Here’s a comment left
by a reader who got the classic scam treatment to sign up to the Amway cult.
Thank you for your post, and I am very sad that I did not
see this sooner. I was introduced to Amway and WWDB (World Wide Dream Builders)
by a guy at my last job. I had just graduated college, and was pressured to get
a job quickly.
The place where I met my "Mentor's Disciple,"
because he refused to actually be my mentor was a call center. He said, he was
not in a position to be an effective mentor for me and that his mentor would be
the person I would truly learn from. That's awfully strange considering you are
the one talking to me about this business, but it did trick me into thinking he
was looking out for my best interest.
Needless to say, I went to his house meeting, and a meeting
at a church where I was told a lot of nonsense, and after the first meeting at
the church from the "Diamond" I said this guy is illiterate and I
don't understand what I'm supposed to do. The "Mentor's Disciple"
said maybe you didn't click with him, but someone else will hopefully make more
sense to you.
So they sent me to a 3 day meeting over 6 hours in travel
time combined to come to these seminars called Freedom something where I heard
from 15 different diamonds, and still had no idea what the business was. All
they did was show videos of their expensive life styles and tell people don't
listen to your friends, family, or any other naysayer because they will never
understand.
Finally,I told my real mentor after asking ten times if you
don't show me some numbers, I will never sign up. He then showed me how I have
to spend money on the dvd's, the membership, and the expensive trips out of
state to go to these meetings. It would've cost me close to 10k that year with
the products and I wouldn't have sold anything.
I was so frustrated with this, and when I confronted him he
basically taught me how to divert parts of my paycheck to cover these
expenses...What a joke, the guy had been in this business for 2 years, and was
an Island's Manager (Basically the same price point as a TGI Friday's). This
guy was getting nowhere fast and he only had 6 "followers" at this
point.
With all of this said, and it is probably very difficult to
follow due to my erratic thought process,I gave it a legitimate chance.This is
why I can fairly say there is no gold at the end of this rainbow. I am very
glad that I only wasted a small portion of my life to learn a valuable lesson,
and they got me at one of my most desperate times. I was getting married soon,
with no job security, and trying to have a kid. These people aren't just greedy
they are inhumane to hunt out people that were in positions like mine.
This is a really effective anecdote, because it's from somebody who honestly attempted to listen to what was being told to him about Amway, and who was interested enough to go through a major effort and major expense to attend far-off meetings. And even when he couldn't get a straight answer from these Amway creeps after asking many honest questions, he gave it a try.
ReplyDeleteHe found out quickly what all of us here know: Amway is A FAKE BUSINESS, and there is no real profit in it for 99% of its IBOs.
The really interesting part of his story is the way in which no one would give him a straight answer! All he got was vague suggestions and propaganda and hype about the Diamond lifestyle. That's really revelatory -- at least in the past the people sponsoring you would draw chalk circles and tell you about down-lines and PV levels. Now they don't even bother. All they depend on now is pure cultic enthusiasm, and unexplained hopes, and vague suggestions. They just try to hypnotize you into signing up.
In other words, Amway has basically lost whatever few vestiges it had of being a commercial enterprise. Now it is like Herbalife or LuLaroe or any of the other crappy scams designed to separate helpless and innocent people from their cash.
That's another victory for us. We have pointed out so many times and with so much evidence how Amway is actually a cult, that the truth is finally sinking into the minds of the general public.
And Amway has basically told its Platinums this: "Forget anything intellectual or financial. Just hook your recruits by hypnotizing them. We might as well act like the cult that we are."
Anonymous - great points! Especially the vague responses to questions - which has been going on forever. Though in the past there was a lot of fast talk and numbers thrown out to confuse prospects. As you said the Amway cult is now depending more on blind enthusiasm and love bombing to create excitement about signing up.
DeleteThat's probably good Amway strategy - just act like the cult we are and stop denying Amway is a twisted religious cult.