Is Amway Fair?

One of the things my upline always taught was how the Amway business was fair. Everyone starts at zero, we were told. Everyone does start at zero, but it is hardly fair when you break down the compensation and the layers of people between you and your uplines. I will also speak about how the sponsoring is somewhat cloudy as well. Despite the claim that you will be paid if you "do the work", it is not necessarily true. These are catch phrases that upline uses to make it seem as if Amway is fair.

The sponsoring system that Amway uses is a hit or miss. You could have tons of business acumen and insight on running a business, but your sponsor and others upline will always be your upline and will always profit on your efforts - simply because they signed up before you and for no other reason. In many cases, a sponsor has nothing to offer a downline. They are in no way shape or form able to advise or give sound business advice to you as their downline. But as long as they remain in the business, they get to profit from your efforts simply because they signed up before you. Does that sound fair to you?

Also, let's take a new IBO for example. If that new IBO sells and consumes 100 PV, that new IBO will receive a 3% bonus. Amway pays about 32% to 33% of their take in bonuses. Thus the new IBO who "did the work" gets 3% and somewhere in the layers of upline, 29% to 30% gets split up among the upline. Some of the upline don't even know that the new IBO exists, but they get a portion of the bonus, simply because they sign up for Amway first. The new IBO has done the work and some of the uplines have done nothing to help this new IBO, but they enjoy a percentage of that IBO's bonus. Does that sound fair?

Tenured upline may also sell business support materials such as voicemail, websites, books, cds, and seminars. None of these materials have been proven to be effective in assisting IBOs in building a business. In fact, some of the biggest crown ambassador types built their Amway businesses before these materials existed. But because they were there first, they now claim to have the expertise on how to build a successful Amway business. Based on some numbers that Amway has provided, we can conclude that only about 1 in 400 IBOs ever reach platinum and out of those who reach platinum, less than 1% ever reach diamond. Not much evidence that the system works. Yes, I acknowledge that some people don't follow the system, but out of these ones who do follow the system, the success rate is still miserably low. If the system is so diffcult to follow and succeed, is it fair for IBOs to have to keep paying for a system that will not help them?

All of the above are reasons a new IBO has the deck stacked unfairly against them. Yes, some IBOs can overcome overwhelming challenges and succeed, but they are few and far between. Is this business set up in a fair manner? I don't believe it is.