Quixtar is attacking bloggers claiming they are working in concert with Orrin Woodward who is under a restraining order. The fallout from this battle with Amway Quixtar has effected tens of thousand of independent business owners. Many who are upset with Quixtar and many of who are voicing their opinions. The other business owners are NOT covered by a restraining order. The business owners are upset about a number of things one being the unilateral name change from Quixtar to Amway in North America. This after the company has spent 8 years telling everyone they weren't in Amway. The independent business owners are fighting back on blogs, the only way they have to be heard!!!

Unfortunately, Quixtar *has* slipped back into being an illegal pyramid scheme.

You correctly state, "In 1979, the FTC ruled that Amway was not a pyramid scheme, but ordered the company to change many of its sales and marketing practices," but you failed to list any of the practices the FTC required changing.

You also correctly state that "Less than 18% of its products are ever resold by the distributors to retail consumers." (Actually, by Quixtar's own admission in a recent report, that has actually fallen to less than 4%.)

Well, one of the 1979 FTC requirements is that, in order to *not* be considered an illegal pyramid scheme, at least 70% of products purchased had to be purchased by retail customers not involved in the plan. [In re. Amway Corp., 93 F.T.C. 618 (1979)]

Directly from the FTC at http://www.ftc.gov/speeches/other/dvimf16.shtm:

"Some schemes may purport to sell a product, but they often simply use the product to hide their pyramid structure. There are two tell-tale signs that a product is simply being used to disguise a pyramid scheme: inventory loading and a lack of retail sales.

[...]

"A lack of retail sales is also a red flag that a pyramid exists. Many pyramid schemes will claim that their product is selling like hot cakes. However, on closer examination, the sales occur only between people inside the pyramid structure or to new recruits joining the structure, not to consumers out in the general public."

I was extremely pleased with your assessment of the mainstream media's lack of understanding of the Quixtar/Amway business model. We have been IBOs in the Woodward and Brady organization for nearly 6 years. The line from Quixtar all this time is that we "own our own businesses," but recent changes in the rule structure are beginning to prove otherwise. While the Dateline expose is a good example of how some of the organizations in Quixtar work, not all organizations act that way. The TEAM (as Woodward and Brady's organization is known) place honesty, integrity, and leadership above all other things in business. What that means is that Dateline would never, ever have had that type of experience with one of our groups.

What disturbs me most about these lawsuits agains the bloggers is that the Quixtar people don't give any credit to the brains of their IBOs. They automaticly assume that anyone who has a negative opinion about the things that they are doing is in cahoots with Woodward and Brady (who are obviously bound by the restraining order). Considering Quixtar's actions and their public comments in their own Alticor blogs, it is difficult to believe that people WOULDN'T be disturbed and looking for a way to speak out. They have brought this on themselves through their negative attitudes and refusal to listen to their "business partners," their IBOs. They promised a business opportunity where we would have a say in our own future. With the name change back to Amway they took away our illusions of business ownership. Those changes were made against the reccomendations of the IBOAI Board, a sort of "union" for the IBOs.

There are many versions of what actually happened on August 9th when Woodward and Brady left Quixtar. But based on the unprofessional and childish comments made by Alticor I tend to find that the TEAM leadership is doing it's best too look out for its business owners.

Wow ... shame that peopel think if you do a site like "pyramid scheme alert" that you actually know what you are talking about. Robert FitzPatrick does not. Both the FTC today, and back in FTC vs Amway in 1979, are not concerned about whether sales are made "outside the network" at all. They're concerned about whether they're made to *real* end users. It plays no roll at all if those folk signed a bit of paper to get them cheaper or whether they didn't. As the FTC made clear back in '79, they well understood that a large number of people "join" purely to get the products cheaper. This is common among all MLMs.

I don't know whether they "70% rule" quote above was from the commentator of from FtizPatrick, but whoever said it is outright lying. The FTC never said anything like that. The 70% rule is to do with inventory loading - buying stuff and stocking it in the garage - in order to qualify for some bonus or recognition. It has nothing to do with who the products are sold to, and indeed FTC vs Amway explictly talks about it being sales "at wholesale (ie to other IBOs) and at retail (ie to non-IBOs).

FitzPatrick came up with his own definition of an "illegal pyramid" years ago, one that is contrary to that used by the FTC and various courts, and it's unfortunate folk continue to quote him as if he actually knows what he's talking about.

www.thetruthaboutamway.com

Of course its a pyramid scheme.......
I don't know ONE person YET that had something from either AMWAY or QUIXTAR or any of this crap unless they were inside their network......
Its like the timeshare scams.....Its the same money for Tide or Colgate or Corn Flakes....Why would a consumer buy this brand?.....If any of this was a real player in global business, I've never heard of even one company that was affected by Amway or Quixtar's business.....
No one buys their products unless they are trying to sell them.....to other people that they want to sell to....

As a former Amway Distributor who made money, but left the business in the 1980s, I am not up to date on much of what has transpired in the last twenty plus years. I did not join Amway to buy products at wholesale, although I have used the products contiuously for over 31 years.

Rich DeVos and Jay Van Andel started an honorable and worthwhile business opportunity for those who chose to do the business the way it was originally structured. IBOs traveled far afield from those founding principles, and I left the business for that reason.

I have no dog in this latest fight, but I am saddened by what has happened in the intervening years between the time I was required to sell $100.00 worth of products at retail to non distributors in order to earn my bonus and today.

Shame on those folks who were too concerned with status to tell people they were Amway distributors with a business opportunity they were willing to share.

Amway, Quixtar, Amway, 3 card monte, ponzi.