Usana scam an unethical business

If you ever hear someone recommending Usana I suggest you cover your ears, say "lalalala" and run as fast and far as possible. A friend of mine brought me to a few of these meetings. The whole thing is an embarassment, I was asked for a payment of $1250 in order to join(after refusing for a couple weeks, the price dropped to $220). It was for a shipment of nutritional supplements that would also put me in some kind of business position (Network Marketing, AKA MLM) that was supposedly superior to conventional forms of working. From what I can tell, you have to work your ass off and not to mention be quite lucky in order to succeed with this. Everyone said that for the first year or so you will be devoting a lot of time and effort and not getting much in return. After that point the "average" member of this MLM will become a gold director or, "hit gold," and start gaining large amounts of residual income. In order to do this, you and your team would have to acheive over 10,000 points for 4 weeks straight. I'm not sure of the exact conversion, but I believe this amounts to selling several thousand dollars worth of supplements PER WEEK.

So you have to build your team by finding other people and convincing them that this works (by the way, Usana members hate it when I use the word "convince") In order to join, you have to buy the supplements. That's what gets your upline(someone who brought you) a commission in the form of "points." (codeword for money, some Usana members seem to hate the word money too...) I think they also get points whenever you (in their downline, having been brought in by them) get points. The compensation plan is excessively convoluted and confusing, what it boils down to (I think...) is a 10% selling commision. I tried to calculate this but my friend who brought me there kept telling me that "you can't" because of about a thousand gimmicky, unpredictable bonuses and rankings.

For the sake of my own sanity, I had to decline on two bases. I needed proof that "hitting gold" is something that would actually happen to at least a significant number of the people who attempted it. They had shown me a time vs money chart which showed a linear graph depicting on ordinary job with a 3.5% raise each year, and a sky-rocketing exponential graph of an "average" Usana member, surpassing ordinary, run of the mill "wage slaves" in less than a year, and then proceeding quickly to millionare status. Of course this graph was referred to by someone who hadn't yet "hit," and the details were scarce, I believe the 3.5% figure to be arbitrarily thrown in as an example. This was just to display an idea. In fact I believed it was meant to alleviate potential recruits (another hated word!) who were worried about the fact that they have to PAY to be in this. They would then see that you start on the graph well below typical working joes, in fact you start below 0 in the minus realm, but that this wouldn't matter in the long run. But some people (myself for example), must demand facts. Where did this graph come from? Who made it? Where is the data and how was it gathered? I went to one last Usana meeting after hearing about the graph. I asked one of their high ranking directors, who redrew the graph and told me the numbers were on the website. I still don't know who made the graph, and neither could I find the data on the website. It seems that a large portion of their site requires you to log in, which of course requires you to purchase their product.

Update: I was recently allowed to view some of the videos that Usana members get to see when they log in. It showed the graph, but had even less details. The 3.5% was gone, it only showed the two lines. Pretty dissapointing.

I know that the only way for this to work is if a large percentage of people fail, but if the only requisite of not failing is not quitting, as I was often told, this WOULD be an impressive opportunity. So I began to think about WHY people might fail. They might just fail because they realized what they were doing was unethical. That's right, despite Usana members constantly mentioning the ethical superiority of their company, I think it's marketing strategy is HIGHLY unethical. This was my second basis for declining, for which no proof has yet been shown. You see, Usana wants it's marketing to occur purely through word-of-mouth. However unlike natural word-of-mouth phenomenon, where you tell a friend about something you like simply because you like it, and you want them to try it too, this word-of-mouth advertising is highly systemized and controlled. And it is used ruthlessly by Usana to their advantage. The truth is, you hold more influence over your friends than a TV commercial. This presents a unique advantage. If we wanted to, we COULD get at least a few of our friends to buy something they don't even really want, at a much higher price than they would otherwise. None of my friends in my age group want or actually need to take nutritional supplements. So why would I want to sell it to them?

But suppose they DID need them? Maybe they would feel a lot better taking supplements. But then let's re-evaluate:

My friends need supplements.

I want to help my friends.

I will find supplements for them.

But not just any supplements, they should be a good deal.

Now let's look at Usana. $100 per month for a health pack?!? All of Usana's products are severely overpriced! Other supplements are much cheaper. Now I would feel REALLY bad knowingly supplying my loyal friends with a rip-off product.

Now, any Usana rep will tell you that this is because of Usana's vast superiority over the competitors in the supplement market. They cite Usana's presence in a Physician's Desk Reference and a few articles in various magazines that mention Usana. They love to cite it as being the number 1 network marketing company, according to Network Marketing magazine (a yearly editorial pamplet written by one person) What strikes me as the most odd however is that they often cite an experiment done with apples. Three apples were sliced open and stored in water, one with Usana, and the other two mixed with other leading supplements. After a few days, the apple stored in Usana water of course came out the cleanest, the others oxidizing into filth.

I later found out why that is. My friend told me that Usana products contain 2000% of FDA reccommended dosage for their vitamins and antioxidants. This is supposedly "optimal," however I think I know the real reason for this. They pump their product up with 20 times more than you need, so that it can stop rotting fruit from oxidizing, and they can show this off to the world. I believe it also probably works faster in your system, but ultimately most of the vitamins will be (and are) rejected by your body, so they are a complete waste. When you buy Usana, you are paying a MUCH higher price on the dubious claim that excessive amounts of vitamins will make more than a trivial difference in how your body digests them. And to sell this to friends and relatives? To convince (yes I said it) them that they need it? And that Usana is the only supplement that is right for them? I would have to have a heart of stone, or simply be ignorant.

I asked some more questions, it took me forever to get them answered. Usana members tell us often that we should focus on building a team rather than getting customers. Building a team means recruiting, and what I finally found out is that in order to receive a pay check by recruiting, you need to bring in 2 people. Usana says that the team should duplicate their team leader. So this means that in order to make money, you have to bring in 2 people who are now in the red. (They've made their investment, but haven't gotten a paycheck yet) Each of those 2 people would then have to bring in 2 more people to get their paychecks. What does this mean? There will always be more people in the company who haven't made any money than people who have, as long as we are focused on team-building rather than sales. Doesn't this seem unethical? You bring someone on the basis of trust, telling them that they will make money. This person may very well be a good friend of yours or even a family member. You tell them this, knowing that some of the people you bring won't make a dime, and if it's not them, then it's someone who trusts them, or someone who trusts that person, or so on, to someone who vicariously trusts you.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't decline simply because I'm an extremely altruistic person who cares only about ethics. But I DO have a conscience. Therefore I cannot devote energy and time to something I think is wrong, without feeling bad. I could have just simply not thought about it that much, then I wouldn't really realize that this is wrong, I'm sure that's how most Usana members are. (I was told quite often by at least two people at Usana to "not overanalyze" and "just run") I don't believe these people are evil, I think they are just pawns of the corporate marketing of Usana itself. They don't realize that what they're doing is deceptive, that someone is going to pay the price for what they are doing. There is some kind of dogma that shows itself nakedly at Usana meetings that Usana is a superior company, ethically and business-wise. Usana reps for the most part believe they are helping the world become a healthier place, while helping themselves and their friends become wealthy. They are given no space to doubt or even re-evaluate their situation. There is a psychological phenomenon at work here called cognitive dissonance, they can't begin to doubt what they've already spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours on. And there is a cult-like energetic frenzy that keeps everyone neatly distracted. Their meetings are extremely thick with the use of psychological tools. The deeper you get and the higher your rank, the more tricks they will teach you. I already had a taste of this at "training." They wouldn't let me attend director training despite my best efforts. Instead they told me how to manipulate my friends into coming to a meeting. I believe this may be why so many people drop out before hitting gold. They finally give it some thought and allow their conscience to be heard.