Arbordahl and Associates is all over Careerbuilder and similar websites (along with Marketing Sessinos) and that is how they contacted me. The job sounded great, I being a recent college grad with a marketing major. Arbordahl listed a salary, and made the job seem like "I have been selected" as though I was someone special.
I went in for my first interview, met with Adam Dahl, and everything was seeming to go well, and the interview ended in only FIVE MINUTES. After the interview, the job was still vague and unclear, and Adam told me he would further explain things at the second interview.
Later that evening, I researched the company Arbordahl and Associates, and came up with only their website, which is arbordahl.com. I found it interesting that Adam is the president of the company and hasn't even been out of college for two years. All that I knew about the job was that it consisted of business-to-business sales and some sort of public relations.
At the second interview, I was first told by Adam that I had been "selected" to go on a first round slaes call. I immediately went on a sales call with another individual from Arbordahl, going "door to door" to different businesses trying to get the business to switch or upgrade their phone plan through SBC. The individual introduced himself to the small businesses as though he was "from SBC, making a courtesy call" and making sure they were up to date with SBC's current special offerings going on. Then the individual asked the business owner for the phone bill and ranted on how the business owner could be saving money. He actually got one business owner to sign up, and change plans. While filling out the paperwork, I then asked the individual from Arbordahl how we were paid, and he told me that compensation is based on performance, and then he changed the subject. Later again, I asked the same question, and he told me that the pay was great and that once you become assistant manager you make one-thousand dollars per week. I finally got it out of him that the job is commission based. After the sales call, I was given a small quiz about the company, which consisted of specific steps to follow while executing a sale.
I then met again with Adam Dahl, and he asked me what I could bring to the company. I told him that I was a team worker and that I strive for success. He had two other co-workers in the office with him, and then he asked me, "when is the soonest you can start?" I told him as soon as possible, and he "hired me on the spot." I THEN learned about work days consist of working from 8am until 6pm, Monday through Friday, but you "get weekends off..." so you can have some sort of life I suppose. The training would start Monday, I was told. I asked if it was paid training, and was given the response, it is "based on merit" so that I would have to be with someone that is making sales... Which seemed strange to me.
I then proceeded to leave, and started talking to the receptionist. She told me that Arbordahl and Associates is sister companies with Marketing Sessions. These companies are actually part of a larger company, Cydcor, which I later found out is a pyramid company that "promotes from within" structuring a pyramid paying structure. The lower-in-the-pyramid workers get ripped off, and the management see the money. There is no mileage compensation, and you could easily go weeks without making a sale, because many small business owners that you visit know that you are ripping them off already, so they refuse the moment you walk in the door. However, you are trained to work around the rebuttals, and hope to try to make the sale. It is completely unethical, false representation, and I hope to make people aware of Cydcor and it's little brother and sister companies.
After all, the only pay you receive is when you trick the small business owners into signing up for SBC services that are through this organization you are working for. There is no salary, no compensation, but rather an unjust way of running a business. Basically, in a nutshell, by making the workers pay the management to work for them. It is sure nice in the management's view, I'll give them that...
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