Comment Number: 522418-09516
Received: 7/14/2006 5:05:26 PM
Organization:
Commenter: Ashley Wilkes
State: MN
Subject: Business Opportunity Rule
Title: Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
CFR Citation: 16 CFR Part 437
No Attachments

Comments:

I was an Amway distributor from 1990 to 1994. My wife was recruited into Amway through a friend who told her to keep her involvement a secret from me in fear that I might be a bad influence. I eventuallly found out, however, because my wife was always walking around the house listening to audio tapes with earphone on and not helping with domestics. When I started asking questions, the person who recruited her advised her to mislead me with respect to what she was involved in. After much badgering and pressure I was coerced into going to an informational meeting at the sponsor of my wife's sponsor. I was showed how I could make a residual income of at least $2000 month after 2 years of part time effort and I wouldn't have to sell a thing. All I would have to do is buy from this company what I was already buying for my family from stores and find another 75 people to do the same. We would get a percentage of the sales of everone we sponsored and those we sponsored only had to find their own 75 people and they and us would become financially independent with a perpetual residual income . We were told that the only time we might have to actually sell anything would be if we couldn't afford to go to expensive motivational meetings around the country - then we could sell vacuum cleaners and water treatment systems until we had enough funds for these motivational expenses which also included weekly motivational tapes, video, books, and other tools that we were told were necessary if we wanted to succeed in this business. Amway wasn't mentioned until the end of the meeting. These "successfull" distrubutors use videos and Profiles of Success books to show off their luxurious homes, cars, boats,planes, clothes, jewelry, etcbut had attained their wealth not from retailing Amway products but from selling non-Amwayproduced or endorsed motivational tools to their dowline organizations.When i found about this I was quite upset and disgusted. I lost $15,000 in the 4 years I followed my upline's advice to buy motivational tools and follow their motivational system all the while being told that I would become wealthy in 2 to 5 years or perhaps a bit longer depending on how committed I became to their "system". I finally quit after I looked at the numbers and saw how much I was in the red because of motivational expenses and not having been taught to retail any Amway products. Of course, Amway, is now running on the internet as Quixtar but it has the same motivational organizations recruiting distributors and telling them the same lies with respect to "just follow our system and you will succeed in this business". I remember my wife's sponsor showing her bonus checkto potential recruits at an informational meeting at her home. The check was for $7,000 and she was representing the sum as if it was her PROFIT from sales for the month when, actually, it was her bonus check from which we was going to have to pay her downline distributors their bonus checks. I did the math after I investigated her payout expenses to her downline and subtracted her motivation expenses and found that she had NO NET monthly income-she was actually losing money and trying to motivate her downline to buy motivational materials, buy products from their own business(personal use)and recruit as many others as they could to do the same. When I find out the truth,I quit.When I quit my wife then informed me she wanted a divorce so that she could go find some man who would commit himself to "bulding her dream". In my view, the deceptions, tricks and lies pervasive in these Amway/Quixtar motivational organizations are criminal and are tacitly approved by Alticor (the parent company of Amway and Quixtar) because these predatory practices have brought billions in profits to that company. This company actually has gone to great lengths to protect their "high level" distributors because of the huge profits generated from personal use rather than retailing of their products.