Brainwashed AMWAY - NETWORK 21

[devilfish]

FFS - i was conned into attending a meeting last night, RED flags went up as soon as i was approached by some one i have been working with thro necessity (im buying a house).

I decided to play along out of curiosity, Its funny these guys use all the tricks in the book of criminal cons, Not telling you what its "about" untill youve been safley sat down in a conference room.

These people are everywhere, you work with them. They are parasites sucking money out of "foolish" people who belive their "piramid" selling techniques by another name.

Funny thing is that as i was sat there i felt like i'd missed out on the funny pill on the way in.. :coocoo: they were all cheering and clapping and had a strange glint in their eyes as the repeated ad nausium the "free way" and how you could earn $80K a year from doing jack, whilst preying on the normal fears of you loseing your day job and being skint.

So which of you have been approached?

Any one here part of the brainwashed / scarily culty AMWAY / Network 21 sect?

PARASITES all of them :coocoo:

[redline07]

Haha you actually went? Working in a sales environment, you get these crackpots asking you all the time, they all seem to think you've never heard of it before.

[Ryan1080]

Haha, I've been approached many years ago, and went for the presentation. Funny you mention the "funny pill", all the pinpgpingpingpings were all happy and clapping and congratulating each other over their success hahaha. Success = how they got 'promoted' to some new level etc etc. I chose to forget those details. Really felt like some sort of a sect though. All the bullshit didn't wash with me though, all these wild claims about them all being millioniares and shit kind of were hard to believe when the carpark was full of old shitters!

The worst one was Skybiz, many years ago. My uncle was in it! Farken retard! They sold you a template website, with the official purpose to "educate you" about creating websites. Al the websites looked the same, your job was to find more suckers to buy a template website. Typical pyramid bullshit.

[TJ]

LOL

Dare I ask were this was?

Technology Park in Bentley?

[Tocchi]

do they offer free snacks and refreshments?
if so im there :)

[Ryan1080]

Free coffee and tea and biscuits...

Mine was at the ECU Mt Lawley campus, one of the lecture theatres...

[Tocchi]

fuck yeh then!!! i already earn my coin from sitting on my ass doing nothing (except when i gotta choke a bitch... sometimes the job gets tough) ... so i can say they wont get to me... but ill eat all their biscuits !!! hhahahahah

[devilfish]

LOL

Dare I ask were this was?

Technology Park in Bentley?

Yup, youd think they'd bann these idiots from holding their cult "meetings" there...

[Ryan1080]

Well, it is real boring though, it is a crappy way to waste two hours over a few free biscuits haha.

[MISS 13B]

Ugh I hate these pyramid scheme with a passion.
My partner got cornered by some guy at work one time so he agreed for them to come to our house and do their presentation just to shut the guy up!!

I was livid. We literally had to sit upstairs in our house with all the lights off and wait until they left. They were knocking on the door for 30 minutes. It's funny looking back on it but at the time I could have killed him :lol:

[EYEH8HSV]

pyramid scheme i gather?

[coFF33]

Once was involved in ACN Telecommunications

never again

[devilfish]

They are seriously nuts, i told here that it was a con and i was the wrong person to have tried to strong arm into it, i ranted on and on about how the only people making money were at the very top and it was immoral and criminal way of making money, she just looked blankly and carried on in a robotic manner with her psycho ramblings - very strange.

[coFF33]

lol , should have an antilag excursion , to one of their meetings, and explain in a group to others at the meeting how its a con.

shut that shit down

[Brockas]

I'm keen to be in a pyramid scheme so long as I'm the tip of the pyramid.

[TJ]

Yup, youd think they'd bann these idiots from holding their cult "meetings" there...

Hahahahaha one of my best mates is involved with that group.

Started with "hey man im meeting my mate for coffee in leedie, come along"

No problem there, get together to talk shit all the time.
Then the spiel - "do you want to work smarter or harder, how much do you want to earn, wouldnt you like to retire early" blah blah

Pulls out a folder and starts explaining to me, then says "______ said you would be keen to sign up, so well see you next Wed, yeah?"

"ahh nah mate, I play basketball on Wednesday's"
"whats more important, a silly game or your financial independence"
"I really like basketball hey"

Gives me some DVD "you can borrow this, but only if you meet up again to return it"

I threw it out the window on the way home :)

Then he was ringing me for weeks after, I just kept ignoring the guy or telling him I was busy. Later my mate tells me I need to apologise as I was disrespectful.

What I find more disrespectful is being bandied up by some muppet trying to steal my soul you pingpingpingpings.

[Lump]

lol, i used to work with someone that was into 'omegatrend' sounded similar to amway not that i took any interest in that shit

[Riggs]

The closest I got was a couple of years ago they sent me a CD to listen to. 20 minutes of a bloke talking shit about how much better his life is now instead of when he had a job.

Then I had a phonecall asking if a wanted to join. Asked them what exactly was involved. "Didnt you listen to the CD?" yes but I dont care about a bloke who wants to sit at home and wank all day. Would bullshit on some more about how life changing it is but wouldnt tell me what it was.

Get these fuckers ring and walk in the door all the time. Becoming less and less polite about telling them to fuck off.

Also get the people who try and sell you the horse tipping schemes, they even have fancy brochures.... A steady $10K a month return from just a one off $5K investment. yeh nah.

[Tocchi]

I'm keen to be in a pyramid scheme so long as I'm the tip of the pyramid.

antilag.com ?

[Brockas]

Sure thing.

Lets do it. I'll tell you the secret to being rich if you send me $5k.

[devilfish]

fuck just started ranting in the office about it and guess what... my collegue is part of one...

THEY ARE EVERYWHERE

jeeze i thought he was ok....:withstupi

Its defo a cult...

[Joe]

Once was involved in ACN Telecommunications

never again

LOL a cvnt that was in some of my uni classes got involved in that, man he was pushy...trying to sell it to everyone in every class we had, until one day I just told him to shut the fuck up with it.

Pushy pyramid scheme muppets are on the same level as brainwashed pentecostal Christians.

[poombah]

Also get the people who try and sell you the horse tipping schemes, they even have fancy brochures.... A steady $10K a month return from just a one off $5K investment. yeh nah.

I had these guys harrasing me at my old job for weeeks. They would ring every friggin day. In the end i relented and lost 45mins of my life on the TAB tipping software. I told them before we started that I had a wild mortage and didnt have money to throw around.. farker didnt listen.. then at the end hes like so how many k do you have to start with.. I had to re-iterate that I work 2-3 jobs and I dont have money to throw around.. and he gets indignant at me for wasting _HIS_ time.. what about the 45 mins you just stole from me fucktard!

[Milhouse]

i think the moral of this story is, dont lend TJ your DVD's or CD's

seems he throws them out the window on the drive home hahah

[ADZ]

lol, i used to work with someone that was into 'omegatrend' sounded similar to amway not that i took any interest in that shit

I went out with a chick who's parents were really high up in omegatrend. They made a killing off it - later i find out how many people they sent broke from it too. Funny tho - just months before omegatrend folded - they start up a new business..

Personally i couldn't do it - just morally wrong.

[Fryman]

interesting article...


A while ago I received a phone call from a person who had been referred my number from a friend, who wanted me to take interest in a business idea of his. He told me he wasn’t currently planning on employing anyone, but wanted to get a business idea across. Although skeptical, I decided to hear him out, see what he was on about and what this amazing business idea of his was.

He was from a company called “IDA” (http://www.idabiz.com.au/) which was part of “Amway Corporation.” He tried to sell me the dream, without giving much information as to what the actual business was. In fact, he told me more about cars, yachts and houses than anything to do with this actual business of his. He also gave me a few ‘motivational’ CDs - this is when I started to suspect this as being a scam.

After this encounter I was pretty sure it was all crap. It sounded all great but as the old saying goes, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true”. Why does some guy that’s never even met me before want to make me rich? But instead of just claiming it as a scam, I decided to do some research. The following is what I found out, information and a warning to others.

So, first of all, Amway is the largest multi-level marketing organisation in the world. It makes billions of dollars a year through sales of soap, water purifiers, vitamins, cosmetics and so on. Amway claims their products of high quality and does business with other market leaders such as Coca Cola. In Amway someone is recruited as a distributor by buying a few hundred dollars of Amway products from an ‘upline’. Every distributor tries to recruit more people in order to make bonuses off sales of their recruits.

It goes like this:

If I buy $200 of stuff from Amway this month, I’ll get a 3% bonus check (3% of $200= $6). If I share the opportunity with nine others, and we each buy $200 of stuff from Amway this month, they each were responsible for $200 and will get $6, but I’m responsible for $2000, moving me to the 12% level. I get $240. However, I’m responsible for paying the bonuses of the people right below me - $54 - so I keep $186. I make more because I did more, I found nine people who wanted to buy at a discount and get a bonus for doing it. After I reach the 25% bonus level there are other bonuses that kick in, but they’re all based on the volume of product flow, not on signing people up or having lots of people.

Amway denies this way of sales as being a ‘pyramid scheme.’ It is true that Amway is not an illegal pyramid scheme and the courts have ruled this out as well, because Amway sell products. Therefore Amway is a legal pyramid scheme. Amway has also been spoken of to be a ‘cult’:

Graham Baldwin of the United Kingdom compares an Amway motivational meeting to a revival or cult meeting. The former university chaplain tries to help people break away from religious cults with his program called “Catalyst.” Soon after one of his broadcasts, he got a call from a man who explained how the group he had joined a year earlier was slowly taking over his life. There were the huge monthly meetings at venues like Wembley Conference Centre where he and thousands of other followers were worked into a passionate frenzy then told to go out and find as many new recruits as possible; there was a powerful doctrine that frowned on television, newspapers and other ‘negative’ influences; there was the strict dress code and advice on how to bring up children and relate to loved ones; there was the fear that to quit would mean giving up hope of a happy future.


However, having seen the television show featuring Baldwin, the man now alleged that he was being subjected to mind control techniques and being manipulated by those above him. He wanted advice on making a possible break. Baldwin asked which cult the man was in. “It’s not a cult. It’s not a religion. It’s something called Amway”
(Thompson).

Whether a cult or just a sales scheme, Amway recruiters use a motivational approach to sell their products, or to resell their products for sale to you. They talk about extravagant figures and speak highly of the quality of their products, because the more people they can get to sell their products, the more money they make themselves. In this sense, it’s more a ‘pipeline’ scheme. It may be legal because basically it is just a business, but whether it is really profitable in the long term is not likely from an independent seller who has been recruited by an ‘upline.’ It is important to remember that the people at the top may be able to ‘promote the dream’ because they themselves have achieved it, but the only reason they have achieved it is by manipulating the smaller people in company to give their majority of profit margin.

One weekend this summer over 12,000 enthusiastic people gathered for a rally in Richmond, Va. A handful were wealthy distributors of Amway Corp’s products; the rest wanted to be. The meeting began with a prayer and a Pledge of Allegiance. On stage, Bill Britt, the master Amway distributor who organized the rally, introduced the other top distributors, who had arrived in their Cadillacs and Mercedes, flaunting expensive furs and jewelry. With the introduction of each of these role models, the crowd cheered.

This is not to saying that Amway encourages fraud; they are not a fraudulent business. But they encourage the gullible that they can become rich beyond their wildest dreams by selling their products. These people trying to encourage you become rich themselves, and not by selling Amway products - but by selling the concept of Amway and inspiration materials, such as books, tapes, seminars etc. which are aimed at motivating someone to think positively. It is possible to make money selling Amway products, but it should not be expected to make the amounts that you are told you can, that is a flat-out lie. In fact, the really money in Amway is selling their motivational materials, ie. selling hope.

Well if your up to here and actually read all of this, well done! I hope this helps people to stay aware of the people out their trying to sell false and impossible dreams. If you want to make big money, the best way is to work and plan hard.

[JazRad]

My neighbour is big on amway. They are top of the pyramid people though make pretty good cash from it have about 20 -30 cars out the front of their house every week down the street.

An they always give me amway stuff everything seems to be amway based. "Here have this AMWAY energy drink etc" ahah

[hoony]

lol there's this guy that comes into work telling us about those drinks etc. blah blah...

i used to do Marketing for Citibank and got approached all the time by these guys, then i moved into clothing retail (with strict budgets) and you wouldn't believe the shit they would do to try to recruit you... you say hi and start chatting to one (trying to start your pitch and get a sale) and then they leave, and every 20 minutes after they would just come into the store, pretend to look at shit while they hear you talking to other customers...

happened at least 5 times over 7 months, freaks man

[SimonR32]

i have always wanted to go to one of these meetings...

people have actually suggested i should go

i think it would be good fun

[TJ]

i think the moral of this story is, dont lend TJ your DVD's or CD's

seems he throws them out the window on the drive home hahah

Isnt that how you scratched Brockas Tiesto DVD?

[TJ]

An they always give me amway stuff everything seems to be amway based. "Here have this AMWAY energy drink etc" ahah

LOL the drinks are good - sugar free and taste good.

Milk the fucker for a carton of tropical!

[ben351]

did someone say free bikkies and coffee ... Tocchi ... lets do it !

[Brockas]

lol free bikkies.


Half of SilviaWA just checked this thread.

[EVLO]

seriously, how many 'best mates' do you have TJ?? Seem to have a best mate for any given subject/situation... :flipa:

[ben351]

free bikkies ... not Kay Bikkies ... TJ just zipped his pants back up

[TJ]

I have no mates.

[Anaru]

I have no mates.

This is very true, every time I see TJ out in the clubs, he is always wandering aimlessly by himself. So I always say hows it going to be nice and he just looks at me and shouts GTFO, and goes back to wandering aimlessly by himself.

:D :poke: :lol:

[TJ]

See I know your lying.

normally im just lurking in the dark corner :)

Anyhow, back to pyramid schemes!

Wait, this isnt a pyramid, its a trapezoid!

[Macca]

Amway is shit, i got promised i would make 60-80k per year. So far im only earning $45k from it

[Tocchi]

did someone say free bikkies and coffee ... Tocchi ... lets do it !

Lol. i really do not need any encouragement aye.

[Lonewolf]

one of my old clients always tried to push me and my staff to go to their meetings.
Fine with her hassling me, but i politely told her to fuck off when she hassled my junior staff.

[jagerbomb]

been approached by a few different people to come along to meetings n such.. got VERY wary when it was mentioned that u sign up, then try n sign other people up. i dont like signing up to ANYTHING, let alone something where i have to buy certain products before i can i make money, then have to sign up other poor unsuspecting bastards to get rich off em. no thanks pal.

so the more i buy, the more i save right??? yeh havnt heard that before..

this story is probably typical:

i'm playing golf in the members comp with a few randoms one day.. we get to about the 4th hole, and this guy pulls out some weird energy drink from his bag.. barely seconds later he's telling me all about this amazing new energy drink that "heaps of people drink" and its just as good as the "commercial" ones.. my first thoughts were that i havnt seen it before, so it cant be that popular or that good.. then he says "have u thought about gettin into business?" and i knew something was up right there..

gradually figure out that the only reason he drinks the shit is cos he makes two cents off every can the cheap bastard, and the only reason he's raving about it is so that i buy some and he can make 2 cents off each of my cans too..

and to top it off he says to come to a meeting and he'll show me how it all works.. i thought to myself 'yeah i know how it works, you make money every time someone buys somethin, but someone, somewhere down the chain is gettin shafted big time.'

meanwhile hes ruining my game of golf! the insensitive prick..

[TJ]

The ironic thing is that those drinks are actually pretty good!

I was told that you can only buy them through approved sellers because selling them via retail outlets dulls their value...

ie you cant suck people into the circle of death if you dont have something to hold over them!