I responded to a craigslist ad for a telemarketer saying the agents were making between 15-30$ an hour and was contacted by Rick Schwartz, a short creepy little man who hired me after just a very short phone interview. I came to a seedy little rented office that is just one room which he described on the ad as a "state of the art call center"... The several people in the initial 'interview' with me never showed up again. He posts these ads on craigslist about every week because not many people last more than a couple days or weeks.
I was told that I could choose to be payed in 100% commission (70$ per program I sold or 80$ per program if I was in the office M-F) or hourly which is 8$ an hour with an extra 20$ for every program I sold. He did a very good job of convincing me that this program was something really great that would benefit students. So when it came time to start making calls he asked if I was going to be doing commission or hourly and I asked him what his opinion was (big mistake) and he told me everyone in the call center was now on commission (also a lie I later found out).
So I went with the commission and for the first two weeks I worked a total of about 72 hours in which time I only sold 5 programs and made a grand total of 370... Which works out to about 5.13$ an hour. While on the phone with someone I was giving the sales pitch to, he got onto this website and told me about it. Needless to say I had never actually seen or used the program and was still under the delusion that I was helping kids raise their SAT scores.
Yesterday I heard another agent in the call center telling a customer that they would not be charged for the material until the end of the 60 day "trial period" which is totally untrue, we submit the credit chard information as soon as we get it. When I asked her about this she told me at first Rick told everyone not to do that then he later pulled her aside and said that as long as she would back him up if they were ever questioned then to do whatever it took to sell the materials...
This company is dishonest and fraudulent and they are able to bypass the national Do Not Call list because they are a "pending 501 (c) 3 non-profit corporation" and supposedly give a portion of their proceeds to some sort of charity. I have read in other reports on here that customers were being charged 120$ for the program but we are charging here in this office (we are a sub-office to the one in San diego) a total of 200$ for the program. I feel guilty daily about what I'm doing but I have been looking for a job out here for four months and this is all that turned up so far.
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