Not too long ago, I was left out in the cold world of todays job seeker. I had been unemployed for nearly a year, and my unemployment insurance payments were fast drawing to a close. I would get the occasional bite on my resume, and would be sent away from the interview promptly with a tongue in cheek allusion that I was not being hired because I had been unemployed for so long.
To clarify, I was not fired, nor had I committed any misconduct at my last job. I had quit over a moral issue, and my boss was not pleased. I could not expect a good reference out of him in spite of the fact that I had outperformed most of the people in my position throughout not just the district, but the region as well. I was desperate, and I had heard about the companies cropping up that would sell a good reference for a nominal fee. I investigated the three options I was able to find. One was out of business, and one had so many bad reports I could not consider using them. I was left with The Reference Store, on whom I could find no reports, good or bad. I decided to engage their services.
They promised much. A company built to my specifications that I could name. A website and a dedicated telephone number. My own personal reference. And all of this was just for me, nobody else. They claimed to not ever reuse a company. Things went wrong from day one.
The company I got was unique, at first. The web page was not. I was given, essentially, a carbon copy of someone elses website with my companys name on it. I caught on because the tab header revealed the name of another company, which I looked up on google. Sure enough, It was an almost exact copy of my own website. The copy on my website was rife with spelling and grammatical errors. Text ran into the background. It looked terrible. I thought I would have an easy time calling up and asking them to fix it.instead, I had to fight for the changes, their argument being that the errors were minor and that nobody is going to notice. Well, I noticed. The errors did get fixed, but I was still stuck with a near clone of somebody elses website.
They state explicitly, for late payments, that one minute late is too many or something similar, but their system for re-upping is confusing. Every time I re-upped, I felt I had to call and make quite sure they had gotten the payment. Eventually, it got to the point that I could not reach my case manager on their toll free line, and I would have to call into my fake companys telephone number to get to speak to someone. The references they promised did materialize, at least at first.
The test calls that I made at the beginning of the venture went all right. Eventually, the company telephone number stopped working, too, in spite of the fact that I was paid up. When, after numerous emails and phone calls, I was able to speak to my case manager, I was told that they were moving their offices and that they were sorry about the interruption in service. I was not offered any compensation for my inconvenience, and was rebuffed at the suggestion.
A few months after engaging services, I found an employer that was interested enough in me to actually check my reference. When he called in, the line was not in service. Again, I tried to contact these people so I could plead with them to provide the services for which they were being paid. It took an awful lot of work on my part to finally land the job. I only got to talk to my case manager after the fact.
A week or so later, things changed again. I checked my custom, just for me website, and found they had added another address and telephone number in a different state on the contact page. I called into this new number, which had a recorded statement that it was an unused number owned by The Reference Store. It was at that point, I simply fired them. I have not heard back from them to this day, and their shopping cart has since had its purchase buttons removed.
To conclude, this was a waste of about $300. I dont believe theyre fraudsters, but I do believe them to be incompetent. There must be better companies.
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