Nothing intimidates Barry, LC elder
PioLog classified ad misleads student
by Beth BonadyLC students are among some of the Oregon residents who have been taken in by a "Help Wanted" classified ad scam.
The Oregonian, Willamette Week, and even LC's own Pioneer Log have been running ads like this:
Help Wanted - Accepting applications replacing summer workers. Filling p/t position for Fall semester. 10.25/hr.apt to start. Flexible hours - can be arranged around class schedule. No exp. nec. Extensive training available. All majors may apply. Call Mon - Thurs., 10:00 - 3:00.
Sounds good, right? "Wrong," says Bonnie Tompkins, a senior at LC. Tompkins warns that this ad and many like it are misleading and are nothing but scams.
Tompkins got involved last summer in the organization "Vector Marketing," which runs the above ad. She did not respond to the ad, but was hired as a secretary for the company.
From this insider's perspective, she was able to discover how Vector Marketing scams respondents.
She was hired to answer the phone when interested people called. She was instructed not to answer any questions people might have, such as "What exactly do I sell?" or "How much will I make?" Instead of giving direct answers, she had to reply, "I don't know exactly. I'm just a secretary. All I know is that you'll sell 'household goods.'" Tompkins then had to instruct callers to come to an interview at a scheduled time. What callers didn't know was that the "interview" was actually a group interview, held with sometimes 50 interested people present.
If you were hired, you finally got to learn exactly what you were selling and how much you had to sell. What do people sell? "Knives," Tompkins said. To make actual money doing this, you have to sell a lot of knives. Every time you make a sales pitch, or "presentation" to a friend or family member, you make $10.25. But to make real money, you have to sell knife sets. And at $800 a set, this isn't easy. And, Tompkins explained, if you sell anything, you automatically lose the $10.25 you make doing the presentation. For example, if you sell $1200 worth of products, you are only allowed to keep $120. You don't get all the money you would have made from each $10.25 presentation. "$120 for all those hours of presentation just isn't worth it," said Tompkins.
"You basically have to sell tens of thousands of dollars in knives to make any substantial money doing this," she noted.
Her tips for LC students to avoid classified ad scams like Vector Marketing? "If you call for a job through an ad and the person who answers can't give you specific information, take it as a sign that it's a scam. If an ad sounds too good to be true, it probably is."
