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The following posts have been reprinted in their entirety from posts e-mailed by readers of this website, except that headers, names and locations have been removed. These posts express the opinions and experiences of their authors, and this site publisher makes no representations about them in any way whatsoever. Hello, my name is *. I was wondering if you can send me a notice anytime you update the site. I just saw it and I really enjoyed. Thank you, First of all, thanks very much for responding to my query on www.skynary. Your recommendation to www.deja.com open another source of information for me. I am still looking for a home-base business and I'm sure there are legitimate ones out there which I can do while also holding a full-time job. Secondly, I had just finished your book which I ordered from your Web-site, and may I commend you for a job well-done and I thank you for pointers on how to cope with the aftermath. I had quit only recently after I found myself financially drained and lack of time for my family, and yet being pushed by my upline to show more plans and continue the SOT and BOM , functions etc. etc despite telling them I'm in financial predicament. Anyway, I'm a much happier person now - I thought I can trust this group and do something 'part-time' and be financially independent after being laid-off by my previous company beginning of last year. Thirdly, I wish to thank you again for being a good person in running MLM Survivors Homepage. Contrary to what some readers might think, those events that you have highlighted and which I had personally experienced, I would say you are right on the dot (perhaps with some variations or localized version for this part of the world. I'm from MALAYSIA.) IF I had only known about this site earlier ... I would have been more informed and made a different decision of NOT joining them. Yes, I'm a survivor - I was hoping to achieve the dream of "financial independence" and "early retirement" and be my own boss; for the first time in my life, I joined a MLM, i.e. Amway. I joined what they called the "4th Phase of Amway business", the INTERACITVE DISTRIBUTION with direct sponsorship from US. Looking back now, I had spent MORE monies buying products (many times, unnecessary and strongly influenced) and on transportation cost in trips and admission charges to rallies, etc. And now, I'm so much worst off - what am I going to with all those tapes and books? And the monies I spent ... it's really not worth it... the rebate is peanuts compared to the price of the products! I could have buy much cheaper products elsewhere and get instant "rebate" considering the savings. It started when I lost my job and was very depressed when I was shown the plan by an old school buddy of mine. It was many weeks before I finally decided to attend my first rally and it was exhilarating and I was so charged up that I signed up upon reaching home (which is 200 miles away from the city they have regular functions) The concept is good - I don't deny it - financial independence, more time with families and friends etc.. not having to be tied down to your JOB, and I was under the impression that it is achieveable by working hard (for sure) and pushing the products. That I can do - we all need to put in some real hard work to reach our goals. I plugged myself right into the system - STP 15 plans a month (sometimes more), monthly functions, and everything I was counseled to do. My internal system had objected to some personal discomfort in the system and conduct of the group, but I told it was just a "test" and "which separate the meat eaters and milk drinker" and "men from boys" By my family life was in jeopardy, my eldest son who's so attached to me was cold towards me because he was neglected so often etc. and money was tight but yet I have to spend for traveling, telephone charges, expensive products etc. I had reached 9-percenter in my 3rd month through building my legs quickly - I went up on stage every month's rally for recognition at each pin level and go-getter. I had being with them for only 5 months. I've stopped the tapes, books, functions but I've not withdrawn my membership from Amway because there are still some pretty good products. But I was told that I am not authorized to buy direct eventhough the rest of the other normal (not the Yager's line) Amway distributors do. My last straw with them came when we were told to plan out a 3-monthly schedule of "sales calls" (STP) to be submitted to our Direct and Emerald. The reason is that the group's Emerald may be down in our city and would help us do the STP. I refused as I can't see how the Emerald can possibly help so many of us downlines. Furthermore, there's no way I can plan 3-months ahead - I suspect someone upline is attempting to "push us" so that he/she can achieve the next pin level. But I was told to do it - I had voice my obstacles and problems about building my business but it always fell on deaf ears and always get respond like "it's a test to see if I am an eagle or eaglet" etc. I work in sales before and I know what a sales call forecast is for - scrutiny and more activities being advised from them. Anyway, all I can say is that I'm indeed very angry for being "betrayed" and now, I am pretty alright as I've not given my heart and soul. Unlike my upline upline . Unfortunately there's no support group in this part of the world - people usually just stay away and move on. Ruth, many thanks again and thanks for reading my long e-mail. I just wanted to share with you what's happening here in Malaysia. Re: Amway Hi I wonder if you can put me in touch with the person who started their message about what De vos said, I would really like to talk to him about the meaning of the books and tapes..Thank you if you can do this Re: Amway Motivational Organizations: Behind the Smoke and Mirrors Hi, Is this email going to Ruth, herself? Either way, I have read the book, and I would very much like to ask her some direct questions about her experiences. I am very interested in her insight. Please let me know how to correspond with her. Thank-you.
You will sell a mountain of
these books by appealing to the gullible prior distributors who
over reacted and did it their way instead of following a practical
approach to starting a business. There are no requirement to
buy anything including books and tapes. Each distributor is informed
in writing that there is no requirement to purchase any of this
material which they sign. Further, no one has ever dragged me
from my home and forced me, or anyone I know to attend any "function",
or leave their children. Re: Primerica Financial Services Friends of mine recently got
involved in Primerica. We've all been through the Amway ordeal,
but I'm trying to find more info on Primerica. I have not been
able to find any negative info on Primerica, although I'm sure
it's out there. If you know of any web sites I would like to
know. They come across as a respectable organization, but then
again so does Amway. If you could e-mail me any information or
web sites that focus on Primerica I would apppreciate it. I'm
skeptical about any MLM company and want to find out what the
real story is on Primerica. Thanks Re: Amway/Quixtar Hello, I will not try and prove you wrong, but I am wirting to say that Amway/Quixtar is not some 'evil empire'. I am 30, and like most people my age and older, I had heard of Amway long befor I got involved in it. I had seen the plan like 10 times between High School and when I finally joined. Everytime I saw the plan I turned it down (until the last one). I would ask 'How do you make money? Are you making any money?' And everytime the answer was 'Ahh...PV & BV, and no I am not making any money yet..but I am close!' I deal in $$$. Why join something that the guy recruiting me in is failing? I was a HUGE sceptic of the Amway business. Then a I ran into along time friend of 20 years. He is making about 110K a year right now, and probably adding about 50K to that this year. I joined with him. I found someone that was making money and I knew and trusted this person. Why the background? I am sure you have heard it befor...Because there are people that make it. They make it off the Products, not the tools. I am VERY close to my Upline. I know where his money comes from, its not from Tapes and Books. As for the Products, they are solid products. They are good quality. I am not even sure that can be disputed. I know people that would not join Amway even if it was the last thing on the planet...but they like the Core Line Products. They know they are good. I realize many people feel like they have been burned by Amway. Lied too, decieved...ripped off. But do you not think atleast some of those people did it to themselves? They acted irresponsible, spent past their means? I know my Upline, while he pushes for us to go to the Funtions, buy the Books and Tapes, he also knows that if you can not afford it, you shouldnt do it...He teaches Financial Responsibility. Get your Bills paid and your finances in order, then spend...dont spend more then you have... *shrug* I dont know. Just seems to me that most people get 'screwed' in Amway because of their own actions, or lack there of when building the business. I have looked at most MLM's and HATED them. Because things like Equinox are a TOTAL rip off (thus their major legal troubles, as in being shut down in Washington State). While Amway is recognized by the US Government as being 100% legal. I dont know. Everyone has a different view and opinion. I am not some 100% GungHo Pro Amway. But I have not found anything bad about the association with the people, the useage of the products, or even the tapes. I havent not made some massive amount of money from Amway, thruth is, until I file taxes I havent even made 100$ and I have been in for 7 months. But I will save about 1500$ in taxes (the tapes are tax write offs, funtions too, books...etc...they are Business Expenses). I realize you are Anti-Amway. But I do think you need to be more objective on the issue. The Stats you list for Quixtar (while I do not disagree with them all) are the same sorts of stats EVERY online business uses. You could break down the Shopping Stats for ShopNow.com and make it look even less impressive...(I know one of their key SysAdmin people...we have talked about this issue). I do thank you though for your view points. We will disagree I am sure on most things related to Amway/Quixtar. But then that is what people do, disagree at times. Thank you, Re: Primerica Financial Services Primerica Financial Services was the company. It took all of husbands time. He worked 60-70 hours a week and lost touch with his family, his church, his friends, his hobbies everything. It stole our finances and our lives. He still has problems reconciling the fact that he got in so deep and couldn't get out before he reached bottom.
Re: Amway/IBS may be you can tell me what you know about the Amway company, or I.B.S. and why does all MLM seem to refer to Amway is there no other group doing anything wrong? Re: Quixtar It's very interesting how you've got absolutely nothing good about the company on your website. Is it possible that you may be spending all this valuable time creating a "hate" page for your own benefits....maybe. You may be in some other MLM so that you want to downplay Quixtar. I have no sympathy for those who claim to have "lost" money in tool investments and functions etc. You know, there's something called "effort". Without effort, you would definitely be wasting your time going to these functions. You know what, I'm waisting my time here. I'm going to get me some "quality" IBO's who will get off the their rear ends and do something in the business, rather than becoming morons like you creating "hate" pages. Bye, I hope God puts some sense into you. Otherwise I hope you rott in hell.
The quote you have from Ken
McDonald: "We're also planning to offer a family-friendly
Internet service provider that will filter out all those 'bad-guy'
Web sites you want to keep from invading your family's PC."
is talking about "Adult Sites" not sites likes yours.
Re: Amway Dear MLM Survivors: I am the wife of a dear man who got involved in Amway 2.5 years ago. At the time, we had 2 daughters in college. While he told them could not help them with college expenses, he spent $6,500 in one year alone on Amway-related "tools" and trips. He listens to Amway's voicemail (daily brainwashing) to and from work, and the things they put out over it are increasingly ridiculous. On a recent trip to visit my mother and her husband, he told them Quixtar has twice as many pageviews as Amazon.com. He also told them Amazon.com is not profitable. Hello? Amazon.com was one of the first retail sites. Quixtar has been online for what, 4 months? It is bad enough they are encouraging my husband to abandon the care of this family. They have to make an fool out of him too. I had to go back to college to earn enough to help pay the girls' bills. Of course, he will not help me either, because all his money is earmarked for Amway. I am studying to be a web designer. In the course of my study, I study websites to see what they do. I occasionally check the financial reports about them. Guess what? Amazon bought Sotheby's for $45 million in June. How did they do that with no money? Hm, well, maybe it was because they had third quarter earnings of $356 million. Even with a net loss of $197 million (which I suppose would include expenditures for expansion), they still made $159 million in one quarter. (See Company Profile at www.redherring.com/cgi-bin/pci-query.pl?format=CMP-PROF&prf_id=4530) Even without an increase in profits, which you would have to be a total dunderhead to not expect, that comes out to $636million, or over half a billion dollars for one year. Yeah, Amway has it all over Amazon.com. Well, I have found their philosophy to be, "If you lie enough, and often enough, people will believe you." (But the NASDAQ won't.) These people are worse than
crooks. They're delusional liars who destroy families. Re: Amway We've been in Amway for eight years now. At first we were all gung ho and bought everything. As time went so did our money. It caused great "lack of respect" on my part towards my husband and "soured" our relationship for a while. You see, he was into the tapes, books, functions but not showing the plan. I realize now that even if he had been showing the plan things would not have turned out like we were told. We are still distributors to buy the few products we like (although they are over priced in my opinion). My husband didn't stop believing the "brain washing" until we found Jeff Probandt's site (Praise the Lord for his site). If he hadn't found the truth on Jeff's site we would have been throwing our money away forever.
Re: MLM I was beginning to think I had lost contact with you. Thanks for the response. MLM for the most part has had a volatility unmatched in business history. That's undeniable. The hurt people feel has to come from not the flaw in a business model, but rather in the flawed people model. People are capable of the most awful things and when driven by greed or some other "me first" emotion. The resulting carnage can be disgusting. I may be wrong about this ,but I think that it is the people who hurt people. Leadership is needed in this area because wealth is only a sign of your service, not how many people you can mislead. I believe that Amway has done into the billions of dollars all over the world- It can't therefore be all bad. If people are to look for an opportunity is there room for them in a multi-level where, like any business, they risk failure? What are the alternatives for someone who knows they need to do more to make ends meet? Do you have an opinion for what they can do? Or is yours a total mission for what they shouldn't do? Alternatives? The e-mails that people write in, they are emotional rather than factual as a general statement. So the reader can hear the hate, hurt, and general vindication. This leads me, anyway, to discredit the info as factual. When I'm emotional I constantly say things out of hurt only to regret it at a later time because it hurt someone else. Definitely not a neutral reading. I realize there isn't anything you can do about what is written in, but I was somewhat taken aback by your own responses. Hope you aren't still upset yourself, are you? I'm a CFO of a bank. I specialize in the study of business models and recommend to several lenders what would constitute a good investment. I've done this successfully for over twenty years. The reason I wrote to you was because a client showed me the Quixtar business model. I called a friend who I thought was involved with the Amway business. He had quit and had nothing negative to say, just something he had chosen not to do. I then started to search around on the net and am finding piles of negative on both Amway and Quixtar. With my background, I am not interested in vindictive opinions. The facts and figures are amazing in the positive direction for both of these companies as a whole. The DeVoss and Van Andle families have had a great impact. The business model represented is 40 years old and has had a average growth of 20% a year over that time perod! How can this be so horrible. You say it is the system and the people that is so bad. Can the business be done without all that? Are there some leaders who can be trusted? Who? Thanks for the response. Re: Amway
My opinion is this...after
three years of Amway/Quixtar, 100% loyalty and with several very
good upline relationships with our Emeralds and Diamonds, I do
not agree with your statements claiming misrepresentation and
scam. I have NEVER been pressured to attend or do anything I
do not chose to do. We have about 25 others on the system and
about 75 not on the system in our downline and we treat them
the same way we have been treated. While we are not setting the
speed record for success here, we have steadily been moving forward.
I am sorry you have had a bad experience with the business and
hope my e-mail gives you additional insight to where another
"normal" person stands in the situation. Best of luck
to you and your family. Re: Quixtar
I am currently a new Quixtar distributor, and have been becoming increasingly discouraged over the last few months with all the promises, and progress they claim they are making....Several of us have read your recent articles, and have been sharing our thoughts with each other on this whole business thing. Do you have any other information for us as we are all ready to tell them to pound sand..... We thank you for your information. I am personally so pissed off right now as I consider myself a pretty intelligent person. Another thing you should know=- they were supposedly changing quixtar products to another name "exclusively yours", and we were told the Amway name would no longer be on packaging-but guess what! It is on the back of every label....... DEAR SIR I WOULD JUST LIKE THANK YOU, YOUR WEB PAGE HAS HELPED ME MAKE AN INFORMED DECISION. MY TIME IS INPORTENT! Re: Equinox Just wanted to say that I read your site, and it's right on! It had me laughing and relating. I also had minimal initial success, but found the whole bit obsurd. My earings were minimal and I spent way too much on rah, rah sessions that just made me feel out of place. I quit after a a few month summer stint with Equinox after being urged by my "warm market" to hang it up. I was especially glad that you posted the part about "promotions" being a sham. I also found this out, which was fairly frustrating after being urged to pressure those close to me into making their "manager's order". The same pricks who were pressuring me and saying they were my friends, could have simply made a phone call to get me to the coveted position they were pushing me toward. I've found much more success in the real world where I'll graduate in six months, and have a job waiting form me as an application programmer, something I really do love to do. Sorry, this e-mail got a little longer than I had intended, but I thought you site was a good read. Thanks for the honesty Re: Quixtar Quixtar- #634 in November Quixtar- #698 in December In a few months the quixtar site will be meaningless. Keep up the great work. |
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