| Comment Number: | 522418-13208 |
| Received: | 8/23/2006 8:34:19 PM |
| Organization: | |
| Commenter: | Kathryn Li |
| State: | MD |
| Subject: | Business Opportunity Rule |
| Title: | Notice of Proposed Rulemaking |
| CFR Citation: | 16 CFR Part 437 |
| No Attachments |
Comments:
In reading the responses online of the Mary Kay sales force to the FTC proposed rule, I think there are some things that need to be highlighted. The people in this country who sell these MLM opportunities were urged by their respective companies to bombard the FTC with a form letter, in which they were instructed to insert their own personal stories (which have usually been embellished). These people and their opinions should be taken with a grain of salt. The numbers of websites that are popping up on the internet devoted to Mary Kay victims should tell the FTC that there is definitely a need for more regulation of this industry. In one of the paragraphs of the rebuttal letter sent to the FTC by Mary Kay Corporate, MK says that the 7-day waiting period would devastate their business - because so many people sign up in the heat of the moment, based on the emotional hype that characterizes MK's recruiting tactics. The fact that Mary Kay depends on emotional pressure to get people to buy their opportunity (and subsequently purchase thousands of dollars in inventory) should throw up a red flag. Mary Kay reps are taught by their uplines to manipulate new recruits into buying inventory within 24 hours of signing the agreement, because that's when the emotional high is still the strongest. MK reps are routinely taught that if they wait more than 24 hours to push inventory, the new recruit will not buy nearly as much - and that is bad for MK's bottom line. A business that is built entirely on manipulating women into spending thousands of dollars after an evening of crazed emotional hoopla? Not a legitimate business opportunity. This is evidenced by the scores of women who are pouring out of the woodwork to post their stories on the internet, describing how they lost thousands of dollars in Mary Kay based on the misleading and deceptive tactics used by that company's sales force. MLM needs more regulation now! I implore the FTC to adopt this proposed rule, for the sake of the thundreds of thousands of women who lose money in Mary Kay (and every other MLM) every year because of these deceitful tactics!