What should I do if I was cheated by a door-to-door marketing company I worked for over the Summer?

Question

This last Summer I worked for a 'marketing' company that involved selling Comcast products door-to-door. They recruited right out of my college, promising large amounts of easy money. They told us that last Summer, everyone made at least $14,000. They also told us things like we would get 4th of July off, that we would get good area sheets with customer information to make selling door-to-door much easier.

The way they laid it out, is we made $25 a sale; however $5 from every sale would come in a 'back-end' cheque we would receive a month after the end of 'selling season' in the Fall, provided we worked all Summer. We were told that we should easily be making $15,000-$25,000 this Summer. Fair enough, I agreed, as did many of my friends and acquaintances.

A friend of mine was made a 'manager', meaning he made money off every sale all of the people he recruited (including me) made (he had recruited several of my friends also throughout the school year for this job). We started selling in one city, and the area they gave us was so terrible we weren't making any sales, so they moved us, with 2 hours notice, to a completely different city 6 hours away. Once there, they forced us to be combined with anther 'team', and stripped our manager of all the money they promised he would be making from those he recruited for the company. On top of that, they decided to take away their promise for taking him on the 'company cruise' in early January.

The way the system worked, if you made 300 or more sales, you would get a $3,000 bonus. Also, if you only took 3 days off during the Summer, excluding sundays which we had off anyway, you would get an additional $1,000 bonus. THey said we could choose any 3 days we wanted. They also told us we would get 4th of July off, and it wouldn't count as one of our 3 days. A few days before the 4th of July, they realized that a lot of people were going to make the bonus and were willing to work 4th of July, so they decided that 4th of July would no longer be a free day off, but would count as a mandatory day that would count against our 3 days for the bonus. Because of this, a lot of people lost the $1,000, because they already had their 3 days planned out for siblings graduation/weddings/etc.

They also taught us selling techniques that were extremely dishonest and unethical. Basically, the price we were giving the customer was good for one year, and then their price would skyrocket. We were trained that if asked how much it would go up, to act ignorant and say we didn't know, but to play it down and divert their attention away from the issue, even though we knew the exact figure it would increase.

Again, they assured us that we would all make at least $14,000. However, when everyone got over 200 sales for the Summer and were closing in on 300 (the benchmark where the company would give us a $3,000 bonus), they began giving out area sheets that had been covered 2 weeks before, thus making it impossible to make any sales, and preventing almost everyone from making the promised bonus.

The problem was, everyone wanted their back-end cheque, so everyone was forced to keep working, even under the conditions of having area impossible to sell in, using unethical and dishonest selling techniques, having the company go back on their word on how much they would pay certain 'managers', taking away 4th of July and forcing us to count it as a day off so many lost out on bonuses, and with the knowledge that they clearly lied about everyone making a minimum of $14,000 the summer before (which we should have been more wary of the fact not a single person who supposedly sold last year returned to work a second Summer).

My question is, if anyone knows, what can be done in this situation. There are a lot of very unhappy people, and we didn't sign anything about job parameters. The owner of the company is a very high-profile individual who owns a large sports team, and is very prominent in this larger area.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

You're a college student or grad.  Didn't something strike you eirher up front or fairly early on that something was wrong here?  Did you do the math, and realize that at $25 per sale, the worst person the year before would have had to make 560 sales to make $14K, which is over 6 sales a day if you worked 7 days a week all summer?  

If nothing else, learn from this experience so you're not easy pickings for getting scammed repeatedly all your life.  Frankly, I wouldn't even bet that the owner of the company is this high-profile person, especially if you knew that because the person who told you all the other lies told you that too.

If you have nothing in writing, you'd have a real hard time proving that you're owed anything.

Answer 2

Make yourselves the maximum possible nuisance to this company, with the goal of extracting a "get out of here" payment. Gather up as many people in the same boat as you as possible. Then inform the company that each and every one of you are going to do the following:

(1) Report them to the state's Attorney General;

(2) File a claim for fraud damages in small claims court;

(3) Report them to the Better Business Bureau;

(4) Pass along your experience to the places where they recruited you (e.g., your college, to make it harder and more expensive for them to find next year's crop of victims).

However, don't expect to win this battle legally. Rather, your goal should be to get a modest settlement from them to make you stop harrassing them -- a couple of thousand dollars maybe.

And please consider this a life lesson for the future. You should have done a much better job of nailing down these details before accepting the assignment.

Answer 3

Sorry but there is nothing you can do. I'm sure they didn't put in writing the $14,000, and I'm sure they can argue that IN THEORY you can make that amount of money "IF" you are lucky. This companies have it all worked out in their favor, they have lawyers making sure they can LEGALLY get away from it.

Now what you can do is expose them and make use of your right of speech. Make sure everybody in collage know about this, and get all the other guys put a complain to ban this people from Collage campus. I'm sure you would have like to hear from the students of the previous summer.

And learn from this: there is no money or future in door to door sales and marketing scams; if it's sound too good to be true then you know there is a scam.

Answer 4

Here is a great site to post a complaint http://www.youbyte.com  go to the complaint Dept link and paste your story!  There are many door to door sales rip offf companies, like the Southwestern company.  They bring foreign kids in and tell them that they can make tons of money selling books door to door.  They are all scams!

Just make sure that your company has put your money in an interest bearing account it they intend to withhold it until a month after summer ends!  If NOT DEMAND interest on YOUR money!

Answer 5

go on a pay phone, dial he's number and when he answers, or the answering machine comes on, just breath. call back 10 minutes later and do the same thing. wait 15 more minutes, then say "snuffol's going to kill you" call back 5 minutes later saying "hold on, i got to take care of something... then get a friend to scream from a distance. then call back 2 minutes later and say " i'm at the door... i'm opening the door... here i come. and that's all. as a heads up, it's really hard not to laugh. i hope i helped.