I also noticed that they seem to specifically prey upon people in bad financial situations. The first time someone tried to recruit me, they asked, “What would you do with, oh, say, an extra six hundred bucks a month?” I shrugged and said “I dunno, put it in my savings account most likely.” Their response? “What?!? Nooo, that’s boring. Don’t you want a new car or a smartphone or a nice TV or something like that?” Now why on earth would I ever take financial advice from or enter a business venture with someone who thinks this way? Then, later in the conversation, the asked about “Well what about student loans and school debt? Amway could help you pay that off.” When I replied, “Actually, my husband and I both managed to graduate debt-free,” their face actually fell a little. Sure, they said “Oh, that’s awesome!” but it sounded really insincere. Like they were actually thinking, “Shit, they’re not desperate enough to take the bait.” If it is such a good opportunity, then why does their pitch seem to rely so much on appealing to the emotions and sympathy of people in financial difficulty?

I should probably clarify that I know my husband and I are pretty lucky to be as secure as we are. I don’t blame other people for being in debt, but I do blame Amway for specifically targeting those people and using their own troubles against them.

Relatedly, several aspects of their pitch seem to rely on people being bad at math. Seriously. The second recruitment attempt I endured, the main recruiter said “Imagine you start out with a penny, but you double it every day for a month. How much money do you think you will have at the end of that month? Well, the answer is actually ten million dollars! Wow, isn’t that just amazing?!” By the tone of his voice, it was very clear that he didn’t expect anyone to guess that high. He then went on to try to explain how Amway was analogous to this penny story. But here’s the thing: It’s NOT amazing. It’s just exponential growth, i.e. high school math. I really don’t understand why this penny story would impress any adult who had a basic grip on how numbers and finances work. And anyone who IS shocked by it… again, I would not want to go into business with that person!

There’s also a darker side of the penny analogy… let’s pretend the pennies are people instead. We start with one person, and over the course of a year that person recruits three more people. Then over the second year, those three people each recruit three more people. So now we have the original person, their three recruits, and the nine newest recruits. If the tree keeps growing at this rate, it will take 22 years/generations for the total number of people involved to exceed the population of the earth. In other words, if Amway really worked the way recruiters try to sell it, it would be completely unsustainable. Soon enough there would just be nobody left to recruit. The only reason this isn’t happening is because the vast majority of Amway distributors aren’t able to make their tree grow at the tripling-every-year rate that the recruiters talk about (and thus, aren’t able to make the “real money” that only comes when you recruit your own tree).

Last but not least, I thought more about the “full refund” the original asker mentioned. There are two main problems with this:

1. Three months may sound like a generous time, but even the Amway recruiters don’t promise huge returns in that short a time period. How much do you want to bet that, if you try to back out in three months, you’ll hear “What? But you’ve barely gotten started, of COURSE it takes more than three months to get a business off the ground, you just have to be patient” or something like that. If you stand your ground well enough they’ll eventually give you your refund, but only after applying all the persuasive power they can to discourage you from doing it.

2. http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/03/25/the-sunk-cost-fallacy/ The sunk cost fallacy means that very few people are even going to try to take up Amway on the refund, even if it would be in their best interests to do so. I guarantee you Amway’s marketing department understands this phenomenon, and it may even be the main reason they’re unafraid to offer a refund in the first place. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the cajoling I mentioned in point one specifically appeals to the loss aversion involved in the sunk cost fallacy.