Product Development Corporation are commissioned by phone companies in distributing their directories. PDC hires people, usually people down on their luck and desperate, to deliver phone books around the country. For me, I was offered $. 10 per stop and $. 07 per book delivered. Sounds good at first but things change as soon as you leave the brief orientation. They outfit you with a gps tracking device and have you sign a contract to deliver phone books in any given area. Among signing the contract, you agree to have business sign what seems to me like marketing forms, verifying the phone numbers and addresses of such businesses. The problem with this is that if you spend 5 minutes delivering one phone book and waiting for a signature, you make $. 17 ($. 10 stop, $. 07 book) Think about this, at that rate you are making $2.04 per hour. Did I mention that you are an independent contractor who is responsible for paying taxes on that income and for the gas used delivering these books. Getting to the point my brother and I are unemployed and decided to give it a shot. After spending $60 in gas and working 19 hours in three days, we ending up getting to keep around $60 each. But that's not all, after completing our contract by delivering to all the addresses on our list, we had to sit on trial as the manager downloaded our gps information and scrutinized everything we had work so diligently on. After being called out on a few business that we did not deliver to, only because they weren't open all three times we went by, we were finally ok'd to get paid. After getting home and trying to forget about what a hard time we had and how little we had earned for our efforts, we received a phone call and it was the manager lady saying that she had called one of the businesses on our list and they said that they had not receive a phone book. I was threatened by the manager who said, "if you don't take them a phone book immediately, you will not get paid for anything else you've done, period." I was surprised to hear this. Then I thought, I know for sure I delivered a phone book to that company. I remembered it specifically. I told the manager to look on the paper for the employees signature next to that company's name. Of course it was there. I delivered over 1500 phone books. I wonder how many people decide after delivering 500 phone books that it's not worth it and give up, knowing that doing so means not getting paid even for the books that were delivered. How often does this happen? It seems to me as if PDC has a substantial amount of books delivered for free. Please think twice about delivering phone books for PDC as it is a waste of time and one Helluva RIP OFF!
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