Lyoness “country packages”: a deception and a marketing lie instead of real expansion

Due to its complexity, the elaborate Lyoness system is hard to understand. Many Lyoness members were lured in with the “country packages”, in which the prospect was held out to members of being able to achieve large profits in “new” markets.

The capital elicited from members would allegedly finance advertising campaigns – and therefore the acquisition of additional members – in the new countries. As a quid pro quo, members were promised they would be assigned direct future clients in these “boom markets” and for the rest of their lives would earn a profit from the purchases (read: advance payments) made by the new members assigned to them. But unfortunately, these promises never came true. Advance payments from the members were never used to build up new markets. Instead, a branch (virtual office) was opened up for appearance’s sake, or – as in India – no “buying syndicate” was founded.

Many Lyoness members have fallen into these deceptive traps: They were promised that the payments would be used to raise capital for Lyoness’ expansion in the new countries, but they were in fact used to pay commissions to the members placed at the very top of the pyramid and which included none of the members who had entered the system in recent years.

Based on the principle of “country inauguration”, it is easy to suspect that no one in the Lyoness company management was really interested in installing a loyalty programme with shopping programmes in the new countries. Apparently, no one shied away from hoodwinking their own managers to also keep up the internal appearance that all of this was done in order to expand markets.

One needs to bear this in mind: A company builds a system from within which suggests a “genuine” and serious business model and management, only to allow the workforce to compile documents which can be intentionally misused in sales operations. And whenever the serious façade has been built up so much that one has enough protection to camouflage the illicit model, one places the workforce “on hold”: Advertising campaigns and brand development are discontinued just like member recruitment (only pure shoppers), based on flimsy reasons. And there’s no money for PR and market development in the countries. Only when it gradually becomes conspicuous are measures approved once more. Managers and staff think it’s moving in the right direction, but it’s not at all.

It becomes ever clearer how skilfully everything is being pulled off. And the worst thing is that not only a high number of members, but apparently Lyoness’ own employees, are being deceived and lied to.