Is it a cult? I've had a long think about this and here's my two penneth worth.
My JW family choose to believe I no longer go to meetings because I have been stumbled in the past, resulting in my 'temporary' loss of faith in God, but they choose to believe that given time I will come back to 'The Truth'. They are OK with this and are loving and sympathetic towards me.
However, losing faith in God is one thing. If I were to tell them that I think their GB are unispired men running a glorified publishing company using them all as unpaid labour, I doubt if I would be treated with such gentle sympathy and understanding. Lovely as they all are, they are trained to never tolerate such apostate thinking so I constantly bite my tongue when I see my loved ones with health problems dragging their poor tired bodies out in field service auxilliary pioneering and 'placing' WT literature when they should be at home resting.
So, I feel reasonably comfortable knowing they realise I have doubts about God but instinctively I know never under any circumstances to critisize their GB. I don't think I need to spell it out whether I think it is a cult or not.