having been financially-challenged for a long time, but I still don’t like feeling any influence on what I spend my hard-earned money on. If I never go to another “I like you, but I like your money better” party again, it will be just fine with me.
Start by checking out these folks: Passion Parties (ironically enough, it is safe for work, as long as your boss is a slow reader. I don’t know what may be linked further in, though.)
I like the ones where it’s either stuff I might want to buy, or else just us girls sitting around drinking and yapping and oh by the way looking at makeup or whatever. I loathe the ones where it’s a constant litany of “So and so will get this free gift or that extra discount if you buy/join/hostess.” Those latter type suck ginormous donkey testicles.
The last Mary Kay party I went to was hideous. Constant pressure to buy this or host that, and no time for stuffing our faces and shooting the shit, but I blame that entirely on the rep, not on the organization. The Slumber Party I hosted last spring, however, was so fun that everyone keeps saying we ought to have another one. We cooked out and had lots of booze before the rep even got there, continued shoveling food and drink throughout the presentation, teased each other and laughed until we were sick, and then went through each other’s bags after the selling portion was over. (So much for doing the sales in another room for privacy.)
I’m ambivalent about them at best.
I went to Pampered Chef parties for a while, but I don’t like their overpriced stuff or their mayonnaise-filled recipes. I sort of eased out of those. Then once I went to a Tupperware party as a favor to a friend who likes that kind of thing and, somewhat to my surprise, found myself turning into a snarky, bitter cynic who hated every minute. (I controlled myself.) I hadn’t expected to love the party, but was surprised at my own hatred of it. I’ve been to one or two candle parties, but since I don’t like smelly candles, I don’t buy much.
OTOH, I’m a Creative Memories addict. I don’t host parties myself–in fact I never go to them–but I use a lot of the products and go to my dealer’s monthly crop parties, which are a lot of fun.
If I were invited to a party now, I wouldn’t go unless I was pretty sure I would either enjoy the company a lot or wanted the product, which is unlikely. And I can usually find the company some other way.
I was the seller at a party like this just before Christmas.
I had given my sister a few pieces of my handmade jewelry as gifts, and she got a lot of compliments on them at work. She suggested that I could probably sell quite a bit to her co-workers, and so we set up a party at her house. I made up flyers for her to take to work that clearly stated there would be no games, hard sell, or any of that crap – just come and shop, try on, and I would be there to customize pieces, take special orders, and so on.
I think most of the people who showed up bought something, either for themselves or for gifts, and I got a few special orders. I made about $350, and several people asked if we could do it again next year (hell yeah!) I gave my sister several pieces of jewelry for her trouble (cleaning house, making snackies).
I also don’t have the type of friends who give these types of parties, and I’m self-employed so no co-workers. I may have been invited to one or two of these things in the past, but I always just politely declined. (I don’t get into all the baby/wedding shower hen-party junk either, but I will go if the person is appropriately close to me – i.e., invites me to events other than gift-giving opportunities, and vice versa.)
I’ve hosted and gone to them. I also feel obligated to buy, then I saw how one woman handled it.
She was attending the same party I was, and instead of buying anything asked to take the catalog home and look at it. She got away from the high pressure, and was able to drop it off later without feeling like the sole holdout amongst her friends, with a “Sorry, I don’t have the money right now.”
I think a lot of it is peer pressure. After all, you don’t want to be the only one Who Doesn’t Buy Anything.
My thing is that I really often don’t like what they offer, so I don’t go because I don’t want to be obligated. I don’t mind being invited unless it’s by someone who I know would never, ever do anything with me socially in other circumstances. This happened to me recently (invited to a pearl jewelry party or some stupid thing). The vibe was “You’re not good enough to be my friend, but I’m willing to take your money.” Eh.