Direct-seller Amway angling for a comeback in United States

[Robbien]

Source: Canadian Press

ADA, Mich. — Once a household name and reputedly the key to great fortune for modern salesmen hoping to live out a Horatio Alger myth, the Amway brand faded from the American market years ago, tarnished by legal and regulatory problems.

The direct-seller of everything from health and beauty items to household cleaners repeatedly fought allegations that it was a pyramid scheme. The company also paid $20 million in fines in a Canadian criminal fraud case in 1983.

. . .

The company is gambling that consumers at home, where sales have been flat for years, will remember the days when Amway was known less for scandal and more for unrelenting pitches from well-scrubbed and optimistic door-to-door salesmen.

Marketing experts say that, despite the baggage attached to the brand, the company is doing the right thing by bringing Amway back to North America in a campaign that launched in March and first made a splash in October with sponsorship of a Tina Turner concert tour that concludes in April.

"My sense is that many of the negative associations of Amway have now begun to fade," says Tridib Mazumdar, a marketing professor at Syracuse University.

Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/...

---

My guess is that they are betting wrong. Amway is still a scam. No amount of advertising will make up for the fact that it is a bad business.

[Cirque du So-What]

1. I saw one of their commercials today on the National Geographic channel

I thought to myself that it will take more than a slick advertising campaign to lend anything resembling credibility to that Ponzi organization. Add a national cynicism settling in from imploding investment schemes and I see nothing but disaster on Amway's horizon.

[pitohui]

3. the thing is they take advantage of older people w. failing powers

i've seen it close-up what aging does to the brain -- frequently enough that they have a guaranteed supply of victims who will destroy their relationships w. family and friends while pursuing this horrible pyramid scheme

the people reintroducing this should be in prison in my view

there is a reason old people are targeted so brutally for time share scams, amway and other pyramid scames etc. something really does happen to the mind when you age -- by age 85 half the population will have some symptoms of alzheimer's and that's what they plan to cash in on

some older people actually lose the ability to say no to such schemes, this is why they should not be allowed, they prey on the helpless

[Donnachaidh]

50. they'll take advantage of young people who buy into the *instant wealth* scam

The greed button is huge with young people who want *instant gratification* without thinking about what they are getting into. These groups prey on people who buy into marketing scams.

[KoKo]

73. They will offer hope to all those who've lost and are losing their jobs...

Amway is the perfect scam for those who are desperate in the hard times. But, then ...they made their biggest money under Reagan when unemployment was so high in his first term. Folks got scammed and they had to leave...but they now have come back to take advantage of the newly disenfranchises and distraught victims of the Bush II Fiasco.

Disgusting.

[EFerrari]

59. Yep. A perfect gig for Rick Warren. He'll be among his ideological peers, too. n/t

[xxqqqzme]

55. Those ads on MSNBC as well.

[jwirr]

2. It was bull then and now. They used to say their products were good

for the ecology. Wonder if that was the truth?

[Baby Snooks]

4. Guess Blackwater didn't prove to be such a good investment...

Erik Prince is the brother-in-law of Dick de Vos, the son of one of the two founders of Amway. Guess Blackwater didn't prove to be such a good investment so the family is going to put their money back into Amway.

Truly nasty people. And of course friends of the Bushes.

[BrklynLiberal]

5. How can this be allowed? They are so obviously grifters!!!

[Lance_Boyle]

84. So is Scientology - maybe Amway should declare itself a religion. n/t

[Hestia]

87. As far as the religion aspect - it is marketed through Dominionist churches

read dogemperor on daily kos to get an idea as to where the actually money goes - to support organizations that want to make Progessive/Liberals criminals.

[TheCowsCameHome]

6. Maybe it will work. A reliable passenger system railroad is important.

Oh, I thought you said A-M-T-R-A-K.

[geckosfeet]

7. My guess is that they are betting on peoples desperation that they will

turn to selling their crap door to door.

An army of out of work people - perfect.

[elehhhhna]

31. bingo!

[kcass1954]

8. From '88 until '94, I had a banking customer with a line of credit which I administered.

He was a flipper, but the terms of the line were quite stringent. He worked in Miami, and lived in Ocala. I had never met his wife, but one day he called and said she was in town and would I like to meet them for lunch. She almost never came down to Miami, so I felt honored that he would invite me to meet her. That feeling was short-lived. The two of them spent the entire lunch trying to sell me on Amway. I lost a lot of respect for him that day.

[Kittycat]

9. It was bad enough with the mary kay ladies chasing me down the street -

talking about my beautiful skin (which for the record I have because I DON'T use thier products on my skin). But now I'm going to have amway people beating down my door trying to sell me toxic soap chips. yay.

[GinaMaria]

10. doesn't this seem like an odd strategy?

Door to door salespeople in the age of the Internet? Wouldn't ebusiness be a more cost effective option? It seems a little out of step or is it just me?

[Robbien]

11. The only way to get someone to buy that garbage is to pester the customer

and the customer just buys something to get rid of the Amway pusher.

The pester approach doesn't work over the internet and its the only scheme Amway has got.

[GinaMaria]

14. Got it.

So they are in no way legit. I think I had them confused with something else. A movie was made about one of their sales people with William H. Macy.

Here's a link http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0274468 /

It was called Door to Door.

So do they just sell crap or do you pay and never get anything?

[bitchkitty]

23. Watkins Incorporated -

that's the name of the company where Bill Porter worked.

Great movie - really heartrending!

[jmowreader]

38. There really is a Watkins Incorporated, and they have a good product

Watkins started out selling liniments, flavorings and spices, and they invented door-to-door sales. I've gone into quite a few little rural stores that sell Watkins as a sideline, which is a business model the company encourages. The thing about Watkins is, they sell very good products and they don't try to convince you that you'll be able to buy a yacht and a mansion on Watkins income--I just checked their site, and they claim $100 a week as a reasonable goal, unlike fucking Amway that leads you to believe you'll go Diamond and make $350,000 a year within two years of breaking your kit.

[JitterbugPerfume]

56. I remember Watkins products

I have even bought them (long time passing) There is no comparison .

[1monster]

16. The products are secondary to THE PLAN. Amway people don't sell the

products, they sell the plan (or rather the dream).

The products are sold downline to the lowest people on the totem. They are not encouraged to sell the product except to those downline from them. The lowest members (distributor) pay the highest price for the product.

Once an Amway distributor sells a certain amount of points per month, his/her price drops. Then, it drops again when a higher set of points per month is reached, etc., etc., until one reaches "Direct Distributor" and buys directly from the company at the lowest price.

The financial rewards for reaching Direct are great, and of course there are the higher Directs who collect a premium for life from their downline Directs.

They make it sound like it is achievable for everyone who becomes an Amway distributor, but if you have a hard time screwing some one who might be worse off than you, Amway isn't for you.

[CreekDog]

33. but the incentives are all backwards

there's more incentives to get people selling than to actually sell product.

it would be one thing if they were doing that to establish a network from the start, but when they had been around for decades they were still doing that. which shows you what was really going on.

[jmowreader]

39. I've read they don't really care if you sell product anymore

Amway knows the day of the door-to-door seller, at least one that's selling the shit Amway pushes, is over. There is absolutely nothing Amway sells that you can't buy in a store.

I knew ONE person who made money from Amway. One--out of probably a hundred who were flogging the shit. He bought a water filter from one of his friends that sold Amway, realized how good it was, joined Amway and started selling just the water filter, which is the only product Amway actually has. (They sell thousands of items, but you can walk into a store and buy just about any of them. Who the fuck buys SOAP from a door-to-door salesman? Get in your fucking car and go to the supermarket.) By focusing on the water filter, and by NOT trying to recruit everyone he saw into Amway, he made a pretty respectable side income...and pissed off his upline royally every time they saw him. (He says that was the best part.)

The focus of Amway is to recruit other people into Amway, who of course will recruit other people in and so on ad finitum--I was going to say "ad infinitum," but realized that in the case of Amway that doesn't really work because 63 percent of the population of the world knows it's a scam and 27 percent knows how bad a scam it really is.

[CreekDog]

42. that explains a lot! n/t

[Recursion]

60. The products aren't meant to be sold to new consumers

They're meant to be sold to your downline -- something like 80% of Amway products are sold only to salespeople.

[KoKo]

74. Isn't that a Ponzi Scheme? n/t

[customerserviceguy]

48. It's not about selling quality products efficiently

it's about people converting friendship into money. Scamway knows more than anyone that it's not about the products, it's about selling the pyramid scheme, where you hook gullible people into a pseudo-religion that focuses more on converting human relationships into a giant "redemption" plan.

Right now, I'd say that laid-off (and full-time to part-time) folks have more time on their hands, and the economic crunch makes them more resistant to the average sales pitch. It's far more easy to ignore that banner ad selling schlocky vitamins than it is to ignore your buddy Billy who's pushing the same thing.

Scamway got going big in the early 60's, it resurged in the early 80's, and it's come back for the current recession. It always seems to feed off the tough times.

[1monster]

12. Been there, done that, drew the circles and got poorer while my uplines

went Direct on the backs of people who couldn't afford it (and any profit we made at all went into the madatory "Tape of the Week" and "Tape of the Month" which susposedly would make us better at selling the plan.

Once our uplines went direct, they had loads of others who signed up to be their downlines and they allowed the branch we were in to wither and die.

And Amways psudo Reaganomic/Fundy Religion was just down right creepy... How many business conferences have you attened where a big part of it was people coming forward to "Accept Jesus" (at lease their version of Jesus)?

[crystalwolf]

49. The Fundy-RR Christian Angle....

LOL! My Son used to sell Amway....and somehow he escaped the rrwing christian fundy angle until he attended a meeting somewhere, and he said it was like "come down and accept Christ into your heart" and he was the only one left sitting,lol! That was the last of his Amway!!!

[Donnachaidh]

13. they'll do the same as Herbalife - advertise the *own your own business* ploy

And then work the MLM ponzi scheme until someone complains and the lawsuits start coming in by the bucketloads.

The folks at the top of the pyramid will be badgering the guys on the bottom to sign people up and keep that cash rolling.

They've been running ads on MSNBC for a while now.

[LibertyLover]

15. 16 or so years ago

my best friend attended an Amway recruiting meeting and got sucked in. I would sometimes buy some things from her and they were ok, but expensive. Then for my birthday that year, she gave me the beginning salesperson's kit. Gods but that was awful. She honestly thought that we would make lots of money. She told me that she would do everything about recruiting for our network and all I had to do was buy stuff. For about a year that's what happened. Once in a while I would get a small check from our upline, but never what I put into it. I went to a couple of Amway events as well, which were a combination of religious revival (most of the Amway people I met were seriously conservative, both religiously and politically) and up-beat training seminar. I hated them. Being a Wiccan, I had to stay deeply in the closet at these events. After about a year I realized that it was a scam. The way you made money was not by buying products, or even selling them, but by pushing the sale of various motivational tapes, books, lectures and promotional events to gullible people in your downline. I quit. My friend was very upset and it put a crimp in our relationship for a while. Then her 18 year old daughter was coerced into having sex by an older and very much married upline manager. The daughter had a crush on the guy (he encouraged all the younger women in the downline network into thinking that he had a thing for them and them alone and that he might even leave his wife for them) and he exploited that. She thought that if she went to his house to talk to him about the situation that he would turn off the charm offensive and leave her alone. He didn't and pressured her into having sex. When she finally told her parents what had happened it was over a month later. Her father blew the whole thing off. Her mother confronted the manager and he admitted what had happened and told her that he had only had sex with the kid to help her get over her inhibitions. That was the end of my friend's dealings with Amway. I truly dislike Amway and everything to do with them.

[yardwork]

18. I lost some friends over Amway, too.

The wife wanted me to join her in selling Amway when we both became stay-at-home moms. I told her that I wasn't interested, in a very nice way, and she just dropped the friendship like that.

Consumer Reports tests Amway products and they always come in at or near the bottom in terms of quality and they're always the highest priced. Scam.

[Hulk]

17. All they had to do was say the word "amway", and I immediately got a picture....

...of the Jehovah Witnesses at my front door again. God, I hate salespeople chasing me down. I prefer to go to them...if it's so damn good.

[Captain Hilts]

19. BIG ad for Amway in Landmark theatre chains. nt

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

20. they call it "Quixtar" now - but it is a pyramid scheme all the same

and the money is made by bringing more suckers in.

You have to buy/sell a certain amount of this crap to stay in, and
meanwhile you try to recruit people to "work" under you.

I had a friend who actually believed in what she was doing and
she stayed with it about 1 1/2 years.

Why would anyone buy this crap when you can buy anything off the internet for
great prices and get it delivered to your door?

[jmowreader]

57. Merchants of Deception describes it as more than a "certain amount"

One of the first things they teach you is you're supposed to use nothing but Amway products in your home. They like to say "99 percent self-use is 100 percent disloyalty to your upline." Your fucking upline will come to your house and ransack all your cupboards looking for non-Amway products, and either chew your ass for having any or cart off the ones they find.

Here's a fun site: http://www.mlm-thetruth.com/ShockingMLMstats.htm

In it he explains that you're more likely to profit by playing roulette or craps in Vegas than you are by hooking up with Amway.

[originalpckelly]

21. What's funny is that I'd only heard of them once until this...

now I would support an investigation into them after these BS commercials that put them on my radar!

[blue_onyx]

90. Lucky you

Here in Michigan, we've been forced to watch Amway commercials since early 2006, when the son of the Amway founder ran for our Governor. I thought the commercials would go away after he lost but they didn't. Over two years later and I still see them fairly regularly.

[pinniped]

22. Watch out for those Equinox scumbags, too. They're the same type of crap MLM outfit.

Someone tricked me into attending one of their meetings. I immediately saw it for what it was, a great big scam.

They specialized in shampoos, water filters, the usual crap.

Oh ya, those Amway commercials trying to portray themselves as a legitimate business are ridiculous. The commercial should start out with a big on-screen pyramid.

[elehhhhna]

32. and "Melaluca", the "other" Amway.

[Hawkeye-X]

81. Yeah.. we actually were sellers for a while.

But the 8:00am conference calls weren't my thing, so I quit.

We didn't even make much - only $21 after selling about $200 worth of crap to parents, friends...

[Hawkeye-X]

80. Melaleuca too.

[Gman]

24. Amway may be a scam but they had some excellent products at one time

I haven't used them in many years now, but their cleaning products were great.

[bluestateguy]

25. Gee, is Cutco knives making a comeback too?

Ugh.

[backscatter712]

27. Some scumbucket tried to suck me into selling Cutco knives long ago...

At least I realized what they were trying to suck me into and got the hell away.

God damned douchetards...

[tom_paine]

37. I'll say one thing in the vile Cutco's defense (and yes, it was a scam)

Those damned knives really did work as advertised.

I never believed it myself, when as a young naive lad I was briefly taken in and appropriately scammed for what was a large sum of money to a 19 year old. The thing ended, laughably "old school" enough, with them shuttering the office and scattering to the four winds with the stolen loot (no forwarding address left) from me and undoubtedly many others.

But is till have one of their demo knives. And it's decades later and the thing is STILL by far the sharpest carving knife in my house, over much newer blades purchased long since.

So Cutco might have been a scame, but their knives worked, so far as I can tell a coupel decades later, with EXACTLY the durability and long-lasting excellence the scammers said.

Crazy, eh? It makes sense, if you think about it. How much easier to scame people on the "Ponzi" side of things, if the scame uses a product that actually works as advertised.

But the scam doesn't resides in the product itself, so the "good product" only adds window dressing, and excellent window-dressing at that, to the Ponzi scam and other sub-scams that was Cutco.

[dugaresa]

64. the Cutco knives were originally made by Alcoa

and it wasn't a scam...it was an American made product ...the history is at the Cutco site...

I personally know some folk who worked in the factories (granted they are much older now)...and were proud to work for Alcoa and Wear-Ever...it was good stuff....and by my experience...the knives aren't that bad...

http://www.cutco.com/company/history.jsp

[Javaman]

86. We still have our "cutco" knives. However, ours are the old ones made by

ALCOA. And they are fantasic. My wife as had them now for over 20 years.

[Mind_your_head]

26. How cum Amway is still around anyway?

eom

[backscatter712]

28. Amway has friends in high places.

Richard Devos is brother-in-law to Erik Prince of Blackwater infamy. The Devos family and Amway are very, very high in GOP circles. People like pResident Bush and Poppy Bush have spoken at Amway events, and are close to the Devos family. So are Dan Quayle, Newt Gingrich, Oliver North and many other GOP personalities.

You think Bush is going to lift a finger against a family and their business after they've provided millions in campaign contributions to GOP candidates and 527s?

[Mind_your_head]

63. Wow! I did not know this.

It makes some sense now. Thanks for posting this.

[du_grad]

78. Amway based in Grand Rapids, Michigan

GR is home to the Gerald R. Ford Library and the name DeVos is everywhere there. Yes, Amway and the GOP are very much related.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Rapids,_Michigan - scroll down to Government and Politics and then see how many times DeVos and Van Andel (Amway founders) are mentioned under Economy. I find it hard to believe the statement that the city itself leans Democratic. The only big Democratic city in Michigan is Detroit and possibly Ann Arbor. I used to work for a company based in GR in the mid-80's and when they found out I was a Democrat they thought I was some sort of rare species!

I sold Amway for a short time back in 1979-80. I attended a couple of sales events and they were just a touch away from religious revivals. I personally liked the products and just wanted to sell the product. The cleaning supplies were fine and I used the laundry detergent myself. I also sold some of the jewelry, although I kept more for myself than I ever sold. I never much wanted to go big-time with it. Alas, that doesn't work. I had a few good repeat customers but never made any big money at it. I quit after our daughter was born. I went to a few sales meetings but I could just never work up to the tent meeting fervor that is required for one to get to be a Direct.

[Hawkeye-X]

82. Granholm needs to be sent a note - to have her AG begin investigating Amway again for Ponzi schemes

Partisan witch hunt or not - these assholes needs to spend time behind bars.

[blue_onyx]

88. Michigan's AG would never investigate

He's running for Governor and whoever the DeVos family (and their money) sides with will be the GOP nominee.

[Irreverend IX]

29. Amway isn't just a scam, it's a cult.

They use brainwashing techniques straight out of Jonestown. There's a fascinating book about it here:

http://www.merchantsofdeception.com/

[jmowreader]

34. Thank you for mentioning that book...

so that I didn't have to.

The best part of Amway is, if your spouse suddenly decides she doesn't want to spend all the family's money chasing "the business" (Amway salespeople are trained to NEVER call it Amway), you're supposed to call him or her a Dream Stealer and divorce that person. There are something like three people in the entire Amway organization who live the lifestyle Amway sells, and the major player is this asshat Dexter Yager. He ain't makin' all this money pushing soap, either--his racket is motivational tapes and other "tools."

[Vinca]

30. All I remember about Amway is the guy who bugged the hell out of me at work to buy it.

The whole scheme makes no sense. Who wants to make a production about buying cleaning products or whatever they're selling now when you can pick up a bottle of anything you want at a local grocery store?

[oberliner]

35. What's weird is that the website makes it really difficult to buy the products

Go to amway.com and see if you can buy any of their stuff.

Clicking on 'buy products' does not seem to be helpful in that regard.

[tom_paine]

36. Ponzi Schemes are coming back IN A BIG WAY! So is shameless theft and fraud openly performed.

Making it's biggest comeback since Hitler and Stalin ruled the Tyrannized World. Unless Obama restores our System of Checks and Balances, furture Bushies will share the ruling of Tyranny with Comrade Putin.

Plus a change, plus a la meme chose
(the more things change, the more they stay the same)

[lonestarnot]

40. They better stay away from me!

[bobthedrummer]

41. Amway=Dick & Betsy DeVos=extreme RW $$$ treasury

Grand Rapids based Media Mouse has published about Dick and Betsy for years. Btw, Betsy is the sister of Blackwater's Erik Prince.

"Dick and Betsy DeVos Funding the Far Right through Foundation Grants" (MediaMouse.org)
http://www.mediamouse.org/features/100506dick_.php

"The Far Right in West Michigan: Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation" (MediaMouse.org)
http://www.mediamouse.org/resources/right.php?foundId=5

[riverdeep]

54. It's amazing what an incestuous little pile they have there.

Blackwater, Amway and the Bush administration.

[1776Forever]

43. The rest of the story - FTC Chair Muris Bush Appointee Law Firm Representing Amway........

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/12/prweb1756444.htm

Pyramid Scheme Alert Calls Madoff Scandal a Failure of SEC and FTC to Enforce Laws Against Pyramid and Ponzi Schemes

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/12/prweb1756444.htm

Charlotte, N.C. (PRWEB) December 17, 2008 -- Pyramid Scheme Alert, the only consumer group in the world focused directly on pyramid/Ponzi scheme fraud, charges that the Bernard Madoff Ponzi Scheme is the tip of a far wider pattern of pyramids and Ponzis. In a letter to the chairmen of the FTC and SEC, PSA charges that the lapse of FTC and SEC regulation has led to an epidemic of pyramid frauds, and it demands renewed regulation.

(snip)

-- The SEC and the FTC over the eight years of the Bush administration have assiduously avoided investigation of Ponzi and Pyramids.(http://www.pyramidschemealert.org/PSAMain/news/MLMInflu... ) After receiving detailed reports about failures to disclose the endless chain nature of Usana Health Sciences and Herbalife International, the SEC issued "take no action" letters.

The first FTC chair, appointed by President Bush in 2001, Timothy Muris, came to the post directly from a law firm representing the largest of all pyramid selling schemes, Amway. Under his leadership, 30 years of FTC policy was reversed and investigations and prosecutions of pyramid selling schemes abruptly ended. Amway is currently the target of a government prosecution in England seeking to close it down for operating an endless chain. The "multi-level" Amway business model was banned in China in 2005, while retail-based direct selling was allowed. Amway is currently embroiled in a major class action suit in the USA that charges it with operating an illegal pyramid scheme.

[KansDem]

44. A word to the wise: Never, *ever* accept a ride to an Amway presentation...

Back in the 1970s when I was an undergraduate, a fellow in the dorm asked me if I wanted to go to an Amway presentation. I didn't know what Amway was and he proceeded to "inform" me in that way they have of not letting you know too much. Anyway, I told him I would go and he offered to give me a lift, which I accepted. Well, let me tell you! We arrived and it was apparent this guy was angling to "get in" and set up his "marks," me included. I was there for the whole afternoon--it was like a combination real estate agent and fundie church reunion.

It was one of the longest days of my life!

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

45. I was suckered into a meeting once.

I saw immediately what it was, and that it was quasi-religious (at least for them). As a Christian myself I recognized the signs of fanatical religious fervor and was thus able to ride the current until it was time to go home.

Hallelujah! Glory be to Amway!

[KansDem]

46. Did you have your own car? If so, then you could have left at any time...

I was stupid enough to have been driven to the revival meeting. And it was way across town! I was stuck there until the person I came with, Mr. Amway Junior, felt it was time to leave.

If I had my car there, I'd left 15 minutes into the "fanatical religious fervor!"

Never again!

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

52. Nope- I was driven.

I was a "guest" of the organizer. Just call me Ben Dover!

[mbperrin]

47. Their own numbers are enough to hang them. Their TV ad says they

have global SALES of $7 billion and 3 million distributors. This means that the average distributor sells about $2300 per year or less than $200 per month. Even if half of that were profit, that would be less than $25 per week.

Try a garage sale.

[customerserviceguy]

51. Let's remember one other reason Scamway is dangerous

I used to do taxes for people back in the 1980's when Scamway was feeding off of that decade's recession. There were all kinds of people who were running it to be able to write off all kinds of crap that were just ordinary personal expenses that would never have been deductible. Many of my "new" clients got upset with me when I told them that Scamway was leading them straight into the arms of an audit, and that my usual audit protection guarantee (I would represent someone for free in an audit) didn't apply to their taxes.

For every fast-and-loose person that gets busted in an audit, there are a hundred more who get away with it. I wouldn't be surprised if the current crop of Scamway dealers aren't trying to sell the tax scam benefits as a primary purpose, in order to deal with "Obama's taxes". They're dangerous, they will throttle any economic recovery that President Obama is able to engineer, and I hope the IRS has drafted some contingency plans to deal with the fraudsters.

[pointblank]

53. I have a "friend" that i have know since grade school...

Right out of highschool and into our early twenties he was really big into this bullshit and kept it up for awhile. He comes from a HUGE fundie family...you know the kind that own slumlord apartments and nursing homes I wouldn't board my dog at - but they sure were rich as hell.

Anyway, my "friend" went from Amway, to Equinox to Cutco knives...None of it ever worked, yet he kept trying to chase "the dream" ... He never worked a "real" job and was aways busting my balls because I always had a steady job and went to school.

He also tried buying cheap candy machines and even bought a payphone - right as cell phones were getting big!

Anything to keep from working.

He currently is 32 years old and is an unemployed nurse's aide with 3 kids and a wife who works part-time. The only way he survives day-to-day is that his parent's are so loaded, but even they have had it with him.

Amway and other "Pyramid" scams are a scourge and ought to be ILLEGAL and those who push them should be jailed.

[Snarkoleptic]

58. Primerica is the financial services equivalent of Amway.

They are all about recruitment and stress that they are part of Citigroup.
They have a really high burn rate as people sell insurance to their friends and relatives before losing momentum.

[du_grad]

79. My neighbor just quit a fairly decent job to go into Primerica

When he told me this I was just speechless. A coworker at my previous job quit to help her son recruit people into Primerica also. I know my coworker attended a conservative right wing church and I'm pretty sure my neighbor is of similar mind. I wonder how long before their house goes up for sale?

I was invited to a meeting about it but didn't attend. Are they directly related to Amway/Quixtar or just similar?

[blue_onyx]

89. I got a job call from Primerica and Citigroup

They wouldn't tell me what the job was and wanted me to come in for a "meeting" or "overview" (aka a cattle call). They also called me at 6:30-7:00 in the evening and the "meetings" were at 7:00 at night too. I didn't feel good about those calls and just said I wasn't interested. I've been looking for a job longer than I would like to mention but I'm not that desperate.

[condoleeza]

61. My father went from Watkins to Amway

with 9 children to raise. He listened to Billy James Hargiss and other radio evangelists who were all about "anti-communist" for my entire impoverished childhood. Frankly, I have no idea how any of us survived, if we actually did, since we now have 2 suicides and at least 2 others who are mentally ill in my family. Being the youngest kid, even as a kid I knew it was a scam. I guess all you have to do is to brainwash the already scared with even more fear. It wasn't bad enough that we were a poor family with too many unsupervised kids that nobody's parents wanted their kids to have anything to do with, we were also the kids of parents who walked the street selling stuff nobody needed or wanted and only bought because they wanted them to go away.

Had no idea before now of the connections with the evildoers in this society. DAMN the Internet. I was raised by wolves, truly.

[underpants]

62. John Tesh does the voice over on the commercial I have seen recently

The Amway Arena in Orlando is host to the Orlando Magic
http://www.orlandovenues.net/other_info_files/amway_are...

[ProudDad]

65. Amway - oh, you mean that ponzi scheme masquerading as a cult? (n/t)

[TrogL]

66. How to make money at Amway

You make almost no money on the product.

How you make money is the sales meetings. Marks pay to get in, then are endlessly pressured to buy tapes and other motivational aids at a huge markup.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

67. The Peoples Network -- 1995

You get a satellite dish. It receives self improvement programming.

You have to buy $50 per month and recruit suckers.

Lots of big names in self improvement were on it -- Michael Gerber, Mark Victor Hansen, Les Brown (not the bandleader), yada yada.

[earth mom]

68. Scammers never quit or die. Just like cockroaches.

[knitter4democracy]

69. Many of us here in Michigan hate them.

First for giving us Betsy DeVos (aka crazy GOP lady). Actually, the entire DeVos family is crazy and right-wing, and did I mention crazy?

Second, Dick shipped most of the manufacturing jobs overseas, so hardly any of it is still here in Michigan. And yet, when he ran for governor, he kept saying how he was a Michigan businessman. Total crap.

The DeVos family can kiss my ass.

[lanlady]

70. just what our country needs right now

Another pack of scheisters selling a pyramid scheme.

[Dervill Crow]

71. I got Amagift cards for Christmas from my in-laws that sell that shit.

That was the year I told my mother-in-law I wanted my name out of the Christmas grab bag.

It's a cult, pure and simple. The salespeople are zealots.

[superconnected]

77. Ewwww. What a thing to get for Christmas! The ones I've ever met who

sell that crap are super religious and super rightwing. Promise keepers men.

I unfortunately went to a friends house for a b-day party once and knew he was severely rw but was surprised to find I was surrounded by these people who "own their own business" and were talking about the get together's they were throwing by bringing in as many people they met as possible to become sellers. I started feeling used like I was invited for a pitch session but luckily they didn't pitch to me - they knew I was a liberal so ignored me. Anyway they ended up giving the most rednecked gifts I'd ever seen to my friend. They literally gave him an AOL cd for 10k hour free. This was in about 2003 when those America Online cd's were free everywhere. And they gave him and address book and apolgized because it was already written in. They had an uncle who was in his 40's talking about how he had to go to school because welfare wanted to train him for the job market. It was really surreal.

[KoKo]

72. Just as Ponzi Madoff goes down...the Old Ponzi comes back to prey on the jobless...

Anyone remember relatives and friends who were scammed by Amway? Remember those scammed by EXCELL PHONES?

Now...just in time to prey on the newly jobless...AMWAY rears it's ugly head to try to hoodwink desperate folks who don't remember them from the 80's and all those who lost their shirts selling for them.

Ugh!

[superconnected]

75. So many republicans need jobs...You know they buy their own products because no one else will.

[SoCalDem]

76. Why not.. Ponzi schemes are back..in a big way

Amway "big-earners" get that way from RECRUITING others to sell the shit...not from the actual sales of the products, which are "ok"..but not worth the price charged..

Shaklee products are better and cheaper & you can get them online..without the pushy Mormon-esque sales people of Amway...

[janx]

83. "They say it's a pyramid scheme...but

it's NOT!"

[Javaman]

85. okay, here's my amway story...

back in the early 90's I was working as a 2nd camera assistant filming commercials. My job was to run the slate and load the film, my direct superior was the 1st camera assistant, his job was to "pull" focus.

Anyway, part of the perks of the job was we could basically come to work in short and t-shirt. very laid back (This will be a point later). So one day while on lunch break, the 1st AC asks me if I was interested in making some extra money. Even though I was making pretty good money as a 2nd AC, there are down times and picking up some extra dough for the rainy days is always a good thing. Sure, I say, thinking it was some sort of side production job.

Oh how wrong I was.

So he says, I'll stop by your place tomorrow and fill you in. I thought this a bit odd, even though I worked with this particular 1st AC a lot, he and I never once shared off time together. I was young single and on the make, he was married with kids and about 15 years older than me. But what the heck, get to be better friends or maybe a beer buddie.

so the next day, there is a knock on my apt door. I open it up and there is the 1st AC dressed in a suit and tie. Uh ho, I thought, this won't be good. At first, I thought Jehovah's Witness, but then I remembered that this 1st AC was Jewish. Something wasn't adding up.

I invite him in and before he even sits down, he begins the schpeel of amway. I wanted to put a bullet through my head. I got suckered.

So I let him blather on and on, all the while formulating my plan in my head.

Finally he finishes with a glazed eyed dopey assed smile on his face.

I look at him and say the following, "you know that amway is a bunch of born agains that are praying for the destruction of Israel, right?"

the glaze, the smile melt away from his face. What? he stammered.

Yeah, they don't care about these products, it's about funding their various near political agendas.

He waffled. He didn't know what to believe. Remember, he was a fresh recruit still shining from the rah rah pump you up meetings. He tried to change the subject by saying that China is a big market to be exploited.

I countered, So you have no problem with promoting and helping a country that has virtually no human rights for it's citizens?

He paused and said, I didn't think of it that way, but we are bringing them democracy and products to help them

I cut him off. (remember Tienanmen Square was only a few years before and still very fresh in peoples minds) You honestly think, that a nation that rolled tanks against people with signs really wants to help them improve their lives?

At this point, I stood up, realizing that the conversation was over whelming him a bit. I thanked him for his time and told him I would see him next week on the set.

That following week. I saw him, we made some small talk. at lunch he told me he did some checking into amway (this was still the Library days, the internet was still in the BB sites stage), he is reconsidering being a "member". I smiled and we went back to work.

the power of the truth is an awesome thing.