Vector Marketing Corp. has allegedly targeted and taken advantage of college-age students to sell kitchen knives since 1981.
“It really sickens me knowing many thousands of students each year go through the same deception I went through,” said Chad Hasselius, spokesman for Students Against Vector Exploitation and a senior at Minnesota State University. “I and other SAVE members would just be happy if they’d stop misrepresenting themselves and their products.”
SAVE is an organization that began in June and is comprised of 72 members from across the United States who feel exploited by Vector’s business practices. SAVE has not been shy about labeling the company a scam.
The group alleges that Vector places vague and misleading classified ads to lure people in for “interviews” which are actually mass sales pitches.
Workers are hired as independent contractors and must buy a display knife set that costs between $140 and $175 for their sales demonstrations. Workers aren’t paid for training or mandatory meetings and are also required to pay to attend optional conferences.
“There’s more flexibility as an independent contractor,” said Sarah Baker Andrus, Vector Marketing spokeswoman. “Contractors can set their own hours and deduct business expenses such as mileage and training sessions.”
Baker said that the true cost of the knife set is $135 plus local tax and is fully refundable. She drew a parallel to the deposit that Blockbuster charges to rent an XBox.
“It’s been the best working experience that I could’ve hoped for right out of college,” said Hal Tarazi, an Ohio State senior in marketing.
Tarazi praised Vector for teaching him time-management skills and for providing the stimulation to become more outgoing.
Vector has 280 offices including locations in Canada, Australia, Korea, Puerto Rico and Costa Rico. Complaints about the company have not been limited to U.S. offices.
In 1990 Arizona placed an administrative order against Vector to desist misleading job recruits. In 1999 the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission brought a violation of Vector’s advertising standards to the company’s attention. The violation was committed by a Vector manager and he was immediately fired. There have been no problems since, Andrus said.
“Where there’s smoke there’s fire and when something doesn’t feel right, odds are it isn’t,” Hasselius said. “Experiences being told misleading or outright false information during recruiting is very common in this company.”
Mike Bella, Vector division manager, said he was thankful for Hasselius and SAVE’s criticism.
“(Hasselius) definitely made some good points and that’s why we changed a lot of things,” Bella said. “Our interviews and advertising guidelines have changed tremendously in the last three years. We explain the pay scale.”
Bella acknowledged that the company has made mistakes but said that they’ve since cleaned up their act.
“It’s very easy to sit anonymously behind an Internet presence and make broad remarks about a company instead of bringing issues to us and asking us to resolve them,” Andrus said. “We have no way of addressing statements this broad behind the Internet.”
In 1992 the Wisconsin Consumer Protection Agency surveyed 940 Vector Marketing independent contractors and found that nearly half had not earned or lost money and the average worker made less than $3 a day selling knife sets. Andrus said if a contractor is good at his or her job, he or she can make a good amount of money.
