Response to Amway Misinformation

1. "As already mentioned, Amway's other objective is to discredit me and the information on this site. Unable to come up with a substantive and intelligent rebuttal to the over 3 megabytes of information gathered from articles, books, court documents, first-hand accounts etc., and presented here (only 63k of which, by the way, is devoted to P&G's case), Amway has instead chosen to resort to name calling and oily insinuation."
-- from my previously posted response to Amway's false and defamatory accusations of an improper relationship between Procter & Gamble and myself

"In the eight years that I've been compiling and posting information about Amway from books, articles, court documents and other publicly available sources, Amway has never once shown any of this information to be inaccurate or defamatory. In all that time Amway has never once contacted me and requested or demanded that I remove or change any of the information on my site."
-- currently on the main page of this site

2. "The detailed nature of the Schwartz/P&G relationship is unknown at this time but is now being investigated."
-- From a similarly misleading statement previously posted on Amway's web site.

3. "The purpose of this memorandum and the attachments is to communicate to Senior Corporate Management - worldwide, as clearly and concisely as possible, Sales Division programs that are currently being carried out in North America to ... Eliminate the illegalities and abuses inherent in distributor (motivational) "systems" of non-Amway designed/produced audio visuals, literature, rallies and seminars."
--from an internal Amway memo, probably written in 1982, introduced as evidence in Cairns case.

"Widespread illegalities inherent in Amway distributor designed "systems" of tapes, books, and rallies. While most of these "systems" were conceived in the late 1960's and early 1970's as genuine "support" programs to help Amway distributors develop their Amway businesses, entrepreneurial "higher pins" discovered and developed programs for substantial, separate, additional income, under the Amway umbrella.

"Appendix 'A', a confidential memorandum to Policy Committee of August 1982, provides you with all the background as to how these "support systems" escalated to what we believe is now a threat to the future security of Amway Corporation, at least in the United States.

"As this document - 'Challenge of the '80's' - points out, the escalating profits and pressures of these businesses lead to an alarming rise in violations of the Code of Ethics and Rules of Conduct. Subsequent legal evaluations disclosed that the disproportionate (to Amway) sales, intensity and solicitation of these 'tools/systems' are illegal, per se, under several U.S. federal and state laws.
--same source

"Now, the tape business, if it is not used as a support for the Amway business, will oftentimes be an illegal business -- in fact, it could be called a pyramid -- because, d -- does not get sold to the consumer. Which means that all the tape business does is take money out of the organization, and because the final person can't retail it, it never brings money into the organization."
--Rich DeVos, "Directly Speaking," January 1983

"I guess if I'd been told all these years you don't have to sell the product, all you have to do is wholesale it to people, then I guess maybe I wouldn't pay any attention to pricing, either. But that's an illegal business. And those of you that preach it and foster it and talk about it are operating illegally. I don't know how often I have to tell you that."
--Rich DeVos, "Directly Speaking," probably Feb. or March 1983

"For some distributors, including Plaintiffs, the sale of business support materials produces revenues far exceeding the revenues generated from the sale of Amway's consumer goods."

"Yager derives a substantial portion of his income from the sale of business support materials down the lines of distribution in the Amway Network. On information and belief, over 70% of Yager's Amway-related income is derived from the sale of business support materials, constituting $40,000,000.00 per year in gross income."
--Double Diamond Brig Hart, in his lawsuit against Amway filed in April of 1997.

4. The continuing filing of lawsuits by distributors harmed by "The System," as well as the many comments received by distributors, are ample evidence that little has changed since Amway determined "The System" to be illegal.

5. See the Canadian fraud case, in which Amway's founders, Rich DeVos and Jay Van Andel, pled guilty on behalf of Amway Corp. to defrauding the Canadian govt. out of millions of dollars.

6. FTC 1979.

7. FTC 1979, state of Wisconsin 1982, Justice Department 1985.

8. See Gommeringer v. Amway, Baker v. Amway, Hayden v. Amway, Touchton v. Amway, Cairns v. Amway, Bartlett v. Amway

9. See the Arbitration agreements that Amway distributors must now sign.

10. From Amway's Business Compendium, copyright 1996:

Rule 102(e) Retail Stores "... Further, distributors may not use mass communication methods such as television merchandising channels, computer networks, national or international advertising, etc., to secure Amway customers.

Amway's rules on distributor web sites also states the following:

1. Content
The purpose of the Personal Home Pages is to share your own personal story with friends and downlines. You may share information about yourself, your Amway business, your hobbies, and your interests. Please be aware this information can be viewed by anyone on the Internet, so you may not wish to publish information considered private and personal. All content must follow the included Personal Home Page Claims Criteria. Content may consist of the following:

* Distributor name and state.
* Amway distributor achievement level.
*Personal statements adhering to the Guidelines, Claims Criteria, and Rules of Conduct.
* A photograph of the distributor about whom the information on the Personal Home Page is written.
* Artistic elements in good taste which will reflect positively on Amway distributors, Amway Corporation, and the Amway opportunity. This would include various background patterns, colors, text styles, headlines, and other imagery.
* An audio greeting to your page.

2. Content Exclusions
* You specifically may NOT include the following content:
* You may not sell products via the Internet.
* You may not recruit new distributors via the Internet. You may not include any information that would allow the reader to contact you to become an Amway distributor.
* You may not advertise products, services, or the Amway opportunity using the Internet.
* You may not include language which reflects poorly on Amway distributors or Amway Corporation. * You may not include income representations, either explicit or implied. Subjects discouraged in the ADAB adopted Speaker Guidelines.

4. No Return Communication
No Personal Home Page may have a method by which a return communication can be received. This would include electronic mail (E-mail), telephone, postal service, fax, or any other form of communication.

5. Links Distributors may have only the following links from their Personal Home Page to other WWW sites:
1) The Amway Corporation Web site: http://www.amway.com
2) The Amway Distributors Association Board Web site: http://www.adaboard.com.
3) The authorized line of sponsorship (LOS) home page of the distributor who is posting the page on the WWW. The LOS site must be authorized by the Business Support Materials Administration department of Amway Corporation prior to being posted on the WWW.
4) For future use, the Amway Secured Site http://www.amway-abn.com

11. For example, Amway has recently filed suit against James Dyson, inventor of the "Dual Cyclone" vacuum cleaner upon which Amway based its "Clear Trak" vacuum. Amway is attempting to prevent Dyson from publishing his autobiography, in which he discusses a lawsuit in which he sued Amway for "patent infringement and misappropriation of confidential information." According to an article in the 5/16/97 Business News, "Amway objects to Against the Odds on the grounds that it violates the terms of that settlement and that it deems certain passages to be defamatory." Also, according to Forbes magazine, Amway in 1984 "obtained a gag order...in a Grand Rapids court" to prevent a "former Amway insider" from writing a book on Amway.

12. In 1985 Double Diamond Rick Setzer, who is still a distributor and a member of the ADA Executive Board, sued Amway, charging the corporation with, among other things, racketeering, breach of contract, and fraud. (It would be interesting to ask Setzer why he chose to remain in business with people he had such a low opinion of.) In a Request for Production of Documents filed by Setzer's attorneys on 3/23/87, plaintiffs asked the court to order Amway to produce "Copies of all law suits filed against Amway Corporation and or Richard DeVos or Jay VanAndel for the past 10 years." In response, Amway's attorneys stated the following:

"The request imposes an undue burden in that the number of lawsuits filed against Amway Corporation and/or Richard DeVos and/or Jay Van Andel for the past ten years represents literally thousands of lawsuits, with the file on each lawsuit varying from several pages to entire rooms filled with documentation."

Even if we estimate the number of lawsuits conservatively at 2,000, that's one lawsuit filed every 1.8 days. Even if only 10% of those were lawsuits filed by distributors, that's still one lawsuit filed every 18 days, or 20 per year. For a company like Amway, legal expenses are just part of the everyday overhead, like the electric bill.

13. Amway published in the August 1997 an article entitled "How to Deal with Inaccurate or Misleading Internet Reports." Typically Amway, it fails completely to actually identify, let alone refute, a single piece of information from this or any Amway Information other web site. Instead, Amway again resorts to their usual sleazy tactic of implying that anyone who says anything critical of Amway must have some mysterious "agenda" and therefore be untrustworthy.

14. "We're So Big And Powerful Nothing Bad Can Happen To Us: An Investigation of America's Crisis-Prone Corporations," Mitroff and Pauchant, Birch Lane Press