Students Fight Back Against “Deceptive” Company

A long-running classified advertisement in The Spectrum reads, “Back to school openings, New York based firm. $14.25 base/appt. Ideal for students ages 18+, flex. Schedule, Conditions apply.” Sound too good to be true? Well, as the saying goes, it probably is.

Curiously missing from this ad, and similar ads on flyers and chalkboards, is the name of the company and a description of the job. The ads are paid for by the Vector Marketing Corporation, perhaps better known as “www.workforstudents.com.” Although the ads often imply that they are for work at an expanding local firm, Vector Marketing is a large international corporation with hundreds of offices and they have been hiring students for decades. Vector Marketing is the sole distributor for CutCo kitchen knives.

The advertisements say “no door-to-door or telemarketing” and promise flexible hours and big paychecks, but what they neglect to mention is that the only way to make money at Vector is by calling up your friends and family to make appointments to come to their home and give them a sales pitch on a new set of kitchen knives. Unless of course you work your way up to management and start recruiting students of your own; then you get commission on their sales too.

Although Vector Marketing undoubtedly has many happy employees that make plenty of money, the vast majority of the people that apply to work for them are far less satisfied. Students, however, are fighting back. Formed in June of 2003, Students Against Vector Exploitation (SAVE) is an internet-based group of students from all over the US and Canada that seeks to expose the unethical business practices of Vector Marketing.

David Ferris, one of the founders of SAVE and a one-time Vector employee, explained his displeasure with Vector and its business practices. “The company’s success at hawking overpriced knives and deceiving unsuspecting sales reps is based on putting up a front of decency, respectability and opportunity,” he told a California State student newspaper. “In reality, Vector is only marginally different from a pyramid scheme—a shady, illicit business based on deception, exploitation and psychological trickery. This is necessary to convince people who don’t want or need new kitchen cutlery to buy it anyway and to coerce sales reps into conforming into the narrow corporate mold and disregard their ethical concerns over the door-to-door sales business.”

Ferris and colleagues at SAVE are not the only ones unhappy with Vector. A 1992 Wisconsin Consumer Protection survey found that Wisconsin Vector recruits earned an average pay of under $3 per day. Vector representatives dispute this survey and claim that they have improved significantly in the last decade. Vector has also been in trouble with the Australian government for deceptive job advertisments as recently as 1999.

“First, we had to pay $150 to get a demonstration kit. Then, we were told that we could only sell to family and friends and referrals would come later,” one disgruntled former-Vector employee wrote on the SAVE website. SAVE doesn’t just talk. They help students who feel swindled file complaints with the Better Business Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission, and state attorney generals. One SAVE member reports that she won a settlement against Vector with the New York Department of Labor, although this is denied by Vector officials. “[Vector] will sometimes provide a small amount in compensation because someone was disgruntled,” Sarah Andrus, director of academic programs at Vector, told the Cornell Daily Sun.

The knives themselves were described in 1998 by Consumer Reports as “Very good, but expensive.” A deluxe set of knives can cost well over $1000. Given the vast number of complaints made by former employees, any student considering working for Vector Marketing should check out the SAVE website as well as www.workforstudents.com and make up their own mind. SAVE is online at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/savecampaign/ and a simple Google search for “Vector Marketing” turns up hundreds of similar anti-Vector websites.