I was contracted to recruit companies to exhibit at the Learning Annex/Trump Expos in January at a seminar in Pasadena, where the company attracted workers by advertising that we'd make "$2,500 An Hour". The speaker was John Goodfriend, who has been the guy running the program.
I worked for them part-time for almost two years until January of this year, when I sent in the largest sale of my career - a 6 booth order totalling $29,970. According to the 2007 contract I signed in November and confirmed receipt of in December, the commission due me was 25% ($7,492.50).
The day AFTER the sale was faxed to their office, the staff of the Learning Annex sent out an email telling reps that the 2007 contract was being changed. The ONLY change was that the commissions for renewal customers (my big order was from a renewal customer) was being dropped from 25% to only 10%. This would drop my commission to only $2,997, costing me $4,495.50 that I had earned.
At a meeting that weekend in Los Angeles, John Goodfriend claimed that he hadn't been authorized to commit to the 2007 payment schedules when he announced them the previous August (even though the changes in that contract dropped the commission rate on renewals from 50% to 25% in most cases). He claimed an outside company was forcing them to make the changes. He also claimed that the changes had been made as of January 1st, yet no reps were contacted and no announcement was made by email or on the internal Forum used for these announcements.in fact, John and most of the staff had been on vacation around that time.
Instead of making the changes effective when they were announced, the Learning Annex made the cuts retroactive and sent out the smaller checks. I have billed them for the balance owed and they no longer respond to my emails, after initially confirming that the announcement of the commission cuts was made AFTER my sale was sent in.
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