I think there's a major difference between Cutco and a pyramid scheme. Cutco may hype shit up, but it's not illegal and hasn't stayed in business by scamming people. I've never worked for them, but there's an inherent difference between being an independent contractor who has to buy inventory ahead of time, and a scam that's based on delayed cash flow. Focus: The guys with a cooler full of meat in the back of their truck they have to "offload before their boss gets mad for not hitting quota". I didn't buy the bit at all, but wanted to try their product in case it was of higher quality than the grocery store. It ended up costing more, and tasting like horse meat. No thanks, never again.
The white van scam, also called the speaker scam. What happens is that you're walking back to your car and along the way you see two guys in a white van and 1 outside of it. The one outside waves you down and tells you that they managed to get a shipment of very nice, expensive speakers because "something happened while they were in transit" so they need to get rid of them quickly. So with the implicit assumption of the speakers being stolen they then show you the msrp on the box which is well over 3,000 dollars and then proceed to then show you a magazine article in which the speakers are featured in, showing the same price as the msrp. They offer you the whole set for only around 300 dollars and you walk away feeling pretty smug about yourself. That is until you open the box and plug them in; the sound quality you get from them is about the same you would get if you bought 20 dollar speaker system from walmart. This happened to two friends of mine at different times in the same location. One took it as a lesson learned. The other plans to wait for them to finish their circuit of the city and return back to were they sold him the speakers and then proceed to forcefully take back his cash. Hopefully I can talk some sense into him.
Funny story about that one. Something similar happened to a friend of mine when he was in NYC except it was DJ equipment, not speakers, and he was wise to the scam. What happened was the deal was $250 for DJ equipment that was supposedly worth $600. My friend told the guys selling it that he had a $900 paycheck he was on his way to deposit at the bank, but would instead cash it to buy the equipment. However he told them that he didnt have enough money in his account to cover cashing the check and he told them that if they gave him $20 he would deposit it and come back with the $600 bucks cash to buy the DJ stuff. They gave him the $20 and he just kept walking.
Tell him to bring a couple friends. The same thing happened to me, once in my school parking lot (I even fell for it, I went back inside to grab cash from the ATM, but by the time I got back the security guards chased them off). The second time I was just pulling into Bass Pro Shops in Vaughan with my girlfriend, cousin and brother, (My brother and cousin followed me in my brothers truck) and I seen a guy about to give one of the scammers a wad of cash. I walk over to make sure what was going on and I told the guy he was getting scammed. The scammer didnt like that so he started screaming to "mind my own fucking buisness" and got in my face. I hauled off and smashed him in the face with everything I had and when he fell down I kicked him in the head with my steel toed boots*. All of a sudden two more guys (scammers buddys) came out from nowhere. I was about to get the shit kicking of a life time, until my brother and cousin pulled in. We just exchanged words and they picked up their buddy, put him in the van and took off. When I called the cops to report what happened they said it wasnt the first time someone has gotten jumped by two more guys. The cop on the phone said that the first two scammers approach usually just one or two guys (they stay away from groups), lay down the speech and hope they sell the speakers. The cop also said another car follows the van and stays back incase people get physical, so tell your friend to be careful if he goes to learn the scammers a lesson. *Dont say shit, Im not a bitch, I just kicked him in the head when he was down because; a) hes a worthless piece of shit, and b) because I figured the driver would jump out to help his friend.
These fuckers used to do the rounds here, but I haven't seen them in a while. They were all about the aggressive sell. I've had them pull up beside me at 60mph on the highway and try and get me to roll my window down so they can give me the sales pitch. I've also had them approach me while I'm getting gas at the pump.
I sold Cutco for a little while. During those three months, I hocked $15K in quality cutlery, silverware, garden tools, and bbq sets. Of that, I went home with around four grand, which wasn't bad. Luckily, I had friends who had done it before, so I knew what I was getting into before I took the plunge. Cutco is one of those things where it requires a special kind of person to really appreciate it. Most of those people are mildly insane, some are straight-up sociopaths. The majority of Cutco's work force is high school kids who don't know any better and get sucked in by the manager's words during the "interview" (which, having done interviews and sat in on the hiring process, is really just "that kid seemed cool" and "yeah, the hot chick is totally hired"). They make you feel like you're advancing with special rewards and designations, giving the illusion of upward progression within the company. I think I left as a "Senior Sales Associate." The only benefit to the tiered advancements was that your commission rose each time as well. At the end I was making 30%. The problem with Cutco is that everyone is so gloriously full of shit and almost entirely unaware--like they've been brainwashed by all the Cutcoisms that have been beaten into their brains and all they can talk about is Cutco. While I was just trying to make a few bucks, knowing full well that it would never progress beyond that summer, I watched as other people started circling the drain. The transformation was incredible and the whole scene started feeling like a cult. You'd walk into the office and the place that was once filled with people talking about sports or vacations or whatever, turned into this homogeneous machine of knife-wielding lunatics. I'm sure they began blinking in unison shortly after I left. New people would come in for interviews and they would swarm in and say, "Oh, this place is perfect for you. We have so much fun and we make a ton of money. Why, Zack over there sold $30K in two weeks and went home with 10 grand in his pocket (true story, by the way)." Their eyes light up, they dream of the ten thousand dollar paycheck, and they walk right in. To sum it up, Cutco is an entire industry built on the naivety of its sales staff. If you're good enough, you can make some money along the way, but you'd better be smart enough to get out before they pour the Kool-aid.
NASE: National Association of Self Employed. They position themselves as the AARP for self-employed folks, sell you a membership (multi-levels, which should set off your BS antenna right away) promising discounts on this and that. The "organization" was started and funded by a company called UICI, United Insurance Companies, Inc., as a means of generating sales leads in order to sell them health insurance (and now, life insurance as well). I get a kick out of their website's "Research" section. Putting a poll on your website and posting the results isn't exactly "research." Oh, and Catholicism. "Be sure to attend St. Lolita's Annual Plenary Indulgences and Bake Sale this Saturday, from 9 am to 4 pm. Knock 25 years off Grandpa's stretch in Purgatory and bring a pound cake home to boot!"
A few years ago a developer went around seeking cash to build a "no frills" ski resort on a local mountain. The mountain had a ski resort back in the 60's/70's that went defunct but the majority of the trails are still passable and I often hike-ski there in the winter. The interesting thing is that the entire mountain and surrounding acreage had been purchased by the two towns that it's forests resided in the year before. The towns put it into a trust and it's basically a nature preserve. This wasn't secret knowledge yet somehow this gentleman convinced a variety of business owners to fork over around $500k. This guy convinced them by actively logging out a few of the trails (which he had no permit for but who asks questions in a small town) and sharing hand drawn "plans" for his small lodge and parking areas. The owners of a ski shop I do side job tuning for handed over $150k between the two partners that own it. Suckers!
I've recently had to deal with a yellow pages scam that I'm not sure is quite over. Over the past couple years I've been getting phone calls from friendly sounding Indian (Or Pakistani, I can't always tell from the accent) people asking if I would like to update the address in my free online yellow pages ad. I've heard about these scams before so most of the time I pretend that the phone signal is weak and hang up or tell them to call back later. Recently I got a call but this time it was to cancel my free listing that I never signed up for in the first place. The caller informed me that canceling my listing would mean that they would never call again but I would have to pay $479. I replied by saying that I wasn't going to pay for anything since I never signed up for for their service and while the caller did get a little upset, she eventually hung up the phone. After doing a bit more reading on the subject it seems that there's a fair chance that they might try to call again and might even be ballsy enough to threaten me with collections. I doubt they'd go though with it though so I'll probably continue my policy of ignoring/denying everything unless things escalate.