One of our readers who was in Amway’s URA cult sect shares their FED Free Enterprise Days horror story:
Now my PTSD is kicking in.
Thanks Anna! LOL.
Now story time. When I was in URA / URAssociation, tickets would go on sale for
the next conference around 1:00PM or so on the Saturday of the current
conference. For example, tickets would go on sale ($93 a pop when I was
involved before I decided to leave in 2018) on the Saturday of Summer
Conference (usually July of each year) for Free Enterprise Days (which take
place in October of each year). The location would not be announced until
Sunday at 4:30PM or so when we all dispersed our separate ways. This is how
things go at every URA / URAssociation conference. By the way, good call by the
previous commenter on not buying a ticket, especially when one does not know
the location. Upline will not like that argument, but it's a valid one.
But, back to my story. So usually at 2:00PM on the Saturday of conference (an
hour after tickets for the next conference would go on sale), we would have
team breakouts and these would drone on for about two and a half or three hours
or longer, then Phone Team after that, and then a scramble to get dressed for
the night session (yes, it's as painful as it sounds).
During these breakout sessions, the High Pins would of course get up in front
of the crowded conference room and give their little speeches about how they
are "FIRED UP!". And then every...single...person...where this was
their first conference, had to come up, introduce themselves and say who they
are sponsored by, name something they have learned, and announce if they had
purchased their ticket for the next conference. If they hadn't purchased it,
they (and others in the room who had yet to purchase their tickets) were raked
over the coals in public.
In addition, the "leadership" would tell IBOs to pawn off items such
as sports coats "and sell whatever you need to" in order to attend
since the next conference is the "Super Bowl of our business" (and
they say this about all conferences). This is how petty and how little they
cared about IBOs when they are telling people to pawn and sell stuff to attend
events that are essentially the same.
But yes, I just wanted to post this. And I would love to see more IBOs use the
example of not knowing where the conference is before buying the ticket for the
next conference. I would love to see the look on the faces of Uplines once
people start dropping that reply.
Forcing IBOs to buy tickets to a conference without telling them where it will take place is vicious and manipulative. And emotionally abusing them in front of a big audience if they haven't yet bought tickets is pure totalitarian crap, no different from what happens in Communist countries.
ReplyDeleteA message to the Amway Corporation in Ada, Michigan: your little AMO subsystems that run these goddamned "functions" are rotten, disgusting, and immoral enterprises. And you in Ada, Michigan are just as guilty of what they do, even though you try to lie your way out of it. You don't have the fucking guts to clean up these AMO subsystems.
Anonymous - the sack of shit Platinum was all about abusing Ambots in front of the crowd if they hadn't bought tickets or enough tickets for the next ScAmway brainwashing function. Saw it in action too many times. I think those assholes at the head office go with the philosophy that if it ain't broke don't fix it. And they fail to accept Amway and all their cult sects has been broken a long time and is in the business or breaking others. Amway's head office will never clean up the shit show they created.
DeleteIt does not matter what they do to the various sets of scammers under them. The entire model is flawed and can never be made to work. A model that works is to create a big warehouse of things people want to buy and then work out how to get things from that warehouse to the people who want the stuff. Both Amazon and CostCo do this in different ways but fundamentally they are both warehouses with a mechanism to get goods into the hands of consumers. They have sophisticated models to work out what to buy into inventory so customers rarely have to wait unreasonably to get the things they want. Also they make sure that they are not holding things in inventory to the point where it is costing them holding costs. The corporation in this case needs to clearly define what benefits the consumer gets from the MLM model versus the Amazon or CostCo models. If you cannot explain clearly why a consumer would come to you and buy in preference over those other models, then you cannot justify the existence of this MLM model. Telling people the money will come in magically is nonsense. If you are convinced that this is the future of retailing and are prepared to buy all your goods from MLM rather than its competitors and you are willing to do this for the rest of your life even without any promise of untold riches then you have a basis. Since you cannot convince yourself of the truth of this statement, you cannot convince anyone else either. No one is going to buy from you and certainly not in the volumes that you need to make any profit. The whole scam should be dead but the fact that it continues at all tells us something about vulnerability, greed and a lot about the human condition.
DeleteAnonymous - at ScAmway meetings the cult leader often refers to Amazon and claims Amway is doing the same thing. Too many differences to mention such as Amazon offers a lower threshold of purchases - is it still $25? - for free shipping and if you spend about $100 a year for Prime you get free shipping plus free movies and TV shows and music and so much more. Amazon membership is cheaper than Amway's and much better benefits. Moving on to the crux of both businesses selling stuff to consumers. Less than 4% of Amway's sales are to people who are signed up as IBO's. So over 95% of sales are to employees. I might be going out on a limb here but I doubt that over 95% of Amazon's sales are to employees! LOL! Amazon has a wide range of products for sale and lots of variety and different prices and deal with many vendors who provide these products. Amway has a much smaller selection of in-house items and they're overpriced shitty products.
DeleteBut then Amway is all about sell the hope not the soap.