# Your network marketing experiences...or...attack of the pod people

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-network-marketing-experiences-or-attack-of-the-pod-people/361119>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [June 18, 2006, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-network-marketing-experiences-or-attack-of-the-pod-people/361119 "2006-06-18T00:11:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Antinor01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecae2f/32.png) [@Antinor01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Antinor01)\
**Post date:** [June 20, 2006, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-network-marketing-experiences-or-attack-of-the-pod-people/361119/21 "2006-06-20T16:20:30Z")

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> [@Mangetout](#):
>
> My parents did Amway when it first hit the UK back in the early 80s - they turned into pod people, converted some of their friends and drove away the rest; kept on talking about how nice it would be when they ‘went diamond’ (which never happened, of course). I think they made a modest income from it, for a little while.
> 
> I’m still convinced it was a significant contributory factor to their divorce a few years later.
> 
> Silly thing is that I actually think some Amway products are quite good; multi-purpose mild detergent ‘LOC’, for example, is something I would still buy - and indeed tried to buy recently when a neighbour popped round with a brochure, but that’s the whole problem - _ **you can’t buy the frickin’ products** _ - you come into contact with a distributor and you will be able to place about two or three orders before they come down heavy with the recruitment deal - wherupon your choice is to become a pod-person, or be ignored thereafter.

That really sucks that they wouldn’t sell to you. It’s been a long time, but I believe there’s a program where you can have a distributor set you up to get the stuff shipped to you directly and never have to go through them.

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**Author:** ![Mr.Slant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c57346/32.png) [@Mr.Slant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Slant)\
**Post date:** [June 21, 2006, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-network-marketing-experiences-or-attack-of-the-pod-people/361119/22 "2006-06-21T05:16:04Z")

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> [@Antinor01](#):
>
> With most of the setups, you earn residual income based on the performance of your downline. However, to maintain your status as a distributor you must generate a certain amount of sales volume yourself.
> 
> As I recall, it’s part of the federal law that keeps it from being an illegal pyramid. It’s been a number of years though and I may be remembering that part incorrectly.

I think the policy in question is that 90% of your sales have to be to non-MLM-member clients. Something like that. Thus, I’ll say that Amway NOT being a pyramid scheme is purely a legal fiction achieved via accounting fraud.

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