This was the basis for a Dragnet 67 episode (love any chance to mention Joe Friday), where the Big Ending had Joe on the stand testifying that for whatever bunko scheme the perp was pulling, it would take more people then there were in the US at the time, which supposedly indicated that the scheme must be illegal and a fraud.
IIRC part of why Amway is legal is that there are people who can and do make money at it, unlike stuffing envelopes and the like.
Years ago I met 2 guys through a mutual friend. One tried the Amway spiel on me. I declined, no harm no foul.
I have a bad time with names and faces unil I meet somebody several tiimes. A while later my friend and I go out with one of the guys I only met once. I casually asked about the other wack job friend involved in the screwy Amway scam.
You can see where this is going, I mixed them up. That turned into an awkard evening.
The story is The Snowball Effect by Katherine Maclean and was first published around 1952. I love the story.
trm
Well, suppose they were all motivated, true believers, and recruited similarly motivated people? Before long, you’d run out of people on the planet to recruit. Then the bottom layer of the pyramid scheme would be SOL, regardless how “motivated” they were. In reality, of course, this “endeavor” funnels money from many hapless suckers into a few deep pockets.
I tried explaining this to my ex-wife when she got into Primerica (a company owned by Citigroup; its actual products were various mortgage packages, but the distribution method was MLM). I described the whole process as “recruiting your own local competitors to create endless layers of middlemen for the end consumer.” Math isn’t her strong suit, but wishing real hard is, and she got quite incensed at me.
I’ve got an old friend I’ve kept in touch with, sparingly, over the years. Part of the reason I stayed friends with him was perhaps a hope that I could rub off on him a little by inspring him to relax and hold better conversations with people. He was never good at it. Always very uptight with his words, and easily frustrated with the fact that people didn’t like conversing on the topics of role-playing, science fiction novels, or other flights of fancy. He’s always had finicky habits when communicating and can never sit still either. I honestly believe he’s borderline obsessive-compulsive, but hasn’t been diagnosed, at least not that he’s told me. We’ve always had a pretty good agreement on things, though, so why am I saying all these personal things about my friend? Because during college, he acknowledged these weaknesses and sought to eliminate them by improving his communication skills … and somehow during this process, he met a Quixtar cultist.
I could write pages about the brainwashing, cultism, and motivational rallies (yes, I have been to one and seen it all). My friend has convinced himself (and his wife) that if they just keep ordering and pushing protein bars or generic toiletries, and going to this meeting or that rally, they’ll be millionaires by the time they’re 35. He even has this goal written down as a reminder amongst other supposedly self-reinforcing daily affirmations on a list of about twenty which is hung prominently on the back of the door to their apartment. It reads like the creepiest daily self affirmation manifesto you can imagine. If you really need to read a list to tell yourself to be happy everyday before you leave the house, you really need to reassess your approach to becoming happier. The rest of their apartment (which is a mess) is strewn with cases of Quixtar materials, promotional kits, products and other such things. He’s got all this stuff, and surprise, little time or money to do much of anything else. Outside of the meager discount he gets on ordering their own stuff through their MLM account (yes, they have been brainwashed into believing they are sticking it to the retail system by saving lots of money from ordering their regular items through Quixtar because they receive a monthly commission check from their own orders), they aren’t making squat. The sad part of all this is that my friend has allowed this entity to serve as his inspiration to grow as a person, and that he thinks this “business” is going to free him from the shackles of employment and deliver him into a life of no worries. Sadder still is that he really hasn’t outgrown the social anxieties which plagued him all throughout his younger years, they’ve only become more acute and noticeable. This, of course, makes him about as bad of a salesman as you’ve probably ever met. I feel for him, but it doesn’t help that he tried to pull this off on me just yesterday …
I met a girl who invited me to join two of her friends for a few drinks, some food, and a July 4th fireworks display yesterday. My friend and his wife had no plans, so I asked this girl if they wouldn’t mind two of my friends tagging along. They said okay, so then there were six of us. I’d just met this girl very recently, and this was the first time I’d met her friends, so first impressions were paramount. Perhaps foolishly hoping that my friend could get through the evening without being too socially inept, I suppose I got what I deserved. My friend started his Quixtar sales pitch several times throughout the evening, trying to inform and convince them of the wonders of XS Energy Drink, otherwise known as “The Nastiest Non-Alcoholic Shit You’ve Ever Tasted In A Can”. Some people argue about how Red Bull tastes, but this stuff tastes like the first iteration of Red Bull before the recipe was perfected: downright awful … and I say this as someone who doesn’t mind the taste of Red Bull. It has artificial sweetener too, so it has that ass-tastically weird aftertaste as well. It comes in different flavors, but they all go down like carbonated sugar-free cough medicine. Any online research you do on this product will invariably take you to sites laden with schill reviews from Quixtar cultists about how fantastic the beverage is, because only Quixtar cultists know what it is since they’re the only ones who resell it. Quixtar will not sell direct to retail because that would ruin their pyramid scheme. The only real reviews you’re likely to find are the bad ones, from people who’ve tried a free sample and realized how awful it was, and want to share even more evidence with the world about how truly insane Quixtar cultists are.
Anyway, my friend used the opportunity of meeting these new people to pawn off a free sample of XS to them, and in the process humiliated himself, embarassed me, and probably made these hosts feel rather awkward. He didn’t even do a good job of “selling” it to them either. He just doesn’t have the selling characteristic in him, and probably never will. I apologized for the awkwardness to the hosts later on because I really didn’t expect him to be such an ass, but now I have truly seen my friend’s delusion come full circle. Much like the other stories in these MLM threads (i.e. a girl cold-calling random numbers stolen from business cards in a fishbowl raffle), the desperation inherent in chasing the false promises of MLM is a truly powerful thing capable of altering long-held relationships.
I don’t want to crush his already fragile ego, but as of now, he’s not coming to any more social events with me as his liaison. I can’t even trust him not to practice his sales pitch on friends of mine he’s just met at a social gathering. I was already nervous about bringing him to social events just due to his awkwardness in the past, but now it’s conjoined with his botched attempts at salesmanship. He doesn’t even realize that what he’s doing is inappropriate because he’s that fucking brainwashed. I don’t even know how to talk to him about it, so I may just have to be blunt and tell him to never do it again … assuming I ever actually do anything with him again. Harsh, perhaps, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t considering whether to have a relationship with him at all after yesterday.
Whaddaya talkin’ about? I have 98, 2000 NT, XP and Vista!
My mom has sold so many different things. I think Amway was one of them, I just emailed her to ask about it. She was really very successful with Tupperware, MaryKay, and some type of vacuum; it allowed her to stay home with us, and to have a little extra income when she did go back to work full time.
Following up on my post above, I just found out about this little morsel of news. Apparently, Alticor has recently announced their plan to do away with the Quixtar name after many years of trying to reinvent the Amway brand, for what they cite as brand recognition issues. Supposedly they’re going to reinvent themselves, again, under the old Amway name. Can’t imagine that their “rethinking” involves much fundamental change, unless it involves some disciplinary oversight of the cultish nonsense perpetrated by their promotional organizations.
Yeah, it’s better known now than it ever was because your shady reputation has become infamous on the internet. I can’t even count the number of Quixtar nutjobs who tried desperately to tell to me that Quixtar was in fact “not Amway”, no doubt due to Amway’s poor reputation. Wonder what they’ll say now. “Well, it wasn’t Amway because Amway wasn’t cool for awhile, but we did a study and realized it was cooler than Quixtar, so now it’s Amway again!” This reminds me of Ford replacing the Taurus with the Five Hundred, then realizing after a year that the right thing to do would’ve been to have called it the new Taurus in the first place. Either way, not many people really seem to want one no matter what it’s called. Kinda like Amway.
Reviving this old thread: It is EXTREMELY unethical for a doctor, lawyer, veterinarian, etc. to recruit for an MLM through their practice! :rolleyes: If they kept it up, it’s highly likely that they faced some level of censure from their professional licensing boards.
:smack:
If they wished to do that with clients they knew outside the practice, that would be OK (to a point, of course).
When I was a kid, we had a neighbor who sold Shaklee products and my parents bought a few of them. The protein bars tasted terrible and had a strange texture, which is all I remember about it. OTOH, I used to work with a woman who told me that her now-deceased mother had really bad psoriasis that didn’t yield to treatment, and a friend who sold Shaklee suggested that she use those vitamins. The doctor hesitantly gave her permission to do so - and the psoriasis went away and never came back when she stopped taking them. :eek: Everyone was quite surprised.
Anyone new to either the thread or the board:
Go back and read RickJay’s post #29. It has been enshrined in several HoF post threads over the subsequent years.
When I was a freshman in college, I sold Amway to make some extra money. I learned two things:
A lot of their products were pretty good and I could buy them from my distributor for wholesale and save bucks.
I suck at sales.
Speaking of the Amway DeVos family, one of them, Betsy DeVos, is under consideration as Secretary of Education. :mad:
Jon Oliver’s take-down of MLMs is worth watching.
My first doctor here in Portland was shilling for a vitamin MLM along with his nurses. Fucking assholes, all. I left after two months.
I just now realized what he could potentially do with that.
He could go on “The Moth” and read it. 
Funny you should mention that, I didn’t remember this old thread and came in to repost my post #6 where I was recruited by a doctor.
That doctor has indeed, since that post was written, received some sort of censure (it’s been a while, can’t remember what it was) and been run out of town.
Google would probably tell you what it was, and medical disciplinary actions are public record. It would definitely be on the medical board’s website.