I was contacted by mail and received a small pink leaflet with a number to call and a very short explanation that this was an employment opportunity. This leaflet also said ACT FAST CALL NOW because the offer would expire in two days, so I did call. I was told that I would be sent some information regarding the commission based employment opportunity by Email, which I got. I read through the documentation sent to me and contacted the number back.By the way this number also was a recorded message service which would not speak to you without entering the 7 digit "confirmation code" that was written on the aforementioned pink leaflet... After signing up with these people I was instructed to take a training course which lasted for 3 hours and required me to be on the phone the whole time to hear, so I sat through the training. The training was like a brochure for the job and did nothing but highlight the positive aspects of working for Summit Merchant Solutions SMS. Also hammered home during the training was the claim that they were not looking for sales people but they were looking for closers to prearranged appointments. The concept was, NO COLD CALLING SALES, and you were supposed to memorize and recant a presentation of the services provided by SMS to the merchants you were sent to speak with.
No cold calling, as soon as I heard that I was hooked. I memorized the presentation and was ready. I was hired without so much as a face to face interview or a thorough background check and received a "team Leader" to contact after the training. This never occurred, in fact I never spoke with the team leader I was assigned to and ended up taking a substitute team leader to work with. So I spoke with the new guy and was told that I would receive a call the next morning with my first appointment. The next morning my team leader called and gave me an address and a contact person, who was supposedly the business owner and I drove two cities over to get there by 11:00 as instructed. This is where everything started to fall apart!
The name they gave me was NOT the business owner, but was just the night manager there. Also, since she was the night manager and it was 11:00am she wasn't even there, so I asked if there was another manager or owner that I could speak to to give my presentation and was told there was not. I then called my team leader back to ask about this so called "verified appointment" and was asked, this is my favorite line from this company, "was there anything else around that I could try and pitch to?", and I said no, there is nothing here except this shop, and relayed that I was not made aware that I would be expected to cold call in surrounding areas because there was no true appointment set. The reply was, and I was starting to figure this by now, "well, this IS a sales position", to which I asked why the training and recruitment went out of their way to accent that this was NOT a sales position and that no cold calling was expected. To which I was told that I "was mistaken and that if sales is not what I want to do perhaps this is not the job for you." I was invested now, so I went along with this, FOR 2 WEEKS, and after being sent to some 30 different "appointments" in 5 different cities and having to fill up my tank 6 times, I never found a single appointment that was real and every wild goose chase I was sent on turned into another request for me to cold call the surrounding businesses.By the end of the second week I was also almost maxxed out for minutes on my cell phone plan from calling my team leader back and forth every time one if these "appointments" turned out to be another fictional reason to drive me all over Hampton Roads to cold call for this company. I understand sales, and that is why I did not want to invest time and hope in a sales position, nobody buys anything ever and you are basically wasting your breath, gasoline and time trying. Everyone and their sister has a payment processing company and most of the business owners I did get to talk to were black and blue from payment processors making the same claims I was making to them.
Moral, if you are told by a payment processing company that they have a superior product or service to all of the others, do not believe this, they all offer the exact same thing for the exact same price. I think this is summed up by a remark I got from a lady who was the manager of a Sub Center diner I tried to pitch my services to who asked me about rates, and I replied we have the cheapest rates in the area. She replied, "yeah so does everyone." In any case, if you are approached by these people and offered a job opportunity, crumple that stupid little pink leaflet up and throw it away, unless you want to pitch their products and services to endless small businesses who are not at all receptive to being sold on it. THEY DO NOT SCHEDULE AND CONFIRM APPOINTMENTS AT ALL! All they do is thumb through the Yellow Pages in your area, pick local businesses, call them and get an owner or manager's name, and send you out there with the illusion that these people have agreed to meet with you. You will be wasting the drive, the gas, and the time to go out there just to get told NO!
Also, it becomes increasingly more difficult to get anyone on the phone after you have gotten settled into this scam and you can prepare to spend at least 5 minutes on hold every time you try to call your so called contact person at SMS, and generally over 20 minutes before anyone picks up. I finally told my team leader that I needed to stop because I could no longer afford the gasoline to do this with no return on my investment, and I was reaching my monthly limit on my cell phone for being put on hold SO MUCH when I tried to call him. If you are involved in this farce, do the same, call until you get someone, and bow out of this, it is a SCAM, run!!
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