As for some of the other stuff you mention, I notice you said it was a few years back you tried Amway. In the last 3-4 years Amway has introduced a whole range of programs to monitor, control, and improve the training, materials and seminars operated by third part companies. I think there’s still room to improve, but much better than it was

I also find it ironic that the IBO’s that contacted me were determined to build their business in the college town markets. Hmm.. praying on the young college students who are either 1) Still using Dad’s credit card or 2) Just got their own credit card are are still very inexperienced with how to handle their credit.

They preach ethics and hard work to you and how certain 18 year old’s out there have had tremendous success by using the methods they preach, but what they don’t say is whose money was being used upfront to fund the business and help it grow.

Business owners like myself(No longer an Amway member, Thank Goodness) know that for a business to grow you have to “spend money to make money.”

This is another thing that was commonly left out by the IBO’s that recruited me. They wanted to it sound like you could make all this money without doing much work by saying comments such as:
“What would you do with an extra “$20,000 per year at your age?”
Followed up by:
“What if I told you you could make $20,000 per year simply by doing 2 QI’s a week?”

I soon found out that I was easily spending 18-22 hours a week on what I now consider to be BS (tapes & books) that THEY approve to further the brainwashing.

The program is definitely misleading and prays on the naive and inexperienced to create growth and profits.

For anyone out there looking into Amway, please be careful and interrogate the hell out of everything the IBO is pitching you!

In my experience, they are 100% full of shit and just looking to grow their business and could care less about you and your money.

I understand that there are some truthful IBO’s out there and they may be ethical and not misleading, but in my experience that was not that case.

Don’t buy into the whole “Peter Island” spiel. How many people go on that trip anyways? 5-10? And how many people have tried Amway? Odds aren’t too promising. I think I’d rather avoid the ethically challenged/ “too good to be true” business model and stick to my capitalistic rights as an American and explore free enterprise to become financially independent like Amway people so often preach.

Agree completely with most of the comments Justin made he’s on the money. Thanks for creating this blog. People need the truth and they for damn sure aren’t getting it from certain Amway IBO’s.

One more thing, the Amway business focuses on selling to your “contacts” i.e. “Friends & Family.” I can’t begin to tell you about how many friendships were altered because of Amway.

Friends & Family have trouble saying “no” to one another especially when they are so enthusiastic about something. So, makes sense why they would hold a huge Pro-Amway Rally congratulating so many IBO’s success stories a few times every year to keep everyone enthusiastic and brainwashed.

Oh, and they even try and pull into your spiritual life as well since these Amway Rallies are over weekends and they drag it out through Sunday morning to hold a sermon for the people in attendance to attempt to make the people realize they need to be “saved” at an Amway event.

Yes, they even go that far.

Word of advice for anyone who gets randomly approached by someone asking them if they’d like to make some more money on the side and are super friendly and respectful; turn and walk away. It’d save you a lot of time and money.

Unless of course you feel confident that you can be one of those 5-10 that make it to “Peter Island.”

Best of luck to you.

I suspect part of this perception comes from the way the business is explained. Anyway, Amway, or even owning your own business, is not for everyone, but make sure you make your decision for the right reasons. For just one example, with Amway often far more of the money from each product stays with the “small business” in the local community (ie the distributors) than does with other small businesses, who often pay a much larger share of their revenues to their suppliers. So not a right reason not to do Amway

I took a listen at home and went to the second meeting wanting to know more.
There he gave me all the nitty gritty details about the steps to success and how to supposedly, “make my money work for me.” As far as I could tell, this looked like a leveraging pyramid scheme. I was almost roped into one before in University called Vector or something like that, I thought.

After the end of introducing the products, the steps and loyalty points, it seemed too good to be true. The guys who gave me this information are really nice…don’t know them well enough to know for sure, but after reading these posts, there still seems like there is a catch. I tried asking them about the web portals and advertising but it seems like they expect you, at first at least, to buy the products to create a profit. I know this isn’t the goal in the end..you want others to buy through you so that you get the referral commissions and loyalty checks.

One post said Amway’s IBOs don’t rely on recruiting other IBOs to make a profit..which is the complete opposite of how I was told I could make 60-70k within a years time.

I guess I just wanted to share this introductory experience I had with Amway’s IBOs with people and see what people’s impression about what this corporation is all about. Hopefully this sparks some legitimate discussion about Amyway.

And lastly, I just wanted to say that I don’t think I will be joining the Amway team. I am a very positive and optimistic person but I am not for Corporations…no matter how much money i could make from them, I would still rather buy products from small businesses that create an economy for the surrounding community.