Subject: my experience so farI am also an independent beauty consultant but from my understanding you can return your inventory at any time for a 90% refund. I'm sorry if you feel you got conned into buying inventory, nobody held a gun to my head. It is also not possible to buy your way into directorship. Giving negative and incorrect information about Mary Kay can be considered slander. I think it's a bit strange that you are slamming the company left and right yet still selling the product. I'm curious to know if you are still active in the company. Sorry again to hear about your negative experience, Mary Kay has changed my life for the better and I'm am thankful the opportunity came into my life
signed
Silly Sally
- 30 Apr 2005
First, let's talk about that 90% refund.
My impression is that this doesn't tend to get mentioned all that much... if you can believe your director, there's not much chance you'll need to rely on it.
Besides, if you're stuck with $2000 of inventory, you're still out $200... and that doesn't count the stuff they won't issue a refund on. That doesn't count all the deductions they make. That doesn't count your time and it doesn't count all sorts of other out-of-pocket costs. It doesn't count the impact on your self-esteem after you make this kind of a mental investment and then fail at it. The 90% refund policy doesn't cover any of those.
Mary Kay offers that only because it's required as a condition of membership in the Direct Selling Association (DSA). Mary Kay's policy is as restrictive as is possible under the DSA rules. On top of that, once you exercise that option, you give up your right to come back into Mary Kay, so for those silly enough to have second thoughts about quitting, it's even less appealing.
My general point is, though, that if Mary Kay works for you, you won't have any reason to exercise that option, and if Mary Kay doesn't work for you, you will still be sorry you went into Mary Kay. They could be more liberal about it, and if this opportunity is as great as all the pink ladies make it out to be, they would hardly ever get any claims about it.
Which leads us to an interesting inference: The only reason to have a restrictive refund policy is that a more liberal refund policy would cost them significnatly more money. There would be more people asking for refunds and the refunds would be bigger. Thus, we can infer from ther own policies that the claims that Mary Kay has a wonderful career opportunity are highly exaggerated.
Next, let's talk about slander... or more generally, defamation.
Here's what they say about this at http://freeadvice.com/ :
In order to prove defamation, you have to be able to prove that what was said or written about you was false. If the information is true, or if you consented to publication of the material, you will not have a case. However, you may bring an defamatory action if the comments are so reprehensible and false that they affect your reputation in the community or cast aspersions on you.
As indicated above, under U.S. law, truth is an absolute defense against defamation. Opinion isn't subject to defamation. So pick your choice, either I'm telling the truth or I'm stating my opinion. In any case, as the courts would say, you don't have any standing. Why should you concern yourself with the possibility that I'm exposing myself to a defamation lawsuit, other than to try and scare me away from telling the truth and/or giving my honest opinion?
EliMantel - 30 Apr 2005
The 90% refund policy is the DSA's attempt to convince the legal world (and the rest of us) that its member companies don't do frontloading. We are supposed to think, why would they push unneeded inventory, just to have it returned? The policy seems to achieve its goal (putting out the right PR), but in fact it does little to discouarage frontloading. Mary Kay (for example) offers incentive "gifts" and "prizes" for large inventory orders (and for other large orders as well.) Then, when a consultant goes to return her unwanted inventory, and actually reads the policy, she finds out that the cost of the incentives (so-called free gifts) is deducted from the amount she gets back when she returns her inventory. (So you see, the ordering incentives work to discourage returns as well as encourage excessive ordering.) In addition, the starter kit, which her recruiters made sure to tell her she could return for 90%, actually can't be returned if it was used (and who that was actually trying to "work the business" would not have used it?) So there's another $100 she spent and can't get back. Also, she must pay to have her items shipped back for the return, and many of them are heavy -- particularly the most expensive items (perfumes in glass bottles.) Oh, yes, and it's absolutely not true that she can return her inventory AT ANY TIME. She can only return, according to the policy, items that have been purchased within the past 12 months. And if she waits until 2 weeks before the 12 months before sending to the company for the form she's supposed to fill out, she will not get it in time to send the products and have them arrive before the 12 months are up.
All of this may lead a discouraged consultant to feel she may be better off hanging onto her products and trying to sell them at discount, use them as gifts... whatever. By the time she realizes even that won't work for a lot of the stuff she has on her shelves, it's too late. However, what she should realize is that MK only deducts (because it's all that's allowed) what the incentive "gifts" cost them, and that's not much at all. And the cost of shipping is still small compared to what she gets back from the return. And she can return product up to the value of what she ordered in the last 12 months, so even if she had things from 15 months ago initial inventory that were unmovable, but recently ordered things that she actually sold, she can return the old unmovable items (up to the value of what she purchased in the past year.) Also, it's important to realize that any money you spend on products (even though you bought them because you were really trying to build your business) is NOT tax deductible if those products are sitting in your basement. They must be either sold, used as demos, or discarded before you can take their cost as a business expense. If you do the product return, then you have proof that you discarded the products, and whatever you spent that you didn't get back should be deductible.
RachelSuddeth - 02 May 2005
Laura Ryan
http://www.thepinkingshears.org
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