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Wow... just noticed the time stamps on these posts... well, I'm assuming there's no expiration date on threads....
First time was when a former coworker said he always thought I was a "go-getter" at work, and had an exciting business opportunity for me. RIGHT THERE, I called "bs" in my mind, as while we were in the same company, we never worked directly with each other. He said it was like Amazon. I was more vulnerable since I was unemployed at the time. Went to the seminar, and it was indeed bullocks.
2nd time, a person bumped into me on the street and thought I looked familiar. I mentioned perhaps at a career fair (looking for work again). Again, the invite to attend that waste of time seminar with no useful info, Amway goons standing around the outside and filling all the seats to make it look like a more impressive spectacle than it really was, and the extreme friendly attitude that made it VERY creepy.
Yep, Amway's still out there, and a plague on the world.
In our early 20s, my husband ran into a couple he had known as a child from his hometown. He chatted with them to catch up on the intervening years since he had last seen them. It turned out they now lived in a rental house right behind us. A developer had bought the last remaining bit of land in an old, crappy neighborhood and built 3 new houses and we bought one as our first starter home. Their house was about 25 years older than ours and it had never been updated, nasty yard, buckled driveway etc. I would be depressed to be like them in my late 40s and living where they did. Anyway, they had a carpet cleaning business and I hired them. We got talking and he said he was so impressed with how we had done so far in life and he would love to talk to us about our future, just give advice and that sort of thing. I couldn't see the harm in that and so to be friendly we had them over. He started telling us about a lovely opportunity and we immediately asked if this was Amway and he absolutely denied it, said it was NOT Amway. He left a bunch of materials and said he would come back again. We looked it over, realized it was Amway and when he came back we explained in no uncertain terms that we were not EVER going to be interested. He actually got into a yelling match with my husband because of our refusal, trying to convince him that he hated his job and that we would never reach our financial goals unless we joined them. I had to removed my young child from the room. My husband went to school for eight years and LOVES his job.
Somewhere between these two visits they took me to meet some of their associates. They picked me up in their rusty woody Voyager van and took me to a horrifying meeting. Everyone looked the same, wore the same jewelry - it was eerie. As we were driving home they asked me if I got excited about the idea of being as successful as the people I had met. I am quite shy normally, but told them I did not see anyone at the meeting I had any interest in seeing again. I sometimes wonder what became of that couple. We sold our house soon afterwards to build a much bigger one in a very desirable location. I think of all the places we have been and lived since then and can say we have been quite successful without Amway's help.
I was working as a Sales Associate at Radioshack when I had a customer come in looking for a new laptop. I knew my stuff since I am kind of a computer dork and went through prices, comparable features, etc with the guy in order to sell him a new laptop.
Needless to say he didn't buy but he did give me a great speech about how helpful I was and how I seemed to be very intelligent and best of all he said I was a great salesman. He said that he would like to discuss a job opportunity with me and requested I meet him down the street at McDonalds after I get off to discuss further. I was very excited and agreed to meet despite my plans for meeting up with friends after work.
So I get off work and head over. He was sitting down at a booth and I joined him. He opened up with how much success he has had and how he is happy at his "company". Fast forward through the 5 minute speech and I quickly ask him, what will I be doing? He dodges the question and again moves into how he enjoys what he does. Fast forward another 5 minutes of talking and I ask him again, "what will I be doing"? Well this is when his whole demeanor changes. He mentioned the amway thing and I quickly said I am not interested.
Even if it wasn't a pyramid scheme kind of job, if I have to ask twice what I will be doing and you cannot answer my question without appearing to be upset, I won't take the job. It takes a special kind of person to accept such a "career".
Years ago, a guy I worked with asked me to come to his house for a meeting about a money-making opportunity. He wouldn't give me any details, but from the little I could gather, and the fact that we both worked in the engineering/design field, I thought that it might have involved funding for inventions.
At the meeting, some guy got up and gave us a ridiculous song-and-dance about Amway, including a really silly demonstration of some detergent's ability to liquefy shoe polish.
The best thing was when a couple who was in attendance made comment about how bad their previous experience with getting involved with Amway had been.
I just said that I wasn't interested in selling anything other than my talent for mechanical design.
I later heard Amway described as: "You guilt all of your friends and relatives into buying something from you, then when you run out of friends and relatives, you go out of business."
munna21977, scAmway prides itself on its pseudo-patriotism and canned "family values." Here in Michigan, the DeVos and VanAndel families (scAmway founders) have poured millions into anti-public school initiatives, and even the now-defunct Proposition 8 in California. Yes, California! Never mind that it's not their home state; their nefarious reach is like an evil octopus.
It's not so surprising that this pyramid scheme still hasn't been busted by the DoJ....scAmway money has lined the pockets of many conservative politicians. They are a despicable organization.
Beware the use of these terms:
Go-getter
self-starter
big dreams
opportunity
financial freedom
Some of the above posters have commented on the eerie same-ness of attendees at the meetings, or "rallies." Conformity is prized above all—if you are an independent thinker, you are not welcome at these functions. And what a relief that has to be!
I would bet my house that there are no members of MENSA who are involved in any MLM pyramid schemes.
I have seen both good and bad from MLM. My parents were involved with Amway when I was a kid. They jumped into a few others over the years. One that they got me into was a water filter business called NSA, I think. I was involved with a company called Reliv for a while. Shared the products with my friends and my dad. He started taking the supplements and ended up getting results from a skin condition that he had picked up in Vietnam. Cleared his skin up. The problem was that Reliv changed the formula on the product just as soon as they could to go cheap. My parents after taking the product for a number of years jumped ship. I had left years before that. Other friends had also joined Reliv and have left that company. Many did make good money but the emphasis was on selling the product that many stated did work. It was a product that 65% of people that took it seemed to stay on it for at least a few years. It was the only company that I saw people making money as in $thousands a month. I knew of people that were making 10's of thousands a month. The couple that has signed me up were making around $10,000 a month. I never did much with it though.
In the area we have one family that is big into Amway that are pulling in a 7 figure income and have built a world wide business. We also have hundreds of families that have made nothing and many that have lost thousands of dollars in Amway. The odds just do not seem so well.
The last business that I checked out I actually liked. It was a company called Formor International. People tell me that the products that they make give awesome results. It is all health related nutrition products. What I like about their business plan is that you buy a certain amount of product each month. Once your family hits a certain amount in purchases each month, say $250 a month, you can sign up to become a distributor and with it get your own website to share the product from. The idea is to get 8 people or families on the product and have them do the same thing. They do not advertise it as a get rich quick program though. They don't even have you attend meetings or buy sales aid's. They just want you to sell the product and share the product with other people. I don't know anyone that has made any money with it but they do have a nice compensation plan that supposedly you could get rich if you have the downline to move the product thru.
My thought is that I can not join something that I do not believe in. If a product works and I believe in it then I would push that product. If it is just for the money, well I know other ways to make money. I am not going to say that MLM is a bad way to make money because I do know people doing it. I will say that a lot of companies are big time scams but some companies have the right product and the right pay out plan. I for one never understood Amways way to make money. They sell stuff I can get somewhere else. With Walmart doing a bang up job selling similar items at a cheaper price than Amway, I just have no way of thinking that their business plan will work for me. Besides that, I don't like getting involved with things that I do not understand. PV and BV sound like great little letters but why not just keep it to what people know, money.
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