Over my Amway and blogging experience, I have come to a conclusion which I will stand by. And this, in my informed opinion, is a significant problem with the Amway opportunity. The Amway owner, Rich Devos acknowledged this issue back in 1983 in his "directly speaking" tape and unfortunately, nothing apparently substantial was ever done and therefore, the problem exists today.
The Amway opportunity is one part of the issue, with the tools systems being the other prong. Over the years, the Amway opportunity and the tools systems have formed a symbiotic relationship. It is as if Amway needs the system and the system needs Amway. What I mean is that Amway provides the opportunity, and then the system uses the opportunity to sell the system. In the meantime, the system leaders teach 100 PV, product loyalty, and do most if not all of the new IBO recruiting. Amway benefits as the system teaches movement of PV whether by sales or self-consumption, and new IBO recruitment, and the system leaders benefit by having a captive audience to sell their cds, books, seminars, voicemail, and website fees.The conflict of interest occurs when uplines tell their new IBOs that they "need" to attend a certain function, or that they "need" standing order to succeed. The upline is smart enough not to say the system is "required", but certainly, they will put a defacto requirement by saying things such as nobody has ever succeeded without the system, but you can try to be the first, or they may say the system is optional, but so is success. Of someone may say so and so diamond (insert) name is a multi-millionaire and he advocates the system, but you can go against his advice if you think you know better.
The bigger problem is that these upline leaders will tell you that you basically cannot succeed without these tools, but at the same time, the more tools you buy, the more profit these uplines make. Some Amway apologists will justify this by saying a college professor may sell his own books to his students. But this is not the same thing. A college professor may spend years researching to write that one book. He will be teaching his expertise that is written in the book. When you attend seminars or listen to cds, you do not have one expert guiding you with clear documentation on how they succeeded. You have very general generic experiences coming from various speakers who may or may not have any common background with IBOs. Thus these upline leaders will profit from their downline IBO volume and also from tools that they advise downline to purchase regardless of downline success or progress in the business.
As evidence of these bad practices by upline, consider this. If upline truly has "valuable" information that would help you succeed, they would get that information to you in whatever means they could. Either by voicemail, MP3, Youtube or whatever. Why would they withhold trade secrets if they really wanted your success? Has it ever occurred to IBOs that maybe uplines doesn't want your success? Maybe it is why you must pay for any piece of advice or support you receive. Maybe upline is perfectly happy with people coming and going as long as there are tool purchases because then there are no new IBOs (platinums and up) to share the tool profits with.
There is a definite conflict of interest with profiting uplines advising you to buy tools. The question is whether you see it or not?
I suppose one could say that the tragedy of Amway was its capture by the various subsystems or AMO groups (WWDB, BWW, Network 21, etc.) that basically corrupted its original structure. In 1959, there weren't any of these AMOs. You just joined Amway, sold as many products as you could manage, and tried to recruit others to do the same.
ReplyDeleteBut now, the tail is wagging the dog. Amway is basically powerless to rein in the AMOs and their indefensible "tool" racket, which basically transforms being in Amway to being in a school where you pay perpetual tuition to learn nothing. Every AMO is a parasite that lives by pretending to teach you how to be successful in Amway, and sucking money from you on a monthly basis.
The AMOs pay no attention to anything said by Amway in Ada, Michigan. Why should they? Amway simply provides the products that are the legal cover for what is in effect a protected pyramid scheme. If Amway were to object, the AMOs would simply switch their product suppliers. And Amway uses the excuse that the AMOs are "independent agencies" over which Amway has no control.
Was this always the plan of DeVos and Van Andel? I can't say. They may originally have had the idea of just helping people to make extra money. But the creeps who founded the AMOs were cynical and dishonest scammers. Their idea was "Let's get rich by taking advantage of the hopes and dreams of others who would like to get rich."
The poster hit it on the head. Plus, remember that High Pins from top AMOs are on the Board of the IBOAI which lends credence to the "tail wagging the dog" concept.
DeleteOur "leader" in URA (URAssociation) was on the board when I was in from 2015-2018. Typical snake oil salesman who put the board on a pedestal (you know...because of edification). He would always sell us at the quarterly conferences on the perceived good stuff that the board was doing to make it easier on IBOs and always make it seem that the IBOAI Board really bad to fight hard against Amway to make things better for IBOs (yet somehow. PV and BV would get more difficult). And yet, the thousands would throw the babies in the air and cheer vociferously at such a benevolent human being.
I hope someone that is new to Amway reads this and remembers the next time a conference takes place (should be in the next month for most) and then really reconsider why they are doing this before the debt piles up.