"The Blue" is just one of countless such companies around the country. They contract with big telecom companies like AT&T to sell services like AT&T's U-Verse, door-to-door to private homes. Sometimes they're also selling "merchant payment services, " which means a credit-card processing service.
And since part of their business-model is to develop salespeople into running their own companies, those new companies keep popping up—under new names—faster than the people who had been fooled by them can post a complaint.
Be sure to check out the consumer complaints for "McKennedy Marketing" (a now-defunct company that had been at the same location in Schaumburg as Blue Marketing now is, and may involve the same people). When you do, you'll find several other company names to avoid.
In all cases, their system is to "hire" practically anyone who shows up and can walk & talk. They'll make it SEEM like you have to be special to get hired, but if your temperature is around 98.6 F, you're in.
Since they pay only on a commission basis, and since they put you on their books as an "independent consultant" (that is, on a 1099) rather than as an employee, they don't mind processing people by the hundreds. They never stop hiring, because they keep losing people.
It's cheap labor for them. The sad fact is, many people sucked into this job make $5 an hour, or less... And as a 1099 worker, you have to pay Self-Employment Tax on that money, which reducesyour net pay by about 34%!
If you sell anything, they make money on it. If you don't, it doesn't cost them much. (You get "trained, " but it's by someone else who's ALSO on commission, so again, the company benefits if you make sales but it doesn't lose anything if you don't.)
As a result, they don't mind heavy turnover—in fact, they secretly EXPECT it! That's why they're constantly hiring crowds of new people. But still, they try like mad to keep you from leaving. It's easier to keep pushing you to make a sale than to go through the process of training somebody new.
Obviously, any home that wants a cable service like U-Verse already has one. And any business that takes credit cards already has a merchant payment service. So your odds of making a cold call and selling them something different are VERY low.
That means you'll work 10-hour days, often 6 days a week, hiking through some strange neighborhood or business-district in all kinds of weather, knocking on people's doors or walking into business offices without appointments.
Now, every salesperson in the world realizes that he or she will hear "No" far more often than "Yes." But when you're turning up unexpectedly on doorsteps, trying to explain and sell a service they already have, you can look forward to plenty of entire days—even weeks—without a single sale.
This is the kind of work that almost nobody can earn a living at... Except those who are natural con-artists.
If you're NOT one of those natural con-artists—if you can't tell lies (or huge exaggerations) to everyone you meet for 10 exhausting hours a day, with a big smile on your face, even after having been turned down 65 times that day—then this isn't for you! Avoid it at all costs! It will just waste the time you should be spending to find a real job.
Trouble is, the "managers" and "leaders" you'll run into ARE natural con-artists. That's how they managed to survive to that stage. Worse, they're living on commissions, too—they get a part of any commissions generated by you! So it's in their best interests to manipulate you, bully you, tempt you with dreams of future wealth, prevent you from hearing depressing feedback from your fellow workers, and anything else they can do to avoid having to go find and train another person to fill your slot.
My advice: Go find a REAL job! This one will just waste your precious time and money.
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