If I'm not mistaken, Amway was booming in the mid 90's. Their sales had hit a new high of around 7 billion at that time. Recruitment was up and there seemed to be new diamonds and emeralds popping up all over the US. I joined the Amway business around 1997-1998 and the wave was still going. I later quit, discovered the lies and fraud that was used to entice me to join and eventually became an advocate for the truth about the AMOs and some of the AMO leaders. The lies told to recruit prospects were rampant and the upline just revised history, never being held accountable for the lies.
One of the things used by Amway defenders is that the experience of people who are critical of Amway are invalid because the experience may be dated, or because some people who are critical of Amway have never actually been IBOs. I don't buy that argument because you can be quite knowledgeable about certain things without having done them. I know that I would not put my hand on a hot stove because my hand would get burned. Even if I have never burned my hand on a stove before, I know this. Or if I burned my hand on a stove 15 years ago, would my experience be different if I put my hand on a hot stove now? Unlikely. That argument is just a straw man used by Amway apologists, as if you can't understand something without direct personal experience. However, in my case, I do have direct personal experience.
Yes, the Amway business has undergone some changes over the years. Groups do not use the call in an pickup method of product movement, although my understanding is that some groups still do this for standing orders and other tools. There is accreditation which may have helped, but even with this, there is evidence of unethical practices going on, just that these issues are going on in small meetings rather than taped functions. Many groups stil focus on recruiting new IBOs and not on selling products for a profit. Many groups still focus on selling their downline tools and not ensuring profitability for new IBOs. Nothing substantial about Amway has changed in many years as far as I can see.
My former group, WWDB, apparently still has many of the leaders who were present when I was an IBO. There have been very few new diamonds in the last 15 years or so in WWDB, relative to the number of IBOs that have come and gone. The lies and deception by the upline leaders were never acoounted for. They have been exposed as basically frauds. Leaders who taught "pay by cash only" are found to have debts they cannot pay, such as triple diamond Greg Duncan, who was in chapter 7 bankruptcy some years back. leaders who swore that Amway saved marriages are getting divorced, such as Brad Wolgamott. Those who swore that tools were the key to success have little or no downline success to show for all the tools they sold.
What has changed in the Amway business in the last 15 - 20 years other than a name change to Quixtar and then back to Amway? Not much when you look at the big picture. The masses are still losing their asses today.
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I don't remember the website name, but they went into great detail about the canned Amway and MLM responses you will receive if you disagree with their stance. It is truly impressive that these robotic responses are still functioning and working.
One of my favorite deterrents of critical thought was the deflection of Amway being a pyramid, because corporate America looks like a pyramid. Without critical thought it seems incredibly logical, but to the trained eye, you find a lot of errors. I have to admit when I first heard it, I fell right into the trap of believing it to be fact. I have probably already gone through why this line is so stupid in previous posts, but it is always good to reiterate important points, especially if they are still being used today.
1. Think about the point they are trying to make with the statement. Are they clearly rebutting your claim, or finding a way to distract you? (example: Your friend lies to you about not being available to hang out, and you run into them at the same restaurant with a different group of friends. Do they defend why they chose not to hang out with you, or do they suggest you would've done the same to them?) This is important, because it deflecting the point, AND, it is not helping to make their point correct. This is what the Amway defender is doing with this comment. They are not addressing the fact that Amway's pay structure is bad, but rather confusing you by saying ALL big business pay structures are bad (which is inaccurate, but that is besides the point).
2. Is their comparison accurate? When they claim that all corporations look like pyramid schemes because there is a CEO at the top, followed by executives, followed by managers, followed by employees, and the levels get bigger and bigger as you get lower down. This is technically true, but you have to ask, why is it true? For one, if you flipped the pyramid over, as they suggest, the business will never work. You can't have 5,000 CEO's and 1 employee, for very logical reasons (it's hard for 3 business partners to agree on day to day operations, can you imagine trying to do that with more?). This is what I like to call the fake apples to apples argument. The CEO makes important decisions for the business to thrive along with their executives, and pay the employees a wage (that the employees agree with) to fulfill the designated tasks. The IBO's position is completely different, because they are recruiting new CEO's and competition in order to make money (With every recruit they bring in, that is one more competitor with the exact same strategy in the market place which takes away from their own chances of success.). Their money is completely reliant on the people below them, because the margins for sales on products are not high enough for anyone to sustain a reasonable business (Most businesses have margins between 50-70% when moving that small of an amount of product, but an IBO's percentage is closer to 3%). When comparing these two structures, it is clear that this is not an apples to apples comparison.
3. The less detailed version of refuting point 2 is, Does everything with the same shape have the same contents? The IBO's point about everything being shaped like a pyramid, therefore everything is bad, is a very rudimentary and simplistic logic that is riddled with errors. This is commonly referred to as a red herring, because you are giving a misleading statement. If I were to tell you, roses are red and apples are red, therefore all roses and apples are the same...you would look at me like I'm a moron. This point made by the IBO defender should be treated no differently, yet it seems to work and has persevered through the test of time.
I love debunking these wacky canned IBO responses to criticisms, and if anyone else has something they have found to be hard to refute, please let me know and I will share why your instincts are correct!
20 years ago there use to be 2.5 million distributors in the United States. Today they claim 3 million but now there is 2.5 million overseas. Amway won't tell you the exact amount in the US cause it's less than half a million here. 300 million people in the United States. Where are all the US distributors? GONE! QUIT!!!!!!SCAMWAY!!!!
LOL
If you stop and analyze what the IBOs are saying, you can see through the canned responses they have been trained to give. The defense of "your job is a pyramid" is a show that takes the focus off of "Amway is a pyramid". Sure, in a job, the CEO might make money but even the lowest guy (i.e. the janitor) still gets a paycheck and a net income to buy food, pay the bills, etc.
The Amway and MLM defenders usually have bad analogies but you can see through them if you think things through. I've debunked most of them thoroughly on this blog over the years.
Amway sales was down 12% last year so it is likely that they have fewer IBOs now than before.
In pyramid schemes like Amway, the persons at the bottom of a large pyramid find out pretty quickly that they are being scammed, and they tend to quit. That's what's happening in North America, where the number of Amway IBOs has plummeted like a lead sinker.
In some foreign countries, where Amway is relatively new, the pyramid is still somewhat smallish. And in a situation like that, with enthusiasm and novelty still hot, there's a good chance for IBOs to actually make good money. Down-lines can develop fast, and money will roll in.
But it simply can't last. When the Chinese discover that Amway is essentially a big rip-off, and that only those far up in the up-line are raking in significant cash, Amway will begin to collapse there in the same way it is collapsing now in the U.S. and Canada.
Amway sales are down 12%... well that's partly due to the effectiveness of blogs like this one.
Well, I don't know how much help my blog has been overall, but I'd like to think that the available information on this blog can be a difference maker to many prospects and information seekers. I know that kind of information was not easily available when I first joined.
I would really like to discuss this more with you, Ben. Please email me at mlm05122016@gmail.com. Joecool, and everyone here against Scamway, please feel free to email me as well so we can better coordinate our anti-Scamway efforts. To protect your identities, you can create a new email specifically for our communication together anonymously, as I did with my email above. Thanks!
In the mid 90's, technology was not accessible to everyone, therefore, it was easy for uplines to recruit individuals. When technology boomed in the 21st century, the internet expanded, which exposed the lies and deception of motivational speakers and how profit was made. The internet made the information accessible to the masses, which made it hard for uplines to recruit.!
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