Amway/Alticor/Quixtar Sucks!

Welcome to Amway/Alticor/Quixtar Sucks! Note to Amway/Quixtar cultists: I am not a bitter, failed Amway distributor; I'm a senior faculty member at a private university. I've never had any interest in multi-level marketing. My interest in Amway comes from the company's attempts to suppress the free speech rights of its critics. See below.

Again, welcome! Here's what I can offer you today:

• My Father's Dream, a new examination of the Amway scam by Erik German, available on Kindle from Amazon.com.

• Former double dimaond Randy Haugen wrote some highly critical things about Quixtar in 2007, and now he wants it all to go away. He's using DMCA takedown notices to try to remove this document from the web. But this document is both newsworthy and of no commercial value, placing it well within the bounds of the "fair use" exemption in US copyright law.

• Quixtar sues 21 anonymous bloggers and YouTubers! This subpoena alleges that anonymous Quixtar critics are actually agents of TEAM (see next story) acting to injure Quixtar's business. I've looked at a few of the items listed in the subpoena and find this theory ridiculous and the lawsuit frivolous. One of the videos listed in the subpoena is an innocuous little thing called Quixtar - Tell me sweet little lies. But the scumbag lawyers at Brinks Hofer Gilson & Lione (home of the Amweasel) never miss an opportunity to threaten a Quixtar critic. A pox on all of them. One of the other videos listed in the subpoena is How to Live "The High Life" with the NEW Amway, a hilarious spoof of "showing the plan" that is well worth your time.

• Quixtar and Team in mudslinging contest: No honor among thieves? Team, an AMO (Amway Motivational Organization), released a blast at Quixtar which was later yanked from their web site due to a temporary restraining order, and announced they were terminating their relationship with the company. Team also filed a hilarious class action lawsuit calling Quixtar an "illegal recruitment pyramid" with products that are "hopelessly overpriced". Quixtar responded with an announcement that they had booted Team for unethical business practices that made the oganization "a disgrace to every person who's ever tried to build a ... business the right way." In my view, both sides are unethical scum, and the real reason for the breakup of their 13 year business relationship is greed, not moral indignation.

• Old news for Team (formerly Team of Destiny [dead link]) recruits: yes, Team (of Destiny) is (was) Quixtar, which is Amway done on the web. Team founder Orrin Woodward used to publicly acknowledge this, but now he only discloses his Quixtar subservience on his personal web site, where his collected "wisdom" is shielded from unworthy eyes by password protection. Scott Larsen has laid out the evidence that Quixtar lines of sponsorship are pyramid schemes, and has a lot more to say about them. Lawdawg has a nice account of the Team of Destiny SLAPP suit filed against Larsen in retaliation. Here is the text of the amended complaint, which TEAM is reportedly now trying to suppress because it includes all the Larsen material they were suing over! More info about Team (of Destiny) here, and also here. And yes, your upline does make money off the tools and seminar tickets you buy: here is how much. And here's a personal story of a former Team IBO, republished with permission.

• Dateline exposes Quixtar fraud. Show aired May 7, 2004. Read the transcript and learn the truth. Or watch the video. Quixtar's response is a predictable attempt at spin countrol.

• Former Diamond Don Lorencz blows the whistle on the Amway/Quixtar scam.

• Eric Scheibeler's explosive Amway expose, "Merchants of Deception", is now available online at merchantsofdeception.com, and I have a local mirror here.

  Amway tries to silence Scheibeler, alleging defamation and demanding arbitration.

• Missouri court find's Amway's arbitrarion agreement "uncnoscionable".

• Amway's Ed Postma calls the tools business (books, tapes, and motivational meetings) an illegal pyramid scheme. This recently leaked 1983 internal memo analyzes the Britt and Yager lines of sponsorship (Britt Worldwide, and Worldwide Dreambuilders) and finds much to criticize. (PDF of original document)

• Report of Professor G. Robert Blakey, Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School, in which he compares Amway/Quixtar to the mafia! Amway really doesn't want anyone to read this. One of their attorneys has demanded that I take the document down, citing this 1998 protective order. But I told him the order doesn't apply to me. See more details of Amway's unhappiness at Eric Janssen's Quixtar Blog site.

• Quixtar's unfair arbitration scheme is rigged against the Independent Business Owner. Amweasel Timothy Q. Delaney frets that this document will be exploited by "Quixtar-hating Internet zealots." Awwww.

• ProAlliance is also Quixtar. See the proof here (to register for your own ProAlliance web site you must supply your Quixtar number). Free guest access code here.

• For beginners: a quick summary of Amway from The Skeptic's Dictionary.

  `Pop Goes the Amweasel!' Contest. Contest over, but read the page for a great laugh!

• Amway: the Untold Story, by Sidney Schwartz. This is my local mirror of the web site that Amway was furiously trying to suppress. Amway's thuggish tactics are what brought me into this fight. Just doing my part to defend free speech on the Internet.

• You can set up your own "Amway: the Untold Story" mirror site by downloading these two zip files: amway-main.zip, and amway-comments.zip. If you are running on a Unix machine, you must unzip them with "gunzip -L" to force all-lowercase file names, and then rename face.gif to Face.gif and nobull.gif to Nobull.gif.

• Amway/Quixtar's Little White Lies, a truly marvelous page by Scott Larsen. This is my favorite anti-Amway page because it exposes the lies so clearly. Amway's legal goons have also been harassing Larsen. Here's his list of Amway Business Myths: a must read! And here's another portal to Scott Larsen's page.

• Joe Land sues Internet critic! The owner of AllianceNet solutions sued Scott Larsen. Find out what he won.

• The other ``Heavy Hitters'': people who have put together important anti-Amway web sites and in some cases suffered serious harassment as a result. Ashley Wilkes' web site (now virtually gutted after years of fighting and $10,000 in legal bills) talks about the abuses of the AMOs. And Ruth Carter's MLM Survivor site also has a wealth of information. And this site mirrors lots of great Amway material. There is also lots of good material at John Hoagland's site. And here's a newcomer with lots of good material: Eric Janssen's Quixtar Blog.

• Forbes Magazine denounces Quixtar (Amway-on-the-web) as a "get rich quick scheme".

• Sherwood Ensey's The Amway Files details his injury by a defective Amway product, and Amway's hardball tactics in dealing with him, including a refusal to give data about the product to the Poison Control Center! If you have a tube of Amway Metal Cleaner in your house, don't even touch it until you've read Sherwood's story.

• Cult expert Steve Hassan tells you why Amway Motivational Organizations seem like cults. And here is excellent information on cult-like aspects of Amway from John Hoagland.

• The Things They Will Say details the indoctrination techniques used by Dreambuilders, one of the large Amway motivational organizations (franchises) with cult-like aspects. Also see this List of Lies told by Amway and its distributors; the second part is here.

• Amway for Scientologists, a "hat pack" written by Bernie Greene. Scientologists who are Amway distributors can use the Scientology cult's "tech" to lure people into their Amway pyramid. See how many Scientology buzzwords you can find.

• Hate mail from Amway cultists.

• Amway was preventing people from selling their old tapes on eBay, according to ex-Amway distributor Jeff Bunnell. See their eBay info page. So much for being an "independent" business owner. You can just eat those tapes, sucker.

• John Hoagland's Anti-MLM and Anti-Amway Webring was destroyed by Amway legal harassment. Read the obituary.

• Amway customers and distributors: your money can help support right-wing creationist wackos! Visit the Van Andel Creation Research Center, funded by a grant from the Jay and Betty Van Andel Foundation. Jay Van Andel (deceased 12/7/2004) and Rich DeVos were the two founders of Amway.

The Last Supper according to Amway: Jesus Christ shows The Plan to the original 12 IBOs, four of whom eventually went Diamond.

Remember: if you leave Amway, you will always be a broke loser... and Jesus won't love you anymore.

More Amway humor: Russia acquires Amway distributorship, reproduced from The Onion.

For more info on Timmy Delaney's legal antics, see Jim Lippard's "Amway subpoenaed me" page at http://www.discord.org/~lippard/amway/index.html.

4/26/00 News Flash: Timmy's at it again!!! Here is the second letter from Amway's dopey lawyer, Timothy Q. Delaney, with a new set of bogus allegations, this time based on the Lanham Act and trademark infringement. The Scientologists tried this same tactic a few years ago against some of their Internet critics. It got them nowhere; the ACLU stepped in and told them to get lost. Now read my reply to Timmy to see how well he did.

5/9/2000 News Flash: Here is the third letter from Timmy Delaney, Amway's tenacious Internet attack-weasel. Now he accuses me of engaging in "name-calling and vulgarity". Awwwwwww: poor Timmy's feelings got hurt! Putting his whining aside, you should notice that he's dropped his stupid Lanham Act claims now that he sees I'm not going to fall for that old trick. He's gone back to spinning conspiracy theories involving P&G and Sidney Schwartz. Here's my commentary on Timmy's third try. Down boy!

5/15/2000 Meat of the Loom was another famous case of a big corporation subjecting a little guy to repeated bogus trademark infringement threats. The little guy got annoyed and sued. The corporation backed off. See also this essay on Federal Dilution Trademark Law in the United States, which points out the law's explicit provision for non-commerical uses of another party's trademark, for purposes such as parody, satire, or editorial commentary.

9/20/2001 A judge has dismissed Amway's conspiracy claim against Procter & Gamble. A few days later, Amway settled with Sidney Schwartz.