Amway sells G & H Body Shampoo and G & H Lotion 250 ml through its ABOs (Amway Business Owners) for Rs 395 each. Believe it or not, the real prices of these products are just Rs 51.49 and Rs 34.19 respectively.
A list of 119 products marketed by Amway, that was seized by the Crime Branch Economic Offences Wing, during the raid at the firm’s offices in Kochi recently, clearly exposes this. The list comprises the product code, name, real price and selling price of products.
“Almost all the products are sold up to ten times more than their original prices. It has been revealed that around 49.75 per cent of the price paid by the end consumer goes as incentives or commission to ABOs in the up line of the market chain. We suggest the public to cross-check the prices of Amway products with those of similar products of other companies. In spite of any value addition, the products are heavily priced,” said P A Valsan, SP, Economic Offences Wing of the Crime Branch.
What’s more surprising is that only a few of the products marketed by Amway are brought from abroad. “Most of the products are outsourced from various Indian companies including Sarvotham Care and Naiza Laboratories in Himachal Pradesh, Soft Gel Health Care, Chennai, Aura Personal Products, Utharanchal, Aero Pharma, Mumbai, Fiabila Limited, Raigarh, Avalon Cosmetics, Mumbai and the KLF Nirmal coconut oil based at Irinjalakuda. In short, Amway procures products from domestic companies and sells them here at six to ten-fold prices,” said DySP P P Sadanandan, who has done extensive research into money chain frauds in the country.
He is also the investigating officer in the Tycoon Empire money chain case. Police said the generation plan being followed by Amway is the most dangerous of all the multi-level marketing plans in terms of the percentage of people losing money in the scheme. “Anyone can sponsor any number of persons as his direct down line. The unlimited facilitation of enrollment and staircase commission structure makes the plan arithmetically infeasible. (To be concluded)