Monday, December 7, 2009

Amway Pin Winners?

I hear many Amway enthusiasts and apologists crowing about all the pin winners. Some of them speak about the thousands of new platinums and people moving up and on. But one point of contention where I think there is a lof of merit. In the US, there are very few new diamonds. I can't think of more than a handful of new diamonds in recent years.

Also, if I'm not mistaken, north american sales for Quixtar and now Amway (again) hasn't really grown. Amway stopped reporting seperate sales from North America and the rest of the world, but I believe North American sales have tapered off or even declined. I recall a message from an Amway corporate blogger confirming that the US diamond club held in Hawaii a few years back had 160 diamond businesses in attendance. That's not really much after 50 years of existance. I know that there was some Amway event recently where it was reported that 4000 diamonds were in attendance. I don't think there were many from the US, unless diamonds routinely turn down free trips to Hawaii.

But here's my main point about the pin winners. If Amway sales have not significantly increased, then it is probably unlikely that there are a lot of new pin winners, unless these new pin winners are simply replacing platinums or diamonds that are not currently qualified anymore. I believe the new pin winners and growth are occuring outside of the US. I believe it is because the Amway name has been put through the wringer by IBOs who may have tricked or lied to people about the opportunity, and due to abusive IBO leaders who were greedy and wanted to squeeze every cent from their doenline's pockets.

It would appear, that in the case of North America at least, new pin winners are simply replacing former pin winners who do not qualify anymore. It would appear that the "net" amount of success in all this is zero.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

All the new pin winners is just an eye wash. For the number of new platinums in that particular year, there would be an equal or more number of platinum who did not re-qualify-This would hold true for any pin. So, it is basically a revolving door business. New pins- old pins who did not requalify = same or less revenue (Is it any surprise that Amway’s North American revenue has been at 1B for more than 10 years now?)

In the 7-8 years we were in the biz, We have seen only a few diamonds going to diamond club every year. Most of them did not re-qualify. Some had qualified only once as diamond. The people who went to diamond clubs were mostly EDCs and double diamonds, who had qualified as diamonds that year. These IBO’s who qualified for diamond clubs had huge international businesses and they qualified atleast as platinums in the international market, which helped them to qualify as diamond in the US market. Some of their personal US platinums were not qualifying as platinums every year.

These are the some of the other strategies for these bigger pins to requalify every year- Have an eagle club, 2 -3 PV leaderships (meaning 1000 pv , 600 pv leaderships) . Every year they would get a few new excited IBOs aka Sucker, to go Silver…Boom…their 6 months of qualification is done. From my personal experience, most of the leaderships we qualified by faking it- by stocking up products to buy pins.

Even Eagle- which is not a Amway pin, but a system pin was achieved through – buying 6-7 or more extra Standing orders for that month, buying more products and then transferring PV to in-active IBOs to create 6 PV cheques. By 6 PV cheques, I mean – atleast 6 personal legs of your s you completed 100 PV (6 PV cheques and 10 Standing order was old Eagle parameters). Atleast Amway pin is like- u are silver this month if u are 7500 PV. Amway is not checking if a person has 6 pv cheques and if she/she qualified Eagle properly or not. Looking back, what other reason could be there on earth- other than these guys requalifying- for us to be forced to buy extra products and transferring PV to create additional fake PV cheques to qualify as eagle.

When u buy all these fake pins- u get to go to AWESOME leaderships to learn to build up your non-existent team. What a great idea to forward in this so called business. The worst part is that before every leadership, they will have conference calls and in the meetings they will promote this leadership and they will talk about how u will learn information that will take u platinum that year, if you qualify for that leadership. Believing that by hook or crook, by stocking up products, you will qualify for that leadership and after a year later you will realize out of all the people who attended that leadership (300-400), there would be 2-3 new platinums that year.

Anonymous said...

Recently Amway proudly released a statistics about how many IBO’s were associate with the company for more than 25 years, more than 20 years, more than 10 years etc.

Apart from the few successful IBO’s who are making profits, a good majority of the IBO’s who are more than 10+ years with Amway – are just renewing their IBOship to buy products (that they actually need)

Amway’s claims about such and such number of IBO’s being associated with the company for so many years and their stagnant revenue of 1Billion for more than 10 years do not add up. (I don’t remember the exact number, but the number of IBOs with Amway for more than 10 years was abt 10-20 thousand or may be more.) If Amway had even succeeded in keeping all of it’s registered IBO’s loyal to their site- meaning that they make majority of their purchases from Amway, their revenue would have increased a long time back. The fact is IBOs do 300 pv or 100% of their purchases from Amway as long as they are with the system (meaning listening to Cds, going to association, plugged into the system). We did 300pv and more as long as we were associating. Once we decided not to pursue the business, we did not have a need for energy drinks, sports drinks, meal bars, meal replacement shakes and so many other great products Amway had to offer (which we had never used in our life before starting the business). In the 7- 8 years we were in the business, we noticed, that as soon as people were out of system- they stopped buying products. At the most people who were part of our team, once they decided not to pursue the business, bought 300-400pv per year( compare that to 300pv/month when they were in the business).

Anonymous said...

Dude, why do you fucking have to always focus on the negative, on people who didn't and don't make it, on why they didn't and don't make it, etc? You come up with two negative posts and not once have I heard you talking about at least one, ONE, person who did whatever it took to make it and now legitimately enjoys her reward. Reading these two posts, I basically read about you and your failure story. Nice, what can I say!

Anonymous said...

I'm curious about this comment:

"Looking back, what other reason could be there on earth- other than these guys requalifying- for us to be forced to buy extra products and transferring PV to create additional fake PV cheques to qualify as eagle."

I wonder how exactly you were FORCED to buy extra products?

What tactics were used?

Joecool said...

Anonymous, I have always acknowledged that some people make it in Amway. The problem is that for every rare one person who succeed, they do so at the expense of thousands of people. Secondly, these thousands of people not only lose out on the product side of the business, they also often get roped into buying tools which also benefits the upline.

Anonymous said...

The amway event recently was held in Las Vegas-where u have mentioned 4000 diamond businesses were represented. It was diamond club celebrations for the 50th year anniversary of amway in which diamonds from all over the world were invited to attend- which many of the BWW US diamonds did not attend- for obvious reasons- they did not requalify.

Anonymous said...

Here are some of the tactics our uplines used:

They don’t use Physical force- they use mental force:

1)The first day of the month – they would make u commit to be a part of their goals- For eg: I had committed to be an Eagle, when my upline was shooting for Double Eagle(one of the criteria for double eagle is having a downline eagle leg), or when my upline was qualifying platinum we were made to commit to 2500Pv that month( not just one month- through out their qualification tiem)- All this commitment when he had 2-3 people on our team- when any sensible person would know that it is an impossible goal to achieve in 1 month. But the great “Mentoring” uplines believed in us and knew we could achieve it (yeah of course- you could achieve any goal by buying extra products)

2)We would receive so many calls from our uplines and they would talk to us for hours together about how they are counting on us to be a part of their goals. We dreaded their phone calls- especially the calls towards the end of the month.

3)If we had sold any products in the previous months- they would constantly remind us telling how great we are at selling :For eg: Nutrilite or Artistry and would tell us if we stock up that product line we are good at selling- we could sell them in the future.

4)They would convince us that buying a flight ticket in advance to qualify for a eagle/PV leadership- would make us work harder and achieve the goal. Of course- by the end of month u would be no way near to the goal- so just stock up products and go the leadership- as we had made the travel arrangements already.

5)If we were hesitant any of the months, to buy extra products- they told us that we were ungrateful for all the help they are doing. They said- “If you don’t commit and be a part of your upline’s goals, how will your downlines ever be a part of your goals?”

6)If we ever disagreed with our uplines and did not budge to buy extra products and if we did not grow in the business the next few months- we would be told this is what happens if you are not part of your upline’s goals.

7) if we did not contribute to ur uplines goals and if upline’s other legs achieved new pins that month- they would call us and ego stroking would happen- “Like , u know what – I can move on without you and would tease us.

When you are in the business, you don’t think is “force”, even the IBO who agrees to all this and stocks up products might even be thinking that they are doing this out of your own free will( If there is such a thing called free will in Amway)

Anonymous said...

When my upline qualified platinum – he had barely 5 people coming to functions. He did whatever it takes( when people say “Whatever it takes”- it means buying pin/extra products to qualify) to complete his platinumship- Why???- His upline was qualifying Emerald that year and he wanted to be a part of his upline’s emeraldship. Sometimes this upline emerald would even do extra volume and transfer it to my upline platinum, so that he could complete his qualification that month.

Needless to say, my upline never requalified as a platinum even after 6 years. His upline has never re-qualifed as an Emerald either. But atleast, because he went emerald, his income from the system has increased- he is being paid for function appearances, gets cuts on tools, function tickets sold.

Now with the 20% PV/BV uplift for customer sales reporting and online customer order, qualifying platinum has become even more easier. When he tried to requalify as a platinum this year, he instructed everybody on our team, to report all our purchase as customer purchase-Imagine if as a team if you report about 2500PV as customer sales and you get 20% uplift on that PV- that is 500 free PV. He did the same thing with all his other legs. After a couple of months, all this fell apart- as people did not want to be a part of this outright cheating.

They talk about honesty, integrity from stage. Passing great values to kids. It is all stage talk. In reality, it is all about manipulating- they manipulate their downline, manipulate all Amway promotions. When we qualified for leaderships like Go diamond and other leaderships, many speakers talked about- “Ok now you are here by some or the other means- we want you to go back and fix your structure and do it right.” Some speakers joked about – “The air and water quality of your neighborhood is so good- they referred to buying a lot of big ticket items like Amway Air purifier and water purifier to qualify.” They will talk about doing it right from the stage. When we come back from the leadership the upline’s next month qualification would have started- and the cycle would start all over again.

Anonymous said...

Please, post another bullshit comment!

Anonymous said...

There were only 2619 Q12 (7500pv for all the 12 months in a year with a few other side volume parameters) in 2008. http://www.amwaywiki.com/Achievers_2008_Qualifiers

This list includes everybody who qualified q12 and above in North America in 2008- including all the Emeralds and Diamonds. These are the only people who are making atleast some profit. Surely Amway is the fastest way to go broke

Anonymous said...

failure at LIFE = you

**proud Amway hater**