1. Mr Sci Fi

    Mr Sci Fi New Member

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    Vector Marketing: Pure scum.

    Discussion in 'The Lounge' started by Mr Sci Fi, May 10, 2008.

    For those of you who've never heard of it, Vector Marketing is a company that markets Cutco, both part of the parent company Alcas. The main ploy of Vector is to post really deceptive ads around college campuses or websites that state in bold: "EARN $18/BASE."

    The allure sounds appealing. $18.00 an hour base pay? What does the job entail? Well, when you apply you learn that there are very limited positions (despite the fact that they post an ad EVERY DAY) and you may not be called for an interview. Well, a day later they call to schedule you for an interview... at 6:00 PM Saturday night. You try to get any information about the job over the phone but they simply urge you to ask at the interview. Next, they ask you to arrive on time and wear proper dress, because apparently this isn't a widely practiced standard for most job interviews.

    You arrive in some back alley of the ghetto to a really decrepit ****hole that they call an office. You enter the must smelling dung pot and learn that you are one of several applicants for an extremely limited amount of positions. The interview is the biggest joke one could imagine. You spend about fifteen minutes filling out preliminary paperwork, and are then called into the "Office" where the manager asks you your hobbies and how much family you have in the area (Red flag should be going off at this point).

    So, after this waste of five minutes you have to sit an hour in a really uncomfortable chair and watch some moron slice ropes with kitchen knives. It's so impressive that the straight edge knife does not cut as well as the Double D edge Cutco uses. Well, yeah... could somebody please inform this idiot that straight edges are used for chopping, not slicing?

    This is obviously Vector's ploy to "sell" you on the company. They try to enamor you with lucrative articles that you aren't allowed to read, probably because they have nothing to do with Vector at all. You then learn that your job requires you to meet with contacts and you are going to sell their knives. Sounds cool, right? Well, not really. That $18.00 an hour that was so appealing turns out to be $18.00 per appointment. But whatever, they obviously are so backed up with customers that they will practically flood you with appointments.

    Vector tries to buy you by tossing around this extremely flexible schedule, vacation perks and the potential to make a lot of cash in front of these naive high school and college students. And you look around and yup... there's rarely anybody over 21.

    So the manager calls you into the office and says you're one of the few that he is going to hire. Great! You're pumped, and convinced you've got a bright future ahead of you. So you're required to attend the 15 hour training seminar the following week. You're reminded to dress professionally again... because that's obviously not a given around those parts.

    You return to the same cesspool to find everyone from your interview is there, plus some. Hmm. I guess their extremely limited number of positions was around 15. You're then forced to sit 6 hours straight in these ass-raper chairs WITHOUT a break. You learn about the history of Cutco and the knives, and you're basically not told squat about the job yet. When do I get my appointments? How many will I have during the week? Hey, where's my W4 forms?

    It's only until the very end of this brutally boring training seminar that you are given an assignment to help practice networking... You are to go home and write a list of every person you know, from 150 - 1,000.

    So you endure this tedious assignment and return only to wait another few hours before you find out that appointments are not pre-set by you. You are expected to pitch your sale of these ridiculously overpriced knives to your family in an attempt to help you earn scholarship money, so they're almost obligated to buy on impulse. You have ten days to sell as much as you can in order to get promoted and the potential for scholarship opportunities. What they DON'T tell you is that the manager gets 25% commission off your 10%, and the more you are promoted the less he makes. But if you ARE one of the few lucky individuals to sell that much, you are forced into a promotion where you're compensated even less for work not even as appealing. If you AREN'T that lucky, which will be the case, you will be exhausted of family to hawk $1,000 knives to and so you are forced to pester them for referrals... whom you need to call and try to set up an appointment with. But remember, Vector said this is NOT a telemarketing or direct sales group... yet, what do you call calling total strangers trying to sell them crap they don't really need?

    So, you're just like... whatever... at this point. You figure you'll just give it a try for a few days. If it doesn't work out, what's the cost to you but time? Well, how about $150? Because that's what it costs to get started. Yup. You've read correctly. You are required to purchase a sample set for $150 before you can start. This is refundable initially, until you try to return it and find the office has closed down or they make up an excuse why they won't take the knives back. So at that point you're like, whatever... again. I have these cool knives. Best in the market. For only $150. Not a total loss.

    Not really.

    Turns out you did some research and found Vector was LYING to you and teaching you to LIE to your friends and family. They claim Cutco uses 440 A surgical steel... which is the best money can be. Wrong. 440 C is the best. They also say their products are 100% dishwasher safe, again a load of bollocks, as you find out when the manual you receive with your knives urged you to only hand wash the blades. What's even worse is they downplay their competitor, Henckels, by making the customer believe their knives are inferior and priced more. Again, not the case. Henckels has no set to compare. Cutco simply adds up each individual knife and adds in a wooden block, which will naturally be more money. What they also don't tell you is that Cutco makes stamped knives while Henckel's makes forged... and as any steel expert knows, forged is the better quality.

    This should get your red flag flying, if it wasn't already shady enough that the manager was teaching shifty sales techniques, such as teaching you to nod and smile when offering a product so the customer will think yes, removing the ability for a customer to say they don't need the product by asking them what they'd use it for, grossing them out by telling them how their old knives have maggots in them, and forcing you to leach referrals out of them by making them believe you will earn scholarship money. Hey, dangle the poor college kids in front of their sympathetic family.. they'll buy. What a joke.

    What angers me the most about this company is the fact that they specifically target college students because of the likelihood that their family will buy from them to support them and they can get away with claiming them "independent contractors" so they don't have to pay them for training, phone calls that need to be made every morning and night, mandatory meetings, travel, gas and other expenses. They are predators in every sense of the word.

    So I did my research and felt inclined to inform my fellow co-workers about Vector... because they're only high school students. Well, the manager didn't seem too happy and the guy won't quit calling me. Sorry, but you're not going to get $150 out of me.

    You can find more information about these scumbags here:

    http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/84672/the_truth_about_vector_marketing_group.html?cat=3

    http://www.indeed.com/forum/cmp/Vector-Marketing/05390c183c137e12787e43

    http://www.corporatenarc.com/vector-marketing-scam.php

    http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news03/save.html

    So, do you think there's anyway I can bait these pricks? The articles I handed out to people seemed to rile them up a bit... but I want them to suffer.
     

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