“Chasing The Dream” Some Feel Sellers Exploit Friendship It Can Be A Fine Line Between Deception And Salesmanship

Will and Lisa Muncey were lonely newcomers to Spokane when they were befriended by another couple.

But when the Munceys declined to join Amway, they were abandoned by their new friends.

“My wife was extremely hurt,” Will Muncey said.

Old friends offered to let Debbie Hoover use their pool on a hot August day. But first, Hoover and her sweaty children had to sit through a two-hour sales pitch.

Other Spokane residents tell similar stories about the ways they were approached by Amway distributors. Some were contacted by long-lost friends; others by strangers who used lines suitable for a singles bar.

“He said he liked my Nova,” said Jim Morris, who was approached in an auto-parts store.

“He said to my husband, ‘Why don’t we get together for a movie,”’ said Jackie Gelhar, who thought the man she met at NorthTown Mall just needed a friend.

“He invited us to a cocktail party,” said Russ Sheekes, explaining how he stumbled into a room filled with 35 Amway distributors.

One Spokane pastor presented the Amway plan to a grieving woman who had called for help making funeral arrangements.

Many distributors won’t admit they’re selling Amway.

“I won’t say Amway because people, as soon as they hear Amway, they shut you off,” said Shane Haggerty of Airway Heights, who became a distributor in March. “I tell them I’m in my own franchising business.”

Deception is forbidden by Amway’s code of ethics and discouraged by most successful distributors.

But some training tapes made by successful distributors offer tips for avoiding the question, “Is it Amway?” Such advice is especially common in older tapes still in circulation.

New distributors are taught to go through their high school and college yearbooks, church directories and Christmas card lists until they’ve come up with at least 100 people they can contact.

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