Is Lyoness a scam?

[mvubu]

Dave - you will not find ANY of the "business opp" literature online as all the sign ups include serious Non-Disclosures. You will also not find any counter argument to the basic facts that you can bypass ALL the "shopping" points (because at 1% it would take you 10 lifetimes) and purchase large numbers of board positions (accounting units) in a binary matrix (pyramid turned on its side)

The website they post as an independent review is just marketing spin and full of logical holes at all points. It is hard to keep reading through heaps of pure manure. Lets just touch a few things:
1. Troy Dooley video - he does not do a 180'. He says (and you can check his own site) that that the shopping MIGHT be legit, but the compensation plan is convoluted and MOST LIKELY in breach of the SEC rules. "Their lawyers in the US are working on it"
2. Comparing Google & Microsoft to scams??? Really??
3. Powerful alliances: It seems to be a mehtod they use (like "partnering with great retailers") They take offices in the most expensive office space they can find. They have offices at CliffDekker in Sandton to make them look flash. They have space in the Empire state Building. It proves they like to look important, not that they are legit.
4. Pyramid Scheme: The income disclosure of the business proves that there is nearly NO shopping. In the US last year - 99.6% of lyoness members averaged $0.38 in income. 38 CENTS!!! The next 0.4% made a little and the top .01% made heaps.
If shopping drove the revenue it would look very different. The money is made from "accounting units" created when people "make down payments on future purchases" (Read INVEST). Once that happens, the numbers start rolling up the chain.
5. High corporate profile: You mean like Fedentia, Enron and many many others. The ability to "give away" money is not proof of a legitimate business. The biggest gangsters are always great benefactors to the poor in their own neighborhoods... it helps people tolerate the crime they commit.
6. Certification : NONE of those certifications have ANYTHING to do with the business & money flow in the "premium member" side of things.
7. "Free cashback card" - as I said, that is the cover. Having sold the concept to small businesses, it needs to generate revenue. The

8. And Lastly... the proof that you can bypass all the shopping is laid out clearly at step 8
In other words, if you had shopped properly through the system for 4 years, and spent around $100,000 on gas or groceries etc you would have generated around 40 shopping units with a potential payout value of $27,000 in profit share.
So Lyoness say, "We know you are going to need to buy food and fuel for the next 4 years, so rather than having to wait that long to benefit from the Lyoness model, why not pay a 'deposit' (down-payment) on those future purchase. That way you can get the LEVERAGE TODAY of years worth of shopping.

How can they do this?

Well remember the $3000 represents the CASH-BACK the merchants would have given Lyoness to distribute if you had actually spent around $100,000 (at a 3% merchant)
So to the Lyoness accounting program it is EXACTLY THE SAME as if you had actually spent the $100,000.


What mattered most to me was that THE MONEY WAS REAL and genuinely represented shopping.



Having called the main people at both Woolies and PnP, I can assure you that NONE of the BS explanations that have been said here are true.
Woolworths were pissed off that there gift cards where effectively being resold at a profit AND that Lyoness referred multiple times in their sales and marketing literature as having being "vetted" by Woolies. The reality is that without this perceived OK from big names, Lyoness would have zero credibility.
PnP gave me an almost identical answer.
And in case you are wondering about how hard it is to by bulk gift cards - http://www.picknpay.co.za/picknpay/c...Detail&pid=699
>R20k = 2.5%
>R50k = 5%
PnP had NO idea who is getting these cards once they leave HQ and had not vetted anything.

Walmart in the USA - GONE, for the same reason.




SARS - they do not vetted business practices, they collect taxes. In fact they will tax criminal activity of they can... just look at the case history of crime lords not declaring income.
Treasury - Proof please.
SARB - they will eventually be the ones who shut this down, when they wake up to the fact. Unfortunately they tend arrive too late to pick up the pieces when the numbers get out of hand. I would like to see the "approval" they gave this scheme.


Let me make myself clear again - the shopping is the ruse... it is NOT where the money is made. OnePilot knows that, as does every other salesman of this scam.
The money is made when you fill you board, have people below fill their board and people below them fill their board. Once that happens, the money flows up that chain and that my friends is a pure basic, garden variety PYRAMID SCHEME.
Sure 5% of the members actually do it, but from Lyoness's own numbers reported in the Sunday Times, if 5% of the 30,000 claimed members paid in, that has generated R30,000,000 in "downpayments for future purchases" on which revenue has been earned.
The law has already been broken here.








Here is the best explanation, in easy to follow steps,
Read the comments section too as you will find well reasoned explanations.

1. http://behindmlm.com/companies/lyone...tment-returns/
2. http://behindmlm.com/companies/lyone...ment-analysis/


And here you have the Austrian press going at them with the head corruption investigator calling them directly "an illegal pyramid scheme"
http://behindmlm.com/companies/lyone...ment-analysis/

No whilst this guy is a bit muddled, the Dragons in Canada can cut through the BS in one quick step:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrwwC6KuS7Y