Watch Out For Scams Like Amway

There are a lot of home based business ideas out there that appeal to people who want to stay at home and earn an income other than going into a bricks and mortar shop or office. Working from home is one of the lines that IBO’s use when hunting down prospects. Its one of those phrases that get people thinking that sounds like a good idea. Working from home means you can often set your own hours, be at home with your kids, and get your housework and cooking done. If you don’t have a car to commute to work or there are no nearby job opportunities finding or creating a job where you can work from home is ideal. Not to mention the thousands of dollars you’d be making each month on your Amway business. Or so the lying scamming Amway ambot that did the recruiting claims.

One of the things that people have to watch out for when searching for working at home is scams. The type of scams that most people seem familiar with are the ones for data entry, stuffing envelopes, or assembling products at home. Those scams have been around long before the Internet when scammers posted ads in the classified section of newspapers looking for unsuspecting victims.

When people think about work from home scams they’re not putting MLM’s into the same category as a work from home scam to watch out for. MLM’s don’t have their distributors working out of an actual building headquarters. They work out of their houses or cars.

There was a link to the BBB work at home scams but it’s dead now. Too bad for that.  http://www.bbb.org/us/article/work-at-home-schemes-408

Anyway I happened to copy and post a quote from the article when this post first appeared on the blog:

To avoid falling for work-at-home scams, both on- and off-line, look for the following warning signs:

·         Overstated claims of product effectiveness;

·         Exaggerated claims of potential earnings, profits, or part-time earnings;

·         Claims of "inside" information;

·         Requirements of money for instructions or products before telling you how the plan works;

·         Claims of "no experience necessary."

I can pick all these warning signs apart on how they apply to Amway.

1. Overstated claims of product effectiveness. All the time! Perfect Water is the cure all for everything that ails you. Take any Amway product. If you talk to an ambot they will brag about how every single Amway product is better than anything else on the marketplace. No point in arguing with those brainwashed ambots.

2. Exaggerated claims of potential earnings. I think I’ve covered that quite well in this blog about how our upline lied about how much money one can earn in Amway. 100k in 6 months working part time 10 to 15 hours a week. I have lots of readers who’ve left comments about the lies they were told about how much can be earned in Amway against the reality of what they actually earned. There are many former IBO’s who’ve taken to the Internet to expose that lie of how much money one can expect to earn in Amway. We’ve got it. False income expectations.

3. Claims of inside information. I guess that depends on what one considers inside information. We’re not talking trading stocks here however IBOFB goes around claiming to have all kinds of inside information to Amway. Just about everyone at Platinum and above level tell us at Amway meetings how they have information about this that and the other and how its highly confidential and they’ll release it to the masses once Amway gives them the green light. Like see how important I am with this top secret information from Amway that the rest of you ambots don’t have. Like who gives a shit.

4. Requirements of money. Yup. You have to pay lots of money for Amway tools to learn how the plan works only to find out there is no plan other than buying lots of tools so your upline can get richer.

5. Claims of no experience necessary. Yup. We were told being an Amway IBO was so easy anyone could do it. If we objected that we had no sales experience or no interest in product sales we were told that didn’t matter we don’t have to sell anything. Guess that is true. Ambots are expected to buy Amway products but sales to outsiders was pretty much glossed over.

And yes the BBB does have MLM’s down as scams to watch out for. Here’s what they say:

MULTI-LEVEL MARKETING: Typical Ad -- "Our products make it possible for people like you to earn more than they ever have in their lives! Soon you can let others earn money for you while you and your family relax and enjoy your affluent lifestyle! No experience necessary."
Multi-level marketing, a direct sales system, is a well-established, legitimate form of business. Many people have successfully sold the products of reputable companies to their neighbors and co-workers. These people are independent distributors who sell popular products and also recruit other distributors to join them. On the other hand, illegitimate pyramid schemes can resemble these legitimate direct sales systems. An obvious difference is that the emphasis is on recruiting others to join the program, not on selling the product. For a time, new recruits who make the investment to buy product samples keep money coming into the system, but very few products are sold. Sooner or later the people on the bottom are stuck with a saturated market, and they cannot make money by selling products or recruiting. When the whole system collapses, only a few people at the top have made money—and those at the bottom have lost their investment.

Very true. Being an Amway IBO is all about recruiting other people to become IBO’s and not selling Amway products. Amway’s own sales figures show less than 5% of their sales are to customers who are not Amway IBO’s so finding customers to sell products to is a low priority. The main reason for being an Amway IBO is to buy Amway products to self consume and find others to do the same. And everybody must buy CD’s, books, attend all functions. Buy tools! Buy extra tools! That’s what’s taught at Amway meetings.

At least with scams like envelope stuffing and data entry victims tend to lose smaller amounts of money maybe $10 maybe $100.

With the Amway scam victims typically lose thousands of dollars. Depends on how long they feed into the scam. Other Amway victims lose their houses, their credit rating, and their families.

Stay away from evil Amway scammers! Scum of the earth!