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Behind The "Work-At-Home" Street Spam Signs
Sabalon writes: "If you live almost anywhere in the U.S. then you have probably seen tons of the 'Make thousands working at home' signs tacked up almost everywhere. Cockeyed.com has an interesting story of one persons quest to uncover the source behind all this money just waiting to be made, the company behind it (or not behind it for legal reasons), and an oversaturated market." Spam, just another medium.
I receive a lot of these offers in my email, by users with Yahoo adresses...
Try it! Library of Babel
While you're working at home, make sure to lose those extra, unsightly pounds! Burn the fat away!
I was only 3 minutes behind the story being posted, and it's already dead. I would love to comment on it, but, well... you know.
Geez this page is already running slow even close to FP. Nothing like /.ing it to push it over the edge.
here in the south bay, the 'make thousands from home' people appear to be paying people to put up thousands of 'lose 30 pounds in 30 days' signs.
now those are a mystery.
go get it
Boy, it didn't take any time at all to slashdot
that poor server.
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
It probably is...
We get these in the UK.
"Earn £300 a day working from home! Part time or full time!"
I always think it's either telesales or some pyramid scheme. The latter seems more obvious.
Claric
There's no problem that cannot be solved with a suitable amount of high explosives
this is nothing more than a quasi-legal pyrmaid scheme, usually they use a corporation like
Herbal life or amway as a front, they do direct mail campaigns with information booklets and videos which basically is just information on how to run the scheme, so it's legal in the sense that you are paying for the information but the information is so you can repeat the scheme..etc..etc.. so you sign up as a distributor for one of these corporate shield and
buy some initial inventory, after that its stritcly direct-mail campain to recruit the next
lemmings..
i really do.
I write code.
http://bowser/workfromhome/workfromhome.html
only first page, still trying to get second. index is on.
I always wondered about those signs myself, but I never really wanted to get involved enough to find out what the scam was. (In the same vein: Summer Jobs ($15/hr) postings of about the same level of specificity... another bit of weirdness I'd never trusted.
You want a few more interesting things collected from around the Boston area: OBEY (www.obeygiant.com; turns out someone is making a fair amount of money off a weird Andre-the-Giant obsession), "Back the B.B." (before they actually started digging the Big Dig, someone from East Boston had a zillion of these signs on telephone poles promoting something called the Boston Bypass), and Groovasaurus (a local band with a large bumper sticker budget).
/Brian
I don't know about you,
But every time I see these I make sure to take them all down and through them in the trash.
I figure that if it's on public property and I'm a tax payer.
I have a right to remove them if I see fit.
Now if IBM got fined for the Love Peace Linux graffiti.
I wonder what these guys get.
I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
Spam, just another medium.
Yes, but unlike other mediums, SPAM can come in many different consistencies, can be used to make sculptures of small animals, and (rumor has it) is edible.
The speed of time is one second per second.
These signs are not only found in the US.
Here in Germany they can be found all over the place, too. And they seeme a little bit suspicious.
Rob Cockerham, a very pleasant guy who is sort of everybody's favorite mad inventor in this area (midtown Sacramento) runs that page... At the risk of dooming him to eternal slashdottedness, I urge you all to spend a half hour poking around the site at his various experiments. I have been lucky enough to be present for the polarbear/ketchup-packet extermination, for instance, and saw his fake banana sculpture at the mall on many visits. What a nice fella.
Work from Home.
There are about 23,958 of these signs in Sacramento. That is an exaggeration, but they really are everywhere. They are nailed to telephone poles and zip-tied to chain-link fences. There are new designs all the time. All of them have a mysterious lack of information regarding what company or scheme they are promoting.
I was always sure they were promoting a scam, I mean, people with a real money-making opportunity don't have to post it on telephone poles. They guard it with encrypted emails, copyrights and lawyers. I never bothered calling the numbers, although I was curious. When I was working at MCI back in 1998, I learned that all toll-free numbers reveal your phone number when you call them, so I didn't want to call from my home phone.
While taking photos for the "Why would anyone want to visit Sacramento" story, I was spending a lot of time driving around taking photos. I tore down a bunch of these signs, but it seemed like a hopeless endeavor...there were hundreds of them, and they've been around for years.
Finally, one night on Yahoo Messenger, my friend Ross suggested that I do some investigation and report on what I find. He suggested that I call them up from a pay phone & track down what they were all about. I wasn't too excited about it, after all, I was sure it was a scam.
The very next day, I wrote down seven of the toll-free phone numbers and called them.
The first one was 800-326-2016.
I was sure I would just be listening to message-machines, so I wasn't nervous about calling them. The first one was a message about how mail order is the best business in the world, how it wasn't a "get-rich-quick scheme", and about how they "need help in their business". It asked me to leave my address at the tone, so they could send me a 14-page report. The message didn't say what the company was...just that it was a Fortune 500 company, described as the "fastest growing company in the industry".
Alright, well, I hung up without leaving a message. Then I called the next three numbers.
800-756-8424, 800-296-7519, and 800-213-6421.
They all had the SAME message. It was a woman's voice, and she started the message with a distinctive "Ya know". In the upcoming days of phone number investigation, I heard this message dozens of times. The next one was a wrong number, the sixth number was the "ya know" message. The seventh number had a different message, but it had some aspects of the first message, "20-year industry leader" and "tap into mail-order". This message, too, was an effort to send me a 14-page booklet.
Well. I was stunned. These signs were all over town, in scores of different designs, and they were all the work of one company. A super-secret Fortune 500 company that never put it's name of it's ugly ever-present signs.
I walked down to the mini-mart with my head spinning. All of these signs...all of this trash...all over Sacramento. One company was responsible. I had to track them down & I had to expose them! Also, I had to get photos of the offending signs & start keeping track of the numbers so I could build a convincing case and find the whole story. Maybe my sign-sample just happened to have one source.
On the way back from the mini-mart, I found a little one of these dumb mini-fliers taped to a news stand. It had the tell-tale figures of my mystery company, $500-$3,000/mo pt, $3,000-$10,000/mo ft. I immediately knew...it was the same people.
It was exciting... I was almost scared.
This company obviously had lots of people working in all sorts of ways trying to recruit new people into the business. I figured it must be a multi-level marketing company, like Amway, but I wasn't sure what the company was yet.
The next day I woke up early and took more photo of signs, making note of the phone numbers. This isn't hard in Sacramento...they are all over the place. I found about 15 varieties in West Sacramento and Downtown. I also photographed bunch of "lose weight now" and "I lost 30lbs. in 30 days" signs, and one "Sal's Tacos" sign.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
here is a link to the google cache of the site
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
mabye the deal is you get hired to put up the signs...if you don't lose 30 pounds in 30 days doing this you don't get paid....??
"We'll buy your home!"
"21" Monitors for just 399!"
and the infamous Electronic filing crap scams.
Counties are starting to outlaw this because it's getting almost impossible to see oncomming traffic at some suburban intersections for the forrest of small neon yellow, red and orange signs.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
These ads are similiar to the loose 50lbs in 10 days or something ilke that. Only fat people believe in those ads.
Here in Portland OR many people have taken up anti-spam measures. In Southeast Portland these signs don't last long before being torn down or, even better, defaced. A group has made giant stickers saying, "I AM UGLY LITTER" and pasted them over these "work from home/lose weight now" things. Very cool.
:)
Off-topic, billboard defacing is quite a sport here. You may have seen a March of Dimes billboard feature Daisy Fuentes and the tagline, "Daisy takes folic acid. Do you?" The "folic" has been blacked out on many of these
Off-off-topic, Kate Moss was featured on a billboard for milk some years ago, when she was doing the Calvin Klein "Obsession" ads. There was a huge photo of her with a white milk "moustache" and the tagline, "Calcium. It's my obsession." The following letters were paint-bombed out on several of them - "Cal" & "i" - needless to say, they were replaced pretty fast.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
My instincts told me that the "lose weight" signs were also a scam, but I didn't have this negative reaction to Sal's Tacos sign. It was just as illegally placed, but there were two attributes that I liked about it.
I trusted the information. "Sal's tacos, 3 blocks" with an arrow. I bet that was the truth.
It identified the source. If this sign was attached to your fence, you could go tell Sal to remove it.
Some of the signs I saw in West Sacramento also had web addresses on them. This is how I eventually linked the signs and the phone messages to a single corporation.
With about 15 new toll-free numbers, I went back to the pay phone and started calling around. I got a variety of new messages, but they all had elements of that first "ya know" message. I began transcribing the messages so I could keep track. Eventually I noted 10 "work from home" messages, and three "lose weight now" messages.
Drizzly rain drove me inside to the warm, inviting internet. The internet sites advertised on the signs had names like homebiz4u.com and workforriches.com, and on the surface, they hid their corporate identity very well. Each site had photos of happy entrepreneurs basking in their riches. These "success stories" were their undoing.
Before I actually tracked down the source of this company, I began to suspect it was Herbalife. I did a search for "plastic signs" on google and found a site called MLM watch. An article on their site mentioned that 60% of "work from home" offers were from Herbalife. That jibed with my findings, except for that in Sacramento, it was 97%.
I also found Causs.org, a nationwide organization against these signs, which they call "street spam". They have members in about 35 states, including at least one guy in Sacramento. The guy in Sac had photos of the signs he had torn down, and photos of a guy putting them up! I was impressed!
Back to my own research, I pored over the homebiz4NE1.com site, looking for a hint about what the product was.
Eventually I found it. About halfway down on the "success stories" page, there was a happy couple identified as Kevin & Amy L. Their testimonial showed that they "aren't a slave to company relocations", and that they are now able to "enjoy the outdoors year-round". They also had a photo of their four kids with Santa hats playing in a pool with an inflatable Orca. The photo was named "lausen_kids.jpg". This was just the kind of information an internet detective needs.
I searched Google for "Kevin Lausen" and voila! The first result was on the official Herbalife website. Kevin Lausen and his four kids were an Herbalife success story. I had found the link!
Herbalife is the company. Their stock is traded on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange, and they have been in business for about 20 years. They sell health and diet products, as well as material to start and maintain your own business. They sell their products across the nation and the world through a network of "independent distributors".
These are the people who put up the signs. These are the people trying to make US$1500-US$5000 a month. At the time, I hated their guts, but as I learned more about what Herbalife had promised them, the hatred subsided.
I can't say how many since the site was slashdotted by the time I tried to get page 3.
What is your Slash Rating?
http://www.mindspring.com/~bencochran/wfh/workfrom home2.html
silly slashdot spaces.
Here in Raleigh you see stickers all over cars with 3 horizontal lines of equal size: black-blue-black. The silly things are pervasive. (Oh, yeah, anyone know where I can get one? A friend of mine tells me it keeps cops from giving him a ticket when he's speeding...)
What is your Slash Rating?
I live in Torquay, and used to work in Plymouth, and in that 20 mile drive I used to see about fifty of these things. Mainly the lose weight ones though. 'Size 12 in two weeks', etc.
Here in Columbus, somebody has methodically gone to every one of these signs and cut away the 'W' in 'WORK FROM HOME'.
I figure maybe Saruman's hiring, or they have some vacancies in those endless Warhammer armies.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
okaaaaay. So the idea is to rope in more people by promising them commission on the number of 14-page reports they mail out? That would be a pyramid scheme.
Seems to me all they are really doing is collecting addresses that people further up the food chain can sell and make money.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
"I started making 1,500 now I do more than $12,000 a month WORKING AT HOME"
:))
I guess companies as big as yahoo should at least forbid such banners to be presented on their site... come on, they sould have thousands of companies fighting for banner space at yahoo! But, if yahoo (just as as example) being as big as it is dont stop this stuff in a near future these kind of ads will be everywhere from clothes to food!
Fabio - Sumare/Sao Paulo/Brazil/South America/Earth/Solar System/Milky Way/Universe
http://www.morroida.com.br
Stock's up ~25% today on news that Equity Inc. is buying them for about $19.50 per share. The chart on this stock looks great. It's sad that a spam company can be so profitable in any economic climate.
There are good Multi-Level Marketing companies out there (or is it called Network Marketing now?). I used to work for a magazine that profiled and reviewed MLM companies. There's one key thing to look for to see of a MLM will actually work and last: What do they actually try to sell? If an MLM focuses 98% on signing up more people, and completely ignores the product, or discourages ever actually selling the product to consumers, it generally won't last. The companies that actually focus on their product, and only use the multi-level aspect of it to really market and distrubute, those are the ones that tend to last, and people actually can make a business out of.
Which is ironic, because they recently put out a press release about street spam:
Herbalife Names Compliance Officer to Ensure Distributors Adhere to Marketing and Sales Policies
LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 21, 2002--Herbalife International, Inc. (Nasdaq:HERBA - news; Nasdaq:HERBB - news) today announced the appointment of Timothy J. Sweeney as senior vice president for finance and compliance.
Since assuming his position in early February, Mr. Sweeney has been reviewing and strengthening Herbalife's marketing and sales policies. One of Mr. Sweeney's primary areas of responsibility is to ensure that the Company's distributors adhere to Herbalife's rules.
``Herbalife enjoys a valued reputation as a respected manufacturer and marketer of nutritional, weight management and personal care products, and it is important that this continue to be protected,'' said Frank X. Tirelli, president and chief executive officer of Herbalife. ``Tim is an extremely diligent and accomplished professional. We are very pleased to have him in this position.''
As one of his first acts to protect and enhance Herbalife's good reputation, Mr. Sweeney contacted the American Association of Code Enforcement, a professional association in the United States and Canada, to discuss issues associated with the use of signs by Herbalife Distributors. As a result, Mr. Sweeney recommended and Herbalife agreed to prohibit Herbalife Distributors from posting advertising signs on any public property or on any private property without the express permission of the owner, even if such posting is allowed by state or local laws.
``Our new policy is good for Herbalife and for our image,'' said Mr. Sweeney. ``The proliferation of signs is simply not consistent with the excellent image of Herbalife products, the professionalism of our dedicated Herbalife Distributors and our efforts to be a good corporate citizen.''
Rick Wolf, president of the American Association of Code Enforcement, added, ``We are all excited about Herbalife's voluntary response to our concerns, and we look forward to continuing to work with Mr. Sweeney to protect the Herbalife image by ensuring that its policies are enforced.''
Herbalife manufactures a wide range of nutritional, weight management and personal care items and markets them in 54 countries worldwide through a network of independent Distributors who purchase the products directly from the Company. In 2001, the Company had net retail sales of $1.66 billion.
I just have to add that Herbalife has just recently directed the "independent distributors" to stop using road signage. So after they come down, either by being removed or from wear 'n tear, there shouldn't be any new ones being put up.
The pyramid scheme, err, company responsible, has just been sold for $685 million, after the head shyster OD'd on alcohol and anti-depressants.
w jones/20020411/bs_dowjones/venture_group_to_buy_he rbalife_for__685_million
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/do
Oversaturated webserver is more like it...
I never am able to read the stories until the day after..
Rapid Nirvana
That's all it is.... recruiting for more spammers. They give you a list of open relays, and a list of Email addresses, and the more you spam, the more you make.
We have gotten very good at tracking down spammers.
No sig yet.
All of these signs were promoting the products of one corporation, but they were being constructed and posted by regular people in my community, trying to make a buck.
I knew deep inside that the people I was really after were the people that run the Herbalife Corporation itself. They had, through their actions or inaction, created a chain of events that created a rag-tag marketing steamroller. This "Work from Home" steamroller continuously plasters my town with cheap promotional signs.
My solution in the past had been to tear down the signs, but I began to realize that wasn't a solution at all. I needed to do something else.
I didn't know how to proceed.
My mind was a like a blender for two days, whirring with guerrilla tactics and diplomatic approaches. Could I stop an entire corporation? Would they slap a big lawsuit on me? Did they make big donations to local politicians? Does anyone else care about this enough to join me? What if I just made new signs that said "herbalife" with an arrow pointing to the other signs, could I get other people involved?
There are laws against these signs in West Sacramento (link) and in the City of Sacramento (link), but the Herbalife Corporation can't exactly be held responsible for what their "independent distributors" do, can they? They seem to be shielded by a layer of independence and artful camouflage.
I could feel myself losing steam. I didn't know how to focus my energy, and it was all getting wasted tracking down Herbalife websites. The incredible maze of the whole operation astounded me. The Herbalife name was so hidden, it was ridiculous!
At some point, I remembered that old commercial from 1971 with the crying Indian. I looked him up on Google and found, not only his photo, but a quick-time copy of the commercial! (link) This was just the kind of motivation I needed.
Here is the text of the Crying Indian commercial from Keep America Beautiful.
This was exactly what I needed to hear. People had been fighting big-business pollution for years, and that was what I was going to do.
The first step is to link Herbalife with these signs in the minds of as many people as possible. My best connection to people is my website, so if you could please send this web address to a friend, I would appreciate it.... particularly if that friend runs CNN.com.
Of course, most big-time community leaders that might be able to steer Herbalife into a change don't spend much time surfing the web, so I am also working on a letter-writing campaign to raise awareness.
I organized the 65 or so sign photos I had taken so far and arranged them onto a single sheet. I added some text, "on telephone poles, mailboxes and newsstands, they litter the landscape. Can you believe they are all from one company?". I asked my sister to help me compose a letter to mayor Fargo and the next day I sent off my first envelope of anti-marketing material.
I would also like to discourage new potential Herbalife customers from getting involved with this company.
From what I have learned so far, it is very, very difficult to profit as an Herbalife distributor.
Lasers Controlled Games!
All of these signs were promoting the products of one corporation, but they were being constructed and posted by regular people in my community, trying to make a buck. I knew deep inside that the people I was really after were the people that run the Herbalife Corporation itself. They had, through their actions or inaction, created a chain of events that created a rag-tag marketing steamroller. This "Work from Home" steamroller continuously plasters my town with cheap promotional signs. My solution in the past had been to tear down the signs, but I began to realize that wasn't a solution at all. I needed to do something else. I didn't know how to proceed. My mind was a like a blender for two days, whirring with guerrilla tactics and diplomatic approaches. Could I stop an entire corporation? Would they slap a big lawsuit on me? Did they make big donations to local politicians? Does anyone else care about this enough to join me? What if I just made new signs that said "herbalife" with an arrow pointing to the other signs, could I get other people involved? There are laws against these signs in West Sacramento (link) and in the City of Sacramento (link), but the Herbalife Corporation can't exactly be held responsible for what their "independent distributors" do, can they? They seem to be shielded by a layer of independence and artful camouflage. I could feel myself losing steam. I didn't know how to focus my energy, and it was all getting wasted tracking down Herbalife websites. The incredible maze of the whole operation astounded me. The Herbalife name was so hidden, it was ridiculous! At some point, I remembered that old commercial from 1971 with the crying Indian. I looked him up on Google and found, not only his photo, but a quick-time copy of the commercial! (link) This was just the kind of motivation I needed. Here is the text of the Crying Indian commercial from Keep America Beautiful. This was exactly what I needed to hear. People had been fighting big-business pollution for years, and that was what I was going to do. The first step is to link Herbalife with these signs in the minds of as many people as possible. My best connection to people is my website, so if you could please send this web address to a friend, I would appreciate it.... particularly if that friend runs CNN.com. Of course, most big-time community leaders that might be able to steer Herbalife into a change don't spend much time surfing the web, so I am also working on a letter-writing campaign to raise awareness. I organized the 65 or so sign photos I had taken so far and arranged them onto a single sheet. I added some text, "on telephone poles, mailboxes and newsstands, they litter the landscape. Can you believe they are all from one company?". I asked my sister to help me compose a letter to mayor Fargo and the next day I sent off my first envelope of anti-marketing material. I would also like to discourage new potential Herbalife customers from getting involved with this company. From what I have learned so far, it is very, very difficult to profit as an Herbalife distributor.
The signs... it is all part of the matrix..
Rapid Nirvana
If you run your own business, such as drumming up business for someone else, you can claim milage, gasoline, and a 1/4th of your living space expenses as a business expense..
If your business consists of putting up ugly signage, but you get thousands of dollars back from the Fed in taxes, wouldn't you do it?
What if you really needed the money.. I mean, so badly that you would be willing to walk around at 3am, tacking paper to signs.. You'd do it.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
He could have just searched Google for "Who put up all those work from home signs?". The answer was in the second result.
DigiSquid Design.
If a business has a 1-800 number, it costs them money each time you call right? it's like long distance in reverse right?
i'd be willing to get an extra phone line (different number) and have my computer call and listen to the message all day. i could have it call them over and over again.
eventually maybe they would be forced to shut it down because they owed the phone company too much money? just a crazy idea....
get your dirty sig off me, you filthy APE!
These little bastard signs are everywhere. There is a new variant in my area - the 3"x5" sticker. They show up stuck to ATM's, drive-thru speaker boxes, and shopping carts. With any luck at all, an anti-litter law would be able to knock these guys off.... man I hate salesmen for crap I don't need....
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
Nonsense.
You actually have to MAKE MONEY from your home business to claim those expenses.
To judge from the article, most of the sign posting / pamphlet placing activity is a symptom of desperately shoving more money down the rat-hole in order to make back that initial investment.
BovineOne came up with this sign and this sign as a more modern alternative for all the work-at-home types out there.
Work at home the distributed.net way.
... even better, defaced. A group has made giant stickers saying, "I AM UGLY LITTER" and pasted them over these "work from home/lose weight now" things.
Uh, how is this better from the standpoint of visual litter. How does defacing something that's defacing something make things any better than the original defacing? If they're going to take the time to get out of their vehicles and paste a sticker on the sign, they could just as well remove the sign, which (in theory) would be helping to solve the problem vs simply adding to it.
Its all herbalife. Every single sign he found was herbalife. Different phone numbers all went back to the same place. In fact they don't even tell you until you pony up some dough.
I lost 30 lbs in 30 days for 30 dollars! Ask me how!
Step 1: Assemble a surgical scapel and an industrial shop vac.
Step 2: [You don't really want to know. You can guess.]
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Theyre plastered everywhere in this country too.
"Got a PC? Put it to work!" etc etc.
Completely lame. Intrusive, greedy, corporate bastards.
There are even people in business selling the spam signs to the spammers.
I don't know about anyone else, but I have never seen these signs before. This is perhaps because I live in a nice midwestern town where anyone who attempted to obstruct the spectacular view of our corn would be lynched on the spot. In the event that I ever do see someone put up one of these signs, I will call the county lynch brigade on the spot and demand that the offender be punished. In other places where this brigade is not available, I would suggest publicizing a shorter version of the story, as the version I just read was extremely taxing only to get to the point Herbalife is behind the awful signs, don't buy Herbalife and don't call the numbers on the signs (maybe there was another point somewhere at the end there... I never got there, it was too long.).
Liora
Strunk, Julie (SJ1036-ORG) julie@HERBAL-ATTITUDE.COM
Herbal-Attitude
2666 Jackson Pike
Batavia, OH 45103
US
(513)732-3836
Fax- (513)732-3836
"Beware advice from successful people. They do not seek company."
That's what I think of whenever somebody wants me to "work from home." If it's so great, then why are they shlepping around town hanging up "work from home" signs?
lol, the true sign of a techie: taking new metaphors and forcing them back on the old world which has existed much much longer.
try 'email: just another medium', then maybe you can see where the advertisers are coming from.
Those are legit. You lose 30 pounds in 30 days by walking your ass all over town hanging more of the damn signs.
"My name is Logan Strunk, I live in Cincinati Ohio"
Julie Strunk, EOLA Independent Distributor.
You really shoulda made that tougher.
MLM sucks.
This sig is xenon coated, and will glow red when in the presence of aliens
Might be considered some kind of telephone harrassment/disruption of business thing, but IANAL.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
About October 2000, someone was posting on "aus.jobs" newsgroup talking about being an "Email Processor". When I looked into it even further, it appeared to be a pyramid scheme, designed to have the higher levels dissove over time (turning into a trapezoid). Other than sending the initial email and finding between the lines of the response, I decided not to pursue the matter any further (I was looking for work at the time).
It started to actually take off over time. About the middle of 2001 there was stuff everywhere. However a lot of people realised that it was a scam.
It has not progressed to the same level as this story in the US. If anything it has started to die down recently.
Herbalife, a lesson in small business
I'd like to make this information available to as many people as possible.
This is the story of how Herbalife works. I've never actually been an herbalife distributor, but I've interviewed a couple of them to get this information. If you know more about it, or find any errors, please email me.
1) you call a toll-free number of one of their current distributors, (not the herbalife company itself), leave your name, address, and phone number.
2) That distributor sends you a free 14-page booklet.
This booklet is red, yellow, blue or green. It has NO information about what the home-business actually is besides "Mail-order". It contains eight "success stories" from happy people that make $8,000-$15,000 per month.
It seems to concentrate on the fabulous vacations that this kind of money can buy. Interspersed with the success stories are paragraphs of text that challenge you to buy into this scheme, like "Choosing to succeed can be frightening", and "Success is our birthright and we cannot allow our fears to keep us from it.", and "only desire and determination matter".
3) If you call the number on the back, you will be given the option to pay $36 for the first information packet.
If you decide to pay this, you will get a "decision kit" package. It will have one videotape, an audiotape, and another booklet. Still, no mention of Herbalife, just "success stories". If you want to take the next step, you will call another phone number, and really talk to your real, human, independent distributor.
4) He or she will send you a second set of tapes for free.
One audio tape and one video tape. These are more success stories and motivational speeches. If you call your Mentor back, he or she may tell you it is Herbalife at that point. To get started in the actual business, you have to spend more money for an "IBP".
5) The IBP, International Business Packet is $195
The packet contains the manual, notebook with forms, procedure, some actual products and books to get you started. This is where you first hear the name "Herbalife" if your distributor didn't tell you already.
Once you purchase the IBP and complete the Distributor Application, you qualify for a 35% retail discount.
(The IBP contains a catalog, order forms, 3 manuals (Success Starter, Welcome & Sales and Marketing plan), samples of 1 Thermojetics bar, 1 peach mango drink mix,1 chocolate shake mix, 1 vanilla shake mix, 1 herbal concentrate, 1 herbal aloe, 1 balancing system, 1 "lose weight now ask me how" button, price list and other various forms)
You are now ready to proceed as an independent herbalife distributor.
6) Then, you have to decide how dedicated you are to the Herbalife business, which is based on how much product you buy for resale.
When you get the IBP and sign up for your HAP, you qualify for 35% below retail, but if you want to get a better price on your products, you need to become a "Supervisor".
HAP stands for Herbalife Advantage Program, and it is a package of stuff that you are required to buy every month. They want you to be using the herbalife products, so that you can accurately describe their qualities to potential customers. It is not to be sold, just used by you. It is $80 worth every month. The HAP can be set up to automatically charge your credit card or checking account.
7) To become a supervisor you must have 2,500 VP. VP stands for "value points", and are awarded for goods that you buy from herbalife. Some information indicates that you must recruit 3-5 people under you to become a supervisor, but others say you simply need the VP. If you leap into Herbalife determined to start at that advanced level, you need to buy $4,000 worth of products.
This allows you to get the products from Herbalife at 50% below retail. (the $4000 worth of stuff costs you $2000).
To help you with your big purchase, they send you a list of the top 100 credit card companies in the country.
You may also be encouraged to buy a website to sell Herbalife diet and skin products for $315, and a site to promote the "work at home" business for another $315. And it doesn't stop there. I downloaded a PDF which describes Silver, Gold and Platinum E-Commerce Business Packages from $952.90 to $1994.22.
You can subscribe to a toll-free number for $6.95 a month plus the price of the calls. You can expect a $25 bill each month.
TouchFone is the company recommended in the IBP.
Why aren't we told when editors moderate our posts?
Call 1-888-134-2442
I see a lot of those "work at home" signs in my town. They are posted on telephone poles, street lights and signs which is illegal in my town.
I've always wanted to turn them in, but I'm too lazy.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
I grew up in a rural town surrounded mainly by farms. When I was 14, I started noticing these summer job signs, and followed thru. (Hey! I was only 14 :P) Some of them are suprisingly real, and I worked one of them the following summer. What they don't tell you, however, is that you get to spend all summer walking up and down cornfields detasseling corn. The work was based upon how many ears of corn you detasseled, and while someone could conceivably earn $15/hr, I averaged about $4/hr. Gotta love those child labour laws excluding farm work from the 16 age limit.
the UK too.
"Got a computer? Put it to work!
www.changeyourfuturenow.net"
etc, etc..
You were expecting a sig?
A few years back there was a sign in Victoria, BC, Canada going towards the ferry in Sydney back to Tsawassen. Big "garden sign" on a slope with "TRAVEL BC" in white letters, with woodchips around the letters and flowers all around. Nice touristy Victoria.
Someone had used the woodchips and covered up the T and the L and left:
RAVE BC
PROFIT !!!
sulli
RTFJ.
Since the /.'ed page appears to be posted in multiple copies already, how about a couple viewpoints from someone whose mom actually tried this?
:P )
This definitely has to be involved in the whole Herbalife Independent Distributor scheme. Just to satisfy your curiosity, yes it is a MLM. You sign up under another distributor (the person that lets you in on what the product actually is, etc.) and they get a small cut off of your sales. Quite pyramid-like, since the best profits come not by selling the product itself, but by recruiting other independent distributors underneath you. (Otherwise, you probably *could* make money, but not the amounts you hear glamorized).
Now, the rest of my information is, to be fair, several years out of date. I can only relay how it was all seemingly setup in the early-mid '90s. Basically, the top-level Herbalife company (corporation? I wasn't too sure exactly) works very hard to keep a legally viable separation distance from all the indenpendent distributors. (This is perhaps why the company doesn't get in trouble for the street spam, since, as another poster pointed out, the ID's are the ones putting them up.) This went so far as prohibiting ID's from using any sort of Herbalife company logo on business cards to maintain a clear separation. (IN fact, the letter of law at the time was that you were only allowed to say "Independent Herbalife Distributor" in a plain font face. Nothing else.)
The signs you see all over creation that make no reference to the product or company arise from this same seeming need to maintain separation. You, as an ID, are not allowed to advertise what the product is or might be; you have to entice interest in the customer, and after *they* make the initial contact can you explain what it all is.
They even went so far as laying down policy on accepted forms of advertisement with respect to various media. Mom, trying to play fair and honest with them, inquired about constructing a store-front web site. They gave consistent, repeated, flat "No"s when she described it. They only saw a web site as a means to advertise for potential business, not as a possible means to *DO* business. (Remember the time frame involved here: early-mid '90s.) The company's own site was the only place permitted to have logo's, product information, etc., and even *they* themselves didn't have a mechanism to take money. (Since, I guess, only the ID's were allowed to move merchandise and collect cash directly.) It was weird.
Now, it got interesting to see that the only people making cash were the select few people at the top of the pyramid. The dominant exceptions are people that are providing these signs for ID's to put up. (Wonder why they all look the same in every city? There's a place that an ID order's them from.) In store product demo's and the like were also something for and ID to spend money on. (Physical stores. You could have the product displayed all over the counter, but don't you dare have any mention of Herbalife in your store window for passer-by's to see.)
Needless to say, it is in fact quite hard to actually set this up as a lucrative business. You really need a big downstream pyramid of ID's underneath you, but then they are competing against each other (and you, perhaps) to get the same thing, so any normal size town (or sub-section thereof) can get saturated by various ID's competing for either customers or other ID's). Mom worked at this for over a year, and I don't think she ever really turned a dime over in her favor.
(Oh, and if any company Nazi's start looking for her as a result of this post, she has a different last name than me.
This drives me crazy: "...they were being constructed and posted by regular people in my community, trying to make a buck. I knew deep inside that the people I was really after were the people that run the Herbalife Corporation itself. "
NO!!!
The fact that there is a bigger fish doesn't make what a littler fish does ok. The whole attitude is broken: "he's not really to blame, we want to get the guy above him" ensures that "the guy above him" always has plenty of people to do his dirty work. Get 'em all. If he's doing something wrong, BLAME the little man - so what if he just wants to make a buck, there are some ways you just don't do it! If people would refuse to do the wrong thing in the first place, then we wouldn't have the problem. The whole attitude that whatever I do is ok because somebody else talked me into has *got* to go.
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
I know him. He actually dreaded being slashdotted. he is gonan owe his isp sooo much. he goes over on his bandwidth quite often and his ISP wasnt happy abotu memepool linking to him. and he is in newyork right now so is unable to handle the situation.
You're just as much of a lying scumbag as your mom: At my school I am a co-director of the Tech Dept.
And what school would that be? The one where everyone takes the short bus?
When is someone going to do something about this plague of spam?
holy amway, batman!
:)
scary how similar they sound, minus the mind control.
-t
If a business has a 1-800 number, it costs them money each time you call right? it's like long distance in reverse right
There's lot of the 800 numbers that pay a monthly "flat-fee" now, but YMMV.
i'd be willing to get an extra phone line (different number) and have my computer call and listen to the message all day. i could have it call them over and over again.
I wouldn't suggest war-dialing. Guaranteed to get you trouble. A Long Time Ago, this was done and was well logged by Southern Bell.
/*drunk.. fix later*/
Its scary how much this mirrors Scientology. You pay more and more each time to get deeper into the system, and it seems you get more and more useless crap the deeper you go and the more you pay.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
Good, the 3x5 sticker is completely covered by my laserprinted nametag "Does Herbalife Litter?" stickers.
Lose 30 pounds!
Don't eat so much spam.
Y2K Compliant since the late 1890s
Howcome the people who stick these things on
ATMs, telephone poles and everywhere else
aren't arrested for vandalism?
yeah, now that i think about it, it probably wouldn't be a good idea.
but maybe i could try to get their numbers onto some fax-marketing lists so the evil fax spam bastards would bombard the evil sign spam bastards! most 1-800 numbers are routed to lines that also have a regular number as well so if i could just figure those out somehow....
talk about killing two birds with one stone!
get your dirty sig off me, you filthy APE!
The IRS can't require you to be successful as a business.. If you go bankrupt, you get to write it off.. In fact.. Hell, look at Enron.. It even works on a macro scale.
All you 'have to do' is pay your taxes. You can pursue profitability.. But no one will ever require you to be successful.
To wit: If you buy a multifamily home and renovate it, you can write off the cost of the renovation. You do not, at any point, HAVE TO have tennants.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Now, whether you are a regular distributor or a supervisor, you need start selling the herbalife pills or the herbalife "work from home" business. Good luck!
,hand then put individually too."
You will need to sell a lot of pills to make back the money you have invested. As a distributor, you will have spent at least $240 in materials to get started, and you are probably anxious to get that money back in sales. If you are a Supervisor, you have an easier road, but it is a lot longer, because you are trying to make up for buying that initial $2,000 in product.
You will most likely spend the rest of your "herbalife" sales career trying to earn back your original investment.
Green and Beige Set (60 and 60 pills each), 30-day supply
Regular Distributor buys at 35% discount
Supervisor buys at 50% discount
Retail $30 (plus $2.10 shipping) Cost $19.50 (plus $2.10 shipping)
Profit per set $10.50
To make back initial $240 investment you must sell:
23 sets of Green and Beige
Retail $30 (plus $2.10 shipping) Cost $15.00 (plus $2.10 shipping)
Profit per set $15.00
To make back initial $2,240 investment you must sell:
150 sets of Green and Beige
Making the $2000 initial investment to become a supervisor may seem like a good idea, but it is extremely rare for someone to sell enough Herbalife to make back that money. Take a look at the variety of herbalife products that people are trying to unload on ebay. Anyone with more than $100 in products probably bought a giant batch to gain supervisor status, not realizing that the market for home-sold diet pills was totally saturated.
There are two main groups of people that you should consider selling to:
all the people you already know
the masses of people you don't know
Now, the people that you know might buy some of your products. Make a list of the people that you know and try to imagine yourself approaching them about a great way to lose weight. Maybe that isn't going to be as comfortable as you would like. Still some people may buy your products just because they feel sorry for you, especially if you have been in trouble with the law or have been living on the streets.
As far as the "work from home" part of the business goes, you probably don't want to sell that to people that you know. Odds are that they will just lose the money they invest in it, and then they will blame you.
Selling to people that you don't know is tricky. You have to make contact with people who are interested in what you have to sell. This can be pretty expensive.
You will probably want to try newspaper ads first.
They will probably fail. One woman I talked to put small ads in her local paper for four weeks straight. She spent $31.50, which didn't break the bank, but she only got 4 phone calls, and no one bought any pills from her.
You can try putting an ad in the phone book. Of course, you will have to compete with the other people in there. Sacramento is bursting at the seams with distributors, and it really shows in the white pages here.
Your "Mentor" will encourage you to go to mall parking lots and distribute 1000 fliers a day, but most people don't like that idea.
Once you start in the Herbalife business, you will find yourself in a number of socially awkward situations. No one likes fliers on their windshield, so you will probably be half-sneaking around the lot, arising the attention of security guards. If they see what you are doing, they will chase you off.
I think it is tacky, and half the time they end up on the blacktop.
A cheap way to reach out a lot of people is to send out unsolicited email.
Everyone on the face of the earth hates this. Please don't do it.
Herbalife will probably sell you some chintzy marketing merchandise, like bumper stickers and magnetic car signs, key chains, mugs, t-shirts, pens, paper weights, squishy herbalife balls. This is fun stuff, but lets face it, that kind of stuff is more for YOU than for your customers.
No one ever called a number on the side of a car to buy weight-loss pills.
The sales method that motivated me to write this story in the first place is the cheap sign nailed on a telephone pole. These are illegal in Sacramento, West Sacramento and many other areas of the country. I believe the reason they are illegal is that they are ugly.
Some people don't find them ugly at all, but other people go to great lengths to tear them down in their neighborhood. I guess it depends on your own sense of aesthetics. I don't mind fallen leaves on the sidewalk, but other people feel strongly enough about them to buy leaf-blowers and rakes.
Here are 40 more photos of signs on telephone poles and fences.
Sometimes people only cut away part of the sign, such as the telephone number.
This may be for two reasons. The first reason is that some signs are difficult to remove without a crowbar. They often have long nails and nickle-sized washers holding them on the pole, so it is easier to just cut part of the sign off.
The second reason is to have a discouraging effect on future sign-posters, indicating bandit sign posting is not welcome. A clean pole seems to be an invitation to some sign-hangers.
I've heard that it is forbidden for distributors to indicate the herbalife name on the "work at home" and "use a computer" signs.
I believe this is because they don't want their company name to be associated with these cheap, illegal signs. It might also be because if you knew all these signs were for herbalife, you would recognize how saturated the market was already.
These signs cost about $1.50 each when ordered in quantities of 100 or more.
You can buy them at Witness Designs in Tulsa, Oklahoma, "where God does signs and wonders, and we do signs and windows".
Another cheap method of advertising is to create small paper or plastic pouches filled with tiny paper fliers.
I've seen them on ATMs, newspaper stands, phone booths, gas pumps, church pews, in toilet stalls, library cubicles, and on drive-thru menus. These pockets really look crappy, so you will have to be pretty self-serving to put them up around your own neighborhood.
Some herbalife distributors refer to them as "hot pockets". Because these pouches are a new form of advertising, they may not be a law against them in your area yet.
It is common to see these tattered plastic envelopes half-full of colored water. What a mess.
When I first began researching these Herbalife signs, I found a website called, "your body is a miracle", which, to be fair, doesn't have anything to do with herbalife, but has this sickening line: "These are GREAT Work From Home Ads for PLASTERING EVERYWHERE YOU GO." and continues, "Get some double stickytape and then put them "EVERYWHERE "you can think of. Laundry Mats, bus stops, telephone booths, put them on the inside of bathroom stalls, telephone poles
An herbalife site on Angelfire has this catchy poem: We will be what we will to be. For failure finds it's false content, In that petty word "Environment" But our spirit scorns it and is free.
I have no idea what he is trying to say here, but I don't like it.
On the official Herbalife site, they have a bunch of "success stories", one of which is the story of Katiuzka Vera.
In her story, she describes distributing 1000 fliers a day for 90 days. Can you imagine? 90,000 fliers. Think of all the time that takes, and how her city looked afterward. Jiminy. And she netted 225 customers. That is 400 fliers for each and every person she made a sale to.
Another Herbalife "Success Story" describes the work of Diana and Nile Eddy:
"Every day for weeks we packed up our car with flyers, staple guns, heavy tape, tacks and our children. It was a family affair," she explains.
I'd like to show her a trick with that staple gun and heavy tape.
The sticky backs of "hot pockets" leave distinct adhesive rectangles wherever they are torn down. They are all over the curbside features of downtown Sacramento.
Here is another excerpt from an Herbalife "success story": Matthew and Michelle Leavitt
There are about 1,000 homes in our neighbourhood," he continues. "Every other week we put the same flyer under people's doormats. It wasn't long before we had 10 new Distributors in our neighbourhood alone." Now, Matt and Michele spend a maximum of two hours a day, five days a week, putting flyers on cars and under doormats in front of people's homes.
Something I once did... I got a piece of regular old email spam that happened to have an 800 number. So I dialed it up, listened to the guy give his spiel, and then played back MP3s for the part where you're supposed to leave your name and address. I discovered that you could bypass the intro message by hitting pound and go straight to the voicemail message, which had a maximum time limit of like 70 seconds. I repeated this somewhere between 15 and 20 times before I got a message saying "'s personal mailbox has run out of space. Please call again later."
A job well done, I'd say. I only wish that on the last message, I could have left something like, "That's for spamming me, dingleberry."
A friend of mine who went to RISD (Rhode Island School of Design, in Providence, Rhode Island) told me a few years ago that one of his classmates printed up a bunch of "Andre Has a Posse" stickers and stuck them on everything and handed them out to everyone--this was around 1992. I didn't understand why it was funny. My friend explained that it didn't mean anything--only that this dude wanted to see if he could start some kind of counter-culture in-joke. I guess it worked, because just the other day I finally saw one of these stickers in my neighborhood in Cambridge, Massachusetts, ten years later!
I notice sometimes that a moving van :)
(U-Haul) would be parked in the street near
some of the apartment complexes (and sometimes
inside the complex), in my neighborhood and
left there for days at a time. The
vans themselves are splashed with the
moving company's name and all of
the great features of the moving van itself.
At first I thought it may have been left there
by a family but realising how much van rental
costs pr. day, and the number of times I've
seen this, and where these vans are
usualy parked, it seems to me that they are
doing this to advertise the vans. Also, this
was probaly done so they don't have to pay
fees to put up or rent a billboard
-1, Overuse of the word "here."
It seems to concentrate on the fabulous vacations that this kind of money can buy. Interspersed with the success stories are paragraphs of text that challenge you to buy into this scheme, like "Choosing to succeed can be frightening", and "Success is our birthright and we cannot allow our fears to keep us from it.", and "only desire and determination matter".
Next investigative report: "Herbalife and Scientology: The Missing Link"
Paradigm Shift
From http://www.herbalife.com/ :
*The weight-loss testimonials presented are applicable to the individuals depicted and are not a guarantee of your weight loss nor are they typical.
*The income testimonials presented are applicable to the individuals depicted and are not a guarantee of your income nor are they typical.
They've got a great privacy policy too:
We have existing business relationships and may develop other relationships in the future with business partners. In these instances, we may share or otherwise allow access to information that is collected about you that will enable our business partners to contact you regarding products and services that may be of interest.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
But... anyone who thinks their pathway to financial freedom involves laboring like an ape nailing signs to poles is too stupid to judge.
Maybe if some of these jackasses got off their own arses and put as much effort into being an actual, hard-working member of society rather than always looking to "do it the easy way," there'd be a lot more wealthy, intelligent people around, don't you think?
The programmer for our little company fancies himself as a bit of an entrepreneur. He became an Herbalife distributor, and he had his assistant make a ton of those "lose weight" and "make money" signs. Before they had a chance to spam their neighborhoods, they got a memo from Herbalife telling them not to post any more signs. There's a huge box of mystery marketing signs rotting away in our warehouse right now. :)
For those of you modding me as redundant, please note that I posted my copy of page 3 exactly 1 minute before the copy that is currently rated +5 was posted.
Lasers Controlled Games!
I'm just glad that they changed from
Work at "Home"
to just
Work at Home
.
My geek-sense was *killing* me every time I drove past one. And my wife was about to kill me for complaining about it every time.
Someone in my area (Orange County, CA) has been plastering big, orange bumper stickers that say SCAM on top of these signs. I love the idea - I'll bet it's more effective than tearing them down since it forms a connection in the minds of people that read them.
If people see WORK FROM HOME associated with the word SCAM enough times, the message would stick - especially in the minds of the type of person that would fall for the scam in the first place.
Textbooks and Open Educational Resources
Ask me how? lol.
That's right, these goonies of herbalife/quixtar/amway are out in full force trying to sign up as many unwitting subjects as they can. Here's my personal story:
I started my own website, tigerslash.com, and in an effort to promote it I made my own bumpersticker and put it on my car. One day when I was getting gas, a "successful" looking "businessman" across from me asked about tigerslash.com. I told him what it was, briefly how I made it, and things like that. He then proceeded to ask me if I was willing to work on other internet projects, and I said "if I have the time, maybe."
Well, I thought I was going to make some extra bucks on the side for a little web design, and Mr. X made me think the same thing when he followed up with "I run a website and I need some extra help with some of it." Then he proceeded to give me his business card, and I gave him mine, and he said he'd call once he'd consulted his associates...
Well he did call, so I thought I was going to make some quick cash for a little web work. We set up a meeting for that thursday and when it came around, I was interested in seeing what needed to be done. Well, I show up at the office and he presents me with this flyer about Britt Worldwide and all this information about their web strategy and "e commerce infrastructure." This is when the bells started going off in my head.
Mr. X then proceeded to elaborate on the whole mission, online sale of products combined with multilevel marketing. It was called Quixtar, the next big thing, and it sounded like a great scheme... if you were an idiot. I didn't beleive one word of it. I sat through about 30 minutes of this and took the brochure politely and left.
When I got home, I went to the website and started shopping. Amazingly, everything was overpriced. I thought "how in the world would they get people to buy this?" The fact is, the only people who do are the ones coerced into joining, so that they earn "points" with their purchases. If you're at the top of the pyramid, this is great, but if you're the average Joe, all you're doing is paying their salaries and getting $5 a month in return (after spending hundreds on "great products.")
I did some more digging and low and behold Quixtar is nothing more than Amway with a new name. It's the same owners, same company, but they don't say a damn thing about it when you ask them face to face. What a scam.
Needless to say, I was pissed. This form of Spam had approached me with a technical need in my field of work, then proceeded to waste my personal time travelling to, meeting, and researching these people. All that effort to find out I had been recruited for Amway. That's the worst type of spam ever.
~ now you know
but maybe i could try to get their numbers onto some fax-marketing lists so the evil fax spam bastards would bombard the evil sign spam bastards! most 1-800 numbers are routed to lines that also have a regular number as well so if i could just figure those out somehow....
Now there's an interesting thought. I dunno if fax-spammers spam 800 numbers though.
/*drunk.. fix later*/
"Now Hiring All Shifts" to "Now Hiring All Shits"
Don't eat the burritos.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
do her...
for a klondike bar...
According to AT&T's website, they'll set up a domestic toll free number for 7.5 cents per minute. That's $100/day. From the SPAM-L Faq: Calling a spammer's 800 number, be careful! All 800 numbers have something known as Automatic Number Identification, or ANI. This is so that the telephone companies will know where the 800 number calls are coming from so they can bill the owner for the correct amount. This is different from Caller ID in that you can not block your own number from being sent. However, the owner of the 800 number can also get access to this list of numbers, which means that if you call a spammer to complain, it would be trivial for him to get your phone number! Therefore, it is recommended that you call for free from a pay phone. :-) However, not all 800 numbers will accept calls from payphones.
I also wonder (if you used your home or busines sphone) if abuse of an 800# like would be grounds for a lawsuit against you...
Madness takes its toll. Exact change please.
Trucks with flatbeds that drive up and down surface streets and freeways with billboards on the back. These are on rollers so they can rotate ads several times.
The latest gimmick are these small trailers with ads posted on them. They usually park these in outlying areas of the suburbs, and are a real eyesore. Several have $1000 reward signs and 800 numbers on them to report people who vandalize the signs. (I would vandalize one too if it was parked by some asshat in front of my house).
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
There has always been AmWays, Avon, and a plethora of MLM schemes out here in So. Cal. But the latest seem to be 2By2.net. You see them plastered all over cars and essentially is a new MLM marketing scheme that has attracted thousands of 18-25 year old high school educated people. From what I can gather one pays for an ISP service with a exorbitant up front intiation fee. Similar to the HerbaLife and every other MLM scheme.
Initially the people involved wore those car stickers like badges of honor, now its more a symbol of a dunce hat.
The IRS can't require you to be successful as a business.. If you go bankrupt, you get to write it off.. In fact.. Hell, look at Enron.. It even works on a macro scale.
All you 'have to do' is pay your taxes. You can pursue profitability.. But no one will ever require you to be successful.
The way business expenses work up here at least (Canada) is that they don't count towards your taxable income.
You don't get free money - you just don't have to pay as much income tax on the money you _do_ earn.
If you're making little enough not to be paying much tax - which I'll bet you are, if hawking herbal supplements is your primary source of income - then you aren't going to get much back from having less taxable income.
What I've always wondered is where all these spamming losers get their toll-free voice mailboxes. Who runs these services?
As an aside, everybody should call these numbers and tell them that they're losers. It costs quite a bit for somebody to receive a toll-free call....
This shows that you are a liar. You have never been to Turkey. The capital of Turkey is Ankara and not Istanbul.
Istanbul should be clean, but it is filthy; after all, the Turks make good toilet cleaners in Germany. Why do they not clean any toilets in Turkey?
since (from what I'm reading) Herbalife is selling the IDs these signs. Unless the management of herbalife is thoroughly insane, they know exactly where the signs end up, which is why they don't want their name on them.
Punish one ID for putting up a couple of signs? nothing changes. Force Herbalife to stop its guerilla marketing strategy or pay big $$$, and I think the streets would get a lot cleaner pretty quick.
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
One thing the report didn't mention is that people have lost thousands of dollars in these schemes. Newest Way to Wealth, one of the Herbalife offshoots which is responsible for this scheme, encourages people to put up as many signs as possible in order to get more recruits. They sell their "training materials" for hundreds of dollars, and they tell their new recruits to buy enough Herbalife products to achieve the supervisor level. They promise that people will make thousands of dollars doing this, but I've heard reports that when people run out of money or patience and try to quit, their uplines get abusive and tell the poor, misled distributors that they hadn't been working hard enough.
And, since Herbalife is finally changing their policy to disallow signs, Newest Way to Wealth is cooking up new advertising ideas. One idea is to toss a bag filled with "Work From Home" business cards onto people's driveways, along with a few rocks to keep them from blowing away. (Of course, if they throw these little presents onto the lawn by mistake, and you don't see the baggie when you're mowing the lawn, you could end up running over it. That's a good way to put someone's eye out.) Another advertising method is to put packets of cards onto pay phones, ATM's, and every other flat surface.
As far as the signs are concerned, most states and cities have ordinances saying that it's illegal to put signs on utility poles or in the right of way.
The GPL means that I have world wide influence
from my home "office".
No employer would be able to empower me this way
:-)
Money is for people who don't have the balls to live in the Real World.
Toon Moene (maintainer of g77, the GNU Fortran
compiler).
And look at all the pathetic AdWords ads.
I tried ebay, there were 26 pages at least of herbalife protein bar auctions.
Everyone knows that damage is done to the soul by bad motion pictures. -Pope Pius XI
Way to go Edmonton!!
Geez, that makes four of us now..
And we all seem to hang out around Whyte Ave..
(I live in Old Strathcona)
Sigh. My grandmother had a phrase she used for such people: "Some people just weren't raised right."
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
After hacking through the initial 'contact' page which goes to GREAT lengths to make sure you didn't enter a dummy email address or phone number (pattern matching, predicted strings, etc) I was sent to the following link [Distributor ID removed to make sure he can't profit from it] page. It's a server that they pay for (one way or another) to have a tracking link.
The result, for $39.95, you get sent to you 'free shipping' your Information Decision Package (Gee, sound familiar) that contains 'EVERYTHING' you need to know. (yeah right)
I also immediately began receiving emails to the single-register email address I setup. In 24 hours, I've received 4 messages so far.
My FAVORITE part is on their contact page . Throughout the whole site they tell you that you can't contact them before you order your $39.95 IDP, however on the contact page they have this to say:
Meaning, if your not stupid enough to pay $40 for something you know absolutely nothing about, your smarter than we are and you'll see what kind of financial idiots your looking at.How fun, how timely!
I'm just getting to this, so it's probably going to be buried in deep. If you get this far, I hope you enjoy the information!
Garth
. . . why aren't they advertising this as a "Save Thousands in Taxes!!!!" scheme?
Herbalife (ticker symbol HERBA) made a 25% gain on the day the cockeyed-story ran.
<grub> Reading
Anybody remember those 'Where do you want to go today?' billboards? It has a picture of the little hand icon pointing to the 'START' menu.
Somebody shifted the index finger to the right one digit. Heh.
Maybe that's the trick to putting a stop to those signs. When you see a sign that says 'Lose 30 pounds' write a caption under it that says '(English Pounds are worth 2 American Dollars)'
"Derp de derp."
"I saw one of those bumper stickers that said, 'Lose weight now. Ask me how.' So I asked him how. He said, 'Go on a diet, you fat pig.'"
-Bob Zany
subject says it all.
I have a personal 1-800 fax number, and yes, it does get fax spams frequently enough to be annoying.
-This sig intentionally left blank
It's a RealAudio file (who's business practices annoy me, so find it yourself if you don't have it already)
Garth
Article
Jeez, it's already slashdotted.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
http://www.causs.org/
Just put a filter that moves any email that doesn't have your name (or server, in some cases)in the To: header field. So if it doesn't have geek.com or whatever in the headers, it goes to the spam box. I've been using that for a month, and it's only filtered one email that I was supposed to get into the spam bucket. (That was a newsletter that I subscribed to, and I quickly fixed that by adding an exception.)
Hope this helps!
Username taken, please choose another one.
Sure, you can deduct the expenses of the business, as long as you make money one year out of three (which basically means you can lose money for two years before giving up.) But that only covers your car and printing expenses - it doesn't cover the value of your labor, which is the big cost of putting up the signs. If you pay someone else to install your loser-signs, you can deduct what you pay them, but they have to pay income taxes on it, so that's no help, unless you can scam a bit of money into your otherwise-non-taxpaying kids' names. (If you pay yourself wages, it would be a wash, except that you'll then owe self-employment tax (aka Social Security) so you're paying out even more.) It's a big lose.
You can only deduct your home office if it's dedicated to being a home office and meets a variety of other rules. You can't simply deduct 1/4 of your rent because half your living room and garage are full of posters and boxes of unsold dangerous pills, or because you've got your computer on the table in the family room along with the TV. And if you do own your home, the money you've deducted for using it as a home office has tax consequences down the road as well. Don't bother with the home office deduction unless you're running a real business.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
...and beaten severely. Learn to spell the names of companies (Hershey's, Herbalife, etc.), proper capitalization, grammer, and the fundamentals of debate before posting again.
To tear apart your straw man:
Imagine that Hershey's told Safeway to post thugs outside the doors to beat up any customer who doesn't have a Hershey's product. In return, Safeway gets half the increase of sales.
So, yes, Hershey's should be fined if they were to encourage Safeway and their other distributors to use illegal tactics to sell their products.
How can you POSSIBLY write off business losses that are greater than your business expenses?
If I spend $1000 printing ugly signs, and make zero profits, then I have a business loss of $1000.
Going back to the multifamily improvements analogy - I actually did this. I bought a house, turned 50% of it into a rental property, got roommates, and counted 50% of all home improvements as rental expenses. But I couldn't take a deduction for more than I spent! The worksheet is really simple - Write your rental/home business income on line 1, write your rental/home business expenses on line 2, subtract 2 from 1 and write the result on line 3 as your gain or loss.
Similarly, you can deduct the amount of any monetary gifts to charity, but you no longer have that money, so it's still a net loss (financially)! There might be some tax benefits to TIMING your charitable gifts so they balance out large gains in the same year, but you will never end up with more money from tax deductions than you would have if you hadn't lost/given away your own money.
Anyone who thinks they can actually save money on taxes by intentionally running a money-losing business is stupid. Then again, anyone who thinks they can make money selling Herbalife is stupid, so it's a good match.
But if this company doesn't put its name on the advertising, that says it's *only* trying to sell distributorships, not products. Which is to say, it's real product is scamming other people into paying to become distributors, not to sell product.
Around here, about half the signs are "Work From Home" and about half are "Lose 30-40 Pounds", so it's some balance between pure scammage and probable scammage.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
In New York / New Joisey, it's the PBA stickers that help repel speeding tickets...
Anybody know anything about these clowns? They
seem to be a Herbalife clone. All websites
alike, no details till you send money, etc.
www.portal4dreams.com
Count me in as #5. I werk in St Albert
:o)
Cool.. I'm in St. Albert all the time (we have an office right downtown..) where abouts do you work?
Y'know, this is getting seriously off-topic
-me
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Its called emphasis, learn it.
Learn to spell correctly? .com company, just a few stories ago.
That's how all the fish fungus afficcionadoes got sued by some animal's warezh0use
So let's NOT use the right company name and use L33t spelling to avoid the court!
On topic? nah.. got nothing to say. But it was an interesting read.
Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC
All I got was:
- This is the Plesk Server Administrator(TM) default page.
Ouch.If you see this page it means:
1) hosting for this domain is not configured
or
2) there's no such domain registered in Plesk.
For more information please contact [email address removed...]
Slashdotted to oblivion! Sorry guys...
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
You know, this sounds like Kramer Logic.
"Who cares! They'll just write it off! All the rich people do it!"
The correct quote is:
Few people know that the actual debate concerned the
oneness (versus the plurality) of God.
The Web is like Usenet, but
the elephants are untrained.
Many cities have laws declaring these signs public nuisances because they post a significant threat to public safety.
Some fliers have been put on utility boxes, sometimes blocking vents or making access more difficult because they covered hinges or latches. In the worst case scenarios the equipment can fail (due to blocked ventilation) or even catch on fire, and public services (e.g., road signals) fail.
Some fliers are on a stuff boarding that blocks the view of drivers of other traffic, traffic control signals, or pedestrians.
Finally, even the flat papers are often distracting because of bright colors, etc. And, legally, it's easier to ban everything than to try to write legislation that allows some fliers while refusing others.
In light of these problems - problems which are not abstract fears but real problems reported in real traffic accidents where people were injured - it's obscene to call this postering "reasonable and non-destructive." There are extensive regulations on the right-of-way of roadways for a reason, and the desire of some cheapskates for free advertising does not negate the very real problems those regulations are designed to address.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
With a little internet research, I was able find the Sally Mizatch, yet another success story in Herbalife's promotional material. Sally lived in Auburn, a small town near Sacramento. I gave Sally a call and told her what I was doing and ask if would have some time to meet. I drove up to Auburn on an early Saturday afternoon meet Sally at a local ice cream parlor. Sally arrived in a remarkably non-descript black Honda Civic. Sally was an attractive woman in her early 30's, a graduate of Chico State, a public university several hours from Sacramento. Sally had majored in business and had worked several years for starting with Herbalife. Sally has sold over $80,000 dollars of Herbalife products, last month alone, through a distribution network she set-up in Vietnam and parts of China. Sally invited me back to offices to observe her operations. Sally's office turned out to be a Motel 6 outside of town. Inside her motel room she offered me a drink, while she slipped into something more comfortable. Not knowing where this was leading I hesitated to remove any clothing and instead gulped by Scotch and poured another. Sally came out where a red silk teddy and sat down next to me. I slowly ran my hand up the inside of her thigh to find a large sac containing 2 walnut sized balls and rather large, partially aroused, cock. Not wanting to miss my opportunity for the story of the century, I quickly dropped to my knees went to town on Sally's cock. Sally if you are out there please call me back...
troll
i agree that this street spam litter. when i see one of those signs i would rather see it defaced, defeating thier purpose and leaving evidence of disapproval, than immediately removed.
Was started as a college thesis at Rhode Island School of Design by a guy named Shep Fairy. He did, among other things, T-shirts for a band called Pollinate. "Andre" signs can be found in weird places, all over the country and the world. THAT was his thesis.
Nobody makes money off it.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
The money doesn't really count when you're buying your own products.
...herbal drugs?
This reminds me of TheSpark's Fat Project, in which, inspired by one of those signs, the author gets two people to try to gain 30 pounds in 30 days. Worth a read.
OMG, you killed cockeyed! YOU BASTARDS!
sulli
RTFJ.
ran that page. It's hard down.
I live in New York City. Because of the nature of my job, I worked 12 - 14 hour days after Spetember 11. On my first day off, I went out for a walk. I was appalled to discover "Make Money at Home" signs with the addition of "SAFELY" in bold, underscored letters. I was incredibly pissed that someone was trying to profiteer off of peoples fears. I started tearing down the signs. The guy posting them and his two helpers confronted me. A shouting match broke out. The last rational thing I said was "You're a fucking parasite!" I called a cop over and just as he turned and focused his attention on me, the guy made an impropper suggestion about someone and I grabbed him. He punched and clawed me good. Because I made the first move, I got arrested. Because fingerprints are now taken electronically (which was actually kind of cool) and checked via telecom but all the telecom was knocked out, I had to spend a night in the pokey. I had to spend a $1000 for a defense attorney but he did get the charges dismissed. It was worth every dime.
wow, something Bob Zany said was funny? When did this happen, I can't believe I'd miss that.
WikiAfterDark.com It's a sex wiki, go now!
According to the articles, the Herbalife signs all look pretty much the same because the company sells them. If they stop selling more signs to their "independent distributors", maybe they mean that directive - but if they keep selling signs, then they're just trying to look good. Answers will be coming soon to a telephone pole near you :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
A lot of "Work at Home" signs in Ohio keep having their "W" torn off. "Ork at Home". Nanoo-nanoo baby!
Then he should have written it like this:
And here ***I*** was, trying to karma whore, and you get the fucking mod points
troll == someone you don't agree with?
What a narrow mind you have.
"... and (rumor has it) is edible."
Try living off it for a week. Change your opinion, it will.
"i.e., you can't call your living room or kitchen a home office. Writing off home rent/utilities at home is one of the flags that may make the IRS look at your return very closely."
So obviously one can't run a home business out of a small apartment.
"The rules are different for corporations than for individuals, since what an individual does may or may not be a business while a corporation is a business by definition."
Set yourself up as a corporation with an employee of one. You!.
So obviously one can't run a home business out of a small apartment
You can, but the part that you write off has to be dedicated to the business. You can't say that it's an office part of the time and something else the rest of the time.
Hmmm...I don't know if anyone's encountered what I'm about to describe. Get a letter in the mail telling you about a "club" you can join to save money on big ticket items. You know cars,home furniture, vacations, etc. Well anyway when you go to their "office" more a big room with other potential "recruits" and the walls have promotional material. They start telling you how this "hush-hush" club has "special" arangements with companies that are significently lower than retail. You order what you want by going into this room that is wall to wall catalogs of items you want. Cars,vacations,etc are usually through a number. The CATCH is that they want a significant downpayment ($1000.00 min usually) and annual (or less) dues. To get this wonderful oppertunity. Also they tell you this is a one time only offer. Never to be offered to you again (that much they do stick to). BTW usually the letter comes with a coupon for a "prize" if you come in (prize in most cases was for a free porterait). Anyone else have any encounters with same, and what's the story?
just keep paying to get in
Better hope that 'Y' doesn't fall off.
I live in Seattle and when I moved here 10 years ago, the telephone poles were very cool. "Poles!" you say? Yes, you see, so many band posters would be stapled to poles that they would literally create a poofy half foot padding around the things. I found that to be charming in a community sort of way. A few years later, the local nazi District Attorney passed a law against the posting of ANY signs on public property. Bad for cutesy band posters good for losing the "Drop 30#s In 30 Days"
So where am I going with this? Well, recently I've noticed a HUGE increase in the number of these signs popping up everywhere! All kinds! What the hell is going on? Isn't this against the law. Don;t these people pay a fine? After several emails I find out there's a hiring freeze so the retired guy who fines these scum bags will not be replaced, ever.
So now we're stuck with no poofy telephone poles and plenty of "Work at Home" signs. Stupid local Gov't!
Ya Sure! You Betcha!, The_THOMAS
Absolutely true but I find the "translation" I use to be clearer. Face it, if William were here speaking to us now, neither of us would probably understand a word he was saying. I will change the attribution on the sig to be Occam's Razor. I think this is actually what the statement I use is correctly known as... regardless of whether William actually said it... but after I post the reply.
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
I was at the American embassy a while ago and saw a sign posted warning americans not to attempt to set up MLM scams in Europe. I asked the visa officer about it, and he said the embassy was aware of a number of americans currently in prison for setting up amway or herbalife MLM scams.
When the fraud police see the posters going up, they track back the number and arrest the scammer. Locals are allowed to avoid prison time by cooperating fully in testifying against their recruiter. If the recruiter is a local, lather, rinse, repeat. At the top, they always catch an american or a russian, and throw them in prison.
Americans tend to be ex-military trailer trash types who did a tour on a NATO base, and think they can come back and scam the locals, since they discover the american market is completely saturated a million times over. The russians are mafia wannabes who add physical intimidation, threats, blackmail and other nasty things to increase ROI. Its the russians the police are after, since there are other crimes than just conspiracy and finacial fraud. But they prosecute the americans just as vigorously, because they tend to make full confessions and claim that since fraud is legal in the US, it must be legal here.
Ex-pat groups always get americans or brits trying to set up a new MLM network. But the ex-pat types tend to be intelligent enough to know it can't work, so the scammers move on.
But I still see posters around town. Stopping these scams even with good laws on the books is like playing whak-a-mole.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Umm I dont think you got it, its quite humourous just as it is if you read the McDonalds M and the YASS together as a 2 letter and a 3 letter word..
OH! Cute.
These adds have started popping up across Melbourne, Australia too.
I figure that if it's on public property and I'm a tax payer. I have a right to remove them if I see fit.
The bad thing about this logic is that people posting the signs can use it to justify their activity... if you have a right to remove it, they have a right to post it.
Ultimately, though, these poles belong to the power company (at least they do in my town of Birmingham, AL), and posting on them is considered trespassing. Of course... the power company doesn't really cares too much.
A few years back, some unknown people went all over town slapping stickers that said "Pole Trash! Do not support these businesses." in such as a way to obscure the content of each ad. Kinda funny for the "Make money at home!" ads, but it seemed like an assholish thing to do to the little local guys running their own legit businesses.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
Be rough in a studio then. Consist of a living room, kitchen, closet, attic, and bathroom. The last four are small. The first not much bigger. Can't stand up in the attic. In other words. Everythings too small to "give away". And I should point out that I've seen smaller and/or awkward places.
Shoulda sent him a bill for your time @ $100/hr...
Chris.
-- I don't have a cool sig.
I once applied(if you can call it that) for a job with a company called vector marketing. Basicly the job application/interview process consisted of seeing if some of the applicants in the group could read, if they could, everyone could have a "job" with guaranteed minimum pay - where's the fine print lock key? - for the first month.
They had all the applicants attend a week long two hour a day seminar about the product they sell, cutco knives. They were impressive knives (I still prefer real knives, even if they do go dull sometimes), but they are better than you ultra-uber-kool-ginsu knife.
They never mentioned that each sales person was required to purchase a complete set of thier products for ~$300 until the second to the last day of the seminar. When they mentioned that fact, I left that room before he finished his sentence. No way was I going to spend money doing something which I was only guaranteed partial return on my investment. Besides, I would feel really guilty imposing myself on people who don't want me there trying to sell something to them that they need more than they need another hole in thier head.
I don't understand how this type of business model can be legal, its like spamming, but going about it one person at a time, with a personally addressed spam (phone call). No thank you.
I wouldn't EVER buy something from a company who didn't feel it important to have some sort of a store front, why should I work for a company with no tangibleness.
Spring is here. Don't believe me, look outside!
"They're cut down telephone poles there specificly for the purpose of posting flyers/ads."
Try actually READING what you quote. In case you possess only 4rd grade reading skills, "They're" is a contraction, combining the words 'They' and 'are'. So the point of the sentence wouldn't be "They are cutting down telephone poles..." as you read it. It would be "There are telephone poles placed specifically placed for ads, which have been cut down cause people can't reach 20 feet high." Get it? Good.
Let's see. A MLM won't make the top rich? Why then all those "I'm a millionare"-dudes at the recruiting speaches?
You call corporations a pyramid. That means that you've either bought all that MLM propaganda or are trying to scam people. In either case, I feel sorry for you.
It is illegal in most of Europe, but not everywhere. Some countries (UK) have not adopted the legislation fully (it is in a EU directive). I have the good intetion to nail one such scam (Zenith Windows double glazing company), but had no luck.15 minutes research showed that nope,they cannot be nailed.
Apparently consumer rights is something that exists on the continent. You go across the strip of water (of any width) and they disappear.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Any other countries bursting with people to work from home?
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
that those signs are the proof truth is a dangerous weapon...
I mean what they really say is : You will lose 45$ and it will take you 30 days to understand it.
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Scientology as originally a crazed religion in an old science fiction novel. The guy who created the rl cult lifted the whole thing.
It appears that their Microsoft IIS box is a little stressed this morning...
Apr 12 09:45:36 http Rx: HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Apr 12 09:45:36 Rx: http://www.herbalife.com/
Apr 12 09:45:36 Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Apr 12 09:45:36 Content-Location: http://www.herbalife.com/index.html
Apr 12 09:45:36 Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2002 13:46:02 GMT
Apr 12 09:45:36 Content-Type: text/html
Apr 12 09:45:36 Accept-Ranges: bytes
Apr 12 09:45:36 Last-Modified: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 01:09:34 GMT
Apr 12 09:45:36 ETag: "18e8a14b619dc11:941"
Apr 12 09:45:36 Content-Length: 1137
I thought about replacing the URL on the signs with http://goatse.cx.
I wonder what that would do for their business.
There is an organization CAUSS - Citizens Against Ugly Street Spam. http://www.CAUSS.org .
These folks are citizen activists who remove street signs across the country. There is lots of information on this site about street spam and how to get rid of it in your community (99% of these signs are illegal in the first place). There are also discussion forums on this site where occasionally you might see the rantings of a street spammer who got their signs "sharked".
AC
The guy I know said it more or less means "I support law enforcement" and that you have to know the right people to come by one. Which reminds me of a sticker I saw on the back of a junker as I was driving south on Wake Forest Rd. where it merges into Capital Blvd. The sticker said
[small]Officer, will this sticker which says[/small]
[huge]I support law enforcement[/huge]
[small]stop you from pulling me over for speeding?[/small]
I've also wondered if the sticker I described is related to the blue square sticker with a yellow = symbol on it.
What is your Slash Rating?
I know it's OT, but...
At the time of posting, the above sig is inc.
Here are the correct lyics to I&S:
"They fight! And bite!
They bite and bite and fight!
Fight fight fight!
Bite, bite, bite!
The Itchy and Scratchy Show!"
Or if you prefer Marge's non-violent version used in "Porch Pals":
"They love! And share!
They love and love and share!
Love love love!
Share share share!
The Itchy and Scratchy Show!"
Zenith windows are scum. Ever get caught in one of their "sequential dialling" sweeps on Sunday morning? This despite registering with the TPS..
*I* always thought the "Lost 30 Pounds" signs were just like the "Lost Black Cat" signs. ;)
:)
I always felt bad for them. I hoped they'd find their 30 pounds. Maybe it's in the pound?
Offtopic and a bit ranty, I know, but...
/. posted the story.
/. provides the space to comment on articles such as this, but when the article itself is eradicated, I mean, WTF? Does this seem right to you? The original news is gone! Granted it *may* be back up in a few days if the server admin hasn't gone broke paying for the sudden surge in bandwidth this month, but still. I wonder how much of a service /. is sometimes when it nukes the content that it tells us we should look at.
Slashdot isn't helping spread news like this when it slashdots the server to the point where the admins TAKE THE PAGES OFF THE 'NET.
I managed to read the first four or so pages of the story from the text that people have posted, but not the ending (i.e. the damn conclusion!).
The site got nuked 5 minutes after
It's be nice if slashdot would mirror the site "just in case". Since now the damn article has been taken off the web and I can't finish reading it.
It's nice that
Anyhoo... if someone knows of a mirror of the second half (page 5+?) of the article please post or send me an email. I'm interested to see how it turned out.
--
The two most comomon types of e-mail spam I receive are the "work from home!" variety, and the ones advertising "hot horny HOUSEWIVES!". I'd always wondered whether there was a *link* between the two... ;-)
This is the text of my original post:
"Anybody remember those 'Where do you want to go today?' billboards? It has a picture of the little hand icon pointing to the 'START' menu.
Somebody shifted the index finger to the right one digit. Heh.
Maybe that's the trick to putting a stop to those signs. When you see a sign that says 'Lose 30 pounds' write a caption under it that says '(English Pounds are worth 2 American Dollars)' "
Somebody modded me down as a troll. I don't see how really. It was on topic, it wasn't inflamatory, as a matter of fact it was a funny story.
If somebody could give me a reasonable explanation about how this could be interpreted as being a troll, I'd be most appreciative. I certainly didn't intend for it to be trollish. If there's something I could do to modify my presentation, it'd help me make sure i"m NOT being a Troll.
"Derp de derp."
Someone has been going around in my area (Irvine, CA) and posting these bright neon stickers that say "SCAM" over the last 4 digits of the phone number, or breaking off the bottom 4 digits. If I ever see them defacing the signs, I'll stop my car and shake their hand.
Netjak.com independent reviews of domestic & import video ga
I also received the following message (to a different internal non-user account) which is probably unrelated but timely:
From: Home Business Lifestyle ellsworthtoohey29@workfromhomenewsletter.com
Doing a Google on Tyree and "Work from Home" brought up this link which looks completely different and has a different voicemail message. However it has they same reference to a $39.95 Home Decision Kit. I wonder? don't you?Garth
Team Karma Whoring