Went to a group job presentation - are these medicine products a scam?

These products sound scammy to me.

I was approached on the street by this friendly, polite woman who asked if I’d be interested in coming to a job presentation because they are offering opportunities for people to earn money. My first instinct was to back off but… but to be be honest I really do need money so I confirmed I would come.

So I arrived at the presentation the next day. There were a couple dozen other people. I was immediately put off by the “Now YOU can become a MILLIONAIRE in a week!” bullshit they started spouting the moment I came in and I wanted to leave then and there. But I stayed.

They say they’re some big name brand, monitored by the WHO, they meet the GMP criteria (they boasted a lot about this) and sell healthy, natural, herbal products that seem to cure anything and make everyone rich at the same time. Mostly supplement pills and teas. They also talked about cryogenics and how their pills have “living plant cells” in them which is why they have some unbelievable regenerative abilities. And it’s all super 21st century Russian scientist technology.

Then on come a bunch of people, supposed clients who shared their success stories with the audience. One guy cured his aggressive allergies, one woman cured her extremely high blood pressure, one guy was even able to walk again after being paralyzed from a car crash.

Another woman bragged that she earns 3,500 euros a month (ten times the average salary over here) doing the job we, potential employees, can be doing. Yet she was wearing really cheap shoes, so I wasn’t that convinced. And there was more talk how dozens of people became millionaires by promoting these products to people they know, forming a network of clients and earning 56% of each sale.

And it turned out to be one of those “Annoy your friends, family and everyone you know and get them to use these products, oh and YOU have to use them too” kind of thing. That’s not really a “job” and I wasn’t going to get suckered into doing that, I’ve been exposed to those kinds of “jobs” before.

One of the things that struck me as the funniest were these magical healing bracelets (www.visionipgroup.com/product_p/braceletw.*htm remove asterisks)Everyone in the presentation was wearing these bracelets, which totally let off a cult-ish vibe. Can someone with some knowlegde of this stuff tell me whether this is legit? Do you know about this company’s products?

Total scam.

Miracle cures, huge amounts of money to be made, etc.

Okay, I know you asked for knowledge of this stuff, which I don’t exactly have, but I’m 100% certain (maybe not quite, that’s rounded to the nearest let’s say millionth of a decimal point) that it’s a multilevel marketing pyramid scam. The products almost certainly don’t work, especially magical healing bracelets. To join, you’d need to purchase a starting inventory, and some portion of your payment would go to the person who recruited you.

This is what I thought too. It sucks because they have my cell number and they’ll annoy me when I stop showing up to the next scheduled presentations and training sessions. I’ll try telling them politely that I’m not interested anymore.

Don’t bother, politeness will get you no where. Tell them to remove you from their call list - don’t take no for an answer.

You were a sucker for listening to the woman.
You were a sucker for even attending the presentation.
You continue the quest by even asking about something so obvious.

If you were just doing research, I recant all of the above.

MY local stations bombard us with herbal cures daily. They go so far as to make veiled promises of health and cures. They can get away with it because the government rarely cracks down on them and when they do it’s only to “stop and desist.” There seldom is an actual penalty. A revised company starts up the day after.

My fav was the old Grapefruit 45 infomercial. Who doesn’t want to lose weight while sleeping? Who doesn’t get up in the morning and go to the bathroom? Instant weight loss!

I *love *the description:

http://english.vipgroup.net/production/catalog/bangles/list.php?SECTION_ID=137

Dammit, forgot to vote in the conversion election this year…

Yes.

I haven’t read your OP. Just your title. Seriously, just the first six words of your title.

Yes. Scam.

I think the Quackometer is broken— it gave that page 0 Canards. I’m surprised their web server didn’t explode.

Yes I shouldn’t have fallen for it but I have a hard time paying the bills - so I wanted to at least give it a shot and see what’s it’s all about.

Once I arrived at the presentation, it took me less than a minute to realize I’m not doing this.

But I got kind of curious whether this was not only a scam, but a scam where the products didn’t even work. Cause that’s kind of amusing yet depressing at the same time. So I wanted to see if someone with more medical knowledge can call bullshit on the magical bracelet, for example. :slight_smile:

They almost never make a pure medical claim. They compare things to this and that. They interview people with supposed credentials. And of course the testimonials are so important. People are just ready to believe the new ones that come along. It’s a sleazeball business. This is why the pyramid sales structure is chosen. They seek people with a get-rich-quick mentality. Most of us are in that category at times. There’s no use trying to shoot it down. Believers want to believe. Once shot down, they re-sprout next door.

There is no other kind. Full stop. If the product worked, you’d have at least a tenuous argument that it was not entirely a scam.

They might be monitored by the WHO but then again, it doesn’t necessarily mean in a good way.

The part about living plant cells is pure nonsense. All else aside, the plant cells are going to land in your stomach and get digested same as any other plant matter you ingest. You might as well eat a Caesar salad and expect it to cure your arthritis.

I think there have been experiments done where cells have been cryogenically frozen and then revived successfully, but that’s not the same as slapping a bunch of plant matter in a vat of liquid nitrogen. When the aqueous solutions inside cells freeze it creates ice crystals that rupture the cell membranes. Even if the cells start out alive, they’re being ground up in the pill mixture, probably subjected to some kind of heating process, stored in sealed bottles, what have you.

I’d think that if their purported super 21st century scientists of whatever nationality had finally hit on a panacea that would cure ailments ranging from allergies to high blood pressure to paralysis (all of which are caused by different things and require very different treatments) they’d be winning the Nobel Prize.

I’d love to get invited to one of these things so I could start asking questions about the science.

Scam. Red flags are in red below:

Trust your instincts. Any “opportunity” that brags about how much money you’ll make & emphasizes the MLM aspect over the actual product is a scam*.

  • this claim has not been medically proven, it’s just my opinion.

The red flags indeed come fast and furious in the OP. Personal take:

A sure sign they’re actually looking for marks.

Unrealistic income expectations - check.

This is the corollary to “FDA-approved!”, meaning no one has yet ordered them to cease and desist.

“Natural” doesn’t equate to healthy. Cyanide, strychnine and ricin are natural herbal products too.

No they don’t, and as noted your stomach acid would kill any “living” plant cells anyway.

Developed by Lysenko disciples, maybe? :smiley:

“Who need steenking research? We’ve got TESTIMONIALS!!!”

Scam scam scam.

Nope. Odds against are incredibly high. Almost certainly garbage sold via multilevel marketing.

What’s the name of this company?

VISION International People Group

Thanks for your input, I’m finding their claims increasingly amusing. :slight_smile:

When I was younger I allowed myself to get suckered into buying some Herbalife products. Surprisingly, they didn’t work - but they did give me green diarrhoea. Despite my skepticism and disgust with how I got suckered, my roomie got interested because he wanted to bulk up and put on weight and wanted to see if they did protein supplements. When he contacted the salesman, he said "I don’t sell that stuff any more, " but rather than continuing “because it’s a scam,” instead he said: “I’m a faith healer now.”

I thought, “figures”.

I remember regular commercials for Grapefruit 45. “Do you know anyone who eats grapefruit who’s fat?” Yes - me, and my Dad. Stupid commercials.

Re: the MLM, I think the OP was trying to distinguish between the scam group he “interviewed” with whose products I am sure do nothing like improve health, and something like Amway, which uses MLM to sell household cleaning products that do actually clean. Still an annoying MLM, and YMMV on their products, but the products are at least functional.

Looking at the Vision group website, their compensation [del]scheme[/del] plan does look like multilevel marketing.

Their high-priced bracelets owe their magickal properties to, of all things, germanium.

*"If the curative properties of germanium are joined to magneto therapy, a mutual intensification of their biological and therapeutic effects will occur: the lymphodrainage function of the tissues will grow significantly and the elasticity and tone of the vessels will normalize – the speed of the blood flow in them will grow and the diameter of the capillaries will increase, which will cause a vessel-expanding, anti-edemic, and immuno-stimulating action

Constant wearing of the Vision QuadrActiv bracelet helps achieve:

holistic invigoration of the circulatory system, improvement of blood coagulation;
enrichment of cells with oxygen and, consequently, their rejuvenation;
intensification of the microcirculation of the vessels, enhancement of tissue elasticity; and
activation of vessel expansion, anti-edemic and immunostimulating action."*

So your blood flow speeds up at the same time that it’s coagulating faster. Uh - O.K. Who wouldn’t want blood clots entering their tissues more speedily?

In reality, constant wearing of the “Vision QuadrActiv bracelet” would only have the effect of marking the wearer as a dim-witted woo-worshipper.

Some of their other products sound equally nifty, like “BRAIN-O-FLEX”, which helps you get through tough college courses with the aid of fish milt. I have never before seen a brain supplement containing fish milt. One wonders if they have a bunch of fish jerking off in the lab to create the necessary supply. If the fish are compensated according to that multilevel [del]scheme[/del] plan, they can’t be too smart.