They end up at my post Communikate Makes IBO’s Superior Over Other IBO’s where a reader put in the toll free number to Communikate 1-866-333-3204. I have not tried to phone that number. For all I know it goes to a sex chat line so phone at your own risk!
Here I want to say that one of the dumbest thing we used to hear from the assholes in our upline when they wanted us to sign up for Communikate and make the Amway cult leaders richer was that they called it a “personal assistant”. Now when I think of personal assistant this is usually someone who tags around with the person paying their salary and helping them keep their life organized. This could be a whole bunch of things - grocery shopping, picking up the kids from school, walking the dog, running errands, meal planning, keeping the house tidy and organized (not necessarily as a housecleaner), running to Starbucks to pick up snacks, or whatever tasks they’ve agreed upon. A woman I worked with over 20 years ago quit and took a job as the personal assistant to a president of a big company. Now some might think that was working in the office in a clerical type of role, but no it was more keeping his homelife organized. One of her first tasks when she was hired was to take the kids on vacation to Hawaii
So those are the things I think of that a personal assistant does.
What does an Amway ambot think a personal assistant does? They think a personal assistant is renting a toll free phone number that takes messages, call forwards a phone call, and does conference calls.
What the fuck? What kind of fucking moron thinks a personal assistant is an automated phone system? A fucking brainwashed Amway ambot! Those brainwashed fools don’t realize they are being scammed and their beloved cult leaders are raking in the dough if they’re foolish enough to sign up for Communikate aka “kate” aka personal assistant.
The majority of people who sign up with Amway usually quit within a year. They now have the problem of cancelling this voice mail system that isn’t worth the $36.95/month or however much the ambots are paying into it these days. Like anything else to do with Amway signing up is easy but trying to quit or get your money back pretty much means promising your first born.
Here’s a former employee with his views on Communikate.
I worked for Webley (company that owns communikate) and yes, it is a scam, the uplines get kickbacks, that's why they push it. They make it super hard to cancel now, you can no longer call to cancel, too many were canceling! They now have chat support, but you cannot cancel by chat, we're supposed to call them and pressure the Amwayers to keep using Communikate. Free tip: Accounts NEVER go to collections, just change your payment method to something incorrect and the account will close itself in a few months. Got questions, ask away?
The amount the uplines receive differs according to the specific deal they have with the respective group, BRITT, WWG, etc. It ranges from $5 to $10 per sign up. "Diamond" level people get special treatment. Another fun tip: Due to Webley's ridiculous billing practice we have gotten many of our clients Debit cards cancelled, it's true! We bill monthly for the service (36.95) but we ALSO bill separately for usage, which usually runs between .25 to .75 cent for most users. These tiny, stupid charges are tagged as "potential fraud" charges by 99% of banks and they "lock" the cards. Lots of people have had important charges for other recurring services bounce back thanks to Webley's stupidity and refusal to make even a tiny good faith effort to better serve their customers. Now you know!
So there you have it. A bit of inside scoop on the deals the Amway cult leaders make with Communikate to get their piece of the pie. Just for those doubting ambots who don’t believe the tool scam.
From the sound of things I would suggest that if you want to cancel Communikate the easiest option might be to call your bank and say you lost your credit card and get a new one issued. The next time Communikate tries to charge the old credit card number, bouncey, bouncey!
And less money in some Diamonds pockets the next month! Oh wouldn’t you like to be in the room when the Diamonds are fighting over how they’ll split up the Communikate profits!
Or listening in on the telephone when the Diamond phones the Platinum to give him shit that someone in his downline just cancelled Communikate!
You know scAmway used to have their own vm system, Amvox, I guess (I don't know if it's still alive). In fact, it came with the pv/bv crap for the ambots. Anywho, that didn't sit well with the kingpins as they could not dip their scammy fingers into that gravy jar as they would have wanted. So starting somewhere in the 90's they had their downline ambots decamp to a system they could wield control over kick back deals. Thus, communikate, who's monthly price has been going one way only, up. It was just another deal to perpetrate financial rape on ambots. There are so many cheaper alternatives now if they cared for ambots' welfare. But make no mistake, evidently they care more about extracting the maximum returns from ambots so communikate rules. It's like a dog-eat-dog world. No actually it's worse than a doggy doggy world. It's a scAmway-bosses, kingpins tag team eat-ambots world.
ReplyDeleteExAmbot - it probably still is alive but as you said the kingpins don't recommend or use it because they don't get a cut of the $$$ action.
DeleteSo much for the bullshit that your upline really cares about you. If they did they'd be using some of the no cost systems to communicate that are widely available over the Internet or on modern cell phones.
Who in the world needs voicemail when you have text messaging, emails, facebook and twitter?
ReplyDeleteIt's just a money grab for the uplines.
Joecool - I totally agree. Everything you've mentioned people either have access to that they are paying for every month on their cell phone or Internet plan. Why do they need to pay nearly $40/month for some dumb ass voice mail system other than to help those sitting at the top of the Amway pyramid get even richer.
DeleteRegarding Amvox, yes, it was an Amway voicemail system that IBOs got PV and BV for. Amway currently has the IBO Communication System (IBOCS) but since there's no profit for upline, communiKATE was invented. Just another way for scamway kingpins to fleece their flock.
ReplyDeleteI am the ex-employee who posted that info, I wanted to say one final thing. Communikate really is built on the back of Amway - there is almost NOBODY else using the service. 95% of Communikate users are from Amway and frankly most are very poor and/or unsophisticated, they often fall behind on payments and rarely even use the service to its full potential as many lack computers - it's true. Not that that is anything to be ashamed of per se but if you're on a budget and only use Communkate on a Cell phone or smartphone you are just burning $. I knew nothing about Amway before I started working @ Webley, I still don't really but having read more about it on this blog I'm starting to understand. If Amway people were to quit the company goes belly up overnight, really. Get the word out, because since everyone is so networked up I would guess that 20 or so people trying to quit en masse might get them some negotiating leverage if they have to keep the service in order to impress their overseer's.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous - thank you for confirming what we've guessed at all along. The type of services that Communikate offers in this day and age of mobile media aren't all that impressive and there's not much of a market for.
DeleteUnless of course your upline Amway cult leaders are forcing it down your throat so they can make money off it.
Many Amway IBO's are disadvantaged people with low incomes either new immigrants, people on social assistance and people who hold low paying jobs. The Amway cult leaders sell the hope not the soap. They give them hope that they can get rich in Amway after working hard for 2 to 5 years at which time they'll retire as millionaires and then sit back while thousands of dollars in residual income flows in each month. Occassionally ambots will recruit educated people and business professionals and this is real bragging rights for them. See I signed up a lawyer or a doctor and they wouldn't have signed up if Amway is really a scam. But mostly ambots prey on the people who can least afford to lose any money to this scam.
Also, even though it's not illegal, in case you're wondering if it really is a conspiracy, I'm sorry but yes, it is. The owners/investors in Webley are very chummy with each other and with Amway. This is the Webley page that details their investors:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.webley.com/about/investors.html
You'll notice big names like AOL and smaller ones like Forstmann Little, the company that invented LBO's? Well, they like to get together and do things with other pals like ex-Amway CEO Dick Devos. Right about the time Webley was founded all the pals were together, AOL CEO James Kimsey, Ted Forstmann, trying to push vouchers through a front group called the Christian Scholarship fund. Here is a link to the info, but there are tons more "links" to be found with a little googling:
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/6482
Scroll down to the paragraph titled "Forstmann & Walton".
I also want to note that when I wrote "conspiracy" I mean that as in a conspiracy to push Communkate on Amway IBO's. You see, even when Communikate was cutting edge tech (and it was, at it's founding) and the patents were most valuable it was still a service looking for users. The company (Webley) is not a real company that built itself up by offering a great service that was competitive with alternatives, it is almost 100% engineers and executives, they only need to make the product passably effective, give it minimal support, because the user base is built in and, from what I've read here, brainwashed. I wish you guys all the best, good luck, great blog!
ReplyDeleteAt one Amway function - I don't remember if it was Family Reunion or Free Enterprise Days - there was a rep from Communikate set up at a table in the outer hallway of the arena. Kind of lonely there all by himself so my husband and I ended up stopping by to talk to him where my husband bragged he'd already set up with Communikate.
DeleteOf course the booth getting all the action was the WWDB Amway one selling all their motivational shit, coffee mugs, and clothing where all the ambots were swooning over and couldn't part with their money fast enough!
As for conspiracy everything is when it comes to Amway and everything is highly secretive. Apparently MLM espionage is huge business!
Ha ha! Gee where can I sign up to be an MLM spy!
I can imagine Communikate is useful (or was 10 years ago) coz it offers voicemail and conference calling. But $30/mo on top of your regular phone bill is a bit bloody steep. Just like everything else Amway I suppose.
ReplyDeleteJQ - the only thing that Communikate is useful for is to make the Amway cult leaders richer! Its like all other advances in technology that makes things obsolete. 20 years ago pagers were useful too. Our cell phones already do everything (and more!) that Communikate offers.
DeleteYou know, I didn't read about this stuff until a couple months ago. I have grown to find this whole topic fascinating. Anyway, when I first saw this word a month ago I had assumed it was pronounced "commun-eee-KAH-tay.". I figured it was some attempt by the amway gods to have some new-agey sounding word to spruce up their stuck-in-the-70s model. Now I get it, yeah, Kate, whatever. So once again these folks show they don't have a creative bone in their body (and their attempts at creativity can't help having that twinge of old fashioned chauvinism - hence "Kate", your virtual girl friday.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous - the whole topic of Amway and cult and brainwashing and the good old boy's club is fascinating and horrifying at the same time because of the emotional and financial devastation it brings to people's lives.
DeleteYup "Kate" was how all the ambots affectionately referred to their personal assistant. Kate did piss all for me whenever I was craving a double java chip frappuccino!
So I canceled my KATE and it was quite easy, go to www.kateone.com then go to contact us, then chat to a rep. then say canncel account, they will verify your info to cancel and then that was it.
ReplyDeleteSo no need to go all crazy and stop your bank card.
How do you get from the email or chat window under contact us to the actual chat?
DeleteDarkassassin89 - cool name! Thanks for the info!
ReplyDeleteDarkassassin89 - I havent been able to get them to agree to cancel the account even after call, leaving a message, chatting, emailing so instead of cancelling my credit card, i just changed my expiration date and 3 digit code on the billing site and they are unable to charge it. I am researching a lawsuit for unethical business practices because of this.
ReplyDeleteAfter months of trying to at first just change my credit card info and getting no response , I chose to cancel the account. After several attempts with no luck, I found a magic phrase to instantanously (10Min.) get a response from a live person at Webley. The magic phrase: I think it is time to contact a LAWYER.
DeleteI am by the way an AMWAY IBO. I believe inthe Amway system but evalutate carefully upline motivations.
To cancel your account, please chat with us by clicking the Chat Now button in the Help section or on the Log In page of your CommuniKate web site.
ReplyDeleteOur hours of operation are Monday through Friday from 8:00AM to 10:00PM Central time.
You can mail your request to CommuniKate Customer Care. PO Box 1439, Deerfield, IL 60015. You may also fax your request to 1(877)248-9279.
The letter or fax must include:
CommuniKate telephone number.
Request to close account.
Name of account owner(printed legibly).
Signature of account owner.
For security reasons designed for your protection requests for closure are only accepted via chat, mailed letter, or fax.
Your account can be scheduled to cancel on the next subscription fee date but only after your chat, mailed letter or faxed request is received.
CommuniKate does not allow you to change your credit card information to something incorrect/invalid. But by using the info in the below website I was able to figure out a way to change my credit card number to a card that will be invalid the next time CommuniKate tries to charge me.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.businessinsider.com/abine-maskme-protects-against-hackers-2014-1
Good luck with your endeavors.
Hey thanks for the tip! Yup its not easy to cancel Communikate without doing something drastic like cancelling your card. Might not be a bad idea to cancel that credit card especially if you're on a standing order with Amway or the assholes in the Amway upline try to push an order through without the ambot's knowledge.
Delete