Monday, August 1, 2011

Why Get Involved in Amway More Than Once?

A question I’ve often asked myself is how did Ambot get involved with a shitty organization like Amway?

The next question I ask myself is how did Ambot get involved with a shitty organization like Amway twice?

Ambot is hardly alone. There are stories on the Internet where former IBO’s have tried Amway multiple times. I don’t know what the record holder is for the person who has tried and quit Amway over and over. The term we heard during round 2 of WWDB Amway hell for multiple attempts at being an Amway IBO was “retread”. Just some dumb ass Amway slang comparing IBO’s on round 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 to car tires that have had some work done on their rubber. Wikipedia says some tires can be retreaded up to 10 times. What about IBO’s? Are there some people out there who are dumb enough to sign up and quit Amway 10 times? I hate to think such a possibility exists but it wouldn’t surprise me. That would be the person with the scarlet G on their forehead - gullible.

On the other hand I think its very likely that an IBO is recruited on all the hype, pays the Amway membership, and then does nothing. A year or two goes by and he gets prospected by another Amway IBO, gets all excited again about the perceived business opportunity, buys another Amway membership, and does nothing. That might repeat itself a few times. Its possible.

I wonder if IBO’s believe that if they stick it out in Amway for two to five years buying Amway products and buying Amway tools and attending functions that their reward will be money rolling in from Amway for the rest of their lives even if they have no customers and no downline. Our Platinum told us at the board plan meetings that we were winners just by showing up. Is the message that nothing else is required other than simply showing up and having your attendance recorded? In return IBO’s live off the hope that Amway rewards all winners who show up with lots of money rolling in forever?

The first time Ambot got in was probably for 2 reasons. The son of the Platinums who signed us up was a business colleague and Ambot thought the Amway business opportunity looked good though maybe he should have asked himself if it was such a good opportunity why wasn't the son an IBO. Find 6 people who can find 6 people and so on and so on. I told him the numbers looked good on paper but what was the reality of pulling it off? Could we actually find 6 people who would religiously buy $300 worth of Amway goods each month and could they in turn find 6 people and so on? I didn’t think so. Ambot got caught up in the hype and excitement. He went to Family Reunion and got fired up and motivated and all the other bullshit that goes along with it. I joined him to Free Enterprise Days and I wasn’t impressed. All those Diamonds parading across the stage had pretty much the same story. They’d been working minimum level jobs, a dear friend showed them the plan, Amway saved their lives and they roll in dough now. They’re some of the biggest bullshitters around, most of them had annoying voices, and they were boring as hell.

After a few months Ambot finally figured out this Amway business opportunity was bullshit. We were spending money, not making money, and no one we knew were interested in buying overpriced Amway products and we couldn’t convince anyone to come to meetings or sign up with Amway.

OK over and done with. We lost some money. Bad experience. Move on with life.

Which we did for several years.

Anyone who’s been following my blog knows I write about the second time we were in Amway and WWDB and the assholes in our upline. I’ll try not to rehash about how our sponsor is someone I’ve despised for many years. I don’t know how he thought sponsoring us in Amway when I had no interest in getting involved in the Amway scam again would improve my opinion of him.

So let me just stop for a minute and say fuck you to that arrogant prick!

Captain Fuck Up sneaks around behind my back and introduces Ambot to the pompous sack of shit Platinum. A very charismatic person. Strong personality. A good people person. An excellent cult leader. He convinces Ambot that his group is much better than the last group he was in. Um, it was World Wide Dream Builders the last time and aren’t you with WWDB too? He promises better leadership and mentorship, the things that Ambot was lacking the last time. He is a very convincing liar. Scary. Frightening. If Hitler, Charles Manson, and Rev Jim Jones could be rolled into one person, the sack of shit is him. Someone to be both worshipped and feared by his cult followers. Terrifying!

Ambot actually likes the sack of shit. He wants to impress him. He wants to spend time with him. The only way he can accomplish this is to sign up with Amway and spend lots of money on the scam because the sack of shit won’t be friends with anyone who doesn’t give him money. I tried to convince Ambot that nothing had changed in Amway including the business plan. We still had to buy lot of Amway products every month. They were still overpriced. The products weren’t as good as name brand or generic brands we can buy at Walmart for much cheaper. We still had to find 6 people who had to find 6 people to find 6 people to find 6 people, ad nauseum over and over....

Our friends base hasn’t changed all that much in the past 10 years. So who is Ambot going to prospect to become an IBO? The same people. They’re still not interested. Who is he going to chase down to buy shitty overpriced Amway products? The same people. They’re still not interested.

Nothing is different this time except the lies told by our upline.

As I see it some people can sign up for Amway and then quit again (and again and again and again) because they meet different people who are very likeable people and lie about how things are different now in Amway than they were the last time the IBO was in. They lie about how their LOS group is better than the last one they were in: better training, better leadership, better counselling, better mentorship, better people, etc. They offer friendship. They promise the moon. They promise your dreams will come true. These professional liars do whatever it takes to convince anyone to sign up with Amway. Ex-IBO’s at one time believed that Amway was going to be their path to financial freedom. The better the upline are at lying the easier picking the ex-IBO for round 2. Round 3. Round 4......

16 comments:

  1. It's much easier to recommend something when you believe in it and it's actually a good deal. Got over 20 my friends the same cellphone plan special i received. With amway it was impossible to even get 3 people to spend 100.00 a month each.

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  2. Colin - you must be pretty persuasive. I don't know that I could talk 2 people into switching to a different cell phone provider let alone 20!

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  3. I didnt pursuave anyone into switching. The new cellphone company was 30% cheaper where i lived. Basically just posted it on facebook and next thing you know everybody is signing up. It's not something amway ibos can do about the scam. When i first signed up with amway i was told to just recommend this thing and everybody would sign up. Like recommending a movie or something. Boy where they wrong about that.

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  4. Yeah I could see how posting an update on Facebook about something like that might generate some interest. Try changing your status to who wants to join me at an Amway meeting this Thursday and see what kind of response you get!

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  5. I might get 1/2 or 70% of my friends deleting me from their friends list on facebook if i mentioned amway lmao.

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  6. Delurking to say that your blog is fabulous! There's so much about Amway that's facinating (from a social psychological perspective) but mainly it's horrifying. I think you're doing people a real service by sharing your experiences.

    I'll probably have more to comment on once I've finished combing through your archives. In summary, though, I think it's fair to say that if Voldemort were an actual person, he'd be a double diamond ;)

    Chelsea

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  7. Hi Chelsea, thanks for stopping by! I'm glad you're enjoying the blog. I write it because it makes me feel better to curse out my upline and so I can let others know what I had to put up with. Its no surprise to hear others say they have similar stories. This blog is also comfort to other women who know they're not alone at experiencing the Amway hell their husband has brought to their home.

    I think more people are hitting the Internet and getting the word out about what its really like inside the Amway cult. The financial loss is one story. And a huge story because some people lose their houses and declare bankruptcy and go into huge credit card debt to fund their Scamway habit. The emotional turmoil Amway brings can be an even more horrifying ordeal.

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  8. Hi Anna: I stumbled upon your blog via PyramidSchemeAlert.org and have been reading nonstop for 2 days. It's like watching a slow motion train wreck: horrifying but you can't stop watching. I read Merchants of Deception also and what a page turner-I couldn't put it down either. Now I'm addicted to your blog, ha ha.
    Keep up the good work, I know journaling/blogging is healthy AND if you keep even one person from falling for Scamway's lies, it will all be worth it. Not to mention providing hypnotic reading for your fans.

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  9. Hi Connie - I'm glad you're enjoying my blog. Amway is a train headed for destruction that's for sure. Its horrifying to be involved with this company and the most horrifying part of our experience was our former upline. Yes Merchants of Deception was one of those books that you can't put down until you finish. So many things he described were exactly what we went through and we were 10 years later. Just shows that nothing changes in Amway when it comes to scamming the IBO's, same techniques used.

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  10. Ok, now it's been 2 DAYS of reading your blog and alternately laughing out loud or being shocked and dismayed at the abuse you went thru. I'm getting nothing done because I can't stop reading and wondering 'what will she write next" ha ha. I'm thru all of 2010 and now it's onto 2011. I hope I get thru it quick and you don't post very much new stuff cause otherwise my laundry will mold, my checks bounce and my hubby will starve to death!

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  11. Wow Connie! That's a lot of reading! If your laundry, husband's meals, and bank accounts are suffering that is the sign of an ambot, regardless of what they're reading! If I can make our former upline, Amway, and ambots look like a bunch of assholes and make people laugh then that's a good thing. Back when I was living through the Amway hell it wasn't so funny. Some days I find something to write about, other days nothing comes to me and lately I've been doing a lot of running around so I haven't had the time.

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  12. Actually, by God's grace I was never involved in Amway at all. I tried Arbonne (skin care+cosmetics) but quickly figured out that driving across town to sell one item and then having to make that same drive to deliver it was NOT a good ROI (return on investment) of my time vs. the money I got from the sale. So I used up my supplies personally or gave them away. I got off cheap as I only spent $3K. Many people spend thousands of $$ more and years investing in a business that is inherently, by it's very nature, a fraud.

    When will people figure out that you cannot "spend yourself into profit"???. Spending $300 per month to get a $10 check???

    Yeah, I'm losing money on every transaction but I'll make it up on the volume??? LOL!!

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  13. Connie - its part of the brainwashing process. Success is always right around the corner. According to your upline.

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  14. How can success ever come from an inherently unworkable business?
    The quote that most astonished me was "If the dream is big enough, the facts don't matter"??? WTF? Hello??? Unbelievable that logic could be so discarded in the face of lies, lies, lies.
    I do understand how people can fall for this crap, esp given the social pressure, wanting to 'belong' and being cut off from alternative viewpoints (rational friends & family, internet, TV).
    It's so all so sad and an incredible amount of human suffering, all in the pursuit of the almighty dollar.

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  15. Connie - that's what I say. How can success come from a business that is designed for failure. Any business with a less than 1% chance of success is setting oneself up for failure.

    The stories all over the Internet of former brainwashed IBO's are very sad. There are stories of financial losses and emotional distress much worse than mine. The devastation this cult causes is sickening.

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Comments are moderated but we publish just about everything. Even brainwashed ambots who show up here to accuse us of not trying hard enough and that we are lazy, quitters, negative, unchristian dreamstealers. Like we haven’t heard that Amspeak abuse from the assholes in our upline!

If your comment didn’t get published it could be one of these reasons:
1. Is it the weekend? We don’t moderate comments on weekends. Maybe not every day during the week either. Patience.
2. Racist/bigoted comments? Take that shit somewhere else.
3. Naming names? Public figures like politicians and actors and people known in Amway are probably OK – the owners, Diamonds with CDs or who speak at functions, people in Amway’s publicity department who write press releases and blogs. Its humiliating for people to admit their association with Amway so respect their privacy if they’re not out there telling everyone about the love of their life.
4. Gossip that serves no purpose. There are other places to dish about what Diamonds are having affairs or guessing why they’re getting divorced. If you absolutely must share that here – don’t name names. I get too many nosy ambots searching for this. Lets not help them find this shit.
5. Posting something creepy anonymously and we can’t track your location because you’re on a mobile device or using hide my ass or some other proxy. I attracted an obsessed fan and one of my blog administrators attracted a cyberstalker. Lets keep it safe for everyone. Anonymous is OK. Creepy anonymous and hiding – go fuck yourselves!
6. Posting something that serves no purpose other than to cause fighting.
7. Posting bullshit Amway propaganda. We might publish that comment to make fun of you. Otherwise take your agenda somewhere else. Not interested.
8. Notice how this blog is written in English? That's our language so keep your comments in English too. If you leave a comment written in another language then we either have to use Google translate to put it into English so everyone can understand what you wrote or we can hit the Delete button. Guess which one is easier for us to do?
9. We suspect you're a troublemaking Amway asshole.
10. Your comment got caught in the spam filter. Gets checked occasionally. We’ll get to you eventually and approve it as long as it really isn’t spam.