# Amway and other MLM "Businesses"



## Cityboy

Anybody ever been involved in Amway or other MLM companies? 

Do you know anyone who has? 

Do you have any funny or sad MLM stories to tell?

We got involved in Amway just before we got married; about 16 years ago. A real close friend introduced us to it. Spent about 6 months and figured out there is no money there for 99.9% of the suckers working their butts off.

There's a "mockumentary" out about Amway called "Believe". Here's the link: http://believethemovie.com/ Looks like it's pretty funny from the trailers.

If there's any interest shown in this thread, I'll tell a funny story or two that happened to us.


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## XeVfTEUtaAqJHTqq

I got sucked into an Amway meeting once.  The guys organizing it didn't mention the word Amway until our second or third meeting. About that time I realized it was something that requires you to have no problem milking friends and relatives for sales.  You have to have no soul and no concern for associates, friends and relatives to be successful in that business.


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## Hutchman

Had a coworker and his wife come to the house once with a plan to make me rich. I kept asking them to tell me the product and they'd always steer the conversation away. Turned out it was Amway. I asked them to leave. Good way to screw up a friendship-pushing that line of BS on them.
My wife has been selling Mary Kay cosmetics for years. She gets out of it exactly what she wants. She sells just enough to stay in the program and qualify for the discount. I keep trying to get her to put in a little more effort and actually make some money, which she could do easily, but she's happy the way it is. She's never tried to recruit anybody. It's MLM but, at least, they have a viable product to sell.  Hutch


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## AndyM

MLM = pyramid scheme with products... 
those above you make money while you do all of the work and see very little, if any, money.


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## Spiffy1

I was in Amway back while had a use for fairly large quantities of a couple [IMHO unmatched at that time] industrial cleaners - of course, I also sold a few items when people requested them.

Of course, if anyone would have wanted to sign up, I'd gladly done it; but I certainly wasn't going to go out pushing people into a "money-making" scheme. In and of itself, I won't say a thing against Amway, but considering the variety of goods you can get at a grocery store these days (without shipping costs!), I can only assume "get rich quick weasels" are driving a much larger share of their bussiness than legitimate sales. 



			
				PBinWA said:
			
		

> You have to have no soul and no concern for associates, friends and relatives to be successful in that business.


Anyone ever notice, a bunch of these groups [i.e. the "business building" organizations - regardless of the product company's integrety or lack thereof] claim to be very religious?! They actually try to make you think you are helping your friends [to find "financial independance"]. Of course, if they have 100 friends to sucker, you might be. But then all their friends are suckers unless they have 10,000 friends to sucker. hmmmmm

Just recently I saw the icing-on-the-cake. They have no products to sell (just a benifit plan [i.e. the high tech version of a coupon book] for $2200  ), and claim you'll get your investment back easily in the first year....even if you don't choose to market the plan and make 6 figures in your first year. Now a less than savy consumer who happens to do a lot of shopping could probably make the savings: else, you're either going to sucker a bunch of people or become one. It was friends/and reletives that showed me the plan; I tried to run the numbers for them, but didn't phase them, so I didn't have the heart to push it. The one I think will do alright in savings anyway, and they all like to meet people, so I guess they have a win-win situation even if they lose; but I'm not going down that road.


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## mtntopper

PBinWA said:
			
		

> I got sucked into an Amway meeting once. The guys organizing it didn't mention the word Amway until our second or third meeting. About that time I realized it was something that requires you to have no problem milking friends and relatives for sales. You have to have no soul and no concern for associates, friends and relatives to be successful in that business.


 
I figured it out at the first meeting and never went back. Now I just ask bluntly if its is some "MLM scam" if someone invites me to any similar sounding affair and decline and not very graciously. True friends would never subject their friends or family to this kind of crap......


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## Doc

mtntopper said:
			
		

> True friends would never subject their friends or family to this kind of crap......



True for the most part but what if they've been suckered also and pull you along for the ride.  I was suckered that way into something called "Think and grow rich" or some such nonsense.  Me and a friend lost a few hundred.  The ones that started it did just want they intended.  I figure they got a bundle out of it.  It was MLM even worse than Amway.  No product other than recruiting other investors.  It was a pyramid scheme of the worst type.


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## mak2

I really did know personally two people who made a lot of money in Amway.  In fact, the first one became real well off and retired to Florida several years ago.  The other guy was a friend of his and I lost track of him, but he did very well too.  I understand there were two braches of Amway, one sold product and built distributors and was mainly from the Midwest, and really did sell soap and stuff.  The other brach was from out west somewhere and just sold the get rich quick scheme.  I am a jerk adn not even close to a sales guy so I was always an innocent bystander, but a few years ago I tried to buy some Amway concrete floor cleaner and I could not find anyone to sell it to me.  They wanted me to come to a meeting,  I ended up using powded laundry detergent.


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## Dargo

I went to one of their "meetings", a big one apparently, but absolutely NOBODY would use the "A" word (Amway) until about 15 minutes into the presentation I just had to raise my hand and ask "Is this an Amway meeting?".  There were about 200 people dead silent and staring at me.  Oh well, I suppose you guys know enough about me by now that I am most certainly not timid about rocking the boat nor will I take shit off of anyone (gave that one up the one and only time in my life I was fired from a job).  So, when the speaker finally began his dissertation trying to explain everything except failing to answer my question, I asked one more time "Please tell me if this is an Amway meeting!"  Well, you could hear a pin drop.

When the speaker composed himself enough to tell me that he was indeed a "Diamond Member" of Amway, I interrupted the rest of what he was saying and said "I sure wish you guys would have said so earlier!"  I then got up and walked out while all 200 people sat in stunned silence that I would do such a thing.  Oh well, they just didn't know Dargo.  

Funny thing, they have never called me back to invite me to another of their meetings.  Also, can someone please tell me how they can survive when, to the best of my knowledge, they don't seem to want you to buy anything; just get other people to sell their stuff.  Granted, their products do seem to be of reasonable quality, but I can't take all the weirdness (if that's a word).

**Edit**

Some people keep saying that Amsoil is MLM.  I just don't really see that.  I see them more as a Sam's Club sort of thing.  Since I do personally believe that they do have a great product, I just pay the $30 a year and act as the 'buyer' for several of my relatives as well as myself.  I've never been asked to try to get others to join, and my little group of people split the $30 a year "dealer fee" so we can order their products at a discount.


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## simpleplan

Network marketing has come a long way since the Amway days. Many companies are working or have worked hard to try to become more legitimate and mainstream and it's slowly becoming more accepted and recognized. However, the very nature of the business model will always attract border line or out right con artist types because many companies do not police themselves in the name of profits. On the other hand, some of the most reputable and more modern network marketing companies have stringent controls to keep their reps. or distributors in check. This may include large legal teams that are not only out to protect the company but also to police the actions of the reps/distributors.


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## XeVfTEUtaAqJHTqq

Alright CityBoy - where's your funny Amway stories?


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## simpleplan

Go here:

http://www.mlm-thetruth.com/humor&satire.htm


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## Cityboy

PBinWA said:


> Alright CityBoy - where's your funny Amway stories?


 
Man, this is an old thread that's been revived.

I don't really have any funny stories while we were involved in it, but I had some fun with an Amway distributor that contacted me about a year after we quit. More on that in a later post...maybe. It was more of a social event for us. We got some fun, cheap vacations out of the deal, but we didn't make a dime of profit. Our "group", if you will, used to get together socially and swim, play tennis or go to the beach fairly frequently, so there was some social value and friendships developed that lasted even after we all got smart and quit even pretending to work the pyrimid scheme.

The products are overpriced and many are sub-par to what you can buy at Wal-Mart for pennies on the dollar. I did see a lot of young couples lose a lot of money attempting to make a go of it. There is a reason Amway goes for the young 20-something married couple; older couples have learned a little more about basic economics and will not fall for such silliness. Some of the "distributors" can be quite deceptive in their recruitment tactics to the point of being criminal, hence all the lawsuits currently being filed against Amway and some of its distributors. 

Do a Google search for "Amway Sucks!" and you will be amazed at what comes up.


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## ddrane2115

I was involved with Primerica Financial Services  (formerly known as A L Williams).  The basis is 'hire' as many as you can, some will stick around and make some money, and some will not.  As in many MLM, the more you get to stick around the higher or more you get to keep.  There are millionaires in this, I know a few of them, who have had very lucrative 'warm' markets to go after, and it got started with the "cash value" life insurance thing way back when.  Basically in this you get a certain dollar value in sales, vs number of people in your 'org' and you get to move up thru the ranks.   Many try, many dont get far, but lots learn about insurance and how to save and make money.


When I was in it, here is what we 'sold'

Life insurance, term only.............priced to high, you can get it for pennys on the dollar and "save the difference" and have even more.   After seeing this I wondered how they could be so high yet cram the buy term and save the difference so much..................

Investing, mutual funds........the only part of it I liked for my consumers really..........

Loans, I never liked the way they sold them and in fact proved to my uppers that it was the same as a credit card.   Do you know you can pay weekly on a credit card and pay it off faster, with less interest paid, than paying extra each billing cycle.  They manufactured a loan program based on this where you pay 2 times a month, but to camoflage it they used the one extra per year theme...........I figured it out in about an hour long session on how to sell this, told my uplines and they were pissed that I knew.  IF IF IF IF you follow the plan to the LETTER, it works, one time out of whack and the whole thing is screwed.

IF you get asked, this is insurance and financial services sales, period.  My upline focused on hiring, in one month he was GONE.


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## Deadly Sushi

I had a girlfriend that told me she was interested in Amway and that she wanted me to goto a meeting with her. 
Well, I eat Amway sales guys for lunch. I had several people try to get me to join in the past. And by the time he was finished all he wanted to do is get the hell out of the house. I can happily say I blew his ass out of the water. 
So I happily agreed to join my then girlfriend for their brainwashing..... errrrr.... meeting. I told her about 15 times that Amway is a scam and she will loose money, not make money. She didnt listen. I dumped her ass the next week. I called a few months later to see how things were. Yup. She lost a few hundred bucks and had a shit load of toothpaste soaps and airfresheners.


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## simpleplan

This is in no way to defend Multi-Level marketing but one should know that the failure rate is very similar to that of more traditional small business start ups and those are a lot more than a $35.00 kit and a few hundred dollars of product per month until you wise up and figure out you're part of the 97% that it isn't going to work out for. 

Nobody faults a person for blowing 10's of thousands of of their hard earned nest egg dollars to start their dream coffee or sandwich shop that ends up going belly up because Starbucks or Subway still does better marketing and maybe better coffee or subs. It's okay if someone sells the farm for what we deem acceptable...but try a kit for $35.00 and several hundred or a few thousand dollars later without results and it's the evil pyramid scheme. These companies wouldn't exist if it wasn't legal. Think cash advance stores. No one is all proud of those rip off artists are they? But they're legal and profitable!

Also, look at McDonalds...are their burgers really the best burgers you can get in any given town? No way...but they know how to market and be consistent.

What gives network marketing a bad name is all the network marketers that peddle the "it's so easy, just use the products and share them with a few who will also get three who will get three, it's not sales"...*all entirely B.S.* 

Those that strike gold with network marketing are those who already have a very large network of people to tap into and/or absolutely positively bust their rear end off and get the proper training just like in any other profession. 

In the end...its very hard work in a business that requires marketing mastery and yes...the phrase that no one in network marketing wants to hear or tell anyone else "*sales excellence*". At the end of the day...it's just another form of sales period....nothing more, nothing less unless of course you've told someone otherwise (lied like many do).


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## Doc

Well said Kevin.  Good post!


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## Cityboy

simpleplan said:


> This is in no way to defend Multi-Level marketing but one should know that the failure rate is very similar to that of more traditional small business start ups and those are a lot more than a $35.00 kit and a few hundred dollars of product per month until you wise up and figure out you're part of the 97% that it isn't going to work out for.
> 
> Nobody faults a person for blowing 10's of thousands of of their hard earned nest egg dollars to start their dream coffee or sandwich shop that ends up going belly up because Starbucks or Subway still does better marketing and maybe better coffee or subs. It's okay if someone sells the farm for what we deem acceptable...but try a kit for $35.00 and several hundred or a few thousand dollars later without results and it's the evil pyramid scheme. *These companies wouldn't exist if it wasn't legal.* Think cash advance stores. No one is all proud of those rip off artists are they? But they're legal and profitable!
> 
> Also, look at McDonalds...are their burgers really the best burgers you can get in any given town? No way...but they know how to market and be consistent.
> 
> What gives network marketing a bad name is all the network marketers that peddle the "it's so easy, just use the products and share them with a few who will also get three who will get three, it's not sales"...*all entirely B.S.*
> 
> Those that strike gold with network marketing are those who already have a very large network of people to tap into and/or absolutely positively bust their rear end off and get the proper training just like in any other profession.
> 
> In the end...its very hard work in a business that requires marketing mastery and yes...the phrase that no one in network marketing wants to hear or tell anyone else "*sales excellence*". At the end of the day...it's just another form of sales period....nothing more, nothing less unless of course you've told someone otherwise (lied like many do).


 
I have to get in a comment or two on this one. MLM's like Amway are still legal because they have a small army of attorneys working constantly to repel legislation that would shut them down. The corruption within the MLM industry is well documented. I cannot see any correlation to the failure of an MLM "distributor" to that of a traditional brick and mortar business. I have not checked the stats, so I am speculating that individual small business failure is nowhere near the failure rate of individual MLM failures. I'd say over 99% of MLM ventures by individuals fail. 

With most MLM, the losses are small, usually in the hundreds before the individual distributor wises up and realizes that no rational person will buy their over priced product from them when they can get it cheaper at Wal-Mart. However, there are some people who wind up with bankruptcy and ruined lives. Here is one example of a guy who feels he was decieved by Amway/Quixtar and the associated Amway Marketing Association: 

Merchants of Deception

This guy is so pissed, he has taken on the Amway legal machine. And he is not the only one. These orginizations are legal by the skin of their teeth and remain legal by the manipulation of the legal system. I cannot see any relation to MLM and the traditional business world. 

The money in MLM is made by those who get in first and remain at the top of the pyrimid. To verify this, just look to the king of MLM, which is still Amway/Quixtar. Look at their top distributors like Bill Britt, Paul Miller, and Dexter Yeager. That is where the real money is. You can only make so much money off a bar of soap, and by the time the profits are spread down to the direct distributor level, there is nothing left; how could there be? 

The real money in Amway is made through the sales of the so-called motivational material which is sold to the down line distributors. The downline is expected to purchase one motivational tape and one motivational book from their direct distributor's at a minimum each week. The big diamonds are the greatest beneficiaries of the revenue from these motivational materials. If these young distributors do not make the minimum required purchases each week, peer pressure is applied until they either buy or quit. I have seen this with my own eyes and know it to be true, and there are never ending reports of this all over the internet.

The way I see MLM is that it is basically a way to market over priced products to gullable people. If the products sold via MLM are so good, then why don't they sell it retail or over the Internet? Sales by coercion is what most MLM amounts to in my experience.


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## Doc

Cityboy said:


> Sales by coercion is what most MLM amounts to in my experience.



CB,
I with ya part of the way .... but I don't believe coercion is the right word.

*coercion n. The act or practice of coercing. Power or ability to coerce. coercionary.

coerce: Definition: To force to act or think in a certain way by use of pressure, threats, or intimidation; compel.*

The coercion comes AFTER the person has agreed to enter the world of MLM.  At the beginning what makes them sign up is the desire to make money by getting others to sell under them.  The whole sales pitch is geared around showing the people a way to build a small fortune.  It starts so small, but the power of numbers makes it sound like you can do it with minimal effort.  Once inside the coercion is put on them by the upline folks.


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## Cityboy

What you posted was exactly as I intended it to be interpreted, Doc. The "sales" I am referring to is selling the business "opportunity" and continuing this "sale" after the person has signed up.

People are responsible for their own actions and should educate themselves before drinking the MLM kool-aid. But, I view the MLM world in a totally different frame from the rest of the business world. MLM's, almost without fail, like to compare themselves to a franchise and invoke the name of McDonalds in an attempt to create credibility, when in reality, there is no logical, justifiable comparison. 

Here's a funny video out-take or two about MLM:

Believe!

The trailers are a scream.


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## Doc

To funny CB.  The trailers are a hoot.
Did you view the cast.  Our own Brian Clark (BC) is one of them.  Brian, I had no idea!!!  
The one actor reminded me of Jim Cary at first.  I never heard of the movie until today but will now keep an eye out for it on one of the premium channels.


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## bczoom

Doc said:


> Did you view the cast.  Our own Brian Clark (BC) is one of them.  Brian, I had no idea!!!


Shhhhh.  Those weren't some of my best times...


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## Snowcat Operations

My dad is a MLM nut.  I was into Amway years ago for the products.  Never tried to sell it.


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## Deadly Sushi

> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *Doc*
> 
> 
> _Did you view the cast. Our own Brian Clark (BC) is one of them. Brian, I had no idea!!! _
> 
> Shhhhh. Those weren't some of my best times...


 
huh??? zoom isnt in that is he???????????


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## bczoom

Deadly Sushi said:


> huh??? zoom isnt in that is he???????????


No DS....  I just have a _relatively_ common name.


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## Doc

So, BC, this is as good of thread as any to ask what was your boy doing in that new avatar you have now?


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## bczoom

His first bungie jump launch.  

Just kidding.  He's airborne off the picnic table heading for a pile of leaves.


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## Doc

bungee jump. You made me look at the pic again before seeing the rest of your post.
Good pic.  Yall got that many leaves on the ground already ehhh.  Not here.    Won't be long though ......


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## bczoom

Doc said:


> Yall got that many leaves on the ground already ehhh.


We don't have that many but the kids scrimped all the leaves they could find for an hour to make the pile.


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