Serious Warning about Reliv

The following article was copied from http://relivnomore.blogspot.com. To read the full article please visit their blog at the address above.

The following Correspondence includes letters and emails following up to Reliv's harsh and injudicious Termination of dedicated & hard working distributors, Presidential Bronze Ambassadors, Rod & Anita Swift, stripping them of their million dollar distributorship, including all Rank Advancements, all Level Positions & Entitlements, their entire organization including personally sponsored distributors and downline hierarchy, the cancellation of all monthly Generation Royalties (lifelong residual earnings per Reliv's Compensation Plan, as well as the removal of all future bonus pay).

Grave Concerns Regarding
Reliv's Chosen Path

Like many distributors before us, we've had our share of concerns with respect to countless product changes (whether known or unknown), the addition of synthetic ingredients, the inclusion of arguably dubious artificial sweeteners and other man-made chemical or non-natural flavoring agents. Such unannounced, closed-door product tinkering has not helped, but hindered our efforts to effectively promote Reliv products in recent years, plaguing us with an increasing distributor (and customer) attrition rate that Anita and I found more and more difficult to keep up with. We have witnessed the exodus of many key Reliv distributors crossline to us, and watched everyone new and old, struggle just to maintain the status-quo. The steady decline of our own income throughout 2008 glaringly lends itself to the fact that Reliv's profits were down company-wide, by 40% in the 3rd quarter [3Q/08] which falls in direct proportion to the decline in sponsoring and rising attrition experienced by the majority of active distributors still trying to build a profitable distribution network.

Last summer around mid July, we became so alarmed by the early warning signs that trouble is on the horizon for Reliv that we decided to write a somber letter to our up-line, John & Jacquie Hayes (outlining the same four key-points we later wrote to Reliv CEO, Bob Montgomery) in which we documented our concern over these alarming trends, possible causes and potential solutions. At this time, Anita and I felt compelled to include Mr. Montgomery in our missives and also convey to him what we were experiencing in the field. With Reliv's 20th Anniversary Conference celebration drawing near, we felt it would be more appropriate to wait until after all the festivities before sending our letter to Bob in order to thwart any dampening of spirits. After all, weren't we promised something BIG that would rejuvenate our floundering businesses to be announced on stage for all Conference Attendees? Weren't we supposed to see upwards of 20,000 or more cheering distributors at the big 20th Anniversary Reliv bash? Well, as so many of us already know, this big conference was a total bust. "Auto Ship" was Corporate's 'Bright Idea' to fix dismal quarterly sales, with Reliv attracting an equally dismal attendance count of a paltry 5,000 participants for its Big 20th Year Birthday Celebration in St. Louis. On his organizational call the following Monday morning, our upline John Hayes' only remark regarding the conference was, "I'm not satisfied with where Reliv is, at this point."

After some sleepless nights following conference (which many say felt more like a memorial service) Anita and I realized we could no longer, in-good faith nor conscience, continue representing Reliv in the capacity we'd served as Ambassadors. Grieving over what appeared to us like a warning sign of things to come looming ever closer to our beloved Reliv, the decision to pull away from our leadership position was not an easy one, and writing a letter of resignation to Bob even more difficult.

From the time I had sent Bob our 'Signature Delivery Certified' letter, an entire month passed without a response from anyone, Bob notwithstanding. In light of Reliv's failure to respond in a timely or respectful fashion, I wrote a follow up letter to remind Bob (or anybody at Corporate for that matter) that Anita and I still had not received an acknowledgment from him, aside from the certified postal confirmation allegedly signed by Bob when he took receipt of my letter. So Anita and I waited with earnest patience once again in hopes our request would be received, and again found ourselves waited some more... And more... And still we waited... A week, then two weeks had passed and still not a peep from anyone, which began to put us in an awkward position, feeling marginalized if not a little neglected, our resignation request pending indefinitely or outright forgotten.

Suddenly, after two and a half weeks (6 1/2 weeks total), it happened, we got a call... only it wasn't exactly the call we expected from Bob or Steve Hastings or somebody at Corporate, it was our own downline, a frontline Ambassador asking us if the rumors were true that Anita and I had resigned as Reliv Ambassadors? The feeling of betrayal was undeniable, like we'd just crashed into some hidden Reliv iceberg in realization of what had seemingly just occurred without our knowing... Reliv Corporate had gone behind our backs and called several key people (but not us) in our organization, informing them of our resignation from Reliv and warning them to stay away and sever all further ties with us, indicating we might (false) be secretly planning to recruit them into a more profitable competing company outside of Reliv. (We had already been working our new network marking venture for almost two consecutive months prior to this and not a single distributor in our entire organization had ever complained we had mentioned nor tried to sponsor them into some other business!) Reliv's subterfuge and subsequent paranoid slander is disturbingly unethical, if not utterly mystifying to Anita and myself.

The very next day we finally get the response we had expected 6 weeks sooner. It was a rather harsh and hastily written e-mail from Reliv CEO, Bob Montgomery. He briefly acknowledged our resignation, stating he would personally handle our speedy removal as Ambassadors from Reliv. Bob went on to say that if a distributor's business ever falters financially, it is solely the distributor's fault and their fault alone, because Reliv is considered infallible by many and essentially above reproach. No compassion whatsoever to our plight, no concern regarding the issues we brought to light, no.. "I'm sorry these issues are affecting you," no... "What can we do to help change things for the better?" ... not a single iota of regard for distributors needs nor well-being. Just pious warnings and veiled legal threats that he [Bob] would do every thing in his vested power to retain allegiance and ownership of Reliv's property and trade commodity; its legions of contract-bound distributors. Anita and I were saddened to learn Bob's harsh response would be the extent of love and attention we would ever get again from Reliv's Top-Dog. Our praise for six long years of unending hard work and selfless promotion of Reliv and all that it promises. For voicing our concern and offering to open proactive dialog of dwindling incomes and endemic attrition rates, our reward is cruel and unjust back-stabbing, total ex-communication and utter abandonment from the very man who once garnered so much respect from us. Truly we are all witnessing the end of Reliv as we've known it.

With so much conjecture and many baseless remarks, I wrote Bob a follow up email that night, refuting some of his harsh accusations regarding our heartfelt decision to gently withdraw as active Ambassadors (while still maintaining our current level of support to the Reliv community at large.) The next morning, on Oct 1st, Anita gets a call from our up-line friend and esteemed mentor Jacquie Hayes. The two of them share warm, congenial conversation as they have so many times before. Jacquie seems so understanding toward the issues we discuss and knows the importance of supplementing our income, crying and getting mushy and telling us how much she regrets seeing us resign and how much she appreciates having us in her and John's downline. Because Anita has always felt a kinship with Jacquie (this call being no different), she confided in her that we had obliged Alex Rad and Gwen Curtis' request that Anita and I sponsor them (both of whom were no longer active in Reliv) into our new business (and no, we didn't recruit them, as some false rumors allege, both Alex and Gwen asked us at different times if we would be willing to sponsor them, so we obliged their wishes) Jacquie warned us to be careful saying, "You know Reliv policies."

Strangely, on Oct 1st, that very same day, our Reliv Distributorship was Terminated, only hours after Jacquie's call. Of course, we would not be made aware of this news for almost a month! In fact, we heard nothing from anyone following Jacquie's call. Our nearest active upline Ambassador, Janet Brewer, called us on Oct 26th to inform us we were no longer showing up in her Reliv downline organizer?! That was the first indicator that we had possibly been terminated. Of course once again, nobody from Reliv Corporate bothered to lift a finger and give Anita and I a clue of this shocking news, deciding instead to leave us virtually in the dark regarding the status of our own business for an additional 20 days.

Our only direct communiqué from Reliv was a solitary letter of Termination, which we found amidst a pile of other mixed mail in our rural mail drop upon returning from our annual Hawaii trip, November 6th. Anita managed to find a generic boilerplate e-mail from Reliv Compliance on her laptop regarding the Termination, I guess in case we didn't get the surface letter. We found no messages on our answering machine from Reliv either, no condolences, no farewells, no advanced nor prior notices of an impending banishment nor reason thereof. Yes, there you have it Boys and Girls, that's the way you're treated by Reliv International if you care enough about integrity and morals to stand up and make waves or help promote the best-interests of the people through better products; you get silenced, shunned, and your check gets shafted, all in one day!

With all that was said and done over the course of this recently concluded fiasco, Anita and I are still thankful for what the Reliv opportunity provided us these past several years. Not only did it give us an opportunity to learn and experience many awesome things, it helped us earn an income while strengthening our character and providing us a way to meet each of you, now part of our extended family, which has proven time and again as the best possible blessing God could have ever given us during our Reliv career. We also want you to know that we harbor no lingering resentments toward Bob and Reliv for the stinging blows so harshly dealt us, because a scorpion does what scorpions do, they cannot behave any other way than what's in their nature. Anita and I are just sorry that we were in no way, shape or form, successful in opening Reliv's eyes to what we felt were (and still are) critical areas needing deadly serious attention and solutions for, in order to help ensure that each Distributor, whether new or old, gets a chance to experience and achieve the same levels of success Anita and I did. Sadly, Reliv's hidden agenda for its commodity of walking billboards shall remain a mystery...

In the end, Anita and I are both eternally thankful that Reliv has chosen to turn its back on us by Terminating our Distributorship and income altogether because its smoother sailing now as we chart a new course for success and so much more satisfying than the outdated square-peg system Reliv tried to force us to follow. And while we're happily gaining momentum in our exciting new business, we cannot deny the fact that we loved Reliv a lot. In fact our dedication was so strong, we would have probably went on futilely wasting endless time and energy, sounding the call in attempts to keep Reliv's products wholesome and begging Corporate to please join the Internet Age before profits and retention crumbles another 40%. Now after having just read the ingredient label on the newest product 'GlucAffect,' we can clearly see that Reliv isn't really all that concerned with keeping the products as "Squeaky Clean," as they are cleaning the mirror-finish floors the products themselves are manufactured on.

Bob has often plagiarized the famous Zig Ziglar line, "If you help enough people get what they want, you will get everything you want." We have found that when given a choice, people prefer the tasty benefits of all natural Healthy Chocolate 10-to-1 over synthetically infused, chemically sweetened, artificially flavored GMO soy powder, and with similar health results through consistent daily use. Anita and I are making a ton of money as our momentum explodes marketing online and off, and we're having the time of our lives offering people that choice.


Rod & Anita Swift


To read the actually letters sent to and from Reliv please visit, http://www.relivnomore.blogspot.com/