I am currently a sales person for Maintenance Engineering and was perusing through my e-mails while in my rookie training period when I encountered a sales position opening in my area for Superior Lamps. I did a little further investigation to find that their products and training material is 99.9% the same as ME's (The only difference was Superior calls their lights "Enviro-safe" and ME calls theirs "Earth-Safe").
Now, the product itself is great. It truly is as I have done research on it. The problem is that it is grossly over-priced.
I mentioned this company to my rookie sales manager and he advised that Superior and ME have a "financial agreeement" but they are competitors of ours. He even went on to give me some BS story that he once owned a hot tub store and when another hot tub store opened up next door that their business actually improved. What? OK, I get McDonalds and BK being next to each other may have this effect, but not when McDonalds is next to McDonalds! Superior & ME have the same exact product with the same exact price.
I have read other ex-employees of Superior's complaints and only wish that I had read them before giving my $495 to ME for "training materials" (Superior only charges $399). The person that interviewed/recruited me did say that trainers would be sent out to me during the first 12 weeks which they did, but the process/pitch is so simple (and rather pushy and unprofessional I might add) that I learned nothing from these trainers that I didn't already learn from the DVD's they sent in the training package.
Of course it wasn't until the day prior to the first trainer showing up did they tell me that the trainer would get the commission on any sales that day he came out. I had already busted my ass to schedule as many appointments as possible, and yes we made two sales (that I could have sold just as easily) that I did not get the commission on (oh, but the customer is mine for repeat sales).
I am so glad I read the testimonials regarding all expense paid trip to NJ (written by ex-Superior employees). I can only imagine the nightmare of having to make 8 hours worth of phone calls and freezing my ass off in North Dakota.
I do have to say that the sales managers are quite pleasant and frequently say "good job", which is different than I have read from other complaints. Maybe that is because I paid $95 more for my training materials.
Just recently ME increased the warranty on it's flourescents from 60 months to 84 months. Now I see why - I read from other complaints that Superior made the customer purchase a pack of bulbs to replace a lamp if it failed within the warranty period. It all makes sense now. They want more customers to call with a failed lamp so they can sell a pack (minus one).
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