Rick Santorum is involved with Amway. Why does that not surprise me

[Quixote1818]

My Freeper Brother and Sister in law once TRICKED me into going to an Amway event in Phoenix some years back. They didn't even tell me what we were going to which will give you a clue as to how they operate. So we are walking into this High School and everyone looks like a yuppie Republican, the women look like stepford wives and everyone had this plastic Ralph Read look to them. Eyes glazed over like the invasion of the body snatchers had taken their souls.

Already I was suspicious and wondering if it was Amway! They had been trying to get the whole family into the "Business" for quite some time and alienated many of the family already. So we go sit down in the Auditorium and they are bouncing a huge beach ball around the auditorium when suddenly off in the distance in the far back corner a guy stands up and yells "FIRE IT UP! FIRE IT UP!!!! :wtf: Then another guy on the other side of the room stands and yells "FIRE IT UP! FIRE IT UP! :wow: Then suddenly my brother right next to me stands up and yells "FIRE IT UP! FIRE IT UP!:blush: Each time the person would thrust their arm high in the air to emphasize how "fired up they were" :puke:

Buy this time I was a little freaked out!!! It was getting creepy as hell! So someone comes up on stage and starts trying to get the crowd going telling corny jokes while everyone laughed way out of proportion to the quality of the humor. The guy starts asking everyone "Wouldn't it be nice to not have to have an alarm clock!!!??? Wouldn't it be nice to have your own Jet!!!??? Everyone claps and screams "YES!!!"

Well this crap goes on for several minutes until he introduced Bobby Sue and Billy who just made Diamond. At this point I am terrified and I realize they DID FUCKING TRICK me into an Amway convention! :grr: Well, I sit their and listen to Bobby Sue talk about how her and Billy were down and out and she is crying and her voice is cracking and the story gets more and more horrible going into detail about the car accident and how their family had abandoned them and Billy had cancer and still they kept their faith in God and thanks to their Up Line....Travis and Mary who were right their at their side when Billy was in the hospital and helped them make it through all the tough times!!!!:toast: :bounce: So everyone including my Sister in law and Brother have tears rolling down their cheeks as people from the audience periodically yell "Praise God!":nopity:

Well all this goes on until I am numb!:hurts: Then we go to Denny's where a number of other Amway folks had gone to gather. I am sitting with my Brother and Sister in Law and they introduce me to their Up Line who look like Jimmy and Tammy Fay Baker. This is when the move in for the hard sell! 'Jim Baker' asks me if I enjoyed the convention atmosphere and just to keep things civil I say "Oh yeah it was interesting". Jim then says "So what do you think....are you ready to sign on?" Then my brother and sister in law chime in trying to put more pressure on me saying things like "Amway expanded more than Walmart last year!!! Come on Steve we can do this together, don't you want to make a lot of money and never have to hit the snooze key on your alarm clock again?" At this point I am really pissed and I say, I like hitting the snooze key! SUDDENLY THEY REALIZED THAT I WAS GOING TO BE HOSTILE AND A TOUGH SELL! I could hear a change in their tone of voice. They started hitting me from all sides! My brother nails me then Tammy Fay then my sister in law then Jim Baker!!!! I was trapped in a corner!! They kept at it until they finally pushed me over the edge and I go ballistic! :mad: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke:

So here we are in the middle of Denny's Family Restaurant and I start going off! Then they start going off! We are yelling back and fourth at one another and I am screaming "I CAN'T FUCKING BELIEVE YOU TRICKED ME INTO COMING TO THIS!!! DO YOU KNOW HOW CREEPY THAT IS!! Well then I get the guilt treatment because the family is AGAINST THEM and Amway is their only REAL family!!! Bla, bla, bla, bla!!!:nopity: :banghead:

Needless to say, I left that night cutting my visit short. Five years later they left Amway and my brother and sister in law are back in the family while Tammy Fay and Jim were determined to be corrupt scumbags who never really cared about them at all.

I have to say! I know I saw people who looked just like Rick Santorm standing and yelling "FIRE IT UP! FIRE IT UP!!!" :rofl:

http://www.merchantsofdeception.com/hallofshame.html
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0412/S00079.htm

[KansDem]

1. My Amway story...

Back in the mid-'70s I was tricked into attending an Amway presentation by a "fiend." He would not give me much information about the event, except to say it was about a "great opportunity to achieve financial independence," but did offer to give me a ride... It was held in a private house with about 20 people or so attending. It seemed to take hours with the same kind of antics going on as you described. I felt like a prisoner.

I learned a valuable lesson that night: Never accept a ride to some unknown destination for an event about which you have very little information.

[tanyev]

2. The only thing that would have made that story better

is if you had started rolling in the aisle and speaking in tongues at the convention and told them that God said they were all going straight to hell. But that's really hard to pull off well.

Good for you for standing up to them. My ex-husband got sucked in while we were still married. He wanted me to come to the events with him--heck, he probably was getting all kinds of grief from them why his wife wouldn't participate. Silly me, I was working two jobs to his none and was the only thing keeping a roof over our heads.

[LoZoccolo]

3. Why is Denny's the unofficial restaurant of Amway distributors?

It may have something to do with the fact that it's still open after the conventions let out, but I've heard other stories about people trying to get other people into multi-level marketing where they take them to Denny's!

I should say here that I'm not trying to knock Denny's; it's like, one of my favorite restaurants.

[Ron Green]

9. I think it's because you can get away cheap.

All they ever order is coffee at these "meetings after the meeting." They're much too cheap (and broke) to actually eat out. I saw a family outside a big Amway convention in Houston sitting in their Cadillac (you've got to drive an impressive car) eating bologna sandwiches for their lunch.

[DinahMoeHum]

12. I wonder if it really was their Cadillac. . .or just a lease.

All show, no real dough.


:evilfrown:

[tridim]

4. What happens if you just get up and walk out?

Do they shine a spotlight on you like the Movementarians on the Simpsons?

[tanyev]

5. Na na na na na na na na....Leader!

[Old and In the Way]

6. I really don't like business schemes that use MLM techniques.

Making money by trading on friendship and family ties debases the sense of community. I really think this does more damage to our social relationships and sense of family then just about anything.

Sadly, I think as our economy turns more towards service industries, we'll see more profiteering based on family/friendship connections and this will further erode the social fabric....

You certainly had more patience than me...I'd have walked out of that rally as soon as I realized what it was all about.

[FreedomAngel82]

8. Me too

As soon as I heard someone chant "fire it up" I'd be gone. I'd excuse myself to the bathroom and sneak out of the first exit door I see.

[Hong Kong Cavalier]

11. It does damage social relationships

I've lost two friends to Amyway and it's related groups (Quixtar, specifically)
In fact, one friend showed up at a 30th birthday party we held for another friend just to work the crowd. Whenever anyone asked him what he did, his canned reply was this: "I own my own business. I create opportunities."

The other friend's girlfriend took him aside that night into a quiet room and chewed him out for a good 15 minutes, indicating that she didn't want him there just to try to scam a few of their friends into his Quixtar scheme. He left that conversation and continued trying to work the crowd.

I've only talked to him once since that night. That was three years ago.

[Quixote1818]

23. It's creepy isn't it???

:scared:

[Walt Starr]

7. What a friggin cult!

Somebody says Amway or MLM to me, I move quickly in the opposite direction.

I am not one to take to the brainwashing techniques of such cults.

[Roland99]

10. It was about the same for Excel Communications (long distance)

But, at least Amway has migrated to the web as Quixtar.

[KharmaTrain]

13. Several Amway "Moments"

About 1980, my then girlfriend and I were given the Anway pitch from a close friend and his new bride. She was the one who set him up...they came over to our apartment with all the charts and graphs and how we could make lots of money and so on. They also hit on my mother (sucker was her middle name) who bought some detergent from them just out of pity. There was a bit of "c'mon, we're friends" pressure on this, but I could just sense there was something goofy about this company and "ponzi scheme" was all I could think of.

Amway also had just bought the Mutual Broadcasting system. I worked for a Mutual affiliate and started to investigate the Amway corporation and it's empire. They took their Chicago radio affiliate and re-directed the signal to point directly at their Ada, Michigan headquarters...cutting back on what was a real great signal.

Fast forward to the present...the Mutual Broadcasting system is history. The couple who tried to recruit my now wife and I into Amway are divorced...both have had a history of financial problems, and she's moved on to Tupperware, Adult Toys, Time Shares and who knows what else. When I cleared out my parents house, we found that unused bottle of Amway detergent, too.

[shanti]

14. my fundy aunt and uncle

were into that for awhile...these are folks that just can't be satisfied with their largesse, they MUST get richer!

[Walt Starr]

15. 54% of Amway recruits make nothing and the rest earn on average $65 a mont

http://skepdic.com/amway.html

[EC]

16. Herbal Life is another one

that drives me crazy...The fundies I've met around here are all into Amway and Herbal Life, and I swear the pills they take through Herbal Life, hypnotize them, they all look like spacey zombies...

[Maestro]

19. So that is the secret.

We always say they drink too much kool-aid but it is actually Herbal Life pills. ;)

[Quixote1818]

24. Spacey zombies

It's funny how they do have a certain weird look to them. Creepy!

[bleedingheart]

17. My view of ScAmway - DeVos and VanAndel KKKlans..

....look at where Dick and Betsey DeVos spread their money and then look at the VanAndels...they are big GOP contributors...they are anti-tax, anti-public school and they are just crooks and they are the "creators of ScAmway"

One of them had a private helicopter pad at his home....that is how rich he got off of scamming people into selling cleaning products...

[kcass1954]

18. Early 94, I had an on-going mortgage customer...

He was a real estate investor, buying property, rehabbing, and re-selling it. But in a very reputable way. He had lines of credit at the banks where I worked. He and his family lived in Ocala, but he owned a condo in Miami where all of his property was located. I dealt with him for about 6 years without ever meeting his wife. One day, he called me that she was in town and could I meet them for lunch. It was the big Amway sell. I never lost so much respect for anyone so fast!

[lonestarnot]

20. OMG .... Now I know I hate that freak!

[Anywho6]

21. Amway is very cult-like

I spent 13 years in the hotel business in Louisville, Kentucky and witnessed many Amway conventions pass through our doors. It was incredible that I was able to distinguish an Amway-ite from a "regular" guest when they walked through the door. You describe the look well, Quixote--"you could look in their eyes and they looked like the invasion of the body snatchers had taken over their minds." They just had this glazed over look.

The "grand pooh-bahs" always came to town in their big custom made buses and were always granted special permission to park it right out front. It was sad to see these people drooling over a bus and believing in their hearts that some day, they, too, would own a bus like that. It broke my heart sometimes if I thought long enough about how these "big shots" were taking advantage of people's hopes and dreams in order to line their pockets. I met some nice people and was tempted more than once to shake them and ask them what they were doing and to snap out of it!

Over the years, they tried to shake the Amway stigma by using different names for their groups, but we always knew they were Amway. We always had lots of people paying cash (for a week-long brainwashing...I mean...stay), credit cards over their limits and sometimes using two or three credit cards to pay the bill and reports of children left alone in the hotel rooms while their parents attended the meetings (some well into the wee hours of the morning).

[Maestro]

22. Had friends that invited us over for dinner one night

in the early 90's. It was a great dinner. Had wonderful conversation before dinner then during dinner came the sales pitch. We never saw them again. And this were smart individuals. I just don't see how they couldn't understand the scam. The only other option was that they did understand the scam and didn't care for our friendship too much so they tried to con us. Oh well. :eyes: