Is Amway A Scam?

What happened to your "serious" building in May 2013 to help pay for a family member's medical bills? Just blowing smoke then or now?????

http://67.228.115.45/showpost.php?p=9216243&postcount=43

Here's a current situation for me, just happened this past week or so. I've started and sold lots of businesses over the years. I have several in process at the moment. Our life is good and money has generally not been a problem. However, we've just encountered a situation (a family members illness) where we are going to end up in significant debt to pay for her treatment.
Some of the businesses I'm involved with may end up generating a lot of money. There's only one business I'm aware of where if I follow certain steps I know that I'm virtually guaranteed of getting the result we need to clear the debt fast.

So I'm starting an Amway business again, because from everything I've seen, both in personal experience more than a decade ago, as well as studying the industry for the past 10 years, success is highly predictable and I don't know of any other business opportunity like that. It's going to take time and an awful lot of work, but I've zero doubt about it.
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This will be interesting.
 
Joecool said:
What happened to your "serious" building in May 2013 to help pay for a family member's medical bills? Just blowing smoke then or now?

http://67.228.115.45/showpost.php?p=9216243&postcount=43
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If the turnover on my business dropped to the levels reported by icerat I'd be for the high jump. Heck, if the profits after tax dropped to the levels of icerat's reported turnover, I'd be for the high jump.

Amway seems like a lot of graft (in terms of the second definition here) for comparatively little reward.
 
The Don said:
If the turnover on my business dropped to the levels reported by icerat I'd be for the high jump. Heck, if the profits after tax dropped to the levels of icerat's reported turnover, I'd be for the high jump.
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So you managed to go from zero turnover to some higher turnover without ever passing through the figures in between? Impressive :cool:

A colleague of mine has an Amway business revenue of over $4 billion, and profits in the 8 figures. How do you compare to that?

Amway seems like a lot of graft (in terms of the second definition here) for comparatively little reward.
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An Amway business is work - but it gets faster results for less work than other startups I've been involved with. One I'm about to launch (hah! said that before!), I've put in thousands of hours work (and more money) and revenue is zero.
 
icerat said:
So you managed to go from zero turnover to some higher turnover without ever passing through the figures in between? Impressive :cool:

A colleague of mine has an Amway business revenue of over $4 billion, and profits in the 8 figures. How do you compare to that?
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Colleague or just someone you heard of - like me claiming that Bill Gates is an industry colleague.

Of course I've grown the company but then again turnover in the first month was £12k on the way to our worst year ever profit of under £60k. Obviously there have been ups and downs over the last 11 years as we've had to deal with illness, bereavement and an effective shutdown of the industry in which we operate which led to losing 60% of our business but at least that first year profit was our worst. How effective have you been at growing your Amway business over the last year ?

icerat said:
An Amway business is work - but it gets faster results for less work than other startups I've been involved with. One I'm about to launch (hah! said that before!), I've put in thousands of hours work (and more money) and revenue is zero.
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Then I guess you're in the wrong kind of business given both the comparative lack of success of Amway IBOs (and don't give me that rubbish about it being a buyers' club for the vast majority of members - why join a buyers club that gives you a worse deal than retail) and the amount of effort you seem to have to put in to get the thing launched.

And I haven't put my friends and relatives in an awkward position by attempting to enroll them in my schemes and/or selling them overpriced goods in an effort to support my business. YMMV of course.
 
The Don said:
Colleague or just someone you heard of - like me claiming that Bill Gates is an industry colleague.
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Met and talked with personally and privately several times

Of course I've grown the company but then again turnover in the first month was £12k on the way to our worst year ever profit of under £60k.
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So your first month turnover wasn't that much more than our second month of taking it seriously, and our "taking it seriously" was less than a eighty hours for the month. How much time did you put in?

Obviously there have been ups and downs over the last 11 years as we've had to deal with illness, bereavement and an effective shutdown of the industry in which we operate which led to losing 60% of our business but at least that first year profit was our worst. How effective have you been at growing your Amway business over the last year ?
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Haven't been trying to grow it over most of the last year.

Then I guess you're in the wrong kind of business given both the comparative lack of success of Amway IBOs (and don't give me that rubbish about it being a buyers' club for the vast majority of members - why join a buyers club that gives you a worse deal than retail) and the amount of effort you seem to have to put in to get the thing launched.
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You're conclusions are based on false assumptions. If the products are poor value, as you believe, then I'd agree with you.

I find the products are overall excellent value, especially at wholesale pricing. So do many other people. I have no problem selling many of them at full retail pricing.

And I haven't put my friends and relatives in an awkward position by attempting to enroll them in my schemes and/or selling them overpriced goods in an effort to support my business. YMMV of course.
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So your friends and relatives don't know you're running a business and what your business offers? I think it's extremely weird to not tell them.
 
icerat said:
So you managed to go from zero turnover to some higher turnover without ever passing through the figures in between? Impressive :cool:

A colleague of mine has an Amway business revenue of over $4 billion, and profits in the 8 figures.
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What's the name of this IBM? I suppose it's no secret if he/she has revenues in the multi billions.
 
Icerat - You posted that you and some others selling Amway goods of about £8300 in the last two months. I then asked:

eirik said:
How many are you, and what is the approximate net profit of the sales?
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marplots said:
Net profit for whom? I'd expect Amway came out ahead. Others in the mix, we have been informed, may not be driven by the profit motive. There's the "buyer's club" model, the "building a business" model, and the ever popular, "business education through doing" model. One doesn't have to make any money to have a satisfactory experience.

(Forgot the "lowering my taxes" model.)

ETA: There's another model I've seen which hasn't come up in these discussions. It's the "I enjoy the community" model. I've seen this where a group becomes more of the focus than the actual business. Things like peer interaction and support in a kind of community atmosphere. Think church or social club.
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This is a very odd response. Well, net profits for YOU off course. Amway making money doesn't necessarily negate you making money, although that's my suspicion. I thought we had established that you are doing this as a business, so I won't go in to your other comments, least of all the tax evasion model, which is the right term for writing off expenses without actually running a business.

I take it you just want to talk about your sales then, and shy away from questions of what you actually earned of these sales, which is the important thing.
 
icerat said:
So your first month turnover wasn't that much more than our second month of taking it seriously, and our "taking it seriously" was less than a eighty hours for the month. How much time did you put in?
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Really, your claim was a turnover of £8300 in sales the past two months. so unless one month of that was effectively zero I disagree with your figures.

icerat said:
So your friends and relatives don't know you're running a business and what your business offers? I think it's extremely weird to not tell them.
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Oh, they know but there's a BIG difference between knowing someone's in business and attempting to make them either sign up or to attempt to sell them overpriced merchandise.
 
The Don said:
Colleague or just someone you heard of - like me claiming that Bill Gates is an industry colleague.
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Icerat knows and sees all things Amway. In another debate, I challenged him to name someone who actually built a business and left the business to collect residual income.

He named some obscure person I had never heard of and claimed this person was an emerald and his business was in trust collecting serious money each month, and that the person was deceased. I asked how he would have such intimate details of someone's finances being that the subject is some taboo in the Amway world.

That ended the discussion.
 
eirik said:
Icerat - You posted that you and some others selling Amway goods of about £8300 in the last two months. I then asked:
....
This is a very odd response.
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That wasn't Icerat responding, it was me. I was highlighting the ambiguity in how value is presented (or has been) for Amway participants. Often, raw profits are (apparently) not the objective.
 
eirik said:
What's the name of this IBM? I suppose it's no secret if he/she has revenues in the multi billions.
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Dornan. Met and spoke with Jim several times, including in private. He passed away last year. They own numerous separate Amway businesses (bought out some who wanted to sell) and the combined downlines makeup a very large percentage of Amway's revenue. Actually, just realised another quite good friend of man years would have total turnover over a billion too. His profts are mid figure though. He's not at all well known, but many of his downline are (eg Cox, Arkhipova, Nusshold amongst others)
 
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The Don said:
Really, your claim was a turnover of £8300 in sales the past two months. so unless one month of that was effectively zero I disagree with your figures.
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Oh sorry, my error, your're right it was over two months. Either way the point remains - you started at zero too, and almost certainly put in a lot more work than I did.

Oh, they know but there's a BIG difference between knowing someone's in business and attempting to make them either sign up or to attempt to sell them overpriced merchandise.
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That's true. So tell me - since I don't do it you must be referring to yourself - why is it you try to make your friends and family invest in your business and buy your overpriced products? Do you really think that's a smart thing for you to do?

I don't.
 
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eirik said:
Icerat - You posted that you and some others selling Amway goods of about £8300 in the last two months. I then asked:
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eirik said:
How many are you, and what is the approximate net profit of the sales?
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Well, it's my wife and I, but I'm guessing that's not what you meant :)

In normal business terms, if I take just March (easier to do with one month), the total ERP of our sales was approximately US$8300. That was made up of approximately USD$2300 in retail sales (direct to the consumer, including ourselves) and three separate wholesale customers (ie downline teams) with ERP volume of ~$3800 and ~$2000 and ~$200.

Our personal profit (after expenses) was around $1000.

As for "how many" we sold to I think 5 retail clients personally (my wife has those records and she's out of town). Looking at our downline, of 18 registered activated IBOs (ie had generated volume in the previous 12 months) there were 7 IBOships that generated volume in March. Of those 7, afaik 5 were personal use orders only -ie just shoppers at wholesale price - and 2 had a mix of personal and retail clients. Only 3 IBOs (including ourselves) "showed the plan" at all, though some provided referrals.

The only one of the group doing the minimum recommended level of work to build a profitable sustainable network was ourselves.
 
marplots said:
If you can buy a downline, you don't have to start at zero.
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You can't buy a downline per se. You can buy an existing business that has a downline, but much like with franchises there are contractual obligations regarding the sales process and qualifications of the purchaser. There is for example an order of offering/refusal (sponsor and qualified upline/downline etc). Someone outside the network without demonstrated success in building and managing an Amway network cannot usually purchase an Amway business that is for sale.
 
icerat said:
A colleague of mine has an Amway business revenue of over $4 billion, and profits in the 8 figures. How do you compare to that?
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I just noticed this. That's a huge figure, more than a third of Amway's reported total for 2013. Which means, at max, there are two other people doing the same volume. But this person's downline would have to do more than they did, since upline only gets a percentage.

But I still don't understand what such a number means. If the "business revenue" mentioned is the total for the entire network, how would others in the network report their income? It doesn't seem possible that one person could do that much and have a downline also doing that much, and not account for all of Amway's revenue (and more).

What does that figure mean?
 
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