The internet is littered with stories about people who had a run-in with Amway or an Amway Independent Business Owner (IBO). It appears that the vast majority of the stories were about bad experiences and financial losses of some kind. Many of the stories contained some element of deception that was used in the recruitment and retention of IBOs.
When I was an IBO, one of the biggest lies I heard was that diamonds claimed there were no profits to be made from tools and functions. WWDB claimed to be a non-profit organisation as well, which was incorrect. There were the liar, liar, pants on fire types of deceptions and fabrications. Looking back, it was a blatant act of defiance. Of course, these lies were spread at a time when the internet was a relatively new technological development. When the upline's profits from tools and functions were revealed, the upline's narrative was changed to reflect the profits from tools and functions, but there was still a certain amount of secrecy surrounding the qualifications and the amount of profit that could be made. It is undeniable that diamonds and higher grades garner the lion's share of profits from the tool and function industries.
In addition to recruiting, lies and deception are common in the workplace. An example of a common lie is a lie by omission, which I discussed in a recent article about IBOs who once denied the connection between Amway and Quixtar. On paper, the Amway pitch will sound fantastic, but in practise, the reality is quite different. The reason for this is that Amway has a reputation for being a bit of a con game. When I was in college, I was invited to a beer bust, only to find myself in the middle of an Amway meeting.
There are literally thousands and thousands of comments on this single blog post alone. Many are from new IBOs or charlatans who claim to have only been in Amway for a short time but are now earning $5000 a month or making other implausible claims. None of these comments have ever been verified, and the people who make them usually disappear after they have been made, or at the very least within a short period of time after they have been made.
I believe that it is impossible to build Amway as a legitimate business without engaging in some form of deception. It is for this reason that there are countless accounts of people being tricked into attending meetings or being subjected to other forms of deception. The diamonds make extravagant claims about their wealth, but as far as I am aware, none of the diamonds has ever provided evidence to support their claims.
At the very least, the vast majority of IBOs struggle and ultimately fail because of this and other factors.
0 comments: