I will begin by listing all the information regarding this so-called company and this man who runs it. As the title states, this is another Kirby distributor who manages to do nothing but lure unsuspecting, desperately in-need-of-a-job individuals and exploit them for their own selfish purposes.
Mark Philbrick
(603) 498-2804
Philbrick Consulting and Supply (KIRBY)
2204 Woodbury Ave, Newington NH
His cohorts include Michael Wright, phone number (603) 674-1222 and Carrie, (571) 382-0207.
My story begins much like that of everyone here who has already posted a report regarding Kirby and it's distributors who are nothing more than con-men disguising themselves as legitimate professionals running a legitimate business within a legitimate company.
I called an ad in the paper that stated "Customer Service, $600.00 a week guaranteed". I called the number and when I inquired about the position I was told by Michael Wright that it involved "customer service, delivery of products and cleaning chemicals". I attempted to get more information but he would not tell me anymore than that. I asked for the address and after being given the address I was told that it was a "yellow house" next to Wal-Mart on Woodbury Ave in Newington, NH. I was beginning to get suspicious already, but at this point I really needed to find a job and all my other leads had led to nothing. So I went to fill out an application.
When I arrived, I saw a paper sign on a makeshift easel that stated "Philbrick Consulting and Supply" with an arrow that pointed to a door — can't even afford a decent sign for you company, I thought. I entered and there were about 15 folding chairs, each with a clipboard, an application that looked like it was printed off an Apple II from the 80's and Michael Wright sitting behind a folding table listening to his MP3 player. This was supposed to be the office and yet there was nothing more than a rug, folding chairs and a whiteboard. I proceeded to fill out the application and after handing it to Michael Wright, Mark Philbrick comes out of his office and asks me to come in.
The minute I saw him, I should have just run the other way. With his greased hair, ill-fitting coat and gaudy gold jewelry that he wore with reckless abandon, I immediately got the feeling that this man was trying to portray someone that he really wasn't, that being the image of a successful, legitimate professional. Rather he came across like a cheap walking billboard for a two-bit pawn shop and an absolute fake; I would have probably had a better first impression if he had just worn slacks and a button down shirt.
When I entered his "office", my suspicions only began to grow as I immediately saw that his office was nothing more than a desk and 2 chairs. There was no PC, no landline, not even a lamp on the desk that was just strewn with paperwork in no discernible order. I sat down for my "interview". Like it was stated before in previous reports, the so-called interview lasted no more than 3 minutes. He asked me if I had heard of Scott-Fetzer and he said the dreaded word "KIRBY". I should have stood up and run, but I didn't. He didn't really ask me about any of my qualifications and after he was done with his 2-cent spheal he told me to call in 4 hours to see if I had been hired. I have been to a few interviews in my life, and that was not like any other that I have been to in the past. And what did I do, I called in 4 hours and lo and behold, I had been hired and told to report the next day to begin my training.
I showed up the next day to find 10 people there and Kirby products in all it's infamous glory lined up in front of the whiteboard. The training took 3 days, none of which we got paid for. During the training, he proceeded to regale us with stories of success and unlimited earning potentials; he brandished one "award" after another that he pulled from a stack of frames in the corner of the room; he inundated us with contest fliers that showcased all the wonderful things we could win simply by selling this "amazing cleaning system that sells itself"; he said all the things that desperate, honest, hard-working individuals in a faltering economy wanted to hear.
He told us that we were guaranteed $600.00 a week if we made 15 appointments or demos in one week; $500.00 a week for 10 demos a week. He told us that as long as we made these demos, we would be paid that amount even if we never sold a single Kirby and that these demos will be scheduled by his "telemarketing staff" based on our personal schedules and that we could dictate our own schedules. He told us that he could guarantee 10 to 15 demos per week, that these demos would be set-up ahead of time and that there would be no knocking blindly from door-to-door sales like in the days of old — this definitely appealed to me since I did not want to go unexpected and uninvited into another person's home (I certainly did not want that happening to me). He told us that for each Kirby we sell it would be $200.00 and that his goal was for us to each make $4000.00 in the first 30 days.
Still, by day 3 - Friday - the number of trainees had gone down from 10 to 6.
Now it was 11/14/08, the "practice weekend" from 11/14 - 11/16/08, the weekend where we would practice our sales skills on friends and family and he said that if we did 5 practice demos then he would pay us $150.00; if we sold one it would be $200.00 and whoever sells the first Kirby for that practice weekend would get an additional $50.00 bonus and "dinner for two". As we filled out the final paperwork that day before we left for the practice weekend, myself and several others asked him what to do about taxes, W-4s and the like. Mark Philbrick's reply to us was, "do not worry about taxes until we have been there for 30 days." Odd, but myself and others went ahead and filled out the paperwork we had in front of us and off we went.
Well, I made the first sale that weekend and I close out the weekend with 2 sales for a total of $450.00 in my pocket. Not bad, I thought. Maybe this can actually work out after all. Since his week runs from Monday to Sunday, with Saturday being payday for the previous week, I proceed to collect my check the following Saturday. I get the $450.00 but I see nothing for the dinner; he said it was still in the works, but that the good news is that I am now only 13 sales away from a "fabulous trip to Atlantic City!"
I begin my first "real week" on 11/17/08 and he informs me that he has no appointments set up for me yet since the other trainees were still finishing up their practice demos (so fault me for actually getting my work done on schedule?) and that his "telemarketing staff" is backed up. What is strange about this is that I have never seen any people that could constitute a telemarketing sales staff since his entire office is one room in a house that was renovated into some type of business building that is also shared by a real-estate company across the hall and another "company" upstairs. So unless his telemarketing staff were made up of a bunch of fairies or elves, they simply did not exist. Oh, except for one day when he had one of his "employees" stay at the office at which point he gave her his cell phone (the only phone, or "office phone" as he calls it), told her to check all the messages and instructed her to reply to anyone calling that "personnel was backed-up" since after all, "You ARE THE Personnel" — yep, there was his "telemarketing staff" right there.
He told me to see if I could set up my own appointments that day and that I would be getting steady appointments in the next day or so. He also told me that if I sold one that day on an appointment that I set up on my own, I would receive a $50.00 bonus because him and his "staff" did not have to do the work in setting up that appointment. I asked him if I would be able to get 10 to 15 appointments before the week closed because I was starting to worry that if I didn't I would not make any money that week. He assured me I would have my appointments. I was able to sell a Kirby that day on my own and I immediately tallied $250.00 in my head for that week. It was a good thing for that because I never received any appointments whatsoever for the rest of the week.
Out of desperation to make more money before the week ended, he told me that I could go "in the van" on Friday — the van being his beat-up Escalade that had absolutely no business being on the road. Now I have heard about the "Kirby Van" and all the stories that came with it; going into a neighborhood, people piling out, going door to door. Harassing homeowners, trying to force their way into homes and the van leaving and not coming back until 2 hours later when demos were completed, only to pick up the same people, go to a different unsuspecting neighborhood and do the entire thing all over again. Well, like I said, I was desperate, so I accepted.
And this is where things really start taking a turn for the worse, if not immoral.
That Friday morning - 11/21/08 - I got in the van with Michael Wright, Carrie and the remaining 2 other people from the original 10. The first thing we do is go to Wal-Mart next door. Carrie goes inside and comes back out with 2 bags of CLOROX Green Sense All Purpose Cleaner. What could those be for, I thought. It didn't take long to find out.
After some discussion between Michael and Carrie, they decided to head down to Rochester NH and target a not too high-end mobile home park. There was no set plan, no schedule, no type of strategy, just "hey, let's go here and see what happens". Once we get to the trailer park, the van slows down to a crawl as Carrie and Michael begin to scope out prospective homes — the only thing that could make this scene any more suspicious would be if the windows were painted black and the words "FREE CANDY" were spray painted on the side. Once Carrie found a house she liked, we would park, Carrie would grab a bottle of CLOROX Green Sense, leave the Kirbys in the back and she would take one of us out with her to the door.
When someone opened the door, Carrie would hold proceed as follows:
"Please do not close the door, I am not here to sell you anything. (holds up bottle of CLOROX Green Sense All Purpose Cleaner). We are opening a new store right here in Rochester, near Wal-Mart, and this is OUR new product.instead of giving out fliers that you might just throw away, we are giving away free samples of OUR product (still holding up bottle of CLOROX Green Sense All Purpose Cleaner). All we ask is that you would allow us to do a demo regarding our OTHER cleaning products in your home."
If the customer said no, then we left. However, if the customer said yes, then she would immediately instruct us to grab a Kirby from the back of the van and immediately enter the person's home before they even knew that what we had in our hands was a Kirby.By the time they figured it out, the vacuum was already have unpacked out of the box and well on it's way to getting set up.
This is how she got into people's homes — by flat-out lying. Now I know that I haven't been there more than a week, but if there's one thing I know, it's that we do NOT work for CLOROX, we are not affiliated with CLOROX in any way, shape or form, and there was no store being built in Rochester NH near Wal-Mart. She never mentions Kirby until we are inside the house. It was all a blatant lie designed to let people open their doors and let us in. It bothered me, but I needed money, so I went along with it, seeing as I did not make any of those statements myself and I was simply there to do a demo. Once inside, the van — yep you guessed it — would leave, they would eat lunch or do whatever, and then return after we called them to pick us up. More often than not I ended waiting around for up to 20 minutes inside the home of someone who did not want me there or waiting outside like an idiot with my Kirby next to me on the curb. They would return, we would not break for lunch (unless we demanded it) and off to the next house/neighborhood we would go.
That day I sold 2 Kirby's. Tally — 3 sales, plus a $50.00 bonus for the appointment I set up on my own on 11/17/08, equals $650.00. Wrong, but more on that later.
The following Monday, 11/24/08, I was in the van again and I managed to sell 1 Kirby. Being that it was Thanksgiving Week, I was not able to sell any more Kirbys, but I was able to get 10 demos in. Tally — 10 demos in one week, $500.00. Wrong again.
On 11/29/08 I came in to collect my paycheck for the week-ending 11/23/08, the paycheck that I believed to be $650.00. When I went into Mark Philbrick's office, he told me that I was only eligible for $300.00 for the 3 sales I made that week! I was flabbergasted and demanded an explanation. He stated that the sale I made on 11/17 was a B-loan and was only worth $50.00 and was not worth the $50.00 bonus because it was a B-Loan; likewise 1 of the 2 sales I made on 11/21 was also a B-loan and was also worth only $50.00 in commission; the other sale I made on 11/21 was an A-Loan and since customer had good credit and put money down, that was worth $200.00 for a total of $300.00.
I told him that my family and I were counting on $650.00 for that week and that we were planning on doing some Christmas shopping for our daughter; I asked him why he kept that information from me, why he did not inform me after each sale if it was a B-Loan and that I was only entitled to $50.00 for each of those sales and why he led me to believe that I was going to make $200.00 per sale and an extra $50.00 for the appointment/sale that I set up on my own when in fact, I was not.
His reply was: "i wanted to keep you motivated."
On top of that, I was told that only 7 of the 10 demos for the week of 11/24 to 11/30/08 counted because apparently I did not pull enough dirt pads from each person's home, even though I did my best to demo the Kirby to it's fullest extent and clean their carpets as best I could; this coupled with the fact most people did not want me in their homes for more than 30 minutes since it was Thanksgiving week. He also stated that I need to be doing 15 demos a week, even though we had agreed that I would only do 10 because that was what my schedule allowed (remember, you can set your own schedule, right?) Other employees who made more than 15 demos that week were also told the same thing and that they were not entitled to the base pay that was promised for doing demos.
And finally, my one sale on 11/24 was likewise another B-Loan (another fact that was withheld from me until everything was said and done) and in the end, for the week of 11/24 to 11/30/08 I was going to make $50.00.
He proceeded to write me the check for $350.00, stating that he is throwing in an extra $50.00 for the "dinner for two" that I won when I made the first sale during the practice weekend. I walked out of that office with $300.00 less in my pocket and only $50.00 to look forward to in my next paycheck. Suffice to say, I ended my employment with Philbrick Consulting and Supply and Kirby that very same day.
The following week, the first week of December, I called him in order to ask if he had mailed out my last paycheck for $50.00, for the week 11/24 - 11/30. All my calls would go to his voicemail and I never got a call back. I used a different phone one day, and lo-and-behold, he picked up and I asked him about my last paycheck. He proceeded to claim that he had already included that in the $350.00 paycheck that he wrote out to me. Of course, I know this to not be true, so I proceeded to detail to him exactly what every dollar amount on that check was for. He kept insisting that he had already included all the money that was owed to me in that single check. I continued to tell him that he was mistaken and the call was ended with him leaving me with an empty promise that he would look into it. I continued to call him almost every other day for the month of December and every call would go to voicemail and I never received a call back. On one of my last calls to him, I stated that if I did not hear from him within the next 24 hours I would contacting the Labor Commission of NH and the BBB; he never called me back.
Last night I called him from a different phone and someone answered stating that Mark Philbrick was not in the office (he had left his cell phone, his only phone, in his office, hence he was not in the office) but rather on the road with Michael Wright. I called up Michael Wright on his phone; Mark Philbrick answered the phone; when I addressed him, he claimed that he was Michael Wright instead and that I would have to call back the office in the morning.
Once again, he lied to me in order to dodge me and I know this because he was taken aback as evidenced in his momentary hesitation from hearing my voice on Michael's phone and the fact that Mark Philbrick's voice, accent and diction is unmistakably different from Michael Wright's.
I have met a lot of different people in my life, some good and some not very good. But I have to say, Mark Philbrick ranks as one of the lowest human beings I have come across so far. He is a liar and a thief; a person who lies and steals from the people who work for him; a person who will find every loophole to see to it that someone does all the hard work, makes him his money, increases his sales numbers, and in the end, keep that person from receiving what he so rightly earned. I don't expect to ever hear back from him or see the remaining $50.00 that he still owes me. I hope that this report will keep another honest citizen from being duped by him or by Kirby. And it is also my hope that someone who can actually do something, read this report and bring Mark Philbrick and his immoral constituents to justice.
Roy
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
U.S.A.
0 comments