Monday, September 14, 2015
An Amway Comment
An Observation About Amway?
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=192279&page=8
It's refreshing to see so many good people on this forum telling the truth about Amway. It looks like the pro-Amway shills here and on other sites are becoming increasingly outnumbered and desperate. I've read through this entire thread and think it is hilarious how many times the shill has to move the goal-posts or play word games to make Amway look like an amazing business opportunity.
I was originally introduced to Amway many years ago in my late teens by an uncle of mine. I attended a few of their seminars, and was impressed at first. But the whole thing started to seem ridiculous and unrealistic and so I didn't get involved any further. Also, I'm not that materialistic, so Amway's message doesn't appeal to me. I wish my uncle had been more skeptical.
My uncle was very devoted to Amway for a few years. He bought all their products(especially the tapes and books), tried to get others to buy them, and also tried to recruit all his family and friends into his new religion. He eventually lost money and friends and alienated himself from much of his family.
Already heavily in debt, he eventually fell for another, even bigger get-rich-quick scam shortly after quitting Amway(to Amway's credit, they don't threaten to kill anyone for leaving Amway). This one robbed him of his entire life savings. The scammers got away with it because they knew how to play him right(he met one of them through Amway). His wife divorced him soon after.
As if this wasn't enough, after making a modest financial recovery with his business over the course of several years, he loses it all to yet another scam. He had to borrow heavily from the few friends he had left since no bank would ever give him a loan, and almost no one in the family has anything to do with him anymore. I haven't seen him for 15 years.
One thing I wonder about my uncle is if all those seminars and inspirational tapes and books softened him up to fall for all those other scams he fell for after quitting Amway(he didn't have a reputation for being gullible before joining Amway, though he was never that bright to begin with). If I remember correctly, he tended to blame himself for failing at Amway, and may have never understood that it was a big scam or at least not a good business opportunity.
I still remember those crazy seminars and how they told everyone that joining the Amway cult will likely lead to yachts, exotic vacations surrounded by hot bikini babes, and shiny expensive cars, among other symbols of wealth. Everyone is told at the seminars and in the "tools" that they have all this unfulfilled potential, but to realize this potential we must avoid those small-minded "dream killers"(skeptical family members and friends).
The story about my stupid uncle is true. There are many other people out there just like him who have fallen for Amway and others MLMs. The few people I've met who claimed they were very successful at Amway usually seemed sleazy or I would find out years later they were up to their eyeballs in debt.
The person who said before that the people who regularly attend these seminars are mostly fools and misfits was spot on.
The story of this man's poor uncle is sad, but not untypical of what happens to the little guys at the bottom of the Amway pyramid. They get sucked dry and thrown away, like the rind of a fruit.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes -- when he says that "the pro-Amway shills here and on other sites are becoming increasingly outnumbered and desperate," he's quite correct. In fact, they are getting terrified. These shills don't know how to handle the growing volume of serious, solid criticism.
How does one deal with a blustering buffoon like "IBOFightback." who claims to be a fearless champion of Amway but who can't address a single significant complaint raised here or elsewhere about Amway's faults? He's Amway's "Defender of the Faith," even though all he can do is huff and puff and spout Amway drivel, while nitpicking and hairsplitting over minor points. And besides this, he refuses to answer when you ask him how far he personally has gotten in Amway. Is this the best that De Vos and van Andel can come up with?
Or what about the airhead "Bridgett," whose blog is one long saccharine paean to Amway, and a whining defense of and excuse for everything the business does? She can hardly put up a single post without including a link to Amway propaganda, or to the accomplishments of some fatuous diamond. I don't know if "Bridgett" is a paid flack for Amway, but she sure acts as if she were getting a monthly check from Ada, Michigan.
Here's the real deal: Amway is scared shitless by the internet, and by the deluge of embarrassing information that is coming out from countless persons about the cynical scam that Amway is. The Amway higher-ups are desperate to suppress Eric Scheibeler's 2004 book, Masters of Deception, and have managed to buy up and destroy nearly every printed copy of it that exists. (Yeah -- book burning. That's really "the American Way"). They are infuriated by Professor G. Robert Blakely's "Report," which shows how closely the Amway business parallels that of organized crime, and have spared no effort to suppress its on-line presence. They use their thuggish lawyers to threaten and intimidate websites and blogs that dare to criticize them. And they actually tell their IBOs and other associates NOT TO READ anything that is anti-Amway.
Remind you of anything? Burn books, cover up crimes, intimidate the opposition, and impose mind-control on your rank and file. It's Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia all over again, but this time with the Smiley-Face button on your up-line Ambot, telling you to "build a dream."
Awesome comments! Yes, I agree. IBOFightback can spin and spout half truths with great ease but in the end, the vast majority of people make nothing or lose money in Amway And out of the ones who actually try, the vast majority lose money because of the "system". IBOFightback spins it by saying it's not Amway, it's a third party company.
DeleteWe know that it's now Amway but Amway is the front for this crime. Just like how the mob might use a restaurant as a front for their crime business.
Bridgette is a buffoon. She likes to make sarcastic comments but gets all butt hurt when you toss some sarcasm back at her. I suspect these two buffoons are paid hacks for Amway, even though they will deny it.
Bottom line is if you join Amway, you better expect to lose money. That's how the diamonds can life a lavish lifestyle. The real business is selling cds, books and function tickets.
Have you ever noticed that those in Amway avoid the A-word and refer to it as "The Business" or "The Opportunity? This is akin to mafia members not saying they're in the mafia but calling it Cosa Nostra--"our thing". Actually, the sad truth is that some people have lost their lives or were threatened.
DeleteYes, when I was an IBO, we called it "The Business".
DeleteAnd yes, I have received more than one threat for running this blog.
Yeah, I know a guy, nice guy but he falls for every get rich scheme that comes along. You think he'd learn but he doesn't, sadly. But he still has his house and shirt on his back and last I heard he has a girlfriend now so maybe she can talk some sense to him.
ReplyDeleteI was taken in years ago by a different MLM scheme. Not Amway but PRECISELY the same kind of thing. All the hype and hoopla, bells and whistles, excitement etc. It was all about recruiting others and taking expensive "training" classes, which were nothing more than motivation and brainwashing. As I remember the big thing was about "building your organization" of sales people because this business was going to become huge, or so we were told. What a crock. So I have some empathy for these poor Amway people. The Amway sheep that is, not the wolves who are ruining peoples lives. Funny thing is, I never have been materialistic. I got sucked in because I was young, gullible about trusting others and actually believed I had found an honest retail business to invest in and manage. By the time I found out it wasn't about selling product it was too late. I had already invested heavily by borrowing from my mother. This all happened in a matter of a few days. There are some really evil people working these MLM scams and so I like to put my two cents in here to help warn others. Keep up the good work Joecool. I think we've got these crooks on the run.
My former sponsor is a physician. He got into Amway in 1993 when he was about 27 years old and he is still chasing the Amway dream. I cringe thinking about how much money he's lost over the years, but worse yet, all the lost time that could have been spent with family and friends.
DeleteIt's not only a waste of money but a waste of life.
I keep on blogging in the hopes that I can prevent a few people from wasting their time and money chasing an impossible dream.
Joecool, you are doing the world a great service by maintaining this blog. You might even call it "Radio Free Amway."
DeleteWhen Amway defenders actually work up the nerve to answer critics, you can read the terror between the lines of their statements. Their resentment and rage barely hide the fear they have that Amway will steadily lose business as the entire planet begins to learn what a lousy deal the company offers.
That's why they frequently lament "Your unfair criticism is preventing people from building their dream!" The translation of that sentence into clear English is as follows: "You're making it harder for us to catch suckers, and this threatens our income!" IBOFightback practically admitted this in his two-part review of anti-Amway material on the internet, when he moaned and groaned that all the thousands of Google hits on anti-Amway sites were surely having a negative effect on the recruitment of new IBOs.
Keep it up, Joecool. The artillery barrage is hitting the bigshot Ambots where they live.
Thanks, I have no immediate plans to stop blogging. It only takes me a few minutes each day to maintain this blog. I hope that my experiences can help people make INFORMED decisions about joine Amway or not.
DeleteI dislike mlm nonsense. but it's so obvious you post to your own site anonymously and reply to yourself. the married to ambot psychopath does, too. it undermines your credibility. you already have plenty of real examples.
ReplyDeleteUm, well YOU commented here so obviously I'm not making up my own comments.
DeleteI am NOT Joecool. I am the "Anonymous" who posted the comments at 4:23 AM and 7:24 PM on this thread. I am a professor of literature at a major university in New York City. A simple comparison of my prose style with that of Joecool shows that we are not the same person.
DeleteOver the last few weeks I have posted comments here and at Anna Banana's excellent "Married to an Ambot" site, both of which I discovered during my research into the fraud of Amway.
I post anonymously because I am well aware of the pettiness and vindictiveness of Amway zealots. If I gave my real name they would go after me, as they try to do with anyone who publicly disses Amway. This is why many persons who make comments at anti-Amway blogs do so anonymously. They don't want some Ambot making nasty ad hominem attacks on their private lives and reputations.
Both Joecool and Anna Banana know how these angry Ambots work: they dig up irrelevant information about one's personal life as a way to intimidate and silence criticism, and change the subject. It's a sign of their desperation.
Sure, Anna Banana can be a little over-the-top in her language. But she has every right to be pissed off at Amway and the creeps in her up-line, who nearly destroyed her marriage as well as her finances. I'd cuss out the bastards too if they had done that to me. Calling her a "psychopath" is a vicious smear. She's a righteously angry woman who resents the lies and duplicity of Amway, and who is doing great work in spreading the news about the fraud of Amway.
And by the way -- every example and anecdote that I have related here and at "Married to an Ambot" about my experience with Amway is true. Nothing has been made up.
Joe, I respect that you let this comment appear here. Now, I did not suggest yours are the ONLY comments on the blog. I still suspect you reply to your own comments, though. Your writing style shows through in the comments. If my accusation is unwarranted, please accept my apologies. If my claim is accurate, though, you are demonstrating some of the very deceptive behaviors you malign on your blog. The married to ambot person is SO obvious when she does it. And she filters out comments she dislikes.
ReplyDeleteI don't reply to my own posts. I'm not sure where you got that idea. I truly don't spen that much time on this blog. If you look enough, you'll see that many of the comments are actually critical of me but I allow those comments unless they are racist or very inappropriate. I've even had threats against me and my family and even those comments were allowed. Sometimes I go thru spells where nobody comments and that's okay. If you look at my blog, I have a visitor counter and since 2009, I've had over 600,000 site visitors so my traffic is pretty good.
Delete600,000 visitors? Joe, that's great! It probably means that there are a quarter of a million persons who didn't become Ambots as a result of your blog. No wonder Amway is losing a billion dollars a year. Hitting these creeps in the pocketbook is the only language they understand.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how many found useful information and did not join but I want people to be able to make informed decisions.
DeleteI do 3 years amway never succcee amway business recomand to people amway runaway how make money .
ReplyDeleteUntil now amway business never got patch i don.t how to amway lose my business.as malaysia amway product customer complain to me .very expensive
ReplyDeleteI am Malaysia join 4year Amway business canot successful dispointment still canot successful 50age++ I am no job no money come my hand Malaysia amway product my hand no cash how by product kill my self .no job for Malaysia people.
ReplyDelete