I currently am a Marketing Executive with Melaleuca. SO, I have INSIDE information as to the issues that consumers will experience if they get involved with this company. Isn't filing a report against my own company cutting my own throat??? YES it is. But I care more about children and consumer safety than I do about money and THAT is what makes me and my business different than all other Melaleuca Representatives.
Let me start by explaining I tried desperately to bring these issues I'm about to tell you, the public, to Melaleuca. When my complaints about false representations of product safety and the false claim of "non-toxicity" of the products fell on deaf ears, I filed a Better Business Bureau Report. Please read what my report stated word for word here:
BBB CASE#: 90055279
I am a Marketing Executive of Melaleuca and a customer. The products are good products for the most part and I am happy to enjoy the partnership with Melaleuca as a ME. It makes me sad that I have tried to address this issue with my marketing team but have been unable to do so up to this point. The issue I have is with the FALSE information that SOME of the representatives of Melaleuca are perpetuating about the Melaleuca product. 1) According to the Product Line @ Melaleuca, the products are NOT NON-TOXIC. There are clearn warnings to consumers about the ingestion of the products on the labels but SOME representatives, in efforts to sell memberships, claim that the product is NON-TOXIC and have even gone to far as to dip their fingers in the Sol-U-Mel solution and put that solution in their mouth, giving the clearn implication that this product is NOT TOXIC or hazardous to the health of children or adults if ingested. (I have names to supply of who has done this if needed.) 2) Just recently I was sent an add asking "Is Melaleuca REALLY Safer and Cost Competivie?" where the add went on to describe the Poison Control warning on the CREST toothpaste label and then compared the Melaleuca Whitening Toothpaste to the Crest and said "... No Scary Warning label!" The fact is that this add is a misrepresenation, one of MANY that I have witnessed by other Representatives, and leads consumers to believe that there are NO warning labels on the Melaleuca tooth paste.in fact, on the MelaPals tooth paste, which is the children's tooth paste, there is the EXACT poison warning label as was sited on the CREST label and claimed to NOT be on the Melaleuca toothpaste. The whitening tooth paste does in FACT have a warning to keep away from children under the age of 6 and contains Fluoride which IS a toxin. Please note that this article (which I will provide to the BBB if requested) was NOT an article JUST about tooth paste. It was an article about Melaleuca in general and was a clear attempt to communicate that Melaleuca is a SAFE product as compared to other name brand products like Crest. My problem with this most recent "misleading add/statement" about Melaleuca, is that I represent this company too and it seems to me that there are NO checks and balances in line at the corporate level to make sure that the products are represented acturately and truthfully. My complaint here is to encourage Melaleuca to REQUIRE ALL independant representatives to ACCURATELY represent the TRUTH about the products in their attempts to sell memberships. My reputation as a fellow marketing executive is challenged when other representatives MISLEAD and provide FALSE information about the products Melaleuca offers. Again, Melaleuca does offer GREAT products however, these products ARE IN FACT a POISON risk to children IF INGESTED. That is an undisputed FACT that those representatives in my up-line seem to ignore no matter how much I try to encourage them to share the truth about the products instead of misleading and providing inaccurate claims about the product's safety. My concern is PRIMARILY for the safety of consumers, CHILDREN primarily, AND for my reputation as a truthful represenative of the Melaleuca product.integrity is EVERYTHING to me. I do believe that Melaleuca desires to be a company of integrity and that is why I am bringing this serious issue to light by way of this BBB complaint. I hope that serious changes will occur in the policy of what information independant marketing representatives can share about the TRUTH about the Melaleuca product. Be in noted as well, that I have been accused of "not believing in the company" because I point out these issues to my up-line. That is simply NOT true. I am a customer and I continue to share the TRUTH about these great products and will continue to sign up members. Only difference is that my members will know the TRUTH about the product SAFETY.
Desired Resolution:
I would like a written response from Melaleuca addressing this serious issue I have brought to light. I would like Melaleuca to provide to me actions will be taken to assure that the TRUTH about product safety is shared HONESTLY and not in a misleading way to unaware, trusting consumers. I would also like Melaleuca to admit that SOME of their representatives have, and continue to, actively and purposefully misrepresented the products safety claims dispite the CLEAR labels on the products THEY IN FACT MOST LIKELY HAVE IN THEIR OWN HOMES which would make it VERY easy for these individuals to verify information about product safety before mass mailing false information about the products. Basically, I would like to know what changes will be made to insure that this practice of false advertising by independant represenatives of Melaleuca will be stopped and that these individuals will be held accountable for propagating these false claims of "product safety" that, in my opinion, are putting children in harms way.
To this complaint filed with the BBB I received the following BABBLE from Melaleuca Corporate.
Melaleuca Response was given after 2nd Request from the BBB:
September 7
Better Business Bureau
Attn: Vickey
(ROR removed because of security purposes)
Re: Kathy
To Vickey:
Recently, we received a letter from your office regarding a concern with Kathy P.
Thank you for bringing this to our attention.
In Kathy's letter to the Better Business Bureau she stated that some of the Marketing Executives are giving out false information regarding the products. This is not the way our business should be conducted and appreciates you keeping us informed. We take these matters very seriously and will look into this further.
If Kathy has any further questions, she may contact Melaleuca's Customer Assistance Department at 1-800-742-3653.
Sincerely,
Andrea Johnson
Vice President of Business Development
AJ/ma
MY consumer complaints
After I received this response from Melaleuca, I then received a hostile phone call from Rachelle F, a person in my upline, telling me that she wanted to talk to me about this BBB report that I filed. I did not have time to talk but she would NOT take no for an answer. I had to get down right firm with her to tell her that I would call her back before the end of the month since she was demanding a precise time/date for my call back which I could not give due to the fact that I was moving. Rachelle didn't like that I couldn't talk to her and became very agitated with me. I ended the phone call and decided to email Rachelle instead of getting into a shouting match with her. She was obviously VERY unhappy with me. Here is the email that I sent to her:
Rachelle,
What is there really to resolve between you and I? The facts that I have made the BBB aware of TRUE and are not just limited to our team. I have heard from many individuals that have been presented Melaleuca that the "Sol-U-Mel finger in the mouth" demonstration has been and is continuing to be used by many many marketing people. I still hear over and again how Melaleuca is NON-Toxic, which it is not. I'm sorry, but you knew full well what is on the labels of the Melaleuca toothpaste lbefore sending out that email add and if you didn't shame on you for not looking at your own product labels before claiming their safety. What I hear from the Business Department is that "they cannot control independant marketing people and what they say." Well that to me is a serious problem and my BBB complaint was meant to address the lack of checks and balances at the corporate level. I certainly do not need to forward to you any further issues with integrity about the product because YOU would already know what lies have been perpetuated. At the Panera Bread presentations I constantly heard how the Melaleuca products, as compared to products like Draino, are safe and even are suggested to be not a hazard to children. When I pointed out that the Melaleuca labels have the SAME poison control warnings, I am hushed and told that I shouldn't question the products during some one else's presentation. I have NEVER once been received well by this group when pointing out these issues with truthful presentations and certainly your tone of voice on the phone is consistant with that fact. I have NO desire to get into a shouting match argument with anyone and so I have decided to email instead. As you may be aware, the BBB has closed the complaint and has done NOTHING to assure me that Melaleuca Corporate will be making changes to the standards their independant Marketing people will be held to. To me, the issue still exists and more people are being told false information about the product.in fact, I called the Product line myself and they informed me of all this information and expressed frustration at KNOWING the reps give false information about the product's safety and continue to lie about the products claiming they are "Non-Toxic" when in fact the product line infactically denies they are non-toxic. They are "Non-Carcinogenic" according to the product line and though I have shared this fact from this companies own product line nothing has been done to change the presentations.in Melaleuca's own advertising they use the term "SAFER" not "SAFE." That is the truth. Melaleuca's own labels still contain poison control warnings and child safety warnings. What are you going to do about the fact that hundreds of people who are using the products under this team's false claims of non-toxicity and child safe are still not in the know about the truth of the products they bought into? During my presentation I was told that none of the products contain child safety caps because they were "not needed" because the products were safe for children to ingest! This is NOT true. If you want me to be happy on this team then you will address each of these issues that I have proven to you and admit misleading people and explain to me how you are going to not only correct this information with existing customers who are under the false impressions of safety about the product but you will inform of what changes will be made to all future presentations about product FACTS and also explain to me how people will be held accountable for perpetuating lies about the products as have been spread and continue to be spread to this day.
Rachelle, I am not angry. I am not "upset." I am a truthful person and I am going about my business from a business point of view, NOT a personal or emotional point of view. These are FACTS that I am presenting to you. There is nothing relational or emotional that needs to be dealt with here. I do not wish for your "concern" about me being "upset." I wish for Melaleuca to address the FACTS that I am presenting and respond accordingly and directly. You said you agree with "the majority" of my statements. Which statements do you not agree with? Furthermore, I am not going to get into a "plausible deniability" argument with you. You know what your tone was with me and you also know what you said. Please do not imply that there was a misunderstanding. There was not. You were clearly pushing me to commit to a time when I very kindly explained to you that I didn't have my calendar and would call you back when I could. I was NOT hesitant to talk with you. I told you that it wasn't a good time for me and told you I would call you back. Nothing negative in that Rachelle.
I agree with what you said about email. However, I believe that FACTS are best exchanged in written form. As a business person, I'm sure you can put aside any emotions and just deal with the facts that I am presenting.
The issue here is NOT ME. I am NOT the problem. The problem has been clearly stated and has YET to be addressed to my satisfaction.
I would like our correspondence to be in writing.
Kathy
To these emails I have heard NO response from Rachelle or Melaleuca Corporate.instead, I found out by accident that my membership into my business group was deactivated in retaliation for my efforts to expose the deceitful practices of the Representatives on my business team, Rachelle being one of the High level Representatives on the team making thousands of dollars by telling people lies about the products. She claims that she and the other team members for Melaleuca are people of integrity but act with retaliation when some one like me tries to help them to see that they are making false claims about the products. I maintain that I am not the problem. That Melaleuca is the problem. Shame of the BBB for not holding Melaleuca responsible for their false advertising and false claims of product safety.
Kathy
Oswego, Illinois
U.S.A.
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