Thursday, March 3, 2011

Amway Critics, Amway Defenders?

Ever since the "tools scam" in Amway was exposed by the internet and further confirmed by Dateline and previously by 60 Minutes in expose's, there has been a sort of "internet war" between Amway critics and defenders. The defender's mantra is almost always "we don't do that", which I find ironic, because often, these same defenders admit they are from the more abusive of the lines of sponsorship. While I admit there may be some "rogue" IBOs who focus on selling product, they are the rare exception and not the rule. Most IBOs belong to an LOS who sells tools such as cds, voicemail, seminars/function and other support materials. In the past, uplines lied and denied that they made any tools profits. Now that the lie has been exposed, the IBOs seemingly have just forgotten about this and gave upline a free pass while uplines continue to display a lack of transparency about the tools business.

I will also acknowledge that Amway may have tried to make some changes to clean up some of the abuse, but at the same time, many of the changes appear to be cosmetic and meaningful changes are not apparent. Take accreditation for example, what did it truly accomplish? Not much in my opinion.

The most hard core defenders of Amway act like internet trolls at times, setting up alerts and dropping uninvited into conversations whenever the word Amway comes up. The weaker defenders of Amway will drop into a conversation and will disappear in a flash once they get schooled by the facts. One good example was someone denying that diamonds spoke about buying homes in cash. When other commentators confirmed hearing this claim, the Amway defender tucked tail and ran. The more elusive defenders of Amway will try to get a critic to defend an extreme postion, or will try to say that critics paint too broad of a picture. For example, when you say upline, why refer to all upline. A valid point, but when making a defense, these same defenders will paint all of the upline as "rosy" by saying things like "we" don't do that, implying that not a single person in the LOS does that, which is almost always false.

But the most important thing that information seekers should note is that Amway defenders have something to gain by defending Amway. Amway defenders may have something to gain and may even lie and cheat to make Amway look good. Some diamonds in the past even made ridiculous claims just to sell their "perfect" water product. Amway critics have nothing to gain. Some of us do this only because there are many injustices placed upon the masses of downline, and not only did the upline get away with past offenses, many of them continue their practice of bilking their downline for personal benefits. They prop up someone's dreams and when the person buys in, they sell them tools and profit, regardless of what happens in the end.

How many people actually achieved their dreams as a result of attending functions? How many people benefited from standing order? How many people got rich from voicemail? Seems like only the ones selling these tools benefit from them.

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