One Offer I had

I was approached via private message on a message board about an opportunity that the individual promoting it was very excited about. He even gave me his toll-free phone number, so I gave him a call. I had a nice conversation with him and he gave me a PIN to get in on a national q&a call. I did that and I must say that I came away with very mixed feelings. This company, known as sixfigureincomeschool.com (I am not connected with them in any way), sells educational products via digital download. I found out that they want you to buy into one or more of 3 different "levels" of representation. The first level is about $1295 to get into. The second is about $6000 and the third is somewhere around $13000. The thing is, you have to "buy in" at each level before you can then resell that level of product. On top of that, your first two "training sales" go to your sponsor and after that, you're a "director" yourself and you can then sell for the big commissions, which are %75. My thoughts are first of all, if a product is truly phenomenal, then shouldn't the product stand on its own? Shouldn't someone be allowed to sell this product without paying a lot of money for the privilege? I know that the requirement to "buy up front" is a powerful motivator for new "distributors" to produce, but in my opinion, that also would tend to make new distributors say almost anything to move through the "training" stage and then in turn produce sales just to get their money back. They say that the program is not MLM, but there certainly do seem to be components of it in the system, at least until the new recruit gets the "two-up" training sales out of the way. After that, it seems that the new rep would then be in direct competition with his or her mentor. I don't know, but the jury is still out on this one.