Scamway In Da House

[pkspeaker]

The other day I arrived home to a shocking find, like finding a mangled dead body in the living room with "You will all die and goto hel_l!" written in blood on the walls; I walked into the bathroom and noticed an off brand tube of toothpaste, upon closer inspection I could only shiver before dropping the tube like a hot potato, *gasp* "This is an Amway product! Someone paid too high a price for something of average quality, and it's in my house!" I stumbled out of the bathroom in a daze and immediately went into denial, "No, this can't be happening, it was just a wide-awake nightmare, an illusion, it will pass soon." But walking into the living room it could no longer be denied, the evidence was everywhere; various useless Amway products littered the place; Amway Herbal Capsules, 'Multi-Purpose' Cleaner. A creditcard bill for 2700B; Amway Car-Wash Solution, "Carwash Solution! <deleted>, you put some dishwash soap in a bucket of water, there you have Car-wash solution!" I yelled out-load. I could hear the screeching horror music in the background as I noticed the final peice of evidence, it was the Amway Member Kit Catalog! "Oh-my God, it's too late, we're 'members'!" Flipping thru the pages there was a seemingly endless list of products that could more easily be purchased at the store for cheaper. I put the book down and pulled out a bottle of Brandy, and waited for my Thai Girlfriend to come home from work.

She arrived several hours later to find me sitting in the corner alone, stone-faced in the dark. After she turned on the lights I confronted her with the evidence and sat her down for a talking to. I explained to her how Amway targets rural people in the US, uses a pyramid scheme to take what little money they have and sends their children to born-again christian summer camps where they are taught that Jesus died for crappy over priced useless products. And how Amway is a major contributor to has caused the decline of The White Race. Many of these lost souls wind up broke, perched up on a hill in the Ozarks, staring up into the sky waiting for the Messiah to come and deliver them from this garage full of soap that they can't sell. But to no avail, the language barrier was just too big to overcome. I decided to try a new track and simply explained to her that we could have just bought this stuff at the store for cheaper, she said "yes, but Amway good." I said "Well even if it is 'good', whats the point in getting soap from a catalog?" She said, because it's good. I went out to the ballcony and screamed at the top of my voice, "IT'S NOT GOOD, IT'S A SCAM, AMWAY PRODUCTS ARE MADE OUT OF PEOPLE, IT'S PEOPLE!!"

But still the Amway catalog and products remain, my Thai Girlfriend having already signed on the dotted line. So I guess my question is, 1. Once you become an Amway Member is there anyway to undue this curse, perhaps something with an exorcist or Buddhist Monk coming into the house and cleansing it of Amway Spirits? or are we doomed to never having any money and too much soap for the rest of our lives? 2. Once someone is brainwashed by Amway agents, is there a re-education camp somewhere, like that is run by former mao-ist rebels, where my girlfriend could be shown a way to redemption? I may never find the answer to our new 'situation' maybe we will just learn to live with this disease, or maybe we will just wind up like the other zombies who have been entangled in the web of Amway. one can only hope at this point.

[kevkev1888]

LOL Very funny post.

I feel your pain!

[jdinasia]

Delusional, but REALLY funny

[lonewolf99]

BEEN THERE DONE THAT GOT THE FRICKING 'T' SHIRT.......................Good news...you can be cured...BUT maybe not the GF

my sincere condolences......it took me years to get rid of the products. I burned the catalogues......every one on the planet who has half a brain cell left in their head should read your posting to stop this madness going on.....I lost friends / golf partners / even career prospects because I became the nut case that was an AMWAY rep......I never made a bleeding penny from it

all this happened to me in the 80's in the U.K. ...What a sad <deleted> I was.....

I had severe withdrawall symptoms when I saw the GIANT BILLBOARD advertising AMWAY as you come out of BKK airport a few months back....

[fstarbkk]

Excellent Post. I once had to fire a formerly very good employee because, even after several warnings, he couldn't stop spending half his working hours trying to solicit colleagues and even some of our customers. It was pretty creepy and affected the work environment to the point where this guy was a serious liability. I hope he got cured before this scam permanently ruined his life.

I see that Amway operates on a major scale here in Thailand and reckon that they probably face a lot less scrutiny from the government regarding their business practices, than they do in the West. I shudder to think how much harm their scheme could do to naive people, with no constraints.

[ozzieovaseas]

Have you ever thought of electrocution/shock therapy?...it might be worth a go

If you are handy enough you could always rewire an amway powerboard (do they have them) and ask the teerak to plug the telly in

[pkspeaker]

Glad to see it's well received:lol:, if you can't deal with these types of frustrations with humor then how can you deal..I personally know someone in the US that had been sent to an Amway summer camp with a christian theme as a child, that was no joke; he used to tell me how the guy that signed them up would always come to their house and try to push more product on them with phrases like "I'm going 'double-diamond' next year and I wanna take you with me!" the whole thing left emotional scars not to mention the respect he lost for his step-dad.

[laxman1960]

Hilarious post!

Amway is huge in Thailand, they do the business a lot more ethically over here than in the US where all the top Amway people make their money selling books, tapes, cd's and seminars not the actual Amway products. Main problem I have with Amway is that their compensation plan is horrible, to work any legitimate MLM opportunity requires you to find prospects, meet them or present to them somehow, then get them to decide to enroll, then work with them to help them get started in the business. Amway max payout is like 21%, so if someone buys an enrollment pack for 5,000 THB you only get little over 1,000 THB in commission. Many other companies will pay 40% fast start bonuses, so for the same work you would earn double the commission.

Amway also has a stairstep breakaway pay plan, so if you enroll someone who is great, eventually you stop get paid anything substantial on that business. Other companies you will make a lot more money than with Amway.

So, after studying many compensation plans, designing some, Amway is clearly not a good one!

Dan

[Murgatroyd]

I've recently had a "Family friend" of My wife's round at the house to recruit her into Amway. On a pervious visit he had talked about it, but I had said "Mai Aw"... However it seems that he had got my wife to sign something whilst I was out of the room. It took me 5 minutes research on the net to decide that it's basically just a pyramid selling scam. They had even had an Amway plastic card made for my wife... like a credit card... I put my foot down, and told them that we wanted nothing to do with it... I cut up the card in front of them and said "Mai Ao" again.

My wife wasn't best pleased, but she had believed their first rung sales pitch that it would only involve selling to friends and family... later they would have told her about the "Training seminar" for which I would have had to pay, along with the sales kit and the promotional and motivational sales material... by the time six months had passed, my wife's friends and family would all be trying to recruit other Amway agents, as that's the only way to make any real money, and we would have a mountain of stock sitting around the house, all of which I would have had to pay for. The house is full enough, without turning it into Dell Boy's flat, and my wife see's her friends seldom enough, without driving them further away by hitting them with sales pitches every time they meet. As the OP says, all their goods are overpriced and no better than similar items available in any supermarket.

The "Sales team" withdrew rapidly in the face of my clear opposition to my Wife becoming involved with the Amway operation, leaving me alone with my wife who was furious and felt that I had caused her to lose face. About 24 hours of the silent treatment followed.

I went back onto the internet, and printed our diagrams of the way Amway worked, and statements from several people who had become involved to their considerable cost. Then I sat my wife down and explained with the aid of visual aids exactly what the problems were with the Amway organisation... How they had been banned in several countries, how Pyramid sales never benefited anyone except from those at the top of the pyramid. I asked her why, if Amway was such a good deal, that her family friends hadn't themselves become rich. Why were they trying to recruit her if they could have made money merely by selling these products directly to her friends and family? I explained that the only way anyone could make money out of Amway was by recruiting other members, (Their Downline), and not by selling the products which were overpriced crap. I told her about the number of people who had lost all their friends because they were fed up with every social contact becoming a sales pitch.

She responded by saying that Amway couldn't be a fraud because it had a big building, and the head of Amway Thailand was a rich man... Yes, I said, a rich man who had become rich by taking a percentage of every penny that the company made. I asked her to ask around her friends, and if she could introduce me to even one person who had made money out of Amway I'd reconsider. She did check, and finally admitted that no one she knew who had become involved had become rich.

In a country where social status mobility is practically impossible, their sales pitch is iniquitive. The carrot that they hold out is extremely tempting to people for whom there isn't and never will be any real chance of increasing their status.

My wife eventually accepted that I had done the right thing, but remained somewhat angry because I had done it in a confrontational manner. It took me several weeks before We were really talking again.

The only way to deal with the situation is to write off every penny that your girlfriend has already payed out on the products, and to burn the lot, along with her laminated card... but first check to see if she has signed any contracts agreeing to buy more rubbish. To what extent such a contract might be enforcible here in Thailand I'm not sure. I managed to stop my wife in time, before they had got her to sign any purchase agreements. If My wife was a natural sales person, with a vast number of rich friends, then maybe it might have been an option, but she is a very shy person. She wouldn't have stood a chance of making any money out of Scamway.

[kokesaat]

If my wife pulled a stunt like that, I'd insist on having a supermarket clone of each Amway product she bought. I'd refuse to use anything but the clone. Each time I brushed my teeth with Colgate, I'd comment about how clean my mouth felt and how white my teeth looked. And each time I used the supermarket products, I'd drop a 10 baht coin into a big glass jar (so it ka-chinks really loudly). I might even go so far as to comment about how my wife's teeth weren't looking so white......or how the kitchen doesn't seem as clean as it was before (she started using Amway). And of course, I'd ka-chink those coins until I had a healthy amount, then while my wife was watching soaps, I'd empty the jar on the coffee table and count out all the money I saved by using high quality, store-bought products. And when Lotus has fabric softener on sale for 13 baht a bag, I'd buy 15 bags and put them next to her one container of Signature Fabric Softener that she paid more than 200 baht for. I'd tell her to be sure not to use that high-priced stuff for my clothes as it made me itch. Then I'd ka-chink some more.

I wouldn't bad mouth my wife's purchases, but I'd pour praise on the quality of the products that I buy, I'd show off the nice things I bought with my ka-ching money, and would feel confident that my wife would soon-enough see the light. And if she didn't.....we'll that's where the lawyer comes into play.

[phil2]

Thank God I've been delivered. My ex was hooked, and my four year old used to talk of Amway everyday.

[Valdezugar]

If my wife pulled a stunt like that, I'd insist on having a supermarket clone of each Amway product she bought. I'd refuse to use anything but the clone. Each time I brushed my teeth with Colgate, I'd comment about how clean my mouth felt and how white my teeth looked. And each time I used the supermarket products, I'd drop a 10 baht coin into a big glass jar (so it ka-chinks really loudly). I might even go so far as to comment about how my wife's teeth weren't looking so white......or how the kitchen doesn't seem as clean as it was before (she started using Amway). And of course, I'd ka-chink those coins until I had a healthy amount, then while my wife was watching soaps, I'd empty the jar on the coffee table and count out all the money I saved by using high quality, store-bought products. And when Lotus has fabric softener on sale for 13 baht a bag, I'd buy 15 bags and put them next to her one container of Signature Fabric Softener that she paid more than 200 baht for. I'd tell her to be sure not to use that high-priced stuff for my clothes as it made me itch. Then I'd ka-chink some more.

I wouldn't bad mouth my wife's purchases, but I'd pour praise on the quality of the products that I buy, I'd show off the nice things I bought with my ka-ching money, and would feel confident that my wife would soon-enough see the light. And if she didn't.....we'll that's where the lawyer comes into play.

A quite enjoyable thread hahahah; woke my wife laughing so loud!

Amway, Herbalife, Kubus . . . all the same.

[nong38]

Yes I too have been to the temple with GF, tried to sellus stuff, GF bought some war paint and immediatly realized when she got home expensive too much!!!!!!!!!!!! It was worth the purchase as she is now cured of the curse. I have been to a seminar with friends and its easy to see how the gullible go for it. I was given a full demo of a water treament machine, after 20 minutes I said how much, too expensive thank you and I dont need anyway, but I have an ace up my sleeve. Iam from UK where Am way is hardly known they havea anice shop near Holborn and Russell Square tubes ( middle of the shops hahhaa they were sold a pup there) Why would anyone go shopping there? My Ace? I have a John Lewis discount card, worked there for 30 years, so I can get a better product a lot cheaper and with better service to boot and all the profit goes to the partners, now why would I want to buy from Am way?

[pkspeaker]

Thats just it Nong, most people realize it's a poor buy so they don't buy from the Amway Sales Rep., so instead the Amway agents try to constantly enlist new Sales Reps under them and unload on them a stock of product for them to sell, each time they sign on a sales rep they are entitled to a cut in the commission, the more people under you the more commission, that's how the pyramid scheme works; problem is this type of scheme basically guarantees that the products they sell (to the end customer) are going to be a bad buy compared to if she were to simply buy them from the store; so Amway's main agenda is to constantly enlist more agents, not to sell to the end customer.. that leaves the people at the top rich and the vast number of people who are at the bottom screaming "I been Had!"

[nong38]

A number of investigations have been made against this outfit, 2007 in the UK centreing whether or not it is a pyramid selling platform, when I was introduced to it last year that is what thought it looked like. I think they, the 2 guys who started it, habe been very clever in leaving just enough of a shadow doubt and they have been getting away with it. Its not a classic pyramid sales system but its very adjacent to it, so far they have got away with it everywhere it been held to account, its big business, how unusual.