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Original thread:
Post 74 made on Tuesday November 8, 2005 at 20:09
Nuke-Mecca-Now
Lurking Member
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November 2005
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It certainly doesnt suprise me to see this old scam is still going on.PT Barnum was right,there is a sucker born every minute,live and learn folks!Flashback to 1984,East San Francisco Bay Area(San Lorenzo).I'm fresh out of high school looking for summer work,and i run across an ad in the local paper that went something like this,"rock-n-roll atmosphere,looking for enthusiastic motviated people to work for audio wholesaler.Make 400-800 a day,must have sales experience or willing to learn.Start immediately!".Back in 1984,$400 a day was a lot of money,most people barely made that in a week.So off i was to "Advant Electronics"(sound familiar but yet not Advent?)There i met a guy as tall as the jolly green giant by the name of Richard A Hayes who interviewed me and hired me on the spot.And i was truly eager to work since i had a high maintenence hot blonde amazon girlfiriend and a 65 GT Mustang Fastback that was a money pit for gas and whatever parts id break on the previous weekend at baylands raceway.Anyways,my first day of "training"was with a guy named Ron.and i first noiticed something was amiss as we were loading up the speakers.I noticed ron was making out an invoice by hand on a legit company invoice sheet.I asked him why he was making it out by hand and he said he needed to be able to show law enforcement in case we got stopped.(red flag!)So off we are in the van with our load of 6 pairs of speakers,our phony invoice and our cheesy looking promo sheets for them.The promo sheets showed the speaker with a hot looking womans leg up on it(sex sells!)a long list of specs that made it seem like a high end speaker to the unknowing and a retail price of around $1500.At this point i was already feeling this was a mistake,but the dumb kid in me still gave them the benefit of the doubt,my next question however confirmed the truth much to my dismay.I asked ron where our first delivery was going and he started laughing.I asked him what was so funny and he told me,"i guess richard didn't tell you about how we actually sell these!"At that point he enlightened me as to how we are going to make our money,and by the time he was done i knew i had made a terrible mistake.Basically this is what i was told.The speakers were made at an undisclosed location in the USA for less than 30 each with cheap speaker cones with small magnets that probably couldnt pump more than 1/5 of the wattage what they were rated for.Our overhead was 125 per pair which we had to give to the shop.We sell them for between 250 to 400 per pair depending on the area we were in or the customers appearance of having money(suit versus casual clothes).Then we give them the cover story of going to pick them up at the wholesalers,that we were supposed to pick up 6 speakers and got 6 pairs instead.The story varied but was pretty much the same about getting extra paris that we had to get rid of since it wasnt our mistake and wed pass on the savings to the "mark" instead of having ot take them back to the warehouse.Needless to say after hearing this i was truly dissapointed at being taken into this whole bullshit scheme,but i was still young and naive motivated by my need to keep my gf happy and keep my pony running.That day we went though various parking lots of shopping centers,malls and we even tried the financial district in the city trying to sell these crappy speakers.All i could think about was how much i wanted out of this van but i knew i was stuck in it for the day.I did however do my best to not let anybody get taken in to this so behind his back as hes trying to sell them,i was shaking my head to clue them in not to buy them.That worked for the day except for one yuppie who was taken in by his own greed and bought a pair.From what ron told me this was a really slow day and i almost broke out laughing knowing i was pretty much the cause.He told me he usually sold out every day and some days he had time to go back for a second load so i did understand this had the potential to make a lot of money,but i wanted no part of it.That was my first and last day,i never showed up to work the next day and they never called me to find out why.I guess they knew i wouldnt work out.But all you out there follow this simple rule,"If it seems to good to be true,IT IS!"Caveat Emptor all the way.Hope this can save some people from making the mistakes a lot of others have already made.Take it from me,i was on the inside even if it was only for a day.


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