Friday, February 15, 2013

An Amway Testimonial

Found this testimony on an Amway forum (Well Trained Mind). Scary!

A very large number of folks in my church sell Amway. Really nice, sincere people. One was a good friend in high school (and her parents are millionaires, in part from Amway, in part from several other business ventures). My parents finally decided to join Amway when I was in college. My dad already had his own business (based in sales) that was successful but wanted to build another business for us kids. He worked very hard at Amway, did all they asked, made my mom start buying all their products. He started leaving his other business with others so he could go to the Amaway rallies in neighboring states because that is what was expected.

At one rally he went to pay his hotel bill and was told he had to pay the posted rate. When he made reservations he asked for a business discount based on his original business - a rate half of what he was being charged when he checked out. The hotel refused saying that since he was there for Amway, the Amway person in charge refused to allow people there for the conference to have a discount. When my dad pressed further, he learned from my friend (the daughter of this leader) that the person in charge of this rally actually received a kickback of sorts from the hotel for having the rally there-it was written in his contract iwith the hotel when he scheduled the event there. The only way to pay less was to stay a hotel not hosting the event. Needless to say, my parents were livid and felt cheated. The leaders son in law later told my dad that the leader made much of his empire by getting a percentage from the hotels, selling tapes and books, and the like. My dad had known this leader for over 10 years thru church and confronted him about the high room rates and what he was told by the hotel and others. The leader had no remorse and even encouraged my dad to keep building his lines so he could do the same someday.

Needless to say, my parents left Amway and have never looked back.

3 comments:

Abhi said...

I am sure that is true. I am a Q12 who moved out fo the system because I could not lie to people anymore. I still build the business but only with my list of clientele that I have built across the last 10 years. I still do like Amway as a business, I have learned a lot. it taught me entrepreneurship which i applied to a company that i started and am doing well..
Anyways.. At open meetings it is often conveyed that there are several ways of making income in Amway. Usually the speaker will say that "there are 10 ways of making income, but let me explain the first three ways". Since I experienced part of the other ways let me explain this to you
1) IGP (Immediate gross profit): money saved is money made
2) Performance Bonus: based on your PV bracket
3) Leadership Bonus: the differential bonus
4) CDs: the whole world knows this
5) Books & Technology tools: again part of tools
6) Functions: Most hotels offer their auditorium free if a certain number of rooms are booked. So if you see the host hotel where say there are 500 rooms booked, the conference hall will be free. So the speakers get paid with the money collected from the sale of the function tickets
7) IBOs are required to enter their upline diamond's name when they book a hotel room. Since the event is booking out 500 rooms for example, the rates are dropped big time. So the supposedly 'special rate' is not really special. A portion of your stay goes to your upline diamond.
8) Britt Go Diamond weekends: same concept as functions

9&10, I have not experienced. So not sure what it is.

Anonymous said...

I suppose a key part of this business is to get your downline to spend money on tools. This can be very lucrative. Say someone has 1000 people (thats a small group) in his group spending 100 a month each on tools. So 100k generated in income monthly of which 30% stays with the upline. Thats what drives the uplines to do this. Now the ibo should be asking the question what is he getting in return for his 100 dollars monthly. If his business is growing why not. If it is not growing then why pay Now the upline will say the return is just around the corner. This keeps people in just a little longer. Thats the aim. Keep them as long as possible.

Anonymous said...

I saw the plan many years ago and went to a function but did not contnue. Two things struck me about it. First i could not see how you could make money. Products over priced. So recruiting had to be extensive which presumably would take enormous effort. Possible as some do it but not likely and certainly not worth it. Second and more important were the values held by the upline. It was greed all the way. Greed to have cars, houses etc. Greed to make contact with people to recruit them. Greed to have money to boast about. This is what drives them even though their discourse borrowed terms such as sharing and caring but the real message was greed.