Have any Amway encounters to share?

There’s nothing wrong with a fellow trying to make a few extra clams, even as a sales person; and Amway folks are okay by me as well. Honest. :stuck_out_tongue:

But for whatever reason, it seems like this particular American company more than any other has gotten something of a ridiculed reputation over the years, and I’m not so sure that it’s deserved. Just the same, I thought it might be fun to share one of my own experiences … and maybe then luck-out and read about some of your experiences so as to compare notes and maybe get some insights into what makes these people tick.

One day, years ago, I walked into one of my favorite restaurants to get a bite to eat. And before I even sat down, a fellow from my high school days hollered out to me in a way that made me feel pretty good about myself, like he genuinely liked seeing me.

He was a guy that a lot of guys were envious of because he was very good looking and was full of big, strong muscles; the kind of muscles that won him a lot of matches on the mat while wrestling for our high school team. And needless to say, the chicks totally dug him!

On top of all that, he was a fine person that was void of arrogance … and he came from a respected family. And while I never said more than a few words to him, because I was a little insecure back then due to not having as much going on the way he did, he was nevertheless always friendly towards me. All in all a great guy was he!

And so imagine how shocked I was when in that restaurant he went into a hyper-happy sales pitch in order to try and get me to join him in becoming an Amway salesman! He blew right through the normal pleasantries of how I’d been doing and all of that, and just made a beeline for the glory of Amway soap products and how the company had such a bright future and how a person would be a fool not to get in on a fabulous deal!

I was only slightly hurt that his whole super happiness in seeing me was really just an effort to suck me into selling silly Amway crap. I felt sorry for the guy.

Of course, I didn’t take him up on the offer, just found a seat and had a milk shake and burger before leaving the place and wondering how things could have gone so wrong for him that he’d stoop to tarnishing his once cool high school reputation by
becoming that type of mercenary. Gosh, what a revelation!

Again, nothing wrong with him for trying to make a go of it; but AMWAY??? :eek:

Anyone care to share thoughts and/or similar experiences? I’m hitting the sack now and then I’m off to work, though will be back later on to read any replies. Thanks All!

I know people who got involved in Team which is Amway in sheep’s clothing. Lot’s of pressure to join them. Wouldn’t listen when I pointed them to all the people who lost money on the deal. The answer to losing money is to pay more money for more seminars! :eek:

Back in the mid-90’s my (now ex-)wife and I were pretty good friends with another couple, Scott and Angie. We met because I worked with Scott. He was a young engineer who I personally trained and mentored when he was new with the company.

We spend a fair amount of time with them and some other couples, mostly going out to eat or having dinner parties. They eventually moved out of town but lived fairly close and came back to town often. We would hang out when they were in town most of the time.

One sad day, Scott’s brother hooked them into Amway. As soon as that happened, they weren’t interested in seeing us anymore unless they could bring us to a seminar or pitch us. I firmly refused. Angie called us one time and said that while she knew that we weren’t interested in their “home business,” would it be OK if they came over and just practiced their pitch on us to help them out. She took me for a fucking idiot and I was insulted and stopped answering their calls.

A few years later, I was laid off. Scott heard about it and called me to see how I was doing. I was really touched that he made that effort. Then, at the end of the call, he said that he understood how times must be tough for me right now and maybe I should look at the website that he set up…for selling Amway.

Years and years ago, a close friend of mine suddenly became interested in Amway, and wanted me to join up with him. I kept telling him it was a waste of time, a pyramid scheme, and so on. I did, however, agree to go to a conference they were hosting at a (shitty little) hotel in town. We got there, there were 30 or so middle-aged guys packed into a tiny room, and the whole thing had this creepy Death of a Salesman feeling to it. All in all, it was very depressing, and my friend shortly decided it wasn’t for him.

I stupidly almost got caught up with Equinox a few years later. Almost. I opted-in to go to a sales conference in Pittsburgh, PA and paid $200 to attend, with the guarantee that if I decided not to get into it, I’d get my $200 back. Well, about half-way through the first day of the conference I came out of the ethers and got my wits about me again. I left the conference (it was hard getting out of there, too - I was confronted by probably a dozen or so people, all wanting to know where I was going, why was I leaving, wouldn’t I stay and hear them out, and on and on). I finally mad my way out of the conference hall, found the phone banks, and called Delta and booked a flight home that evening. I realized I had to write the $200 off as a loss - I’d never see it, and every time I talked to those guys, they’d try to suck me back in. My handler/initial contact called me and left messages daily for months until I got my phone number changed.

ARGH! Good friends of ours started doing Amway and asked us to join. I said “I’ll give you the money to join and whatever but I will NOT sit though any BS presentations about it, buy anything from them, or in any way DO anything with my fabulous business. If it will help you out for me to join, fine, but I won’t do anything more than that.”

So they said fine, yadda yadda. BTW, could we pop over so they could “practice their presentation?” Sure, I thought. What harm in that? Unfortunately for them, I was working third shift at the time and was fiercely greedy with my free time so I was much pissier than normal when this all occured.

We went over (my husband and I) and lo and behold, it’s NOT just our friends, it’s their “leaders” (or whatever) too.

What happened was that the leaders told them that they (our friends) would be practicing their speil on us and the reality was that the LEADERS were going to try to get us sucked in.

Basically it went like this: These people pulled out the craziest circular logic ever and quote all sorts of false income promises. My favorite was that they “only work 10 hours a week!!” I asked how many talks they did each week. They said 4. I told them we’d already been there for 3 hours so that’s 12 hours a week and that’s not including travel time. Yeah.

“Don’t you wish you could quit your job?”
“No, I don’t. I love my job and I can’t wait to get there and do it again tonight. I’m helping people who are sick get well again. I find it rewarding.” That was a stumper for them. It was basically a point counterpoint nightmare for them until my husband called an end to it and we went home.

Our friends called MORTIFIED over it and apologized. I don’t think they were involved with them for much longer after that.

Their business practices, IMHO, are for people who can’t do math and want something for nothing. I have no doubt that you can make money with Amway, but unfortunately that seems to involve making a lot less than they promise and lying to people to get what you want.

They do have nice soap products, though.

About 2 years ago I went to see my doctor about pain in my lower back. He took some x-rays, we discussed the pain, blah, blah, blah. Not important to the story.

The next day I had a message on the answering machine, it was my doctor. He asked if I would call him at home and gave his home number. I was amazed, I thought for sure he had looked at the x-rays again and spotted a DEADLY TUMOR and I was going to need emergency surgery! Why else would my doctor tell me to call him AT HOME?!?

Nope, not a tumor. He thought I was friendly, outgoing guy (I am) and would I be interested in joining Amway?!

Amway sounds exactly like a religious cult to me.

I had a lab tech who worked for a customer try to pitch me.

A few years later I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen in years. I saw the pitch coming, and shut him down before he even got started. A couple years later I ran into him again. Asked about a mutual friend…turns out they no longer speak due to an Amway related dispute.

I’ve decided that Amway must be a word from an ancient, now forgotten language that means “How to piss off every friend you ever had.”

Their bad reputation is completely deserved. It’s because of their slimey, deceptive sales techniques, because they purposely started rumors about competing companies that were patently false, because they hide the true nature of their business when recruiting, because they do about 90% of their sales in self-help literature rather than in any actual product that they produce, and because they go after anyone who disagrees with them with all guns blazing and 50 billion dollars worth of slimey scheister lawyers (much the same way Scientology works).

The average Amway distributor makes around $750 per year, but spends $1000. Which of course, is a fact you will NEVER hear in any of their presentations. It’s a business that relies upon each person preying on their friends and family in order to make the executives a crap load of profit, while the people doing the work and sweating over recruiting make $3.10.

You can read more about it here:

http://www.mlmsurvivor.com/vendetta.htm

http://www.rickross.com/groups/amway.html
(Especially pay attention to all the law suits…very interesting)

http://www.skepdic.com/amway.html

Not only does Amway (and other similar MLM scams) wreck families and friendships, but they’ve also moved into entire communities and torn things apart, creating battles between neighbors as they sweep through entire countries before any one realizes they’re not going to make any money.

And yes, I do believe it’s a cult of sorts. At least, it certainly has plenty of the characteristics of one, including brainwashing people to see everyone they know as a potential “mark.”

Pity me, for I am the Son of a Former Amway Salesman.

After my father left the Forces, he was kinda floating around for a few years, trying to figure out what it was that would really made him complete. I wasn’t around for the original conversion, as I was away at university. When I came back for Xmas, however, he sat me down for a little talk:

“So, son…what’re your plans for after you graduate?”

“Uh…I dunno. I’m only in my second year. I’m kinda hoping to get into professional acting, but obviously, there’s a good chance that won’t happen. Maybe teaching…?”

“So if you were going to be acting, you’d need to make some money on the side until you got established, right? Something that would leave you time to go to auditions and rehearsals?”

“…Yeah…I’ll probably look for some waitering jobs or something.”

“How’d you like that freedom to work your own hours and make a lot more money than you would waitering?”

Jesus, Dad! Did you join Amway!?”

“Well…yeah.”

“BWAHAHAhahahahaha!”

He insisted on taking me to one of those “Be Your Own Boss!” seminars described upthread. A hall full of desperate, mainly middle-aged men, trying to make their mark on the world by selling crappy products (good chocolate chip cookies, though); gladhanding each other, slapping each other on the back, talking numbers and the best ways to get their foot in the door. On the drive there and back, he’d played these motivational “You Can Do It!” tapes. For about a year, they’re all he’d listen to in the car.

Before I went back to school, he loaded me down with all these pamphlets and introductory tapes, asking me to hand them out to my housemates :eek:. I stuffed them in my desk drawer and threw them out at the end of the year instead.

My mother had to live with it for about 2 years before he realized that he sounded and acted like a used-car salesman and hadn’t made a dime. He has since found the thing that makes him complete, and although it wouldn’t be for me and it’s particularly offputting when he tries to share his new enthusiasm, he is no longer a used car salesman and is genuinely happy.

I’m glad he found what he was looking for.

And another thing (apparently, I wasn’t done with my rant): There’s something else hincky about the way they package and the claims they make on their products.

I can’t remember the exact details now (I’m looking for a cite) but it seems that there’s some reason their claims about being “environmentally friendly” or “good for you” aren’t evaluated by anyone but themselves. They’re not subject to the same advertising laws other products are…I believe it’s because of the way they’re distrubuted. Since they only sell to one another and don’t put products on a shelf in a store somewhere, they get past a lot of regulations.

So, you know, when they say “these vitamins are better than any others!” they don’t actually have to prove it.

Yeah, I was an Amway orphan for awhile too…and my father ended up FURIOUS with me because I wouldn’t embarrass myself by recruiting my friends.

When I was a little kid, I remember people talking about Amway, but then it seemed like it went away completely. I didn’t realize it still existed until a few years ago, when someone mentioned knowing a person who was an Amway salesman. My main memory of Amway was their stain remover L.O.C. (any clue what it stands for?), which was a laundryroom staple in my grandmother’s house for years.

Amway Christian soldiers marching as to war
With the soap of Jesus, going door-to-door …

Interesting. My best friend in high school was the son of an Amway couple. They had a pretty decent house, and never tried selling to me or my parents. It all looked copacetic to me.

I wonder what they were doing wrong.

True, but IME it’s hard to convey I will buy your products because you are my friend and I’m happy to help you out; the products ain’t half bad; and I’d have to buy them anyway, but I’m not interested in hearing any speils on selling. They hear it but they don’t believe it or respect it.

Why? Because what they are really trying to generate is not sales but salesmen. They make money by getting other people roped in to trying to make money. At the end of the day, they are not as interested in having you buy a truckload of detergent as they are in your getting other people signed up.

My Amway-dealing friend (acquaintence, really) simply COULD NOT STOP trying to get me interested in Amway. She tried to pitch me repeatedly, and she didn’t listen when I told her very bluntly, look, I’ll support your choice by buying these products but I am never going to agree to participate in any other way. When she asked to “practice her sales speech” to me and I said no, she chose to get mad and decide that meant I wasn’t a good friend. Which was fine with me, but I found it very telling that she was willing to give up a source of revenue for what they were supposedly selling (soap, papertowels, etc.) rather than accept that I wasn’t interested in what they were really selling (illusory “opportunities” to make money). But I felt pretty strongly that she was not respecting my clear wishes and that if she wanted to make participation in Amway the price of her friendship, that was a friendship I would have to do without.

I can’t imagine she has any friends left at this point.

Oh, I remember an enounter with an Amway minion, it was completely unexpected and very weird indeed.

A few years ago I was looking for work and regularly spoke on the telephone with various companies, trying to set up appointments for interviews. One day I spoke with the VP for a company I very much wanted to work for and we had a wonderful, long conversation and we set up a time to meet. I was on cloud 9 thinking that I had a very good chance of finally landing my dream job.

I was nervous to meet him and prayed to Og that I wouldn’t screw it up. I wanted this so badly! We ordered lunch and he started asking questions about what I wanted out of life. Would I be happy if I could make a lot of money, etc., etc. I thought it was kind of weird because these weren’t asked in a normal job interview kind of way. He finally launched into his Amway spiel over coffee and my heart just dropped. I felt like slapping him across the face. I was so disappointed that I wasn’t going to get my dream job and I thought he had quite a nerve to do that to a jobless person. I left in a hurry.

What a pisser that was!

Well, I’m glad I didn’t get a job with that company anyway. Obviously if the VP is out peddling Amway he’s not looking to fulfill his dreams with that company. Neither am I.

The L.O.C. stands for Liquid Organic Concentrate.

My mother was in Amway for years and years, starting in the early '60s, and she eventually became some kind of a distributor, which meant that a whole bunch of people ordered their products through her. She was the “Diamond Direct” for the area. She did newsletters for her group, reallly rah-rah sales pitch kinds of things, but she did make a lot of money.

The thing was that Amway started out with two products that were really good products–the laundry detergent SA8 and the aforementioned L.O.C.–but then branched out into other things, eventually everything, and not everything was of the same quality as the soap, and it was all overpriced (due to having to add a 35% incentive here and a 35% incentive there).

It was very cultish, but my mother was a widow and she loved the “we are family” vibe they had back then and the fact that all the sales meetings started with a prayer.

We had a basement full of stuff and those products had the weirdest names. I think there was a deodorant called “Pit Stop” and there was a refrigerator deodorizer called “Must Go.” She tried to get me to sell the Amway makeup line in college (“Artistry”) but once again, while the products were okay, they were about the same quality as, say, Maybelline, only priced like Lancome.

I got invited to a Quixtar (http://www.quixtar.com/) meeting (amway subsidiary they formed when e-commerce was taking off. I don’t really know why I went…had no idea what it was really, and had moved to a new area and figured it be a nice way to expand my social circle.

Scariest thing I ever saw. It was like a tent revival. The keynote was one of the Amway triple tier extra special 1 out of 100,000 people who suceed kinda person. “If you don’t do this for yourself, you owe it to do it for your kids and their future” etc…really scary.

The sad thing is, when he finished the pitch, everyone in the auditorium just about mobbed the stage in a rush to sign up.

The friend who invited me got a few other people sign on - they all ended up feeling pretty taken advantage of and alienated.

Isn’t this a Ponzi scheme? And why not illegal?

I had to look up Ponzi scheme, never hoid of it. Here’s the definition:

A form of fraud in which belief in the success of a nonexistent enterprise is fostered by the payment of quick returns to the first investors from money invested by later investors.

I wouldn’t consider Amway a nonexistant enterprise, so I don’t think it qualifies as a Ponzi scheme. Thanks for the new word though!

This is horrible! I think you should have slapped him. I hope you wrote a letter to the president of the company telling him or her what the VP had done. I know too well that feeling of Ohmigod, I need a job and this would be such a great job . . .. I think this is one of the meanest things I’ve ever heard of. :mad: