Friday, August 30, 2013

Nothing Ever Changes In Scamway

Here’s a reader who tells us nothing much has changed in Amway in the past 20 years. Except the tapes ambots have to buy on the tool scam are now CD’s. The story is the same as many people who’ve got taken in by the Amway scam. A couple looking to make a better life, have extra money, have the wife be a stay at home mother. Dream Night = nightmare. 40 people crammed into a hotel room at an Amway function. No sleep. Love bombing. Having words like quitter and loser ingrained into their heads from the assholes in their Amway upline. Fear of being ostracized keeping them in the Amway cult. Figuring out Amway is a losing business opportunity. Stockpiling Amway products. Savings gone. Credit cards maxed. Fighting all the time. Being financially set back several years trying to recover from the Amway scam. How many times has this story been told? Get involved in Amway and step into hell. 
 
Every now and then I get an urge to look up the latest info on the Scamway world. So this time I landed on your blog and I'm glad I did.

My wife of twenty five years and I were coaxed onto the soap slickened slopes of Mt Scamway back in the early 90's after we were first married. We were a couple of wide eyed 23 yr olds who wanted simply to help ourselves financially by making that extra few hundred bucks a month and buy products we were already using from ourselves. Sound familiar?

Our sponsor was a guy I went to school with. It all seemed pretty good until we attended our first function, a Dream Night if I recall. Start of a fucking nightmare is what it was. We were newly married and as such didnt have a lot of money. We did have good credit however. So we paid for this with mostly credit, partly cash, all with the blessing of our upline direct. It was quite expensive even with like forty of us crammed in a room in Richmond. And we didnt sleep all damned weekend. And above all I was really uncomfortable with a lot of what was being said but tried to keep an "open mind".

But I digress. After this I began dissecting facts and crunching numbers and realized in the back of my mind that this was a losing proposition. But I wanted to give it a fair shake and I'm not a quitter, and my bride whom I did and do love dearly, was all in. So we continued. For two long years and the birth of our first child. His birth caused us both to take a long look at how we were spending our resources and we finally had the clarity of mind to say fuck it.

The addiction for her was the people. You know the ones who hug you incessantly and tell you they love you? The ones who tell you how great you are, you're a winner, and all that shit? I'm not really a touchy feely guy and wasn't really into that but she was raised in a home where praise and encouragement came at a premium. Just another angle for the programmers to use. For me it was the desire to achieve success for me and my wife and honestly, I wanted her to be proud of me like those gals up on stage were proud of their hardworking hubbies. (Even tho I hear a whole bunch of them were having fun on the side and are now no longer wed).

I have to this day no real idea how much we lost on that whole damned mess. I know it took a huge toll on our married life because of the bills we racked up in pursuit of "The Dream". By the time we escaped and deprogrammed we were flat broke, the cards were maxxed, the savings were gone, and we were constantly at each others throats over everything, but the fights always started about money, or rather the lack of it. And there was enough fucking LOC in our closet to float a battleship. Rather than helping us, the Ama-Scam set us back a good five years financially.

Today I would never fall for it, but as a young and gullible man I was sucked right in. And I actually tried. I went out and met people. You know, "cold contacting" and setting up "QI's" and the whole damn tamale. Went to the meetings, CONventions, and slept 3-4 hours a nite. And never made enough to cover the gas and the fucking food, let alone hotel rooms. Looking back it was like escaping from a booby hatch. After probly a year of no Scamway influence, no tapes in our car tape deck,(no they weren't friggin CD's they werent invented yet) and telling every upline Ambot who called to apply pressure to have an arsenic and LOC cocktail, we were free. We are now approaching our Silver-no longer in Scamway-Thank You Lord Anniversary. Carry on your good work, Anna Banana.
 

17 comments:

  1. CDs? They are downloadable MP3s now!

    I am with you I got suckered in too and I and figured it out within 24 hours and checked out soon after.

    I made my 100 pv and my 50 retail pv, it is funny how you can get the 50 retail pv, you can purchase things for your customers to help get your 50 retail pv. My upline made an account for his parents and bought stuff for himself under that account to make his pv and he passed the trick onto me.

    I did not realize how much we would have to spend just to get this 10 dollar commission pay. It is not shit you would normally buy, because at first I believed them and then when I saw what was actually offered...

    Their 'partner' sites that are tied into the amway site is a bunch of crap too, if you actually compare the prices (dell for example) you pay MORE using the partner site than going to dell.com. I went to buy my sister a surface tablet and I had both partner dell and dell.com up and guess which one was $75 bucks MORE? PARTNER DELL.

    I have but all ties to amway except for the site, cause I save more money on my cell phone plan than without it. I didn't even stay in a whole month

    ReplyDelete
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    1. I swear, that cell phone discount keeps so many IBOs with their little toe in the door of rejoining.

      I noticed the partner site "discount" discrepancy as well. My Ambot Ex got really upset with me when I would go to the brick and mortar store that "she" had a partnership with, in the business. After taxes, and the partnership discount, there was almost a 20% difference, in favor of the brick and mortar store.

      Good for the partner store. Hike the price, add a "discount", and IBOs will blindly say it is better, cheaper, an probably better for the environment, somehow.

      Maybe some Ambot or ExAmbot can answer this for me, how does the partner store sales influence the IBO's sales numbers? Do IBOs actually make money off of the partner purchases? The IBOs I asked, when they were trying to sucker me in, kept telling me they would have to "confer with their upline", AKA "I DON'T KNOW."

      The line, that was trying to recruit me, was more focused on recruitment, religion, and 'self-improvement'; not much was mentioned of sales, self-consumption, customers, products, or anything other than getting more people signed up (it's no wonder the upline in question has struggled for years, bouncing in and out of silver).

      Basically, I tried to ask a bunch of questions about products and partnerships, and they tried to distract me with fancy cars. Damn me and my questions.
      -Jerry

      Delete
    2. Rbot - that old ambot trick of creating an account in someone else's name and ordering products for yourself has been taught for decades! Nice try for your upline to convince you that's a secret he thought up all by himself!

      I know all the bullshit the assholes in our Amway upline came from someone years or decades ahead of them. They just pass along the brainwashing secrets and how to abuse/ love your downline from one cult leader to the next.

      Yup those partner sites charge more to ambots than to normal customers. Everyone's got to make some profit and the business owner of the partner site needs to mark up for all the grief he gets from dealing with Amway assholes.

      Delete
  2. There is no way in hell I am rejoining that crap. I enjoy my tuesday and thursday nights at 8pm.

    I enjoy not having to pay $500 for two people (fiance and i) to goto the quarterly seminars to get 'motivated' IE hear about how you were poor and now rich.

    I love how they always use the 'im tied to the right people crap' its like knowing a rich person automatically makes you rich by being near them. I know just as many 'rich' people too but i dont ride their dick like these guys. Its like popular kid in school except you are in your 20-40s

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Rbot - you were lucky if you only had to go to 2 Amway meetings a week!

      Yeah in Amway it's all about name dropping like anybody not in Scamway gives a fuck or even knows the names of the Amway cult leaders. They always go around yapping about who you must associate like rich people so some of that richness will rub off on you. Like normal rich people really want an Ambot tailgating them spouting off Amspeak all day long!

      Delete
  3. This was an email I got from a potential sponsor after an initial, "large townhall-style" meeting. The game here is they keep stringing you along, hoping you'll join, buy the opportunity kit, spend more money, go to conventions, go to other functions that inexplicably suck more of your money away, and rinse and repeat. This was my 3rd meeting (previous 2 were by another sponsor), so I had no reservation in telling him flat out that I am NOT going to have anything more to do with Amway....
    ""Let me know if you want to sit down and talk what is the next step to earn income. I know you were looking for job description. IBO is Independent Business Owner, it is not a job and It cannot be compared with a job.. however if you work like a job it pays significantly greater with no max... It has great potential to create income security for your lifetime and generation to come.
    Nothing works until you make it work.. job, relationships, money, sports etc anything worthwhile requires effort. If you are willing to learn and put the effort, there is no doubt that you will succeed. If you ask me to describe the work I will ask you how much you want to make? (in thousands, hundreds or tens). There are two ways:
    1) Selling Products and Services : we have great training programs that will enhance your selling skills. When you start applying it there is no limit to how much you can make. I know many people who makes thousands of dollars by just selling products and services without having a store or putting upfront capital. I also know many people who makes nothing because they never learns or worked.
    2) Networking : Similar to 1), we have great training programs that will help you enhance interpersonal/entrepreneurial skills and then there is no limit to how much you can make for how long you can make because the people in your network will continue to do the same thing with or without you. This provides true security and residual income.

    On a day to day basis we do those things in our unproductive time just like you would put a little money to invest for your future retirement. If you are looking for complicated stuff this is not complicated that is why most people miss it. It takes some people a lot longer to understand the simplicity of it and what is behind that drives 11 Billions worth of business and over 80 countries.
    If you want to learn more, give me a call and we setup a time.""

    Ehhh. the 4096 char limit strikes again. My thoughts on this email and my other comment about deals will follow in the next post...

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Hi Anonymous. Thanks for the insight. They're still calling them townhall meetings?

      Delete
    2. I've never heard that term. It's just what I call them when they rent out a large presentation room of a hotel. Roughly...
      6 to 8 seats per row x
      20 to 30 rows
      then x2 for the other right half of the room

      Delete
  4. There's one of the classic distractions... I ask him what's the job description, and the response is.. "how much $$ do you want to make?" WTF?

    The links are also positive just for positive's sake, but have little information nor value from the perspective of how a user would care for... like how McDonald's advertises how they didn't have to use all beef for their hamburgers, but they did. Another type of distraction, and Amway's videos during the meetings embody just that.

    No limit, no max, no store or upfront capitol... As posted a gazillion times on this blog, if you work out the hard numbers (time spent, $$ spent, the odds of many moving parts falling into place), the odds are truly against you. It's really as simple and straightforward as making 'X' per month, but your expenses are 'Y', and 'Y' is figure that's a lot bigger than 'X'. While business can be cold and all about the numbers, there's no heart to being in Amway either, so former ambots can't even say THAT. At least when you hear stories about folks who went into temporary jobs, they learned life lessons (and NO... losing years of finances and lifetime friends is truly the worst life lesson and should NOT come to those), or how former Borders employees are still friends with former coworkers... Amway has nothing. The one thing I regret while going to all of those meetings (besides wasting all that time) is not reaching out to the other prospectees who were going through the same ordeal I was. We probably could've hit it off, and stayed on positive, meaningful, and NON-CREEPY terms, but I'm sure the ambots are trained to keep us apart. I was going to ask how bullshit they thought the meetings were, but failed to do so. at least, a bit of poking around online did the trick. There are many sites, but this blog is one that I come back to, just because of how ridiculous Amway and their tactics, demeanor, and sheer evil (but still legal though :( ) are.

    ------
    As for partner sites...
    Even the direct sites like Dell are sometimes too expensive. I used to be able to get some discounts direct from Dell if you wait. If you wait monthly, you get something. If you can hold out 3 to 5 months, you stand to get a much better deal. Nowadays, I'm checking out sites like SlickDeals.net. Was able to get an i7, 8 GB of RAM, and it even included a 24" monitor. I was even able to customize that on Dell's site (e.g. I got a higher capacity hardrive for the usual upgrade price, so I wasn't tied into that system without any flexibility). Many of the posters who rated the system as "so so", for one the inferior video card for heavier gaming even said that with the monitor thrown in, it does make it up to par on the value side.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Yup. Good post! If you had tried to reach out to other ambots and some would be feeling the same way you were, you would have caught shit from the cult leader running that Amway meeting and been ridiculed in front of that group and they would try to find another way to brainwash you.

      Delete
  5. Hi Anna,

    Are you aware of this

    http://annabananareplies.blogspot.com/

    this person seems to use your content. It is exactly opposite to what u have posted though

    eg .

    Your Post:
    Every now and then I get an urge to look up the latest info on the Scamway world. So this time I landed on your blog and I'm glad I did.

    fabricated post:
    Every now and then I get an urge to look up the latest info on the Amway world. So this time I landed on your blog and I'm glad I did.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes we know about it. People in Amway are taught to duplicate so what else do you expect. Around here the comments are usually much better than the posts.

      Delete
  6. Hi Anna, was googling for solution to help my mum and chance upon your blog. Thank you for sharing all the negativity ex from people ard the world with Ambots. I couldn't managed to read through all your blog post and comments as they were so many of them. However from some of the many information I've gathered from your blog; Is watching them 'Ambot' helplessly the only solution? Sorry if I've missed out anything. Like many others, thanks to your blog at least I know myself or my siblings are not alone in all these Scamway drama.

    Sadly, the Ambot for my case is my mum, someone that I once respect and love dearly. My mum divorce and remarried since I was young. Myself and my brothers stayed with our grandparent while my mum stay elsewhere with my step-dad and step-siblings. My mum have a tough life, her second marriage is not a happy one either. She feel into depression and found Amway. She soon visualizing herself being financially independent and could break away from this asshole (my step dad)and take care of all of us (all her childrens). We all know that this will not work out and tried to talk her out but like many others.. we FAILED.. Badly at times if we tried too hard.. Her Life now is all about Amway. Especially when she link Christianity with Amway. Things got even worse. It's like GOD plan for her to do this. In order to make peace in the family, we have no choice but to support her by listening to her business plan, weekly Friday night meeting with her $%#^ upline at her place (to the extend myself and my wife have to work overtime so as to excuse ourself fr the stupid meeting.. when we are so dying to see our baby at home.. we can't go home..)

    It's really a true nightmare for the whole family. Despite all that we have done and compromise. She still think that we are not supporting her. Her idea of support is that we must all do this ACTIVELY which is ridiculous as we all have our job. As usual they will start to scrutinize everything that you are engaging with.. your job etc. I used to value the limited family time that I have with her when we can talk about anything under the sun but now I am truly afraid of seeing her as she will link every single thing to AMWAY and talk only about this bullshit. Why have it become like this?! How I feel now is that the person that I once love and respect dearly is gone.. If that person is a boyfriend/girlfriend/Husband/Wife/Best Friend.. We can simply let it go.. But this is my MUM.. How can I possibly give up on her? Those scumbags took advantage of a vulnerable depress victim and brainwash them with fake dream. Being the eldest in the family I felt really helpless that I can't bring MUM back to the family. I wish I could just walk away but I can't. I wanted to help my mum, I buy her a ticket to watch a motivational talk by Nick Vijicic with me with the hope that she will view life differently, be more positive with her life and that Amway is not everything but guess what.. She chose to attend some AMWAY bullshit seminar rather then going to the talk with me because she said that AMWAY thingy is more important.. I really do not know what else I can do further. Sorry for such a long post Anna. Thanks for reading and giving me a chance to pen down rather then keeping inside which is killing me..

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Hi there Anonymous kid of an ambot. Stories like yours are very sad. I'm not sure if you read posts from a couple of months ago where I was featuring comments written by other kids but you'll see you're not alone in having ambot parents.

      And really one of the requirements for parents to get involved in Amway should be to turn their kids over to child protective services. Maybe that will make them think twice.

      Cults like Amway prey on people like your mother and what she's lacking in life and fill her head that all her dreams will come true and she'll have all the money she wants rolling in for the rest of her life after 2 to 5 years in Amway. She gets love bombed by the Amway cult followers. If you're not sure what that means, whenever your mother sees them they'll hug her and pretend to be excited that she's shown up and will shower her with attention.

      The thing with kids of Amway ambots is that they don't want to take any action because they love their parents and don't want to destroy the family (that's Amway's job anyway).

      You might find it helpful to download a free ebook called Merchants of Deception. Look on the right hand side of this page under more information about Amway to get the link. Once you've read it, try to convince your mother to read it.

      Do you have any family or close friends that you can talk to? You mentioned religion but I'm not sure if your mother decided to get religious before or after Amway. All cults use some twisted form of the bible to preach their message and the cult leaders in Amway are masters at doing that so they can convince their followers that God wants them to be in Amway. So perhaps there's a church leader who is not affiliated with Amway who can help.

      You need someone who knows about businesses and profit and loss statements to sit down with your mother and create a spreadsheet. She'll be reluctant to do it because the losses will be staring back at her in black and white. An accountant or someone at the bank can also help. Also your state might have non profit groups that help with debt counselling that can help put together a statement and help with budgeting. Your mother will have so much more money in her budget once she kicks the Amway habit.

      And sorry to say as you've kind of suspected sometimes there's nothing you can do. The ambot has been brainwashed by the Amway cult leaders not to trust anyone who isn't in Amway because they're all negative unchristian dreamstealers. Sometimes the ambot has to hit rock bottom, drain the savings accounts, max the credit cards, go through bankruptcy and foreclosure and lose their family before they come to their senses. Most come to their senses and quit before it gets that bad.

      You come back here and post anytime you like. And no need to go #$%@^&. You want to curse out those bastards who've stolen your mother from you this is the place to do it.

      Delete
    2. Sorry to hear about your mum! :(

      Anna's got some suggestions worth considering.

      Another thing I'd like to suggest... is it possible to stage an intervention? I have no direct experience in this matter, but I've noticed it's done for addicts... drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling, collecting/accumulating material possessions, unusual habits, and otherwise any destructive habits that's a cause for concern for the individuals loved ones and friends (Amway's definitely an offender). If these habits go unchecked, it can ruin the person's life, those around her, and hurt them too.

      I'd suggest looking up some info on staging an intervention if you need some ideas, as again, no direct experience there other than to grab people very close to your mum and want to see her get better.

      Hope you and your mum can get through this!

      Delete
  7. Thanks for your reply Anna.

    "Do you have any family or close friends that you can talk to?"

    Everyone is starting to get irritated and shunting away from her. I do have a close friends and my spouse that I'm talking to.. but it seem pretty hopeless.. For eg. During our family gathering like birthday party or family events, those parasite ambots upline will be invited in as well.. So that they will get a chance to poison the rest. No more good old family bonding time.

    "You mentioned religion but I'm not sure if your mother decided to get religious before or after Amway."

    We are all non-Christian to begin with. My mum was on the verge of suicidal till she found Christ. Her life was filled with hope again and I am truly happy for her. However she became really obsessed with Christianity till a point she really irritated me and it was not long after she met Amway and somehow affiliated these two together as one which is when all hell break loose. Do not get me wrong, I've no disrespect for the religion.

    "So perhaps there's a church leader who is not affiliated with Amway who can help."

    I've thought of this before but is it alright if I just walk into a church and speak to the leader? As mentioned I'm not a Christian.. yet..

    "You need someone who knows about businesses and profit and loss statements to sit down with your mother and create a spreadsheet. She'll be reluctant to do it because the losses will be staring back at her in black and white. An accountant or someone at the bank can also help."

    Myself and my wife worked in a bank. I tried all of the above but it doesn't help. She listened and the next moment it's gone and back to how glory Amway is again. Honestly, we have a lovely daughter and is fully independent. We can simply walk away, build our own home/family and let her hit
    hit rock bottom. But I can't do it for many reasons. My younger sibling are still very much in need of parental support especially my step-siblings which are all really young. There are the real victims. Instead of monitoring their upbringing and education, my mum is wasting all her time with Amway. For eg, she could just throw the kids to us and fly off to attend some Amway seminars.. expecting us the older children to take care of them.. She blame their poor academic performance on others like their tutor or school instead of reflecting on herself.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Anonymous. Oops you're a little older than I thought. So obviously you're looking at the situation through the eyes of an adult who is somewhat detached because you live somewhere else.

      Everything you've described is what other ambots and their family and friends go through. Everyone wants to avoid ambots becaus they know they're going to get pitched and after they decline to buy any shitty overpriced products or attend an Amway cult meeting the ambot gets really nasty toward them. Yup ambots descend like locusts at weddings, funerals what have you and do their prospecting no matter how inappropriate it is. One track minds to get rich and appease their great Amway gods by tithing them.

      And no I wouldn't just walk into any church and ask the leader for help. Go to the one your mother attends and the leader knows her. They might already have experience with this.

      As much as you hate to do it if your step siblings are minors you might need to get child protection services involved. There is no doubt that those kids are being neglected because your mom has to spend a lot of time at Amway meetings or with the cult leaders. Parents need to spend time with their children and that don't happen when Amway comes first in their lives. Also the money situation. Money that's going to Amway could be better spent buying children real food, clothes, education, sports activities they're involved in, or even birthday presents. These children need to be protected from the cult. Someone in authority comes in and lays the law down to your mother that she better stop neglecting them or they'll be put under state care might smarten her up.

      Or as the other poster mentioned, stage an intervention. A church leader might even have experience doing that for different types of addictions and know how to help.

      You should read some of the information on this website www.freedomofmind.com Some of the things are for sale like books and counselling services but this might be a start.

      Good luck and keep us updated. Some other readers might have suggestions.


      Delete

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.