Friday 9 December 2011

AVOID APPCO MARKETING GROUPS AT ALL COSTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is going to be a blog dedicated to the criminals that call themselves Appco. Now if you don't already know, Appco is the leading direct marketing group around. Basically, Appco prey on people to become field representitives of Appco and these Field Representitivies (also known as Customer Service executives, Fundraising executives) go door to door trying to sign people up to charities via a direct debit, least this is my personal experience with the group. Oh and did I mention these FR's make peanuts, working well up to 70-100 hours a week for rubbish pay!

    All groups within APPCO operate in similar ways, they are designed to look appealing and trendy, this is what I like to call the lure tactic. They lure you into thinking it's a high flying job, which is guranteed to provide you with a nice cash flow. Now the majority of offices operate in the same way, my personal experience is with the company R1 GLOBAL of NORTHAMPTON, ran by a man called NICK REES. Basically, from my personal experience and from what others from differen't offices have informed me of the way in which the offices operate and are layed out is similar, if not identical. 


 Firstly you are lured into the job via a promising and a pretty outstading job offer via an online job ad on top job searching websites such as TotalJobs. The Ad promises a stable income of earning upto £250-500 a week, chances to be promoted within days or weeks and a chance to even become a leader of an office yourself. These AD's are misleading as they fail to mention that it's a self employed vacancy, they won't tell you that until moments before you sign on the dotted line. As far as I'm aware it's against job searching sites rules to fail to mention such important information, so straight off you can understand what kind of people these are, liars.


  Once you have applied for the job you will usually recieve a response either by email or phone, claiming that you have been "short listed" to attend an interview, you haven't been shortlisted, they will interview ANYONE, and I mean ANYONE, aslong as they can walk and talk to a basic degree they are ideal candidates.  Once you get to the office for an interview, you will notice that atmosphere is that of a cool, relaxed composure, the office I worked in had a TV on in the waiting area, playing the latest music in the charts, this is to make you feel that the work enviroment is chilled out and relaxed basically subtly luring you in. In the interview the owner will then ask personal questions as to why you want to join the company, it's a very fact paced interview and is pretty much done within minutes. The owner the offers you a day of shadowing, this involves going out with a FR from the office, working the doors with them. Now you would think this is the chance for people to see how the company works and would put them off it right? Wrong, this probably only happens on the odd occasion, the owner brain washes you so much, promising good pay, fun working enviroment and so forth, that you look past the long hours and think, I could really do this. Now I'm not going to lie, a small minority of people are succesful and make good money and go places, but I predict this to be around 1 in 100 people, odds are pretty high if you ask me.


  Now once the shadowing day is over, the owner then asks how the day went, if you are ideal for the role, and then offers you the job. You then arrange to go back, do some training about how direct marketing is the best and how they basically hound people to sign upto charities. The second and last part of the interview is where you go to the office and get your badge and credentials sorted out. Usually happens on a Friday, so you are in for Monday. 


  Now you're in the company the first thing you'll notice is the office enviroment. There is a lot of energy, enthusiasm, they even play loud music when training in the morning. The "team leaders" then go over your pitch, and then the morning meeting commences. This is a strange ritual like meeting, where everyone gets in a semi circle, chants, cheers and high fives. A friendly enviroment, yes, but this enviroment only last the morning meeting, which is around 1-2 hours. the other 6-8 hours is on the field.


  Once you have perfected your pitch and everything is in order, you are sent into the "field". The owner has marked areas of where your office is based and sends the FR'S to these locations to knock on doors, asking people to sign upto direct debits with Charities. You would usually get to the field around 1 and usually finish around 9pm. Which is against the law, as we were prompted to knock on fresh doors after 8:30pm, which is against the law, but we did it anyway as we were urged to get the sales, on hope of getting money and promotion. Now on the lines of money, you get paid commision for each sale you get, and a percentage of that goes into a security bond, of which you wont get back if you quit, you're suppose to, but it will be turned negative no doubt.


So let's analyize where we are, you are now on the field trying to make sales, working from 10-11am to 9pm on the field, and usually to around 9pm to 11pm at the office, 5-6 days a week, yet you are apparently SELF EMPLOYED. No you're not, you work for the OWNER who orders you were to go, what time you work until and get's irritated by lateness, why though? You are self employed, you work for yourself to try and climb your way up the Appco ladder right? Bull S**t. They are in total control. 


NOW THESE ARE ONLY THE EARLY STAGES OF THE APPCO EXPERIENCE, I WILL EXPOSE MORE OF APPCO IF THIS INITIAL BLOG GETS ENOUGH VIEWS FOR ME TO FEEL THAT PEOPLE ARE FINALLY UNDERSTANDING THAT APPCO ARE NOTHING BUT GREEDY CRIMINALS. CHEERS FOR READING GUYS. THERE WILL BE MORE TO COME