Complaint Review: Online Business Systems- Herbalife - Colorado Springs Colorado

I am an athlete and joined Herbalife to raise my performance and lose weight. Both have occurred drastically, even during an injury. My team is almost entirely athletes, meaning my upline. We focus on increasing our bodies' performance, nutrition and read/study all athletic and nutritional information available. My two sports teams love the products and even the teammates who don't buy the products are supportive and will gladly sample anything I have.

I found out about Herbalife after entering one of their "work-at-home" web pages and ordering their starting kit. Herbalife was never upfront until later on. That is a red flag unto itself. Shady business practices. And now that I look at it, there's a reason why they want to be initially discreet.

Herbalife will try to bilk as much money from you as possible in as little time. Part of this process will include "mentors" who will incessantly urge you to achieve the highest position on their MLM scheme, hoping that you'd pay hundreds to thousands of dollars to do this; the pressure to attend "leadership conferences" and watch many "testimonials," and to get through training in as few days as possible. In this process, you spend ample time and hundreds of dollars to use the tools and resources to start your online business with them. This gives you no time to really think.

They will then try to connect you to a card-processing company and a card authorization company for your merchant services, which you will have to pay even more money while being offered bogus online contracts, while Herbalife continues to pressure you on their end to buy more of their resources. And to top off that, you receive these hidden/unwarranted charges when viewing your

bank statement.

This is what happened to me, and now I'm going through a legal process which has been successful thus far.

In all reality, we shouldn't have to pay all of these hundreds of dollars (sometimes thousands) to start an online business. If it's so easy since it's online and Herbalife is a wild success ("business is booming!" they claim), we should only pay a small one-time fee and then see if this program really works. That's the way I see it. When I was in training mode, I asked myself this: "Why are they asking for so much money if they're such a success? If nothing is guaranteed? If online businesses are supposed to be easy?" In real life, when you look for a job, you're not going to pay ridiculous amounts of cash to get started (maybe in rare instances).

In all reality, the overwhelming majority will fail in Herbalife while the top dogs will actually see some real money.

Hubpages breaks down an example of Herbalife's pyramid scheme:

"In its flyers, HerbaLife claims that you can make as much as $1500 per  week for part-time work. If you work full-time, you can make $5500 per week.

However, the statistics say otherwise.

In actuality, about 1% of HerbaLife distributors make 85% of the company's gross sales. These distributors are in the upper echelons of the company, and were around back when the company was still starting up in the early 80's. The remaining 99% of HerbaLife distributors, who joined the company after the mid-1980's, make the remaining 15% of the company's gross sales.

What does that mean math-wise?

Let's crunch the numbers: 99% of all reported HerbaLife distributors comes out to 1,782,000 distributors (99% of 1.8 million). Meanwhile, 15% of $3.5 billion comes out to $525 million. Divide $525 million by the 1,782,000 distributors and you obtain $294 in annual sales per distributor!! And keep in mind that is not profit, but sales, so the actual take-home pay is even less."

And does the Herbalife company tell you this? They certainly never told me anything about this! Very deceptive.

I should have listened to my doubts, my instincts, and done closer research on my part. I urge everyone to ask as many questions as possible and seek verification, corroboration, with potential companies and relationships.

Always research a company to make an informed decision, and be very careful, especially when it deals with your finances and personal information. If they've obtained this information, seek legal help or resources for action to protect you, your finances, your credit, your identity...and your life. Remember, ripoffs and scams come in all shapes and sizes, from one individual to corporations like the Enron controversy. I just wish that I didn't have a momentary lapse of judgment, but one slip-up like I did, and you can run into a gamut of problems that can ultimately ruin your life.

Again, Herbalife guarantees you NOTHING and only a few will really strike it big. Don't take such a big risk if you're struggling, teetering on the edge. Invest in something where you are sure you will see the direct results.

There's a reason for the significant amount of complaints against them from governments, agencies, and consumers from around the world.

There's an old saying: if it's too good to be true, it probably is.

Don't waste your time and money with Herbalife like I did!

I agree, do not get involved with Online Business Systems.  Thank goodness for forums like these informing people of what they're getting into.  Luckily it only took me one day to realize how disingenuous and unethical there business practices were.

Their decision package was filled with absolutely no information about what type of business you were getting yourself into.  It was riddled with uplifting testimonials, completely non-representative of the majority of people who get suckered into the scheme, and it is designed to exploit your hopeful nature and optimism.

When I received my call from the personal coach, I was already on-guard with lots of questions, as I have been victim to another pyramid scheme before.  Even though I knew it was too good to be true and every fiber of my being told me it was a scam (because of how pushy the coach was to make the sale and how little information was given upfront), I still purchased the $399 OBS package.

I had asked my coach specifically if this was a pyramid scheme and he responded, "No, nothing like that.".  I convinced myself that maybe this "opportunity" was legitimate since I had heard about it from people whom I consider trustworthy over the radio.  What I found out as soon as I made that purchase was exactly what I feared...  There were even more hidden, reoccurring costs associated with starting your OBS account and the various web domains needed (all of which you were never told about upfront obviously), and it is the same old-fashioned pyramid scheme cleverly disguised as a "multi-level marketing" system in which your "up-line" profits off of anything you sell.

It's easy to see why someone would stay with the business for 5 months before throwing in the towel.  It's human nature to want to believe that you can obtain wealth/success, to linger to the hope that things will pick up if you just stay with it for a little longer, and that if you quit you're losing out on all the time and money that you've already invested.

But believe me...  You are quitting while you are ahead.  Don't waste any more of your time and money on something that in most likelihood won't turn out a livable level of income even if you do put an excessive amount of time and effort into it.  I'm not saying that it is impossible to make a fortune using scams like Online Business Systems, it's just highly improbable.  And the bottom line hard fact of the matter is that the only way you can make a profit using OBS is to be as dishonest, disingenuous, and unethical as the people who sucker you into the scam to begin with.

If you aren't willing to do that, then there is no amount of "hard work and effort" that you can do to obtain a "successful" business.  I for one am not willing to demean my spirit and sully my soul, no matter how much money I could make.    

I read this report (as I did your other posting which had more information attached to it) and was wondering a few things.

You stated you were involved for 5 months, but say the company is misleading. If this is the case then why were you with them for so long? You would have known the products are Herbalife before signing as you are told this during your initial phone consultation.

Saturated market? If this is so, why are there more large companies getting into the Health and Wellness industry and trying to compete with Herbalife - a 30 year young international company?

Why would you continue to do the same marketing to your website for 5 months without results? Business common sense would say that something is not working within the first few weeks and it should be changed. Whose fault would that be?

Were you taking the products? Try the products? Did you know what it is that you are trying to sell? Your other post said you did not...so which is it? How can you sell something you know nothing about?

Can you honestly say that you gave your business what it needed to succeed or did you just "try" little bits here and there to see what would happen? A business takes commitment and determination to make it. This business works if you are willing to commit and put your efforts into your success.