The Vector Marketing Scam

When I got a letter from "Vector", offering a job with benefits, $17 per hour/appointment (more on that later) and an environment geared towards students, I was certainly interested. What I didn't know then is that Vector Marketing, according to who you ask, is either a great source of student work for hardworking entrepreneurs, or else a manipulative scame. Which is true? Let's start with my Vector experience.

The letter directed me to a website, workforstudents.com, that I remembered seeing plastered around my campus down in Richmond, Virginia. On the site I filled out a very basic application. The sheet said that I was to call to set up an appointment; to my surprise they called me the next day. I set up an appointment (we needed to allot over 90 minutes to the interview, which surprised me, but what the heck, no other job leads had been promising.) With plenty of time to spare, I arrived at the Falls Church headquarters on Columbia Pike and headed to the proper room.

The setting was a tad unexpected; I was in a cramped and rather cluttered lobby with folding chairs around the perimeter and trophies in a corner--of course, the obligatory motivational poster ("Teamwork") decorated the far wall. A number of other students, less well-dressed than me, were seated filling out a basic questionaire, along with some older folks who I figured were hurting from the economy and were willing to give the job (which I still had little concrete ideas about what it was) a chance. We were treated to some poor music coming from a boombox in the corner while we waited and the place filled up with applicants (some people in jeans; I mean, seriously, no one will take you seriously dressed like that, so why bother wasting 90 minutes?) Three of us were shepherded into an adjacent room at a time for "pre-screenings", basically elaborating on the content of the paperwork we filled out. The district manager who talked to us acted something like a robot, mechanically calling out names and remembering them almost immediately. I still can't be sure he wasn't at least part machine, or just trying out for the new Terminator movie.

Anyhow, eventually (and by this time I really had to pee, but the bathrooms were locked) were shuffled into the center of the room for the presentation by Mr. Robot Manager. Luckily his robotic tendencies melted and he became more animated as he (finally) told us what we were doing there. As it turns out, Vector Marketing is the marketing spinoff company of Cutco Inc., a cutlery manufacturer. Oh, so the job, as it turns out, is to be a knife salesmen. Not exactly what I had in mind, but it's a job that pays decently, so I continued to listen. The manager tells us the history of the company, who runs it, and goes through the product line (they make a $* of knives, man) and demonstrates a few. These include scissors that snap pennies in two or else make them into flowers (I feel like I should have mentioned that this penny mutilation probably falls under defacement of current, a felony, and if we in the course of our jobs were to be doing the exact same procedure we'd all be criminals, but I digress. I forgot to mention it, anyhow.) Other items were a nifty swiss-army-filet knife and various cutting tools used on leather and cloth to demonstrate their effectiveness.

Once he had us sold on the product, the manager went into detail about what we would be doing. Rather than cold-calling, we would set up personal appointments, show the product in a similar way that he showed us, and then get paid for the meeting--whether we made a sale or not. (This excited me the most.) After going through benefits and salary, he called us back to the other room one by one for final job decisions (that was fast). Noting my professional attitude and dress (hell yeah), I was offered the job. My first reaction was relief and well-being. Finally, I had a halfway decent job. And while salesmanship wasn't my strongest suit, I was willing to put in the work as necessary. However I had barely gotten home when I realized that joining Vector would be a waste of my time (and most other people's.) Why? Let me explain.

First is the pay. The $17 per hour is technically possible, but in reality, you're actually making it per appointment, which last from 45 minutes to an hour. So factoring in travel times (you're allowed to work as wide or narrow a field as you want,) you won't be putting in a solid 8 billable hours. Suddenly that $136 per day has shrunk considerably. Then there's the fact that since you're demonstrating actual merchandise, you have to pay a $130 or so deposit (refundable). But you're still sinking in money to something when you haven't actually made anything yet. Not exactly optimal.

The benefits touted? Non-existent. There are some mandatory meetings, and some recommended group meetings for pizza and such, but I'm trying to make money, not exactly friends. You have to check in to the home office every day, and there's meetings every week, which result in you losing time you could be relaxing or working. Either way, it's a loss of time.

Finally, the whole business model is less than ideal on second look. You don't cold-call, which saves you rejection in the short term, but Vector doesn't give you leads; you're expected to cull them from "personal contacts"--i.e., friends and family. I really don't feel like shilling knives to people I know, especially not my family. My parents wouldn't buy wrapping paper from me when I was selling it for the school in grade school, why the hell would they buy "premium" knives that start at $30 a pop and then go up from there?

So is Vector a scam? Not really. But that doesn't mean it isn't toeing the legality line in its deception and manipulation. The reason they want college workers is because they are barely legal and its more likely friends and family will be guilted into buying a knife from them than a random person. It's a simple fact. But even if your immediate friends and such buy merchandise, you have to ask them for more leads to stay afloat. But as you move to more obscure and obscure people, they will be less likely to have a strange person carting around sharp pointy objects into their home (let alone the potential safety of the salesman). In short, the longer you're at it, the less likely you are to succeed in making appointments, and thus the less money you'll make. And if you're trying to find leads, Vector isn't paying you--meaning that suddenly the job has turned into the on-commission sales job the company claims to abhor, with you hustling for a meeting with every possible client. Waitaminute, that's not the low-pressure job I was promised!

The end result? If you work very hard, you can make seriously money selling Cutco products; these people, paying their way through college, are documented by reliable secondary sources besides Vector. But they are much fewer in number than Vector would have applicants believe. In 1996, for example, The Washington Post reported that Vector employees were on average making $3 a day when all was said and done. For many, the job will get them little, or they might even lose money. When my parents seconded nagging doubts about the job, I did some research and found that my distrust was well-founded; the company has continually had run-ins with the law about their business practices. A student group called SAVE (Students Against Vector Exploitation) has sprung up to combat what they see as manipulative practices.

In short, even if Vector can be a profitable job for some, it is misleading people deliberately. The internet is full of people extolling the virtues of Vector and others denigrating it entirely (they also say the knives are bad, but I really have no hard evidence this is true.) Why else not say anything about what kind of job it is until candidates are at the interview--to the point they won't tell you over the phone if you inquire? Any job requires hard work, but misleading people into believing a commission job where you are technically not even employed by Vector is a position with the company is morally wrong, the legality put aside. Even on Associated Content I've found many that suggest people like me are a bunch of malcontents for not wasting three days on unpaid training and actually inflicting such an experience on ourselves... but if it looks like jumping off a cliff is a bad idea, why would you jump off the cliff (by the way, I plan on deleting all spurious blantant comments along the lines outlined above on sight. I'd like to think you aren't paid to spread Vector PR, but given that their recruiters are all college age, I'm not doubting they wouldn't do it.)

In short: my advice is to stay away from Vector. As for me, I'm still unemployed... but I'd rather be free than working for abusive employers.

References and further reading
*Graves, Dante (April 7, 2010). "Shady businesses profitable at college students' expense". State Press. Accessed May 19, 2010.
*Hermitt, Andrea (May 3, 2010). "Students, beware these bad summer jobs". WalletPop. Accessed May 20, 2010.
*Lucchesi, Nick (February 4, 2004). "Vector Marketing targets unaware college students". The Journal (Webster University). Accessed May 18, 2010.