He must have thought it was like Christmas two or three times a week when the Amway shit arrived by good old USPS. Too bad there's nothing that stops those buggers from delivering the mail! What is it? Rain, sleet, snow, and dark of night etc. Nothing stops the mailman! Let's see him delivering in the dark of night to an Amway night owl meeting!
Unfortunately reality kicks in when the next credit card bill shows up with $1000 charged to Amway.
This photo exactly depicts what I'd say when he opened the box of Amway shit.
"...delivering in the dark of night to an Amway night owl meeting!"
ReplyDeleteLOL that would be something!
Scare the shit out of that postie that's for sure!
ReplyDeleteMy son's friend, who unfortunately is caught up in the Amway scam, came to my son's birthday party at our house the other night. He stayed until after everyone else had gone and his dad arrived and was chatting with us. Then I watched the kid come into the room holding a box in his hand and stood there as his dad smiled and said "Chris has something he wants to say". I felt the blood running out of my face as I thought "Oh God, no! Is this going to be a fucking Amway pitch?" Sure enough, he pulls out a box of Nutrilite Cranberry Crunch bars and some other Amway snack and told about how good and healthy they are and that he wanted to give them as his gift. My son thanked him and, luckily, the pitch ended there with that being his "present". I'm not sure if there was the hope that we'd become "addicted" to them and start ordering more, but no way in hell that is going to happen. I did a google search and found that other Ambots were selling them online for as much as $16 dollars a box!!!! 12 bars. And they are TINY!! Each bar is like 3 inches long.
ReplyDeleteAgain, I don't know if the intent was to try to get us as a "customer", or simply because since Amway is purely self-consumerism, he uses Amway as gifts to get his "sales" totals up and get a pat on the head from his upline.
Just thought I'd share that. Amway is such a sad thing to see happen to a person. I don't know what hope this kid has since his college roommate is the one who got him into it, so he gets daily brainwashing. I know that his dad allowed him to have one of their stupid circle meetings at his house which got another kid hooked into the Amway scheme, and the dad of THAT kid still hasn't forgiven the dad of my son's friend for helping his son get sucked into the cult.
~Dave
Dave - just be thankful you didn't get the Amway pitch! Be careful and warn your son about this cult. His friend will continue to hound him to get him to come to a meeting where someone upline can hook him in with a bunch of lies. At least that kid is young enough to still have time to bounce back and recover. Once he's out of school and away from his roommate he'll probably quit Amway sometime this summer.
ReplyDeleteYes, the intent was to get you as a customer. IBO's don't give anything away without an ulterior motive. You can be pretty sure that someone in his upline has counselled with him and given him some bad tax advice that now he can write off the cost of those bars as marketing and promotional materials. If he contacts you to ask how you liked the bars just give it to him straight - they tasted like shit! That'll give him a huge hint that you're not interested in buying them but he will get defensive and come back at you with a bunch of canned Amspeak about how healthy they are and they're much better for you than regular granola bars, blah, blah, blah.
Speaking of those food bars whenever we went to a meeting held in someone's house, those were served as refreshments. They'd slice them like a loaf of bread getting about 20 slices out of a bar and put them on a plate and pass them around. Ha ha! The bad memories come rolling back!
For $16 you can go to Walmart and buy a big bag of chocolate chips, dried cranberries, almonds, oatmeal, and sunflower seeds. Mix about a half a cup or a cup of each with a can of condensed milk and back in the oven for about 20 minutes and you've got your own granola bars and still have tons of ingredients left over for your next batch. Homemade means you know its fresh and you can slice them into as big a bar as you want.
@Dave
ReplyDeleteThat kid (and his uplines) is actually not smart to your son's advantage. The norm for a birthday party is to give out a gift album.
Yep Anna is right. The bars are to crack open the door, the intent is to "follow up" later with your son. Probably invite him to a meeting etc. and more than likely that will happen shortly. Please inform us what happens next. And yes warn him strongly to stay away and give him information why. That info is for his benefit not for for show the other kid how bad scamway is, cos that's an argument he won't win and will result in enemity.
The ideal answer is as Anna said, straight up, say it's not for me, is there anything else? Goodluck, C Ya. That's it no discussion!
Thanks for the advice. When I first heard that this kid had gotten into the Amway cult, I knew the next step for them is to look for the easy prey first, i.e. friends and family, to try to "prospect", so I had a long talk with my two sons, 16 and 19, explaining what Amway is really about, letting them research it (with sites like this that talk about the brainwashing methods, ways they pull you in with B.S. lies about dreams that less than 1% will even get close to no matter how hard they work and the whole cult mentality). Luckily, my boys could see how this was just a pyramid scheme where only those on the very tippy-top make any money at all, and even that is through CD's and rah-rah meetings, not the products. I have a couple of Canadian cousins who fell into religious cults, so I already have seen the tricks cults use to remove all critical thought from their sheep and close their ears to rational family and friends to control and fleece them. Amway is no different.
ReplyDeleteMy sons said they have no intention of attending any meetings or buying anything from Amway. They've educated themselves to the mind games and lies they try to pull, and have their "shields up". :)
~Dave
"...20 slices out of a bar..."
ReplyDeleteCheck! We did that too in the name of sampling either for the new people or a new line of bars. Yuck! That's how the memories are making me go.
Dave - or your sons could go to an Amway meeting and be disruptive and yell out things like You're a liar! You're a scammer! Amway people are assholes! They'd get shown the door pretty quickly! What fun that would be!
ReplyDeleteExAmbot - my husband used to get dixie cups and put half an inch of his beloved XS in there to pass around with the sliced bar. There were only a few meetings held at our house thank god. The sack of shit Platinum refused to hold any more Amway meetings at our place because we didn't bring any prospects to meetings - no matter how many hours my husband spent pleading and begging with anyone to show up and make him look good to the assholes in his upline!
ReplyDelete@Anonymous:smart choice.. I had my 2 son's also research Multi-level marketing..
ReplyDeleteMy Daughter got approached about a new weight loss/health diet BodyByVi, Something had set off alarms in my head about it, sounded too much like the Quixtar/scamway MLM scheme that my husband and I got into in the past. so I started doing some research and ended up finding Anna's blog :)
it took a while to connect bodybyvi to other mlms but I did and found out that there was a huge connection between them and amway.
I informed my Daughter and had decided it would be a perfect time for my sons to do a little research on their own, followed by a long conversation with them..
as a parent you prepare yourselves for the Drug talks, the sex ed talks,how to teach them right from wrong.. never did I think id ever be having a talk about mlm to my kids, even though my Husband and I ended up in one ourselves, we were naive on the fact that it could just as easily happen to one of our Children.
Anna, your advice to Dave above made me LOL so hard my sides are hurting! That's right - that's some fun I would love to indulge in. And each time I would yell "that's right!" Boy those ambots would be a confused lot for they would not have seen that one coming.
ReplyDelete@Dave
ReplyDeleteWay to go on the "shields up" with your sons. Next...until shields are up all over the world!
JadenRed - isn't it incredible the things as an adult you take on the responsibility of discussing with your children and I'm sure talking about the evils of MLM's and cults and brainwashing was never even on the radar.
ReplyDeleteThe art of being a scammer is filling someone's head with dreams, taking their money, and then blaming the victim when they're unable to make money at the scheme. A scammer will never refund anyone's money either.
On the other hand a true business owner who cares about their clients will go out of their way to make things right for an unhappy customer. There's been times where we've lost money trying to do the right thing for a customer. You won't see any scamming Amway IBO doing that even though most of them crow about offering excellent customer service, they don't know the meaning of the phrase.
ExAmbot - I'm just waiting for the day when some lousy IBO approaches me to come to a business meeting! The speaker won't get a minute in before I bring out my tirade which will start off with "Is this Scamway?" Then they better get prepared for the foul language to be launched!
ReplyDeletehelp. My son is being inducted--went to his second meeting--and before I could even do anything, he is starting to talk about wanting to join. Is there any way the police can get involved?
ReplyDeletedatauser - get your son to read a free ebook called Merchants of Deception. The Emerald who was one of the top paid IBO's with 1000 people in his downline was only making 30-35k. The book is a big eye opener on how only a fraction of 1% of IBO's make money in Amway and that's because they're the ones taking in the ticket proceeds that IBO's have to pay to listen to Diamond speakers.
Deletehttp://www.transgallaxys.com/~emerald/
The police can get involved if you press fraud charges against his upline. Probably won't go anywhere but the upline will drop him like a hot coal. In order to press fraud charges you will need to get his upline telling you in a recording or writing down on paper and signing their name and date how much money your son will be making in Scamway. They usually say something like he'll be making $5000 - $10,000/month after 6 months. Any other lies you can get them to say on tape to prove the fraud. Get them to brag about the high quality of the Amway products. All you have to do is talk to the person trying to sign up your son to his downline and the Platinum will probably show up too. Ask for their profit and loss statement of the people in his upline and tax return information as proof of all the money they're making in Amway. They won't show it to you because they're losing money. Legitimate business owners show their books. Tell them you think they're scammers and tell them you're calling the police right now. See how fast they hightail it out of your house! Make sure they understand that if they are dumb enough to sign up your son to Amway you will press fraud charges with the police. Can't hurt to threaten to call the cops on them!
I hope you can reach him before he gets completely assimilated into the "system". Right now they have him starry-eyed with their breathless talk of this "exciting business opportunity which is ready to really take off and will lead you to reach all of your dreams". If he still has any of his critical thinking left, implore him to read the e-book Anna listed above. It really does give a full account of what kind of life to expect in Amway and how they use brainwashing techniques to manipulate, control and change a person. One doesn't have to be stupid to fall into a cult. Everyone thinks "I would never be so dumb", but a cult does things in stages. The first stages seem fairly benign and positive. But once they have their hooks in, they move on to the stronger brainwashing.
DeleteOther things he might check out is you can go to youtube and search for the Dateline expose' on Amway/Quixtar. Although it's from some years back, nothing has changed with Amway (though they will try to say that). Also there is a funny Penn and Teller segment on MLM "opportunities". www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y60XdZJG83U
They don't cover Amway itself, but the techniques and ultimate money-losing futility of them is the same.
All my best to you that you get him to look more closely into that "amazing business opportunity". Right now they are trying to put blinders on him to ignore all other reality than whatever they tell him, saying negative thoughts will destroy his dreams. And once they really get him hooked, you will see him change dramatically. Suddenly he will look at those he once loved and trusted as "dream-stealing outsiders" who will all die broke and young.
It's hard to believe that someone can all of a sudden put all their trust into people they just met over that of lifelong trusted loved ones, but that is the frightening power of brainwashing.
~Dave