I first found out about this company through a job posting that read, "Opening as a customer service representative, pays $16.36 an hour". I called them and they asked me to come in for an interview I arrived at a place called T.A.C. (Total Air Cleaning), which is a distributor for a product called the Rainbow which is developed by Rexair, Inc. Based out of Troy, Michigan.
When I arrived, there were at least 30 people there also for an interview. We all sat in a room, then a lady came into the room and started to give us a demonstation of the Rainbow home cleaning system. It turned out that they did not have an opening for a customer service representative but instead lured us all there to become salespeople and potentially buy the product.
I should have stopped right there because they had already deceived me into thinking that they were looking for a customer service rep. I was told I would not get paid for the four days of training, but I was desperate for a job so I decided to give it a try and continue with training.
During the training, I was told that there would be no cold-calling or door-to-door sales. Once the training was done, I had to collect leads or clients who I could potentially run demos for. How did they have us do this? They gave me lists of people and their phone numbers that were randomly collected online. I was given a script and told to go down the list and call each person saying that my company was conducting a survey in their area and they could win a gift card. Isn't that cold-calling?
The point of the calls were to get the person interested in winning a gift card, then we would say that we would drop-off the gift card at their home and also give them a demonstration of our product.
Another way to gain sales leads was to go door-to-door and hand out pieces of paper to people saying to call a number so they could win a free case of Pepsi or movie tickets. Once the person would call in, they would be told that someone would bring them free gift and also give a demo of the product we sell.
One thing - They do NOT pay you to do this.
In my first week with T.A.C., I spent roughly 35 hours making phone calls and going door-to-door while not getting paid.
So where does the $16.36 an hour come in to play?
You are only paid for running demonstrations and selling the product, as well as recruiting new Rainbow members. They say that a demo should only take 2 hours to run, but if it takes 3 or 4 hours to run (which happens frequently), you are only paid for 2 hours. So for those 2 hours - or 3 or 4, you are paid $32.72. Depending on which pay scale you are on, you will receive $100 for making a sale. The more sales you collect, the more money you can make.
By the way, the Rainbow we sell costs about $2,900.00. With the economy in bad shape, its imaginable that many people could not afford this product.in order to make a decent paycheck, one would have to run at least 3 demos a day.
Within my first week, I was only able to run 2 demos. When we start our demonstration, we are to call the office and say we have arrived. Then when we are closing the demo, we are to call the office again and ask to speak to our manager in order to push the sale.
After finishing my first demo, and started my second. I called the office and let them know I was starting. I finished my second demo around 11pm, however the office closed at 9pm. I figured no one would be in the office to answer my call to close, so I did not call. After completing my demos with no sale, I returned to the office the next day.
I was then notified that because I did not call in to close on my second demo, I would not be paid for it. Later that week, after spending at least 35 hours in the office making cold-calls, going door-to-door, and driving over 2 hours and 110 miles to do these demos, my paycheck came to me totaled at $32.72.
Needless to say, I left this company after the week and a half of wasted time and money spent to receive a worthless paycheck.
I would highly advise any who is considering working for this company to find a much more depending job that does not lie to or deceive both their employees and their customers.
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