Taking legal action against Amway or IBS

Sunny222

Having decided to 'surf' to see what my old employers were up to, I was flabbergasted to see the links in connection with IBS and Amway. I worked for P&G Gregory as their 'Office Manager' at their private address for nearly 10 years - any questions - please post - I will answer frankly and honestly 23.06.09

BFG_2

Sunny222 wrote: »

- please post - I will answer frankly and honestly 23.06.09

Do they feel any remorse for scamming so many people??

daingeaneaea

The result of the Court case was as follows;
Amway won.
DTI(i.e Government) lost

BFG_2

Does that means it's not a scam???

No, it just means the DTI couldn't PROVE it in court.

inmypocketnottheirs

DTI are toothless tigers. Amway is a huge American corporation which is immensly profitable and can hire the best lawyers.

Damage

A very interesting thread. I found it via Google when out of curiosity I was looking up names from the network marketing business I used to be involved in. Whilst I'm here I'll give a few details on my experiences with network marketing.

I was involved from 1990 to 1991 with what was then called the O'Brien Network. If I remember correctly, Jerry and Mandy Scriven were Bill O'Brien's downline Diamond distributors in the UK.

Back then, contact was made with prospective members with what they called an 'Ad Pack', which was a plain brown envelope containing an audio tape and a book. For anyone interested - having been successfully 'ad-packed' - the next thing you got was an associate of the person that 'ad-packed' you coming round your house and showing 'the plan', which involved a whiteboard, a squeaky marker pen and lots of circles drawn, joined to other smaller circles.

After that there was the stage of attending local meetings, buying a Tape of the Week, a Book of the Month, and finally attending the large conferences. Everyone involved had a blue and red 'Free Enterprise Works' sticker on their car.

I was very interested in the whole thing, so used to go along to the small local meetings, but only attended a couple of the large conferences. What put me off those was the fervid chanting, clapping and air-punching that went on at the beginning of the conferences, during which I felt seriously out of place. The group I was involved in were (I think) called 'The Rhinos' because there was a lot of chanting the word 'Rhinos' at the beginning of the conferences. I felt like disappearing under my seat when all that started.

Another thing that sticks in my mind is that everyone seemed to have one of those smally squirty mint breath-fresheners and you could hear people squirting them all the time. I jokingly wondered at the time if Amway were putting something in those to get people addicted to them!

The people I was involved with were very nice, and had the same hopes as all the rest of us for what it all might bring. A lot of people seemed to be turning up with personal friends that they had 'ad-packed', who were also interested. I went to one meeting at my upline direct distributor's house and it was clear that his wife didn't approve of what was going on. He eventually left the network. The people who 'ad-packed' me fell out with the person who got them involved, so I had to deal with him instead.

No names mentioned here, but a lot of the network further up the stream from me were from the Yeovil area.

Hearing all the success stories kept me interested, but what cast some doubt in my mind was that I never got any answers to things I asked about. The first two things I wanted to know (just out of curiosity) was who produced and published the tapes of the week/books of the month (and who made the money from them), and who got the profits from the conferences. That all got glossed over and I felt that there was a lot that we weren't being told. The response was always along the lines of 'just believe in it, follow what your upline tells you and it will work for you'.

I turned my attention to the Amway products and they seemed very good, but very expensive. I did sell a few items, but it was hard to justify the price to people. I remember looking at the Amway vitamin tablets and the price per tablet worked out as being ten times that of vitamin tablets I could get in Boots. The car polish was okay but I found it smeared more than Autoglym, so I didn't use much of it. I think I still have some of that somewhere. I also still have the Amway plastic spray bottle in the garage! I can't remember how I got those, but we all ended up with a small range of items, which included the empty dispensers in which to put the diluted Amway concentrated cleaning products.

Naturally of course, nearly everyone I mentioned the business to told me it was a pyramid selling scheme, to which I had all the answers, as instructed by my upline distributors (I knew it wasn't a pyramid scheme, but it was impossible to convince some people otherwise). I got a couple of my close friends interested, who had much the same experience as me. A lot of the time I got looked at as if I was an alien when attempting to 'ad-pack' someone, and I got the distinct impression that this was going to end up costing me some friends. In the end there was a lot of reluctance in contacting people through fear of being ridiculed. After that I stopped going to the meetings and gradually lost contact with the organization.

It didn't really cost me much at all. Just a few tapes, books, some expenses going to those conferences and some product purchases.

Some of the names I remember are Jerry and Mandy Scriven, Pat and Greta Gregory, Lee and Sandy McCann, and Neil and Ruth Salway. One of the speakers at a meeting I attended had a really good life story. I can't remember his name, but I think he was from Benfleet and (I think) used to be an estate agent. His story involved some hard times, including contemplating suicide. Then there was another very young couple who spoke at one of the large conferences who had a life-changing experience when one of his friends was stabbed in the street and later died. I wish I could remember their names as I often wonder if these people made the network marketing business work for them.

One thing that they always used to say that turned out to be (more or less) true was that by the end of the nineties, 40% of all business would be carried out via a network, which of course I took this to be network marketing - and I think that's what they thought too. Well, that was in the days before the internet, and lo and behold, we ended up with a network called the internet. Not quite what I was expecting, but we certainly do a lot of business through this network!

Anyway, thanks for reading. I thought some of this might be of interest to others searching for information about their days in network marketing.

:-)

Nile

Hi, Martin’s asked me to post this in these circumstances: I’ve asked Board Guides to move threads if they’ll receive a better response elsewhere(please see this rule) so this post/thread has been moved to another board, where it should get more replies. If you have any questions about this policy please email [EMAIL="abuse@moneysavingexpert.com"]abuse@moneysavingexpert.com[/EMAIL].

somethingorother

The real issue is not this recent bust-up between the company and IBS, but the ghost business of the tools. I was involved in 1988 and we were always told that money from tool sales was 'ploughed back into the business', a very easy phrase that turns out to have been untrue. We now know most of the income of the big pins is from these sales. The issue of the IBS people being treated shoddily in the UK is just some recent side issue, small fry compared to the massive deception over the tools.

payitforwardeddie_2

I was associated with Amway and IBS from early in 1991 upto 2008.
I was part of Pat & Greta's group. I never made it to Direct or higher, mainly, I think, through lack of goals.( At that time.) Its been said already on here about the cost of the training which in my view was peanuts compared to what students at uni are being forced to pay today. My gripe with Amway is this...They can take "your business" away at any time for no reason. Like all these businesses, avon, kleeneze, betterware, etc you are an independent distributor ONLY because it suits the company. You do not own anything. You have more rights as an employee. I will say that I learned a lot from the O'Brien group over here in the UK and if anyone objects to them making a profit from the books, tapes functions etc., then I suggest they go to a communist country. Oh,no. sorry, you can't. Even China wants profits these days.

Out_of_pocket_2

All I have to say anyone doing business with people like Mr Bernie De Souza protect yourselves.

Never pay them cash and ensure you have a contract signed with what they will provide for their service.

If you want to protect your business and your reputation you need to avoid anyone that will bring it into disrepute by their own lack of morals and ethics.

I cannot go into any more detail for current legal reasons other than to say the word 'Trusted advisor' is farcical.