One of our readers explains why Amway creates a pyramid of commissioned sales reps:
Amway products are overpriced because the money you pay for them has to be distributed among all the various shitheads in your up-line. Everybody gets a cut, especially your fat-assed Platinum, and the Diamond above him.
For this reason the basic structure of Amway is that of an endless chain of middlemen. When you buy that absurdly overpriced case of Perfect Water, you are paying a group of persons who have a financial claim on you.
Now it is true that middlemen exist all over the world of buying and selling. They usually function as distributors who get products out to the more remote customers who aren't reached by the original producer. This is a helpful convenience, and naturally the middleman has a perfect right to get his cut of the price. But Amway is totally different, and totally corrupt. Amway deliberately creates a huge number of unnecessary middlemen whose entire function is to be parasitical on their down-line!
If Amway were honest, it would simply sell its products in a normal retail manner to customers. It would compete normally in the retail market with other producers, and try to earn a market share based on product quality. It might use some middlemen or franchises to get its products distributed more effectively, but THAT'S ALL. It would not go to insane lengths to create a totally absurd pyramid of buyers, sellers, and recruiters who pretend to be "Independent Business Owners."
The fact that Amway refuses to sell in the normal retail manner (and in fact forbids its IBOs from doing any sort of normal retail selling) proves two things:
1) Amway products are NOT competitive with other brands, and can't gain a normal market share. Amway would be clobbered by the cheaper and more effective big brands if it tried.
2) The entire Amway racket is not about the products at all, but about the recruitment of down-line that will make you a perpetual middleman who just collects fees. That's why you will never see an Amway IBO who simply sells you the Amway products. He will ALWAYS insist on telling you about "the Plan."