Thursday, November 18, 2010

Amway Makes Progress?

One of the things that Amway has been criticized for in the past was for what appeared to be a complete lack of action when violations of rules were reported. It also appeared that many things were shrouded in secrecy and covered up. Any lawsuits were settled with no information forthcoming. It seemed that even high up diamonds got away with things and it certainly had the appearance that the corporation did nothing. While some actions may have been taken by Amway, nothing was disclosed, thus the appearance of inaction.

While the battle between critics and supporters raged, Amway launched an accreditation program and a PR campaign. However, having been blogging and researching information on Amway, and having contact with real IBOs via social networking gave me the impression that while there was accreditation, the same old upline leaders had still found a way to get their (unethical) messages to downline. Despite accreditation, IBOs were apparently still taught to "buy from themselves". or to "submit to upline" or to "vote republican". Not all groups did this obviously, but I had contact with IBOs from various groups and many of them were taught these things. My old upline, WWDB apparently still teaches the buy home in cash mantra, I suppose to pretend that WWDB diamonds have money to burn. To sum it up, all of these efforts by Amway seemed to be cosmetic with no real change forthcoming. Even the PR campaign with commercials didn't seem to do anything to help Amway's image, at least in the US.

In 2008 -2009, the critics and Amway supporters were at it again because Amway sales were reported globally and US figures were not released. It is my guess that Amway sales in the US were not so great and I believe it's because the Quixtar project was not effective in reclaiming Amway's image. Thus the eventual change to Amway Global and back to Amway.

I was however, encouraged by a fairly recent action taken by Amway. And that was their openness to start this blog: http://blogs.amway.com/answers/
While the blog is not the answer to everything Amway, at least it candidly gives some real information to information seekers and IBOs. A good example was when the blog author said IBOs should not use "passive income" as a term when promoting the business. That is something that most or maybe even all major LOS's were guilty of. While there is a lot more that can be done, this was one of the biggest steps Amway has taken and I give them credit for it. Now if they could only get IBOFighback to stop his rants and insults all over the net and we'd really have something.

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