Amway - What Level Playing Field?

One of the things my upline always seemed to be talking about was how Amway was a level playing field and that was because everyone starts at zero. While on the surface, that may sound reasonable, but when you dig deeper, you may find that it is not a level playing field and that the deck is stacked greatly in favor of your upline.

One of the points in the Amway plan was to eliminate the middle man in the distribution of products thus allowing an IBO to gain a bigger piece of the profits. While this may sound reasonable, what actually happens is an IBO is a prt of a system with even more middlemen taking a cut out of an IBO's efforts. If an IBO were to simply buy and re-sell a product, that IBO would get all of the profit. In Amway, the corporation pays about 31-33% back to the IBO force in commissions and bonuses. But a new IBO would get only a 3% commission (100 PV) and his sponsor and uplines would enjoy 28 - 30% of the commissions. The new IBO did the work, but got only a tiny percentage of the bonus. What's fair about that?

An IBO can eventually get a bigger piece of the commission by sponsoring downline and moving more volume. However, the newly sponsored IBOs end up in the same unfair position that the sponsoring IBO was previously in. Also, until you are at the 2500 or 4000 level, you probably won't even generate enough income to cover your business and system expenses. Also, because of Amway's reputation, especially in the US and Canada, it is very difficult to sponsor others. Most IBOs never sponsor a downline.

The playing field is not level. Upline may want you to think it is, but a closer looks reveals that it is heavily stacked in favor of the tenured uplines.