Not enough info has been here linking Midwest Marketing Concepts to GQ imports. Do a search on consumer complaintss for GQ imports to see how many people are getting scammed by this Scam Artist group.
I will give a long description of my experience with them.
First, I found them on Monster.com, applied and received an email back from them to contact Tammy Myles. I called and set up an interview with them. She asked me if I would be willing to come in on Monday. I reminded her that Monday was Veterans day as I knew alot of offices would be closed. She said that they would be open and that I could come in to get a head start. She also stated that it was very important that I have my own car, because if I didn't I could access them by public transportation. Seemed odd to me because North ave isnt that far away, but I didnt give it much thought.
I show up for my interview and find that there is already two other people in the office waiting to be interviewed. The office isn't in its own building but more in a group of little offices. Walking in the place doesn't look very professional. Peeling paint, shabby flooring, the infamous plasma blasting music videos, and on the wall it doesn't say Midwest Marketing, it says GQ imports. More on that later.
As I'm waiting for the interview in the reception area with the other two applicants, I'm given a paper to fill out with questions such as my interests and hobbies. Also it asks to list what kind of car I drive. This seemed odd to me as well and I wrote it off as needing to know so they don't tow in the private lot.
The first person gets called in, and in a matter of minutes exits. The second was the same amount of time. Now I was called. The lady that greeted me seemed very nice. She asked again about my interests. Said that she already had went over my resume with her partners and that they just wanted to get a feel for the applicants today and that it was just a preliminary interview. Asked my salary requirements which I stated with my background in Customer Service I would require about 35k. She said that wouldn't be a problem. She ended the interview by saying that they only wanted to hire about 5-6 customer service reps by the end of the process and that if I was chosen for another interview that I would be contacted by the end of the day for a full day interview tomorrow.
Around 4:30pm I was contacted again by Tammy and was told that I had made it to the next round of interviews and that I should show up for a full day interview tomorrow and that I should be there at 10am.
I never heard of a full day interview so I thought they must really going to be thorough with the candidates. I show up for the 10am interview and there is 11 of us there for our interview. The head guy comes out and does a roll call and briefly goes over how their company does a hands on marketing with all sorts of big name companies. Regular advertising is dead. Blah blah blah. He then goes in back and starts calling the applicants one by one. As they are called they go in back briefly and then pop back out with a employee and leave the office into the parking lot.
I was called in finally and introduced to John from New York who I was told was an assistant manager and that I was going to go along with him and another employee for the day. I was told I needed to impress John to beat out the other applicants so that one day I could sit in the head chair and be the big boss of a branch that they would be opening. Why wouldn't any of these people want that position? Never covered.
So John and I walk out the door, and John asks me where I'm parked. I told him at the end of the lot. We both walk to my car when the writing on the door of the office next to the one of Midwest Marketing catches my eye. CQ Imports. WTF? We get to my car and John tells me I can't leave my car in the lot I need to go to a sublot across the street. So I pull into the lot and park my car and we get out.
I was told they we were going to ride with George a person who was newish to the company and that we were going to go market. I figured that the company wanted me to watch these people in action so I could better do my job as a customer service rep.
We do some idle chit chat on the way towards Chicago and I was told we would be doing some marketing for Warner Brothers, Hallmark, and Toys R Us. I thought, hey that sounds cool. Until I'm dropped the first bomb shell. He told me on my way to Chicago that my salary requirements would not be met. He told me during training that it would be alot less for the first three months.in need of a job and already having planned for the full day interview, I went ahead with it. Expecting that we would be going to retail locations getting them to put items on shelves, we arrived in Chicago. We pulled into a parking lot of a Bakers Square. At that point the harsh reality hit when they started loading up a duffel bag full of coloring books and cheap dollar store crap in it. I felt like such a tool. We were gonna spend the day going business to business selling crap to the employees.
Stuck because my car was 25 miles away in a parking lot in Addison, I went ahead with the day even though I had already decided that there was no way in hell I was taking this job. Even worse I was pissed that I was stuck for an entire day doing this shit because I had no means to get to my car. If I was told upfront what the hell we were going to be doing, I would have laughed and left. Same thing as if I was told this at the very begining of the whole process.
So I had to wait the entire day which meant that I didnt get back to my car til about 7pm. These guys went to every business. No Soliciting signs meant nothing. Carrying a large duffel bag we even entered banks. Let into an office building through one person we even went into private offices who did not invite us in. The guys weren't rude about it though. I don't hold them responsible at all. They seemed like cool enough guys, like the ones you'd grab a beer with. I kind of felt sorry for them for having bought into the bullshit.
There is no marketing firm, there is no customer service or management jobs. Youre just there to peddle cheap crap from your car. And that why you need to have a car. Not so you can get there, but so you can drive to Chicago everyday and sell that stuff. For me that would have meant driving 90 miles a day.
I also plan on writing to MLB, NFL, Samsonite, Hallmark, Warner Bros, Toys R Us, and every company on their sham website. I'm positive that they have no permission whatsoever to be using the names of these companies claiming that they represent them.
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