DBERR vs Amway UK Case - Decision Imminent

As reported previously, the court case regarding DBERR's petition to shutdown Amway UK concluded on the 6th December and initially a judgement was expected around the end of that month.

We noted that our search keywords for the blog began to be dominated by terms referring to the UK case, representing hundreds of people looking for any updates or any type of news regarding the decision. There were no comminications from the Amway Corp, none whatsoever, not even something along the lines of an update saying "that they are still awaiting the decision and we'll make it known when we do"....until very recently.

A number of very rightly concerned and anxious IBO's began emailing Amway UK, complaining about the lack of communication regarding the case and wanting an update on it. Amway UK must have received plenty of them as within days an email was issued to the leaders of Amway UK. That email surfaced on the truth about amway forum and so for the benefit of those who may not be aware of it's existence, the email is quoted below:


"Dear Leaders,

In light of enquiries from some of our leaders requesting news on the court case, I would like to take a moment to let you know the up-to-date position.

In addition, we have a number of key business initiatives planned for 2008 to inform you about at this stage.

Please feel free to share the information in this letter with ABOs in your group if you think it's appropriate right now and if they've been asking about the outcome of the court case. It's our plan to send out a Business Bulletin on Friday to all ABOs with a similar update.

As you are aware, the court hearings in the case brought against us by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR, formerly the DTI) finished on 6 December and we were told to expect a written judgment some time in January.

We have not yet received a ruling from the court and although our lawyers check on a daily basis we have no indication as to when the ruling will be given. We are hopeful it will be announced before the end of this month.

This letter is to let you know about the arrangements we are making to ensure that you hear the result directly from Amway, and also to reassure you that we will do everything possible to ensure any disruption to the business is kept to an absolute minimum, once we know the outcome.

As soon as the ruling is announced in court, and we've informed our staff, we will telephone all UK Leaders (Business Consultants) to inform you of the result. The call will be brief, and will be followed up by a more in-depth email to you and a subsequent email to all registered ABOs later that day. We will try our very best to ensure that you hear the outcome first from Amway.

We are of course hopeful of a judgment in our favour, based on the evidence we gave in court and everything we have done to address the concerns that BERR (formerly the DTI) raised with us. Our legal team strongly disputed their case and the selective analysis of our figures they used to support it. We are nevertheless taking responsible steps to be fully prepared for any eventuality.

In the event of what we would call a negative judgment, let us reassure you that Amway is committed to staying in this market. Amway never left a market in the 20th century and it is not going to do so in the 21st.

Please note that throughout this period the changes to our business rules remain in place. The moratorium on sponsoring that was put in place on 4 May 2007 continues. Deciding to lift the moratorium will be a business decision based on our new retail, marketing and training programme being in place . This will be some months away and is not linked to the timing of the legal action being concluded. On this issue, we will of course take into account any comments the judge makes in his ruling.

With so much happening, it's our intention to meet with all Business Consultant leaders face-to-face in informal groups, ideally within 10 working days of the judgment, at our Milton Keynes offices, subject to your availability. The objective - to discuss key training, support and marketing strategies for the first half of 2008.

We will continue working on building this business, and improving the support we offer ABOs in training and retailing, starting with the announcement of extra 'Retail With Confidence' workshops to cope with demand - the initial 12 February workshops are fully booked. We're also bringing forward Retail Coaching and training for BCs, CRCs and RCs, on-line training on products and branding, and new Product Introduction Packs.

A note will be sent to you under separate cover soon with all the information you need about the face to face meetings. You are invited at our request, as our guests, and expenses will be covered by Amway UK. We will be in touch soon with more specific details.

I look forward to seeing you in person very soon.

With best regards,

Tom Denham Director and General Manager, Amway UK Limited"


The decision to date is yet to be known, but word around the net is that it is not far away, perhaps sometime this week. We'll continue to keep an eye out for any further news or developments and post them as soon as possible.

There is also some major happenings regarding Amway India also. Massive changes to the Amway business looks set to be made, as a result of the government investigation there too. We'll do a seperate blog post on that in the future.

Amway UK to be Shutdown? Part 1

Amway UK is being taken to the High Court by Britain's DBERR (Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform) which was formerly known as Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). The DBERR is Australia's equivalent to the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) and the USA's FTC (Federal Trade Commission).

To those who have been following the Amway/DBERR case, this news will be of no surprise. However, for the benefit of any new readers, as there have been so many developments and elements to the case, too many of which to post here!, we recommend you visit http://www.mlmleads.eu/ which provides an abundant amount of information regarding the case, all in chronological order.

To outline the case briefly though, basically the DBERR conducted an investigation of Amway UK, and some of it's AMO's (Amway Motivational Organisations) namely Britt World Wide (BWW), IBS and Network 21 and raised serious concerns as to how the business was being promoted, it's business practices and the misrepresentations that were being made. So serious were the allegations, the DBERR lodged a petition to wind-up the company. In response to this, Amway sanctioned it's entire UK sales force and has since made major changes to it's business over the last six months, in the hope of satisfying the DBERR that it had addressed it's complaints and thus prevent the petition to wind-up the company from proceeding. It didn't work, the case to shutdown Amway went to court yesterday.

Although the Amway UK business makes up only a tiny percentage of Amway's revenue, a drop in the ocean really, the ramifications are far more reaching and it could very well be the beginning of the end of the Amway business on a global scale, including Australia.

The following news article covers the the first day of the court proceedings. The DBERR is certainly not backward in coming forward with their claims and revelations as a result of their investigation.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article2951266.ece

Some pretty shocking stuff eh?

There's a lot to take in, so we'll discuss the contents of the article in detail and how this relates to the Australian Amway experience in Part 2. Stay tuned!