From: stealth@engin.umich.edu (Mike Pelletier)
Subject: Re: ILLEGAL TO OPERATE MULTI-LEVEL WITH PURE MONEY TRANSACTIONS??
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 92 22:09:16 EDT
Organization: University of Michigan Engineering, Ann Arbor

In article <1992Jul29.170541.10039@auto-trol.com> kevoka@auto-trol.com
	(Kevin O'Kane) writes:
>>Well, there are certainly some significant similarities between pyramid
>>schemes and Amway *as marketed by many distributors*.  IMHO, "pure
>>money games", while
>
>Please elaborate on the similarities.
>
>>clearly illegal, are much more straightforward... that is to say, there is
>>less likely to be dishonesty recruiting people into a pure money game, than
>>there is recruiting people into Amway.  Amway benefits from being in a gray
>>area of the law... while Amway is often marketed in an unethical manner,
>>determining it to be illegal would require the FTC to find that the Amway
>>products were a sham, insofar as the marketing plan goes.
>
>What is the gray area of the law? Amway is 4.5 billion dollar a year business
>which, if it were publicly traded would place it as the 149th largest company
>in the U.S. by sales (using the *Fortune 500* ranking). A company cannot
> get this big by engaging in illegal activities and escape notice of the
> FTC. It does business in all 50 states which have their own Attorny
> Generals' offices and business regulatory bodies. Do you not suppose
> that each state has not checked it out.

Not to mention that they also do business in over 50 other countries
each of which has their own equivalent of an Attorney General's office.
Gray area?  Pish posh.  And also not to mention that last month
60,000 people in the US alone decided that the plan looked good enough
for them to give it a try, and that Amway also distributes products
and services for almost a thousand different companies -- the likes of
Coca Cola, General Motors, Magnavox, Bunn, Lipton, Kellogs, Canon, Panasonic,
Gerber, Hanes, Spalding, LA Gear, AT&T, MCI, Uniden, Northwest Airlines,
Sharp, Ford, Chrysler, ... ... ... ... ...
   Don't want to take up too much bandwidth here...

Don't you suppose that a worldwide company with an immediately recognized
logo such as Coca-Cola has a pretty sophisticated legal departament?
Do you actually think they'd sign a partnership agreement with a company
that dealt in a legal gray area?

And since you're not aware of it, I should note that the FTC already
crawled up Amway's rear end with a flashlight a number of years ago
and Amway is now the standard of legality for multi-level marketing plans.

That you think that Amway is often presented in an unethical manner is
only a function of the people who tried to present it to you, not an
indictment of Amway Inc. or the workability of the marketing plan.

If you think you can, I recommend that you take a serious look at the
business after leaving your preconcieved notions about ethics, the shifty
people you've met, and multi-level-marketing at home.  Then see what you
think.
-- 
      Mike Pelletier       | Administrator of the systems that people tend
The University of Michigan | to be touchy about -- USENET News, Mail, and IRC.
  College of Engineering   | My asbestos suit is always close at hand.
Newsgroups: misc.entrepreneurs