I understand your passion and agree generally with your assessment of Quixtar/Amway. The tool pyramid scandal, although lucrative for the top kingpin sellers is small potatoes to the “product pyramid” run by the AmQuix Dons. Incredibly overpriced products reap incredible profits for the company. Considering all total revenues from Amway’s worldwide business, the product profits make the tool kingpins profits look like chicken scratch.

The Devos and Van Andel crime family dons operate this more lucrative “hidden product pyramid”. They get the benefit of people believing that their side of the business is legit, while to tool scandal aspect is questionable. These crooks operate the public relations aspect of the business while the tool kingpins manage the “internal” cult-like motivational propaganda aspect.

Amway/Alticor has attempted to “manage” this tool scandal by announcing a name change back to Amway last year. They have also made a public showing of shaking a few rats out of the IBOAI nest, and are placing a renewed (mostly sham) emphasis on requiring distributors to make retail sales. The lack of retail sales is the Achiles heel of the Biz.

Quixtar has not enforced its own retail sales rules and I truly doubt that recent Alticor public relation strategies are anything more than a sham effort to avoid regulatory scrutiny. If their teat has gone into the wringer, they want to reverse the rollers and get it back out.

The Devos and Van Andel families have paid for the best protection from regulatory scrutiny their money can buy. They have forced disgruntled distributors into a silence of the lambs arbitration clause that U.S. Courts are now finding “unconscionable”. The little lambs hopefully will get their day in court.

Tracy is correct when she comments that a distributor that consumes their own product is not a business. This does describe a badly confused consumer.

IBO, do you know who is really fleecing you? It is you, for believing all the cult like rhetoric from the tool kingpins and allowing the Alticor Public Relations Department to foster the belief in you that they are “Good Fellas” having your best interests at heart. Wake up!

The Amway/Quixtar legal department has torn many a “Diamond-Jim” distributor to shreds. It is the supposedly successful distributors that suffer at the hands of this “Lawyers Gone Wild” mentality that exists there in Ada, Michigan. Bah Bah Black Sheep: Have you any wool? The kingpins take a little off the hind section while the company Dons remove the lions share for the surface of your hide. IBO, Think about this the next time you self consume your 150 pv or 300 pv from month to month? The best thing that could happen for you is that, through a “miracle” of regulatory scrutiny or legal jurisprudence, this “double pyramid” scam business will be rolled up and save you for other more lucrative pursuits instead of spinning your wheels and enriching folk that do not deserve your time of day, let alone thousands of dollars of your hard earned “JOB” cash!

Honestly, the real profit from the higher-ups comes from selling tapes and CDs, not from products. And that’s why they promoted the need for listening to QUIXTAR tapes and QUIXTAR-approved books so strongly. They even went so far as to say that unless you were investing thousands of dollars each month on these ‘tools’ to distribute, you wouldn’t have a successful business.

All the tools do is brainwash people (repeat a big lie many times–just like the Nazis) and line the pockets of the people who are high enough to record/distribute them. The truth is that people like Bill Britt, Larry Winters, and other high level business owners distribute their own tools in a manner they don’t have to continue kicking money up to other people so they can get richer themselves. And they go on stage, talking to thousands upon thousands of new people every year, teaching that unless they buy the tools, they’ll never succeed.

They should be ashamed of themselves and there will be judgment against them when the good Lord calls us all home. I, for one, couldn’t stomach being part of that system once I saw through all the BS they spout and looked at the system exactly as it was–an pyramid scheme that preys on the hopes and dreams of young people. Did you know that the average age of a new Quixtar member is below 24 and continually getting younger? They’re urging people to recruit on the college campuses in order to get them before they grow wise, just like the abusive credit card practices that snare people in debt for their lives.

Don’t listen to the hype about making money in MLM. It’s not true what they say. They’ve had over 45 years to perfect their sales pitch and new recruits have a much shorter time to see through it. Sorry for all the hurt I did to people during my time in Quixtar. I just hope people will forgive me because I only did what the people I trusted told me to do. I refuse to have anything to do with MLM again.

For all those brain washed people still involved in this scandal ridden business, I have a few questions: How are you (in good conscience) going recruit new prospects(marks) into this business by saying “that this isn’t Amway” knowing full well that it is and soon will be Amway? Are you going to tell them that the future legality of their business is being challenged as a pyramid scheme in the federal courts? Are you going to tell them that changes to the business model by Alticor may actually require them to sell Amway products to real world customers, and will you still encourage them to be the real consumer of their own wares?

Independent Business Owners have been their own best customers and, therefore, is it any surprise that over 99% of these sham businesses loose money every year. As a tax write off, the IRS has determined that many of these businesses are run in such a way that they will never show a profit and therefore are being denied the traditional business expense write offs allowed legit business.

The lost opportunity people in the MLM business incur is incredible. Consider the social stress on family, friends and community these “dream merchants” cause! It shouldn’t be difficult to feel, the sooner these pyramid schemes collapse, the better! Amway, Quixtar, Amway: Three Card Monte–Ponzi!!!

Rules (1) and (2) are the ones that flag Amway/Quixtar as a product-based pyramid scheme in virtually all cases.

Regarding the supposed quality and/or low cost of Amway products, one should consider this: Amway’s been around since 1959 – that’s more than 45 years, or roughly two generations. Moreover, the estimated current size of Amway’s active sales force is about 2,000,000. If Amway/Quixtar products are really so great, and they’ve been around so long and there’s so many people selling, why have not these products largely displaced all their competitors in the marketplace?

The absence of extensive advertising and marketing campaigns does not adequately explain the lack of significant commercial success of these products. Surely the Amway/Quixtar kingpins are smart enough to have altered their business strategy accordingly if they thought that extensive advertising and marketing campaigns really would increase turnover and profit. And altruists they’re clearly not.

The tools are illegal – they have no customers. Only the participants in the scheme buy the tools and the lest IBO cannot sell the tools to anyone.

What is a real oxymoron to me is how come a company with such a bad reputation have such good products? It baffles me!!

Lindy

Newsflash – Buying stuff for yourself from Amway isn’t a BUSINESS.

I’d suggest perhaps because they may have got their information from Robert FitzPatrick, who has his own definition of “illegal pyramid” which is completely different to that used by the courts and FTC. Quite simply, in a pyramid you need to paid for recruiting. That doesn’t happen in Quixtar.

One of the most amazing lines in the suit is where the plaintiffs say “Few Quixtar products are sold to consumers; instead, most are purchased by Quixtar distributors for their own use.” Uhuh. I’d be interesting in hearing how “use” is not “consume”!
Right since the original FTC v Amway case in the 70s the courts have been away that a large percentage of volume is from “distributors”, and they’ve had little concern with that. Why should they? It makes perfect sense if you like the products to register for wholesale pricing. The issue is whether there are legitimate products with legitimate consumers. There are.