Is It Works! Global a Scam?

In this review of It Works!, we will be looking at their compensation plan for distributors, rather than the infamous It Works body wraps.

Is It Works! Global a Scam?

• Name: It Works! Global
• Founders: Mark and Cindy Pentecost
• Website name: www.itworks.com
• Price: $99 plus a monthly fee for your website, eSuite It Works access and Connect App.
• Overall Rank: 10 / 100

It Works! Global Overview

It Works! Global is a beauty and nutrition company with their Headquarters in Florida, and offices in Ireland and South Korea. The business hierarchy is a typical Multi Level Marketing with complicated compensation plans.

They sell health and beauty aids with the most prominent product being the It Works body wraps. It was the first product of the company, which, when used with a large amount of water that is consumed, can firm and tone the body.

Do you need to make a positive change in your life? Would you prefer to work for yourself in a home-based business?

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The actual product

The range includes beauty and personal care, nutrition, keto tea and coffee, weight control, energy and endurance, vegan and apparel and accessories. Also, dietary supplements such as appetite suppressants, hair and nail growth pills and tightening and toning wraps.

You join them either as a Distributor or a Loyal Customer. In order to get any commission, you need to either sell 150 Bonus Volume (BV) worth of products to loyal customers, or you have to set up a monthly auto shipment of 80 BV worth of products.

A distributor has to get “loyal” customers. A loyal customer is somebody who signs an auto shipment and commits to buying one It Works! product, each month for three months. The loyal customer has to pay a £50 cancellation fee if they want to cancel within the three months. After the first three months, products are sent and the customer is charged automatically, unless they cancel.

The retail price of the products are incredibly high. $115 for 4 It Works body wraps, exfoliating peel is $60 and 15 sachets of Skinny Brew Fat-burning coffee will set you back $82.

They offer a discounted price to distributors and loyal customers, really to entice them to join. The discounted prices would be $69 for 4 It Works body wraps, $36 for exfoliating peel and $49 for 15 coffee sachets.

A distributor account is active for a year, as long as you pay the monthly fee. Most people will not buy again after three months because the products are too expensive or they do not work.

Products are not sold in stores, so it is up to the distributors to sell them. This is done through your typical party plan to host a party at home, or through social media. You are supposed to spread the word by using the vast amount of testimonials from customers.

3 Ways to earn money

• Retail customers: these are customers that just buy products from you without a subscription.
• Loyal customers: these are customers that sign an auto shipment for a minimum of 3 months, to get products from you on a monthly basis.
• Distributors: these are customers who buy products from you, but then also sign up to become a distributor and you earn commission on their sales.

Common It Works! Terminology

Bonus Volume = BV – this is the value that is assigned to a product for the purpose of qualification and the calculation of bonuses and commissions.

Personal Bonus Volume = PBV – this is a combination of BV from the distributor’s personal orders and personally enrolled Loyal and Retain customers.

Group Volume = GV – this is the sum of your PBV, plus the PBV of every distributor in your down line.

How much does it Cost to Join?

The Business Builder Kit costs $99 and it includes:

• Your own personalized It Works! website 
• Access to eSuite It Works for real-time reports, customer insights, and more
• A promo code for 10% off It Works! apparel, accessories, or business tools after joining
• Access to tools and apps that allow you to work from your phone anywhere and anytime
• An all-digital starter kit that allows you to start working from home immediately without waiting for anything in the mail!
• 7 Skinny Brew Sample Mailer Credits (there are 3 Single Serving Packets per Sample Mailer) The sample mailer credits are loaded and redeemable in your Connect App and expires 90 days after enrollment.

Please note that your website, access to eSuite It Works and Connect App are free for the first months. Thereafter, you will be charged a monthly subscription fee.

It Works! Global Compensation Plan

You have to become commission qualified before you can start earning commission. So if you ask me is It Works Global a scam? The mere fact that you have to qualify before you can earn your commission, points to a scam, and I will show it to you in this review of It Works.

If you bought the Business Builder Kit, that would qualify you. If you didn’t, then you need at least 150 Personal Bonus Volume (PBV) and process at least one 80 BV auto shipment. So there are two things to qualify for commissions: 80 BV auto shipment, plus 400 PBV.

According to the company’s income disclosure for 2018, the monthly income for active and non-active distributors, were $173. That would be gross earnings and does not include any expenses or taxes.

So distributors still need to deduct their costs from that. According to It Works, expenses can be several hundreds or even thousands of dollars annually.

The Better Business Bureau currently has an alert for the business and the FTC sent a warning letter to It Works because of misleading posts on their official Facebook page about earnings potential during the corona virus pandemic. So I would be very skeptical about their claims about how much you can earn.

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You earn commission from your own sales and also from the distributors that you recruit. You cannot progress and achieve a higher level, if you are not recruiting and buidling a down line. Earn 10% commission on the first two levels and 5% enroller bonus on the sales of personally enrolled Distributors and Loyal Customers.

To earn more commission, you have to promote to a higher rank. Monthly commissions are calculated at the end of the calendar month and paid on the 15th of the following month.

What is a Leg? each distributor on your first level, represents a separate leg in your team. Legs grow as your own recruits start building their own down line. A qualified leg has at least 400 total GV coming from anywhere in the leg.

These are the Ranks: Distributor, Executive, Ruby, Emerald, Diamond, Double Diamond, Triple Diamond, Presidential Diamond and Ambassador Diamond.

Distributor is the first level when you join them and are commission qualified.

Executive rank: to qqualify and be paid as an Executive, you have to complete the same steps as a Distributor, plus have at least 2 qualified legs.

You can now be paid on 3 levels of your down line.

Ruby rank: to qualify and be paid at Ruby level, you must have at least 3 legs, with one of them being an executive leg.

So there is an executive somewhere in the leg. A Ruby can be paid on 4 levels in their down line.

Emerald rank: to qualify and be paid at Emerald level, you have to build and gather 4 qualified legs, with at least 2 of them being ruby legs. You are now eligible to be paid on 5 levels of your down line. You will also earn an additional 2% on the BV, starting with the 6th level.

It now becomes very complicated and you can qualify for leadership bonuses,

Diamond rank: to qualify for the Diamond rank and be paid at that level, you need 5 personally recruited team members.

Three team members need to just qualify, plus, in one leg you need a team member at Emerald level and another team member needs to qualify at Ruby rank.

Once again they must be in separate legs. You will get a $80 bonus for each new qualifying distributor who is in the Diamond Leadership Level sponsor leg. Only 1.58% of distributors reach this level.

Double Diamond rank: to qualify for the Double Diamond rank and be paid at that level, you need 5 personally recruited team members to qualify.

In one leg you need a team member at Emerald level and another team member needs to qualify at Diamond rank.

Once again they must be in separate legs. You will get a $40 bonus for each new qualifying distributor who is in the Double Diamond Level sponsor leg. Only 0.96% of distributors reach this level.

Triple Diamond rank: to qualify for the Triple Diamond rank and be paid at that level, you need 5 personally recruited team members to qualify.

You need 2 team members to qualify at Diamond level and another team member needs to qualify at Double Diamond rank.

Once again they must be in separate legs. You will get a $15 bonus for each new qualifying distributor who is in the Triple Diamond Level sponsor leg. Only 0.33% of distributors reach this level.

Presidential Diamond rank: to qualify for the Presidential Diamond rank and be paid at that level, you need 5 personally recruited team members to qualify.

You need 2 team members to qualify at Diamond level, another team member needs to qualify at Double Diamond rank, and an additional team member needs to qualify at Triple Diamond level.

Once again they must be in separate legs. You will get a $10 bonus for each new qualifying distributor who is in the Presidential Diamond Level sponsor leg. Only 0.17% of distributors reach this level.

Ambassador Diamond rank: to qualify for the Ambassador Diamond rank and be paid at that level, you need your 5 personally recruited team members to qualify.

You then need 2 team members to qualify at Double Diamond level, another 2 team members needs to qualify at Triple Diamond rank, and the fifth team member needs to qualify at Presidential Diamond level.

Once again they must be in separate legs. You will get a $5 bonus for each new qualifying distributor who is in the Presidential Diamond Level sponsor leg. Only 0.05% of distributors reach this level.

Black Diamond is a title that you receive when you reach a certain earnings level. You earn more bonuses and commissions. This is not really a rank, but rather a title to recognise your efforts.

You have to maintain your status on a monthly basis for bonuses and incentives to be paid.

It Works! Global Bonuses

Fast Start Bonus is $100 and has two conditions:

• Every time you sign up a new distributor to your team and they have their account set up correctly (so that is auto shipment with 80 BV), plus
• They find two Loyal Customers in their first 30 days.

Fast Start Bonus is that you can sign up your first recruit and they can join with a 50% discount off their Business Builder Kit. You will be encouraged to use social media to recruit. The Fast Start Bonus clearly rewards recruitment. Money from people that get in at the bottom, pays for the extra commissions for those in the upline.

Loyal Customer Bonus – when you personally enroll and maintain a minimum of 60 qualified active loyal customers and accumulate $3,000 PBV in one month, you receive $600 for each month that you qualify.

There is a $5K Ruby bonus when you reach Ruby rank and a $10K Diamond bonus for reaching Diamond rank. What they don’t tell you, is if you reach the 10K Diamond bonus, it actually gets paid over a 25 month period. So to get your $400 per month, you will have to requalify every month to get it. This to me stinks and is why I say yes, to is It Works Global scam. I would not waste my time with a company like It Works Global.

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The main product is still the It Works body wrap, together with the ultimate body applicator. Basic idea of the wrap is that you warm up the area of the body where you want to lose weight and tone up. Body wrap is infused with special herbs and it makes you sweat. You could wrap your body in plastic and achieve the same result.

Product support

They do offer training events and conferences, but you have to pay your own expenses to attend. You can earn while you learn on the eSuite app that you get access to when you join, but you pay a monthly fee to have access to the website and eSuite.

Review of It Works! My likes and dislikes.

What I like :

• There is unfortunately nothing about It Works! that I like.

What I don’t like:

• Better Business Bureau (BBB) rating is C+ with 167 complaints in the last 12 months alone. Your can read more about that at the official BBB site.
• Their claims have NOT been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), so they are not FDA approved.
• As recent as 24 April 2020 the FTC sent a warning letter to It Works because of misleading posts on their official Facebook page about earnings potential during COVID 19.
• They have claw backs, which means that if one of your customers returns a product because it is faulty or they do not want it, the commission that you received on that sale, will be reversed. So that commission will be deducted from your next commission payment.
• You do not automatically start earning commissions, you first have to qualify.
• Commissions are only paid on the 15th of each month for the commissions earned on the previous month. That means that you could be waiting for as long as 45 days to receive payments for sales that took place at the start of the month.

Final opinion of product

BBB rating is currently C+ which is terrible. Complaints are mainly that even after you have canceled, you still get charged and products being shipped to you and also the $50 cancellation fee that they apply.

Their reviews on Trustpilot are poor and you can read more of the reviews here.

Beware: BV is not the same as the purchase price or retail price of a product. A $59 product might only have a BV of 54, so make sure that you reach your BV when you are placing orders.

Product at a glance:

• Name: It Works! Global
• Founders: Mark and Cindy Pentecost
• Website: www.itworks.com
• Price: $99 to join and ongoing monthly expenses for your website and auto shipments
• Scam rank: 10 / 100

Is It Works! Global a Scam?

It Works! has got legitimate products, with It Works body wraps being the most famous, but I think the business plan is a scam. It will be very difficult for you to make a decent amount of money with them, specially with the amount of unhappy customers. It is a typical MLM company with a few at the top earning the money and those at the bottom losing money.

I hope this review of It Works has shown you that it is not worth your while to join them as a distributor.

If you are serious about working from home, then look at my no. 1 recommendation and read my review on Wealthy Affiliate here.

If you do have any questions or comments, please leave them below and I would be happy to help you.