What's new

$cientology reminded me of Amway

xseaorguk

Patron Meritorious
While in the cult I remember looking at Amway products and once even went to one of their big meetings where people received awards etc.
I found it somehow similar to the cult of $cientology, as I was also surrounded by smiling people telling me how wonderful it all was.
I realize now what the similarites are.
They are both pyramid schemes concentrating on getting people to become salesmen (in Scn its staff), then you are convinced how great the products are and how its gonna change your life, and that there are NO other better products in the whole wide world etc. (its like that with the books in Scn.)
At the meetings in Amway people are 'lovebombed' with success stories and how people are changing their lives for the better.
They hold speeches at theh front of the event.(as in Scn)
I found the events at Amway a wonderful hype, but I experienced the same effect at Scn. events.
People clapping and a standing ovation at the end too.
But when I got home from the Amway event I realized it still meant I had to contact friends and family to convince them how brilliant this certain type of washing powder or bathroom cleaner was, and of course better than anything else.
That it was about 10 times as expensive was another matter.
For sure it was going to change your life.
So, what do you do?
You end up buying tons of different products from your advisor above you on the ladder in Amway, then you have a small room in your house/Apptmnt full of such 'wonderful' products.
Its seems funny that most people end up with the all of products they started out with even years later.
So, they didnt get far, maybe sold a few items to friends and relatives, who couldnt hear the word Amway any more after several months.

This for me is where it is similar to Scn.
You are told in the beginning people are given tools in the form of courses for bettering their lives, their work conditions etc.
OK, so you start out on a few inexpensive courses.
Learn some practical things about life.
The usual step after that is that you will be asked about maybe joining staff, either under the pretense of then getting your 'Studying' FREE, and maybe of also going up the bridge FREE.......
Most people I know who had anything to do with Scn. have had this experience.
You are also given a guilty conscience for NOT being on staff or in the Sea Org, as it is of course in their eyes the most wonderful thing to do with your life, and how could you have wins and NOT want to join staff??

But this is how the pyramid scheme works.
In Amway you are trying to get people to sell products too, so you can sponsor them and get more points yourself.
You're not concentrating so much on actually selling the stuff, as its more profitable to get new people in.
Thats how $cientology does it too.
While I got conned into joinnig the Sea Org years ago and elderly lady of about 62-65 yrs, who had successfully worked as an FSM and sold more books than anybody before in the UK was also conned in to joining the Sea Org. She was very hard of hearing and was generally pretty hard work, I know as she was on the EPF with me at the time.
Her life is the sea Org was mundane and harsh, I could see she wasn't happy, and the Sea Org doesnt really cater for old people anyway.
I remember thinking of what b#stards these guys were for getting her to give up her life and join the Sea Org, where she was probably earning quite well selling the books and probably spreading the word for Scn.
What more could the 'church' want?
Here is where you see that they just don't look any further than the end of their noses, and how incompassionate they are about people's lives.
I saw people sell their homes to join the Sea Org.
They were told they were going to be class 12 auditors and Flag trained.(ha..ha)
I remember feeling the disgust when they naiively told me of their plans in the Sea Org. Of course these plans were quickly forgotten once in, as there were more 'imporatant' things to be done.

It later occurred to me, after having left the Sea Org, that I actaully didn't know any $cientologists who were applying this great 'tech' and having such wonderful lives from doing so.
I only knew ex-staff members and people with debts.
The only OT I knew was a woman called Erika B., who I very much admired at the time. In fact she was partly responsible for me joining the Sea Org.
She was a great jewish business woman and seemed to fit all my ideas of being OT.
I always did wonder though why these wonderful OT's werent helping to 'clear the planet' themselves by being on staff.

I think I've gone off my original idea to explain why I think that Amway and Scientology are pyramid schemes, but I may have given you an idea.
Maybe somebody else can contribute with their experiences.
 

gomorrhan

Gold Meritorious Patron
Yep, definitely similar in the pyramid scheme manner of doing business (FSMs push to Missions push to Orgs push to AOs push to FLAG push to the Ship, and then push back out to OT Committees, themselves usually FSMs).

However, Amway isn't selling immortality, and even their most expensive product probably doesn't compare with the cost of the OT Levels. And as far as I know, Amway doesn't break up families when it seems like someone in the family doesn't want to sell Amway any more (or never did). Nor does Amway try to subvert the justice system and target their critics.

I trust Amway much more than the Church of Scientology.
 

chipgallo

Patron Meritorious
The internet helped expose some of Amway's (now Quixtar in N. America) practices as it did with Scientology. Amway tried to stop some of the web sites from talking about their "secrets" too, and if you search on their renamed operation there are critical web sites on it also.

No wonder Scientology hates the internets ...
 

Iknowtoomuch

Gold Meritorious Patron
If so much money didn't change hands, they might just get away with it actually being a religion....minus the Sea Org as well of course.:D
 

xseaorguk

Patron Meritorious
comparing Amway and $cn...

yeah, I didn't mean Amway was bad, but it's the way its built within the system that seems somehow similar to the cult of $cientology .
Reminds me of those chain letters that were going around too, you know where you had to get so many people to join and then get payed out a huge amount, but someone always lost out.
We called it the pilot game, and you had to get passengers.
There were various versions of it going around, back in the 80's.



Yep, definitely similar in the pyramid scheme manner of doing business (FSMs push to Missions push to Orgs push to AOs push to FLAG push to the Ship, and then push back out to OT Committees, themselves usually FSMs).

However, Amway isn't selling immortality, and even their most expensive product probably doesn't compare with the cost of the OT Levels. And as far as I know, Amway doesn't break up families when it seems like someone in the family doesn't want to sell Amway any more (or never did). Nor does Amway try to subvert the justice system and target their critics.

I trust Amway much more than the Church of Scientology.
 

byte301

Crusader
When Amway first got big it came to the small town I lived in at the time. It got to the point that if anyone called and asked you to have dinner with them your first question would be to ask them if the dinner came with Amway or not. lol

I have a friend who got in the "Dare To Be Rich" scam way back in the 70's. He ended up with a closet full of fire alarms. He used them for Christmas presents for years.:D
 

Wisened One

Crusader
:welcome: to ESMB!:)

Yeah one time I went to an Amway meeting (before scn)..and they were pretty hard sell. (Didn't join, mainly cuz we didn't have the few hundred or whatever it was to join).

Heard Amway's stuff is good tho.

True?
 

Dulloldfart

Squirrel Extraordinaire
The only OT I knew was a woman called Erika B., who I very much admired at the time. In fact she was partly responsible for me joining the Sea Org.
She was a great jewish business woman and seemed to fit all my ideas of being OT.
I always did wonder though why these wonderful OT's werent helping to 'clear the planet' themselves by being on staff.

I believe some of her kids did. The whole family was well known at SH when I was there 1972-86, and I heard about them later too.

I saw a "tell-all" write-up online on Amway several years back, saying that most of the money was made on the promotional items, tapes and rah-rah stuff, with the high-ranking distributors raking it in from that, not so much sales of the products.

Paul
 

xseaorguk

Patron Meritorious
is Amway good?

I think the products are generally good but overpriced.
As its a pyramid system where everbody is earning at the different levels in the pyramid it makes the products expensive.
Most of the products are socalled 'concentrates', where youre meant to use only 1 drop of dish washing liquid cos its sooooo powerful, same with the detergent just one scoop etc.
Its the same with most products you buy in a normal store cos you can use less of it and still get a good result.
The new $cientology DVD's in circulation where short clips of people claiming how wonderful it is remind me of the American kitchen gadget adverstisements on tv, or those ones where they're trying to flog you an ab-trainer.
Don't they realize how corny these DVD's are?
How about demonstrating on the DVD's how a 'Clear' has certain abilities, or maybe how an OT is 'cause over Matter Energy Space and Time'
 

Twin A

Patron with Honors
In 2003, I got approached by Quickstar members in the La Quinta area. They were OT 5 and above. I think one of them was an OT 8 even or at least OT 7. She gave me some tapes and books and brought me to a Quickstar meeting at the Hilton in Glendale. I was supposed to buy the tapes and book or bring them back, but I Googled Quickstar and I found out it was connected to Amway and I kind of freaked out :omg: Amway Scientologists! I ran the other direction.

I actually really liked some of the AMWAY products, but I was not interested in being a salesperson so I didn't return. Plus, the OT 7 was a nervous wreck. She couldn't sit still and she picked her own fingers so hard that chunks of skin were gone off the tips of her fingers. That really grossed me out, it's kind of indicative of serious emotional issues when someone mutilates their own fingers like that. I don't want to get rich quick at the risk of my own serenity and peace :omg:

There were quite a few Scientologists into Amway/Quickstar back in 2003. One of them was an older guy with the last name of Potter. I can't remember the names of the couple in La Quinta, hope they forgive me for taking their beat up quickstar book and the tapes :bigcry: The whole idea of being in two cult like atmospheres at once just freaked me out so much that I totally lost their address and phone numbers. I consciously and subconsciously didn't want to have anything to do with them.

I have since met some regular distributors of some of the Amway products that I liked and they were cool and didn't try to hard sell me on anything, they just ordered some products for me and sold them to me. Simple. The cleaning products are great, some of the vitamins/protein powders are really good too.
 

Dulloldfart

Squirrel Extraordinaire
In 2003, I got approached by Quickstar members in the La Quinta area.

When I lived in LA I got approached by some Scn Quickstar person. I compared their prices to the same items from other suppliers. And that was the end of that reg cycle. :)

Paul
 

Cat's Squirrel

Gold Meritorious Patron
I think one thing they both have in common is that they discourage critical evaluation of what they're offering; any attempt to do so in Amway is dismissed as "stinkin' thinkin". Hardly surprising when it doesn't take a genius to see how unworkable their business model is; it would apparently take just 18 months for everyone on the planet to become an Amway distributor, and then the structure would collapse inwards..

The best account I've seen of the perils of becoming an Amway distributor, or of getting involved in any other MLM "opportunity", is this one;

http://www.vandruff.com/mlm.html
 

xseaorguk

Patron Meritorious
on MLM's

Thanks for the link to the article on the MLM's.

This is my favourite piece in the article:

Summary of What's Wrong With Multi-Level Marketing:

MLMs are "doomed by design" to recruit too many salespeople, who in turn will then attempt to recruit even more salespeople, ad infinitum

But somehow it all reminds me of $cientology, where I met the most egotistic and incompassionate people EVER
 

byte301

Crusader
Well, there's another thing $cientology did for me! It put my senses on high alert for any pyramid scheme! I can smell em a mile away.

So far I have saved my husband from:

A.L. Williams

Some dumb scam to "help" people who's homes are in foreclosure.

A scam to buy houses with no money down. Wait...TWO of those scams!

A scam "internet shopping mall" program.

Several attempts to sell him lightbulbs that last a lifetime.

And a jewelry online auction that used pictures that made their cheap jewelry look like 3 carat diamonds.

He isn't allowed to even answer the door in case it's a door to door salesman or a Jehovah's Witness. I refuse to go to the Kingdom Hall for anything!

And yeah, my husband is the biggest sucker in the world.:D
 

Tom of Helatrobus

Patron Meritorious
Oh man, MLM nears the top of the things that I hate...

Here is the list of the TOP 5 THINGS I HATE.

5. MLM
4. supply side economics
3. Scientology
2. Fascists
1. Carrot Top
 

duddins

Patron Meritorious
I pretty much agree (but what's Carrot Top?).

carrottopcm7.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]


Thats a carrot top Cat. :happydance:
 

johnAnchovie

Still raging
UK SO people

Eileen Russle Able died in an old peoples home in 2005. She was completely delusional by the time she died, I too, was disgusted by her treatment in AOSH UK, fortunately dear Cherle Laws, the CLO UK MLO took some care of her, as much as she could.

Erika was and is a wild one. Her power had nothing to with OT, it had to do with her very enlightened upbringing, Scientology is a parasitic operation, it is parasitic on the earlier achievements of the individual and the actual energy and goodness of the individual in the present time. It both differs and is reflective of Amway in that sense
 
Top