You could get the impression if you read some internet sites that Amway and Quixtar must generate a terrible number of complaints about the way Independent Business Owners operate.
What’s the truth?
In the last 3 years, the Better Business Bureau in the United States has received exactly 3 consumer complaints regarding Quixtar "Sales Practice Issues".
There were a total of just 2 registered complaints over the 36 month period, the other 17 were regarding billing, contracts, guarantees, service issues, etc ie regarding Quixtar itself, not IBOs.
Given there are over 8, IBOs in the United States (with 66% of them considered active) only 3 registered consumer complaints in 3 years about IBOs, and 2 complaints total is quite an enviable record.
By contrast, for the same period, Nuskin/Pharmanex, another network marketing company, with 49, active US distributors (less than1% that of Quixtar) received a total of 17 complaints, a rate 9 times higher than Quixtar. Even the venerable Tupperware , with 22, active US sales representatives (less than 5% of Quixtar’s active sales force), generated 29 complaints, a rate nearly 3 times higher than Quixtar.
Microsoft received a whopping 2286 complaints!
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Some time ago, an person posted a response from the Better Business Bureau about the low number of complaint filed against MLMs like Amway/Quixtar and Nu Skin/Pharmanex, etc. As a consumer advocate, I worked with over 20 victims of Nu Skin who had colletively lost over a quarter of a million dollars. It took almost a year to get them to file a joint complaint with the state of Utah Div. of Consumer Protection; we didn’t pursue BBB complaints. I discovered the primary reason that so few complaints are filed with authorities in any chain selling program is FEAR. They fear consequences from or to those who recruited them or who they recruited – often close family or friends. They also have been conditioned to believe that “failure” is their fault – not the fault of the system. It takes a great deal of deprogramming to get people to understand that they have been scammed. The lucky ones are those who invested little or nothing and walked away.
How nice of you to join us Dr Taylor. No offence, but though you claim to have studied statistics you don’t appear to knowledgeable in their application to real world situations. How many people have been distributors with Nu Skin? And you consider a self-selected sample of 20 is enough for you to establish a “primary reason” for a lack of complaints?
I can’t speak for Nu Skin, but I personally can come up with more than 20 former Amway distributors that haven’t complained to Amway … not because of “fear”, but because they had no complaints! Heck, I’m one of them.
The idea that tens of millions of people have somehow been brainwashed with “fear” too great to complain is absurd. Do you believe in the Illuminati as well?
There’s no doubt in my mind that there’s been people with bad experiences in Amway, NuSkin, pick a company, any company. You can come up with all sorts of reasons why people might not complain. It could be some fantastical conspiracy of forced silence. Or it could simply be they didn’t feel they had much to complain about. Indeed, a University of Westminster study found that the majority of people who’d had experiences with direct selling companies (which are almost all MLM these days) reported positive opinions. But then, yeah, it’s possible they’re so terrified they even lie on anonymous surveys! Occam’s razor would suggest another explanation.