Soap Crew Worker Discovers Horrors of Traveling Sales Crew Devil

I recently noticed a comment made on one of my several articles on the horrors of the traveling sales crews Amway Cult Youth Initiate's Deaths Possibly Related to Sleep Deprivation. msawyer wrote:

"I came from a soap crew and I was abused by most of the staff and the owners too. Its really hard to find some place to go when you give your life to these people. I had no clue that for the first year I would be stuck selling this junk. They treated me good at first. and then when my mom ended up in the hospital that's when I saw there true colors. They would extort me and threaten me. you guys that don't have a clue what this is about are foolish and blinded. these companies trap,brain wash and threaten. They take your pay that you earned so you cant go any where. Then you feel lost and homeless , so you end up going back to them so you have some place to go. Its Sad and I will help to get all door to door sales companies to be gone, they are the devils."

It has been some time since I have visited the Horrors of the Traveling Sales Crew issue or wrote any blog posts concerning Malinda's Law. The beautiful summer weather brings with it the likelihood that you will be receiving that unexpected knock at the door from a wondering "soap crew" salesperson of one type or another. Just as in msawyer's comment above, those victimized many times do not understand what type of "devil" they are signing up with. At first, all seems to be bright adventure and travel, and then degenerates into what Phil Ellenbecker has documented as a potentially horrifying experience which exploits youthful exuberance and has the potential to end badly.

"Persons seeking "financial freedom" in the Amway Cult also arrive all bright eyed and exuberant, pursuing their dream, only to discover the devil that preys on its own as well"... quixtarisacult

Please visit the Traveling Sales Crews Information Web Site.

What About The Other 'Big Three'? Amway, Scientology, and the Unification Church

There is a lot of news in the press about the Big Three, GM, Ford and Chrysler, but what about the other famous 'Big Threes', The Yalta World Leaders during World War II and the still existing Big Three World Cults?

Amway; Scientology; and the Moonies, the Big Three thrive on human ignorance and lack of complete understanding.

They attempt to control and define the information about themselves to perpetuate a form of ignorance which works in their favor.

What they and their adherents say about themselves is misinformation which seeks to perpetuate their myths. They indeed thrive on human lack of intellectual rigor, a failure to understand beyond the obvious.

People have heard the key words 'scam' 'pyramid' 'scheme' and 'cult' so often that the words seem to lose their significance as the hearer juxtapose these against the key words that the Amway cult initiators use to define themselves: 'business' 'selling' 'system' 'legitimate' and 'opportunity'. Amway attempts to define themselves and create a cognitive dissonance in the minds of humanity. They arrogantly brag that they will always seek to define themselves and not allow the critics and naysayers to do this for them.

Amway and the other cults benefit when people generally remain in the relative bliss of ignorance about cult affairs. To describe what and who they are by simply describing it as a scheme, a scam, or a pyramid doesn't tell the whole story. Most people do not go beyond these mental images. They live in a state of mind that the cult actually can turn to their advantage. People when confronted by an adherent of the cult in a recruitment scenario usually doesn't have a deep intellectual understanding of what Amway really is, only shallow ideas that take the form of the keywords words scam, scheme, pyramid, and cult. There is no depth of understanding behind these adjectives that the recruiter can psychologically deflect, minimalize and thereby use the prospect's own ignorance and lack of deeper understanding against him or her. They brush aside the allegations of being a cult in an opening salvo in their war to completely invert reality in their prospect's mind. The rest of the deceit then becomes much easier, and the prospect is psychologically disarmed for want of deeper understanding.

The prospect who hasn't graduated to a keen deeper intellectual understanding of whom and what they are facing presents the cult with an opening they can exploit, much the same way the German military forces exploited the Maginot line in their blitzkrieg against France during their western campaign in World War II. Indeed an understanding of Amway's factual history is necessary to go beyond the superficial.

Amway Cult recruiters quickly try to define and dispel their prospect's misgivings. They seek to reinforce that their affairs are a business or a religion, not an insane cult like the Branch Dividians. Amway apologist recruiters describe how great of an opportunity Amway is and promote this myth in the 'reality inverting' and 'thought stopping' jargon that author David Brear succinctly describes within his writing.

It must be absolutely understood that this myth made truth is without a doubt criminal intent to defraud as Amway recruiters deny the Amway financial holocaust.

Failure to graduate to the higher levels of cult understanding and enlightenment then allow the cults to define themselves in terms with which they choose. The cults want their detractors to at least, in part, believe the 'myths' that they spread about themselves as 'truth' instead. I've seen this phenomena within the opinions of ex-Amway adherents turned critic. If you doubt me, I have to ask readers and critics what they really know about Nutrilite? There is something so much more pernicious about cults and when they succeed in keeping a level playing field by having their reality inverting myths believed, even the critics themselves can be fooled by the propaganda. Nutrilite being just an example, one that will be further explored in more detail in future articles on this blog and sister blogs: Quxitar Cult Intervention and Amway Soap Box.

David Brear says that cults seek to get their detractors--and even the cult experts--arguing amongst themselves; They seek to masquerade and infiltrate cult think tanks and thereby define themselves as not being a cult. Scientology has infiltrated and taken over one anti-cult organizations that was originally set up to describe Scientology deceit. To some degree, Amway has attempted to subvert in exactly the same manner with certain cult experts secretly being Amway apologists themselves. David Brear has been more intimately involved in the struggle with these reality inverting cult expert frauds in Europe than I. Isn't it good that we can come to some understanding by reading his thoughts instead of simply assuming that we know, when we really are mentally shallow on the issue.

Understanding of and resistance to the development of cults is much farther advanced in European nations because the people have more experience (and fear) of pernicious cults and the human destruction they can wrought in the present because of the history of what they have wrought in the past. Intellectually advanced people have a 'never again' view of organizations that promote their myths as reality.

Americans have limited experience, allowing cults to develop and achieve their evils. What many Americans discover about Amway is very superficial, and therefore allow a niche in their psychological armor to exist that the Amway cultists seek to exploit when ever they can. Their slogan: "Some will, some will not" points out their strategy. They seek to find those that are open to accepting their reality inverting logic. When they encounter someone who has no true depth of understanding beyond just superficial thinking that Amway is a scam or a scheme, the recruiter quickly seeks to sweep these aside as mere misconceptions; and to some degree, they succeed, at least in those “that will.”

Quixtar Cult Intervention--as well as my other anti-cult blogs--seek to keep pushing the intellectual bar of understanding forward. David Brear's extensively researched and painstakingly written articles do just this. David, nor I look back, but keep pushing the bar forward because Amway seeks to drive a wedge between the critics if they can. The big three continue to pursue their 'reality inverting' misconceptions which succeed to some degree in making continued cult recruitment possible. They seek to define who they are--even in the minds of their detractors. Word Up!


If you enjoy reading David Brear, there is more of his work that can be found by clicking on these links:

Now What Would George Orwell Have Made of the 'Amway' Myth? By David Brear

How Amway Fraud Works: The Bakker's Advance Fee Fraud

Amway: How the Mind of the Oppressed is a Weapon in the Hands of the Oppressor

The Esoteric Structure of Amway

Amway Apologist Inhabit the Same Intellectual Bunker

Amway: If It Walks Like a Duck

Cultism and Hypnosis

Amway Apologists Narcissistic Personalities! Amway Apologist Cult Like Themselves

Freedom is Slavery

Amway Described as “Premeditated Closed Market Swindle”

The Horror of Traveling Sales Crews Revisited and A Condemnation of the Modern Direct Selling Industry!

(The beautiful young girl in the picture to the right is the 18 year old daughter of Phil Ellenbecker, Malinda. She died on March 25, 1999 from a massive skull fracture when the van she was in flipped over twice while traveling at 81 mph. The crash near Janesville, Wisconsin left a total of 7 dead and 5 maimed for life. Phil's email to me is at the bottom of today's post. Please see the online memorial to her by clicking here. Make sure you have your speakers turned on because the beautiful music and words are very moving and brought tears to my eyes.)

Before the advent of the modern age, direct selling was a necessary and desired business model. Pioneers living out on the edge of the wilderness many times looked forward to that occasional peddler bringing any number of products and goods from the east to the homestead. General stores did not exactly put these peddlers out of business who began to specialize. Bible salesmen appeared as well as people selling hard to find beauty aids and various other hard to find items.

One of my favorite movies of the past few years was "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou" where John Goodman played a disreputable Bible salesman in the Great Depression era who gave a good beating to two of the key characters of the movie with a tree limb and then squished a toad with his bare hand. This movie may have been a farce, but these types of direct selling characters really existed then and in many ways still exist today.

I see the modern age MLM sales tactics to be an evolution of these last century Bible salesmen who used questionable tactics and outright deceit to make the sale. These early Bible salesman, for instance, would prospect folks who had recently suffered a death in the family. They might approach a widow and con her into buying a Bible that they claimed their loved one had ordered before their untimely death.

Quixtar representatives are taught to size up their prospective "marks" in a similar fashion. The Quixtar training materials teach questionable methods to identify character flaws or weaknesses which will facilitate the sale of their plan which for the most part is a product based pyramid scheme con job. These modern day multi-level marketers like to call themselves direct sellers as if they were a throw back to the good old days of the homestead peddler. How often do you get a knock on the door and are asked to buy products offered by a MLM direct seller? Probably not very often because door to door selling is not generally done by MLM scam artists. These so called sellers are more interested in finding people who will sit down in front of their easel board and see the plan for making it big in their business by buying the products and recruiting others to do the same. This can hardly be considered direct selling but direct recruitment! Many of these MLM scam business people are not true direct sellers but hope to benefit by the self consumption of company products they hope to inspire the newly recruited rep to make.

What about the traveling sales crews who are actually direct sellers? Here again, there are many problems. The mostly young people on these sales crews are many times taken advantage of themselves by the company and people they work for while they go out and take advantage of the door to door residents who many times swallow deceitful claims and buy the magazine subscriptions and products. To make sales, these door to door sellers might claim that they live a few blocks away or are trying to work their way through school. People fall for these deceits the same way people seeing the Quixtar plan to success are also hoodwinked. Many times the Quixtar reps like to pass themselves off as Quixtar success stories sporting nice suits and jewelry. They may look the part, but are anything but successful; their appearance only furthering the deception. I have described how questionable misrepresentations are made to talk prospects into climbing aboard the Quixtar mother ship and how the training materials are basically propaganda to keep the new recruits buying the overpriced products, the training materials (known as tools) and believing in the success dream.

The traveling sales crews are despicable, the MLM schemes and scams represented by the DSA are despicable, and even the Vacuum selling industry (like Kirby and Rainbow) are fraught with problems and are considered despicable by many. There is very little good that can be said about modern day direct sellers or con artists which misrepresent themselves as direct sellers, a common thread that runs through them all.

There are different trade associations that represent all these businesses who hope to find some degree of respectability amongst one another. Of course there is the Direct Selling Association which Jon Taylor of the Consumer Awareness Institute believe have been infiltrated by questionable MLM product pyramid scheme companies like Amway, Herbalife, YourTravelBiz, and Mannatech. The traveling sales crew companies also have their own trade associations also which are described below by Mr Ellenbecker.

I realize that I made a earlier post which described the traveling sales industry, but I felt the industry should be revisited so I might provide readers with more information on this very questionable business which takes advantage of its recruits and encourages young people to leave parents, family and friends for a life on the road. These traveling sales crews many times are traveling dens of corruption, sex and drugs.

I received an email from Phil Ellenbecker who I am going to copy and paste directly below which links information related to the traveling sales industry that AGCI readers might want to further investigate. I support the efforts to expose any situation that takes advantage of young people and in some cases has directly or indirectly caused the death, rape and murder of these youths who are exposed daily to the dregs of society and dangers of the road. Parents and family are the secondary victims of these traveling caravans from hell as well as the people who open their door to some unsavory gypsy sellers.

********************************

To whom it may concern,

I would like to provide you with more information on Kirby, the Direct Selling Association, and 'traveling sales crews.'

Southwestern and the DSA:
http://www.travelingsalescrews.info/southwestern%20company.html

Southwestern and the DSA lobbying against a bill in Wisconsin to protect kids and homeowners
from the crimes committed by traveling sales crews:
http://www.travelingsalescrews.info/wisconsin%20legislation%202007.html

Kirby: a brief chronology of crimes:
http://www.travelingsalescrews.info/kirby%20vacuum%20crime%20research%20%20021908.htm
Traveling sales crews:
Specific to door to door magazine and cleaner sales:
Wanted Page:
http://www.travelingsalescrews.info/wanted.html

Traveling sales crews:
Specific to door to door magazine and cleaner sales:
http://www.travelingsalescrews.info/door%20to%20door%20sales%20profiles.html

Featured Articles:
Houston Press:
What Mainstream Publishers Don't Want You to Know About Door-to-Door Magazine Sales:
http://houstonpress.com/2008-07-17/news/what-mainstream-publishers-don-t-want-you-to-know-about-door-to-door-magazine-sales/1
New York Times:
For Youths, a Grim Tour on Magazine Crews:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/21/us/21magcrew.html?ex=1329714000&en=be91678aaac7038d&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

New York Times:
Life on a magazine crew - Video
http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=cc441f37425c1403e086b3f96ab5c21bf296dc36

Our battle to protect homeowners and children from the door to door sales industry is mainly focused
on the National Field Selling Association: www.nfsa.com the trade group for most of the magazine and cleaner door to door
sales companies, and the Magazine Publishers of America: http://www.magazine.org the trade group for most of the
magazine publishers in this country. Extreme crime and exploitation of children, young adults, and homeowners is occurring in this immoral
and corrupt industry.

The NFSA and the MPA are separate trade groups and not associated with the DSA.
However, the DSA, Kirby and Southwestern have now taken up arms against us and
legislation in the state of Wisconsin that was created to protect Wisconsin kids and homeowners
from crimes associated with the door to door sales industry.

Thank you for your article and your time.

Sincerely,
Phil Ellenbecker
Director
Dedicated Memorial Parents Group
www.travelingsalescrews.info
www.dedicatedmemorial.org