Amway TV ad

[Skeptic]

Ok, now I may have been merely skeptical of your estimate, but I really don't believe your claim to have counted them - you individually counted 70,000 seats?

At one second a seat it would have taken you nearly 20 hours.

Oh, dear.

 

[Furcifer]

Amway puts a lot of R&D into their products, so I doubt they don't do anything. You also haven't addressed the usage you get, as commented upon in the link I posted.

Well think about it, the known carcinogens are in greater amounts than the "natural extracts".

As for the foaming properties of the Tolsom product, the propellants are the same, just in different concentrations. The usage from person to person is going to vary more than the foaming properites. Plus, if you give someone a more expensive product they are going to be conservative using it.

Do you know what a Gimmick is? I hope so. Amway products are chalk full of them and you seem to be pushing them in every product discussed here.

@ the superman post- Dwight Howard can afford to use Amway products, as if he has to pay for them

 

[Skeptic]

$22 for a toothbrush, $300 for a knife set, $160 for a frying pan (but it DOES include a lid), $50 for a vitamin bottle, $90 flatware, $11 shaving cream...

... gotta pay that upline.

But they're SPECIAL toothbrushes, knives, frying pans, vitamins, flatware and shaving cream, so it's NOT FAIR to compare them to other similar products. Apparently all of Amway's products are SPECIAL in this way. And so were the king's SPECIAL new...

....now waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaait a cotton pickin' minute....

...let us see: the king's new clothes were extremely expensive, came with a silly gimmick ("only wise men can see them"), the kid who said the gimmick is a fraud was screamed at, the two tailors who sold the clothes were either extremely deluded themselves or simply con men, they were busily spreading their business into a new country, where their gimmicks were unknown before...

...my God, the king's new clothes were made by Amway!!!

 

[icerat]

If you are just as likely to experience harm as you are benefit, and you are much more likely to experience not much of anything, with the use of a particular supplement, why would the best conclusion be "I should spend lots of money on this supplement"?

If in your best estimate you are just as likely to experience harm as you are benefit, or nothing, then spending any money at all on something is likely a poor decision. My best estimate is I'm much more to experience benefit - and I've come to that conclusion through a lot more than a couple of studies, it's a large body of work. And I really have no interest in trying to convince you of it.

You did. You said that Double X was better than multi-vitamins and you justified this by referring to the way in which it was produced and monitored.

Lol! Now whose jumping to conclusions? My comments on the quality of production is somehow me saying because a study says A is better than placebo means it's also better than B? I don't think so. It's evidence you're wrong about poor quality control. It's not evidence at all of efficacy, which I'm sure you know.

Regardless of the specific amount, the excess price partly reflects excess production costs.

Actually, no higher price does not necessarily reflect higher production costs at all. It could be a reflection of scarcity and demand.

I understand the difference between the price of a product and the cost to produce a product. This is relevant to one of my areas of production - fibre arts. However, your description is not of two products that have equivalent production costs. And like I said earlier, you have simply captured a population who will pay extra for a story they find believable. That the story is false seems to be of little relevance to you, but it is arguable that this is "sensible".

Ok, so apparently YOU have research showing these products are no better than the competition. You must have such quality research in order to justify a conclusion that "the story is false"? Mustn't you?

(Indeed one must have even heard the story!)

Please share your research that has compared Nutrilite products to the competition, I'd love to see it.

Your most recent claim was this:

"The added value for a consumer absolutely comes in terms of health"

Mea cupla ... please add "in my opinion and experience" to the front.

"Yup, cheaper than the costco product of worse quality."

Here is where your interest in pedanticism again outtrumps you interest in science.

I don't seriously believe that you believe synthetic, isolated, vitamins are as effective as plant nutrients.

I don't believe you believe that.

But for the sake of being a pompous a**, that's the position you're taking here. It does you no credit.

You haven't presented any comparisons of these products to generic multivitamins. When asked for evidence that Double X is beneficial, you made reference to a study comparing it to placebo.

Sigh ... I really don't want to get in to this debate, it's too damn long. Simple fact is there's an enormous body of evidence showing a diet health in fruit and vegetables leads to positive health outcomes.

There's also a large body of evidence that's not so positive as to the benefits of supplementation.

By taking double x I'm increasing my intake of fruit and vegetables. That's what's in the damn tablets.

Are fruit and vegetables better than vitamins or not?

Then why did you state that the added value was in terms of health when you have no studies looking at differences in terms of health?

see above re fruit and vegetables.

My claim is that normal amounts of plants is better than miniscule amounts of plants, and that 3 cent vitamin pills are equivalent to 231 cent vitamin pills.

Ok, that only makes sense if you belive that the macronutrients are all that are important in plants. There's an enormous amount of research to indicate you are wrong. Please provide some studies that back up your claims that micronutrients are unimportant.

There is a difference between the progress of science and making recommendations to people in order to maximize health and the justifying of a high price by misleading people as to the value of those tentative conclusions.

Everything I tell people is backed up by research. They can make their own conclusions. It's not that hard. A quick summary -

1. Nutritional content of food is decreasing
2. People eat crap
3. Fruit & Vegetables are good for you.

It is your prerogative to make a "best guess" in a way that is more likely to be wrong than right. What I am complaining about is the marketing of your choice to others as though it is a sensible thing to do. And of the substantial negative effects of this marketing, which I have mentioned previously (e.g. waste of billions of dollars of resources, mis-education of the public as to what constitutes evidence for a relationship, encouragement of pill-popping as a solution, etc.)

Oh yeah, your such an expert on what we teach. Go get a dictionary and look up the meaning of "supplement". You'll find it doesn't mean the same as "replace".

Again though, your back to this ridiculous idea that if something is in the shape of a pill, then it must be somehow bad.

My background is in a field of public health that is sadly lacking in the US - harm minimisation. It's born of the realisation that sometimes it's better to go with a second (or third or whatever) best solution because it's far more likely to get results than implementing some ideal solution that has a terrible compliance rate.

It's the same approach I apply to this field. Yes everyone should eat better. Yes everyone should exercise more. Yes everyone should get more rest, and less stress, and less pollution. Yes our food production systems should have less toxins and concentrate on more nutrition.

yes. yes. yes. that's what we want everyone to do.

The reality is - they don't, and indeed most won't. We (and I) encourage all of this. It's the ideal solution. You still work on it, but in the meantime - harm minimisation. I'd rather people at least get some fruit and vegetables in the form of a tablet than next to none at all - which is the reality for a large section of society.

 

[icerat]

Well think about it, the known carcinogens are in greater amounts than the "natural extracts".

I haven't had a chance to look up your carcinogenic claims, but remember the poison is in the dose, so it's not that simple.

As for the foaming properties of the Tolsom product, the propellants are the same, just in different concentrations. The usage from person to person is going to vary more than the foaming properites. Plus, if you give someone a more expensive product they are going to be conservative using it.

I'd love to do a full proper comparison on it to see what's really going on, but at face value (and fully aware of the issues of conservative use etc), it really seems to me they actually compress more into the can. "concentration" has been something they've been well known for doing for years, so it may be an example

Do you know what a Gimmick is? I hope so. Amway products are chalk full of them and you seem to be pushing them in every product discussed here.

One man's "feature" is another man's "gimmick". If you don't care about it, don't buy it - which takes us back to the core of this discussion - motivation for purchase.

In terms of discussing the business model, it really doesn't matter whether it was a "gimmick" that got someone to buy something, or a "story" that may or may not be applicable to them, or whatever - at issue is whether there is legitimate market demand for the products, and it's not driven purely by motivation for profit - ie buy this stuff and get others to buy this stuff and I'll be rich! If the latter is happening then you do indeed get into pyramid scam territory.

So the question isn't whether you'd by the product, or even if a majority of people would buy the product - it's whether there's any kind of reasonable market at all for the product. Heck, look around, I've found more than a dozen $20+ shaving gels. There's cookware that costs a lot more than iCook. There's supplements that cost more than Nutrilite. etc etc etc

There's clearly a market for the stuff, and if you have a potential market, then you have a potential business. For the purposes of this discussion that's what really matters.

Whether the entire $20 shaving gel industry is BS or not is really a different topic.

 

[NewtonTrino]

Ok, finally, I am convinced.

How much does it cost me to sign up? How much is it recommend I spent on training materials per year? What does my expected cash flow look like for the first year? When can I expect to be profitable?

 

[Skeptic]

HERETIC!

Don't ask such questions. We all know that "everybody who puts in enough work succeeds" and that asking about "average" or "expected" income just means you want to be an "average" loser.

So just sign up and buy all the "leadership tools" and "great products" like your upline tells you, and shut up about losing money, you hear? Nobody likes a whiner and a critic!

 

[Skeptic]

It tells us someting about Amway that the only area where its price is even comparable (as opposed to anywhere between 3x to 10x) to competing products is in the BS-filled, overhyped-crap-galore fields of cosmetics and "food supplements".

Some recommendation that is.

Still, you learn something new every day: it shows us that when one buys lipstick or "natural capsules" from just about any of the "big name" companies in that field, one is doing the equivelant of buying those $160 frying pans, $60 knives, or $20 toothbrushes.

 

[NewtonTrino]

I still think arguing about the products ignores the larger issue of profitability. I mean even if the products are crap it doesn't mean you can't make money with them somehow. Bottom line, how much work for how much money?

 

[icerat]

Based on your earlier comments I don't believe either of you are legitimately interested in any answer, so I'm not going to waste my time composing one.

 

[NewtonTrino]

I would love some answers from someone who is actively working and trying to build one of these businesses.

 

[icerat]

Here's a good paper that covers many of the issues we've been discussing -

ETHICAL ISSUES IN MULTILEVEL MARKETING: IS IT A LEGITIMATE BUSINESS OR JUST ANOTHER PYRAMID SCHEME?

 

[NobbyNobbs]

Based on your earlier comments I don't believe either of you are legitimately interested in any answer, so I'm not going to waste my time composing one.

I find it curious that you will compose long posts about the value and content of food supplements and other questions about the product side, but when asked about work effort/expenses/income, suddenly it's not worth the time to answer (especially since those are the topics most people get excited about. It certainly isn't the soap.).

 

[Bob Klase]

Based on your earlier comments I don't believe either of you are legitimately interested in any answer, so I'm not going to waste my time composing one.

I doubt that your many posts in this thread are directed only at the those two people. I suspect they're aimed at many people who are reading but not replying or posting.

Either you assume that none of those others could possibly be interested, or you have reasons other than what you claim for avoiding the question. I'm betting on option #2.

 

[fls]

I expect to be misled by advertising. And there should be an element of buyer-beware. If my 11-year-old daughter is able to figure out that the upside-down tomato plant that you see in commercials right now can't have grown that way, surely the occasional adult can figure this out as well.

So if someone wants to tell me that a particular detergent or shaving cream is super-duper extra special, it's up to me to decide how much I'm willing to risk to find out. Sure, sometimes it's a dud, but other times, it's worth every penny. But the thing is, I can figure out on my own if the special slicer-dicer hawked by Billy Mays really does make my vegetable prep faster and easier.

It's different when it comes to claims about health, though. How can I look for something that will take years to show up and for which there is no control? And when we are talking about harm we are not just talking about a dirty floor or wasting your money. We are talking about disability or death. We treat health claims differently for a reason.

If in your best estimate you are just as likely to experience harm as you are benefit, or nothing, then spending any money at all on something is likely a poor decision. My best estimate is I'm much more to experience benefit - and I've come to that conclusion through a lot more than a couple of studies, it's a large body of work. And I really have no interest in trying to convince you of it.

I don't really care what you personally decide. The point is that if you wish to market a product on the basis of health claims, then you need to know that what you are saying is true. This is different from simply managing to persuade the credulous or naive.

There is a huge drop-off from pre-clinical studies (in vitro and animal), to Phase I and Phase II studies (designed to look for obvious harm and maybe some effect in humans) to Phase III studies (designed to look for efficacy in humans), to Phase IV studies (designed to look for effectiveness). This means that only a small percentage of successful Phase I and II studies (less than 10%) manage to eventually demonstrate effectiveness. Which means that if you use the results from successful Phase I and II studies to conclude that a particular product is effective, you will be wrong more than 90% of the time. And this doesn't even take into consideration that many of your claims aren't even based on clinical trials, but on pre-clinical information, and it doesn't take into consideration the issue of reporting unsuccessful studies as successful, which probably drops the possibility that you are correct to something approaching 1%. If you limit your claims only to those where there's a good chance you are right instead of wrong, then all you are saying is that these products serve as vitamin pills.

Lol! Now whose jumping to conclusions? My comments on the quality of production is somehow me saying because a study says A is better than placebo means it's also better than B? I don't think so. It's evidence you're wrong about poor quality control. It's not evidence at all of efficacy, which I'm sure you know.

I was referring to your justification of the price. You talked about the production of the plants that went into the product and the kind of monitoring that took place as to the end results.

Actually, no higher price does not necessarily reflect higher production costs at all. It could be a reflection of scarcity and demand.

I didn't say that it necessarily reflects higher production costs. I said that in this case it costs more to produce these vitamin pills (if one believes the story about how they are produced) than alternative methods.

Ok, so apparently YOU have research showing these products are no better than the competition. You must have such quality research in order to justify a conclusion that "the story is false"? Mustn't you?

(Indeed one must have even heard the story!)

Please share your research that has compared Nutrilite products to the competition, I'd love to see it.

That only works if it is reasonable to assume an association is true unless proven false. Unfortunately, false-relationships grossly out number true-relationships such that the chance that you just happened to pick the one true relationship out of the thousands of false ones is too minuscule to consider. It would help if you read and understood the paper I referenced earlier.

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

Here is where your interest in pedanticism again outtrumps you interest in science.

I don't seriously believe that you believe synthetic, isolated, vitamins are as effective as plant nutrients.

I believe that your body treats ascorbic acid as ascorbic acid regardless of which story you attach to the molecule.

Sigh ... I really don't want to get in to this debate, it's too damn long. Simple fact is there's an enormous body of evidence showing a diet health in fruit and vegetables leads to positive health outcomes.

There's also a large body of evidence that's not so positive as to the benefits of supplementation.

By taking double x I'm increasing my intake of fruit and vegetables. That's what's in the damn tablets.

Are fruit and vegetables better than vitamins or not?

see above re fruit and vegetables.

Ok, that only makes sense if you belive that the macronutrients are all that are important in plants. There's an enormous amount of research to indicate you are wrong. Please provide some studies that back up your claims that micronutrients are unimportant.

Everything I tell people is backed up by research. They can make their own conclusions. It's not that hard. A quick summary -

1. Nutritional content of food is decreasing
2. People eat crap
3. Fruit & Vegetables are good for you.

Again though, your back to this ridiculous idea that if something is in the shape of a pill, then it must be somehow bad.

My background is in a field of public health that is sadly lacking in the US - harm minimisation. It's born of the realisation that sometimes it's better to go with a second (or third or whatever) best solution because it's far more likely to get results than implementing some ideal solution that has a terrible compliance rate.

It's the same approach I apply to this field. Yes everyone should eat better. Yes everyone should exercise more. Yes everyone should get more rest, and less stress, and less pollution. Yes our food production systems should have less toxins and concentrate on more nutrition.

yes. yes. yes. that's what we want everyone to do.

The reality is - they don't, and indeed most won't. We (and I) encourage all of this. It's the ideal solution. You still work on it, but in the meantime - harm minimisation. I'd rather people at least get some fruit and vegetables in the form of a tablet than next to none at all - which is the reality for a large section of society.

Here are the problems. That the production of your pills involves some plants does not mean that taking the pill is like taking fruits and vegetables. Many of the specific nutritional issues that have been identified in North America are not solved by increasing the intake of fruits and vegetables (for example, vitamin D deficiencies in certain populations). The research which supports the usefulness of Double X relates to the usefulness of acting as a source of specific vitamins and minerals, not as a vegetable or plant source. For 231 cents (less, actually) I can buy a bag of pre-washed, pre-cut carrots and broccoli in a microwaveable bag and 3-1/2 minutes later provide my entire family with the known nutritional benefits of a serving of tasty vegetables. If (for some bizarre reason) I decide to forego that serving of vegetables in favour of using that money to buy a pill, I will find it necessary to spend a good amount of time looking for research or information on the plethora of pills available to discover which ones are demonstrably equivalent to the taking of fruits of vegetables. And I will be unsuccessful.

If someone is too lazy or poor to wash an apple or throw a bag in the microwave, what makes you think they aren't too lazy or poor to track down that cherry-in-a-pill?

Oh yeah, your such an expert on what we teach. Go get a dictionary and look up the meaning of "supplement". You'll find it doesn't mean the same as "replace".

Exactly. So why is this term being used when you are clearly talking about using it to act as a substitute for far more sensible behaviours?

Linda

 

[icerat]

I doubt that your many posts in this thread are directed only at the those two people. I suspect they're aimed at many people who are reading but not replying or posting.

Either you assume that none of those others could possibly be interested, or you have reasons other than what you claim for avoiding the question. I'm betting on option #2.

Why would I avoid the question? The answer is one that's gone through every time anyone explains the business to an interested party.

Given nobody here, including yourself, has said "well I'd like to know", there's no interested parties here.

I'm simply dealing with the myths that are getting posted, and yes, I have the lurkers in mind.

 

[NobbyNobbs]

Given nobody here, including yourself, has said "well I'd like to know", there's no interested parties here.

You must have overlooked it. Here ya go.

I would love some answers from someone who is actively working and trying to build one of these businesses.

Ok, finally, I am convinced.

How much does it cost me to sign up? How much is it recommend I spent on training materials per year? What does my expected cash flow look like for the first year? When can I expect to be profitable?

 

[Pushkin]

Why would I avoid the question? The answer is one that's gone through every time anyone explains the business to an interested party.

Given nobody here, including yourself, has said "well I'd like to know", there's no interested parties here.

I'm simply dealing with the myths that are getting posted, and yes, I have the lurkers in mind.

well I'd like to know, I'm running my own business that is suffering in the recession and whilst i have my talents I'm definitely up for something that will bring in more money. I have a good group of contacts with my present business.....

so i'd like to know.

 

[Bob Klase]

I'm simply dealing with the myths that are getting posted, and yes, I have the lurkers in mind.

Many people have different answers to those questions. Wrong answers could be some of the myths you say you're answering. Why not deal with them?

 

[NewtonTrino]

He's not answering the questions because the answer is very unflattering. Simply put if you join N21 you will be asked to spend a lot of money on tools, tickets to functions, travel etc. Nobody sponsoring you will ever show you a P/L statement for their business or better yet a tax return. That's because the money is all in the tools and that would give up the golden goose.