Another Victory Against Amway/Quixtar/Alticor
At the beginning of the year, I wrote about how the blogger Google bomb against Amway/Quixtar/Alticor had been a huge success in terms of educating people who were considering investing in this scam. In the past several months, I noticed that a lot of traffic has gone to the post based on quite a number of keyword searches (e.g. the post is ranked high for a search of "Dexter Yager"--Yager is one of the Amway kingpin tools scammers). What is great is that over 95 percent of the hits are from either red states or third world nations.
Why third world nations? Because Amway has reached the saturation point in the US and the areas of growth are places in which people haven't heard of them and their shady business practices. Why the red states? The simple fact is that Democrats and progressives are not generally susceptible to the Amway scam--it is a con that is directed at Republicans/conservatives. If the typical progressive were to attend an Amway rally and be exposed to their theocratic/right-wing propaganda, he/she would make a hasty exit (also read Eric Scheibeler's free online book Merchants of Deception for more examples). The kind of people who get scammed by Amway are the same types of people who were conned by Jerry Falwell's phony videotapes (click here and here) claiming that Bill and Hillary were bumping off anyone who got in their way.
That's the power of the Internet: it allows people to better weigh their options--something that should lead to a huge decline in business for Amway.
UPDATE I: (via The IBO Rebellion) A hilarious undercover video of an Amway IBO prospecting.
UPDATE II: I've received some inquiries about the attention I've been bringing to Amway/Quixtar. The general tone is: what's the big deal about Amway? For one thing, it is one of the most reactionary businesses out there. The Amway founding families, the DeVos and Van Andel families, have a stingy compensation plan for their distributors but their purse strings aren't tight when it comes to funding wing-nut causes such as creationism, dominionism, and the scary Council for National Policy.
Many of the kingpin distributors are just as reactionary as the main corporation. Listen to these clips of kingpin distributor Dexter Yager (click here and here). Yager and other are using their ill-gained wealth to undermine the U.S. political system (also here).
However, the most important thing about the work that bloggers have done is to help inform prospective Amway distributors about the perils of joining the
organization. That's what is so great about the internet is that information is anathema to mind-control cults like Amway. When I and other bloggers manipulated the search engine results to allow for more critical sites to appear for keyword searches of "Amway" and "Quixtar," it better allows these potential recruits to reason and to ask tough questions of the people who want to sponsor them. As former Moonie Steven Hassan has pointed out, cults thrive when the control of information is in their favor. We helped to even the playing field.
What exploitive cults like Amway do to their recruits is unseemly. They sell their victims--often young couples who want nothing more than a better life--a bill of goods, front-load them with over-priced "tools," and when they fail, blame them for their victimization (blaming the victim is a hallmark of most cults).
This isn't just about politics; it's about freeing people from the tentacles of nightmare organizations like Amway.
5 comments:
The author of this website, has clearly devoted a lot of time to this site. and you have to ask yourself why? What does he/ she have to gain from all this? Does it make him feel like he has "achieved" something, because he gave Amway a pathetic try and then gave up? Sounds like tall poppy syndrome to me, and I would be surprised if this post gets published. If anyone is a scam it is your website. There are a lot of MYTHS about Amway. People believing that Amway IBO's are out to rip people off. Well the only way an IBO can make money is by helping someone else make MORE money than themselves!! You wouldn't be offended if a lawyer helped you collect $500,000 so he could have $20,000. And how could you call US$27,000,000,000 of bonuses and incentives paid out since 1959 being stingy! Tools are not overpriced and you get to choose what tools you want. Costs go to cover the tools, no profit is made on these, so you can't lose any money.* Amway has 50 years of success and websites like yours are not going to change that. You speak like you know the facts, yet you get the facts around the wrong way. Sure some fresh IBO's carry business out in the wrong way in their eagerness, as do many new Christians go screaming from the rooftops in their eagerness. That doesnt mean that what a few people do, represents the core foundation. I say that if someone is checking out Amway, don't read about it from people who have failed it or not tried it, jsut like you wouldn't ask someone about a marathon who has never run a marathon. Instead contact Amway's head office and try all the questions you like on them. In fact read the stuff on this site and then ring Amway to check how much of it is true. You will be surprised by how much rubbish is on this site. Don't believe me, just try!
*I think the problem is a lot of people enter into Amway who don't have a lot of money and see it as their gold lotto ticket. Which it can well be...but, you need to be wise. It IS still a business,and just like any other business, you don't just quit your job, or invest money you don't have. You let your job supplement the growth of your business until it can stand on its own two legs. Do this, and make it clear to anyone who wants you to pick up speed, as to what you are doing, keep the goal in front of you, and there is no way you can lose out.
And if you go about things the right way with the proper advice, you can't lose friends either, if you're losing friends then you're doing it all wrong!
I think that you are just an upset person who wanted the company to work for you but you just didnt do anything. HAVE YOU EVER HERD THE SAYING>>>>YOU CAN LEAD A HORSE TO THE WATER BUT YOU CANT MAKE HIM DRINK IT>>>THATS HOW YOU ARE >>WHO EVER CREATED THIS PATHETIC WEBSITE>
I am sadened by the fact that someone has devoted this much time to slamming one of the greatest oportunities out there....it sounds to me like a person that is unwilling to take ownership for the fact that they didn't work the business therefore the business didn't grow. You obviously are laking education about this business and need to make sure the next thing you invest this much time in is something you know more about Good luck in your future endevours
Call me "Always Suspicious"...
I recall that the books, tapes, functions, opens, and selling myself $200 of goods a month were mandatory. It was a;; "show the plan" and "6-4-2" business model.
The products were good quality but too expensive for anyone to use consistently. The shelf-stable foods were a great lunch but not everyone wanted to pay $6 a package back in 1996 when a frozen entree cost less.
I remember altar calls at functions. I am a Catholic and I never really fit in the Protestnt, especially Southern Baptist, streak of the services that were held on Sunday morning at functions. I can't tell you how many times I heard about Paul Miller, who was baptized a Catholic, being re-baptized in a hotel room bathtub!
Anyone who believes all of Amway's bonus and other compensation numbers had best take the advice given by "Deep Throat" to Woodward and Bernstein as they began to investigate the Watergate break-in: "Follow the money."
Glad I left with my life intact.
Despite what many currently active IBO's want to hear, much of what this website says is the cold hard truth. If this were truly such a great opportunity, then nearly everyone who ever got involved in it would be rich. And all of those uplines and kingpins who speak at the functions, the ones you all think are wonderful successful people, make at least 75% of their income from the speaking tours and tools. And even then, they don't make nearly as much as they would have you believe. Just look up their tax returns and divorce court records if you don't believe me. And another free piece of business advice: religion and the like has NO place at any type of business function, especially one where you are trying to pitch your proposal to a prospective client/associate. Also, many of you should probably get a real education. From the posts I've seen in response to this article so far, many of you are woefully naive and completely ripe for the picking. In the world of (reputable) business, excellent written communication is absolutely indispensable, and I'm seeing a lot of typos and bad grammar, which to me further indicates your lack of business acumen and vulnerability to pie-in-the-sky scams such as this.
Look at the numbers. Twenty-seven billion dollars in bonuses paid out to hundreds of thousands of people over a 60 year period is NOT impressive ot even noteworthy. That's assuming that those numbers weren't fudged (which I'm 99.999% sure they were, but we won't know for sure as Alticor is conveniently privately held). Hell, Amway by law has to disclose what the average IBO can expect to earn in their brochures, so put on your reading glasses and look for the small italicized print near the bottom of the page. They legally cannot lie about this kind of thing. If the success rate and probability of "going diamond" were something like 1 in 10 or 1 in 20, then the victimization and accusations of laziness would be justified. However, when the odds of going platinum (if they still call it that) are only 1 in 100, and going diamond is more on the order of 1 in 25,000, and EVERYONE older than 30 has the same sentiment toward the business model (including the government, business professors, financial advisers, attorneys, and even the media), that should clue you in that something is amiss. Believe me, 99% of everyone else in the world is not ignorant, jealous of your success, or underachieving; it is your upline feeding you BS.
And for those of you who think I am ignorant or underachieving, think again. I have a BA in Business management and finance, an MBA in finance, and a Master of Accounting. I have run multiple businesses and currently work in public accounting. Therefore, in the world of business I should know what I'm talking about.
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