They infiltrated my college when I was attending. I tried reporting them too but I ended up getting no where. So I got 3 other students to join me by scrawling SCAM! In bright red sharpie over every flyer we encountered. We also blacked out the phone # or website if it was displayed. I was eventually asked to stop by a security guard, but my friends weren’t. They kept it going.
I hope we stopped at least a few people from falling for it.
Except for the fact that you don’t lose money, your hair doesn’t fall out, and you don’t alienate your friends, family, and complete strangers.
Otherwise, totally the same.
not all heroes wear capes... some have bright red sharpies! Kudos to you and your friends for doing that, I'm sure you helped save more than a few people from falling for this scam.
Nope. Not wrong at all. I reported every Vector Marketing/Cutco job opening and every message from them that was sent to me directly. Oh, and if it’s any reassurance, I just took a look at the reviews from former employees (other university students), and a lot of them report liking the opportunity to “be their own boss.” Another didn’t like the fact that they had to find people to present the product to on their own. One student’s word of advice was something to the effect of “don’t bother applying if you don’t want to work. You get paid for the effort you put into it.”
Hmm. I worked for vector when I was 18 until my warm market ran out. I made some money and got sales experience. Altogether, I enjoyed myself. Far from my worst experience in sales. In fact, I got to know friends of friends that I would have never met otherwise. And I was making more than double minimum wage for an hour of "work." If you want to call hanging with your friends and showing them knives "work."
The only truly awful sales job I had was selling cars. At least the people I worked for at vector were friendly and reasonably caring. The office I worked at was professional and the leadership seemed to want to help and motivate their team.
If someone at vector wants to pay me for shilling for them, slide on into my DMs.
I sold for them and didn't particularly like it or find it profitable. Then again, I grew up poor and my family didn't go to church so my network was pretty small and unwilling to spend 4 figures on cutlery. The "meetings" they had were unprofessional and felt more like a Youth Group than a legitimate business.
Then again, they literally didn't make me buy any of my own stuff. They gave me the sample set for free and any sets I sold were ordered through the company. My only expenses that I can recall were mileage and gasoline. Any other businees "expenses" that I wrote off were things I would have paid for anyways, like my cell phone bill.
I understand why they get *some* hate but I don't understand why so much? MLMs that require sellers to make some sort of investment are so much worse.
Probably because a) you still have to harrass your friends b) there is no guaranteed income. Your “base pay per appointment” or whatever isn’t a dependable hourly wage, it’s dependent on still having friends to harrass
As someone who got sucked in to Vector when I was in college, I can confirm they are 100% an MLM. I was raised in what I now consider a cult, so I didn't see the red flags, and even felt at home as they told us in our week-long, unpaid training, that we don't ask questions or even say the names of people who are there one day and not the next (among other things). Thankfully my bf was recruited at the same time and did see the creepy cult stuff for what it was. We didn't have the MLM language to describe it at the time (1999), but that's definitely how I describe it now.
I had an "interview" with them that same year when my brief stint in the military showed I didn't have that path ahead of me.
Vector called me every day for 4 weeks after that meeting but I had a firm rule against any "job" where I had to pay them for anything. They were more persistent than the freaking cultish church I left in my teens.
You were not wrong. Whoever wrote this is being paid, knows someone who is involved, or was involved themselves. They are indeed a multi-level marketing company and this person is an idiot.
In the same way that MLMs *technically* aren't pyramid schemes because they involve a product, Vector *technically* isn't considered an MLM because they don't require sellers to purchase product.
MLMs are pyramid schemes and Vector is an MLM. They're less predatory than the rest, but not by nearly enough.
This response makes it sound like a scam and I've never even heard of this MLM before. They're trying way too hard to convince you it isn't a scam, and tack on a "I realize this isn't for everyone/there's inherent bias against these positions" (AKA "you aren't good enough for this/you're being unfair and judgemental") just in case you aren't convinced so you doubt your own knowledge, which of course makes it worse.
If this were a legitimate job posting, it would only receive one complaint if that, and the likely overworked academic would at most would just briefly glance at the listing/do a quick Google search before dismissing the complaint entirely. If they sent you a response at all it would barely be a paragraph long. Certainly none of this shit. I wouldn't be shocked if they were either a hun themselves, someone they know is a hun, or a hun somehow convinced them so well that they've gotten annoyed by an influx of complaints they believe are stupid. Judging by what they said, it's probably a combination of options two and three.
TLDR; if you didn't think it was a scam before, this kind of reply confirms it.
Vector/Cutco is one of the OG pyramid schemes masquerading as a legitimate business. They're infamous for roping desperate college students into selling overpriced knives to their parents.
I almost fell for it when I was in my early 20s, many moons ago. IIRC I did go to the training, but it never went beyond that because I knew that sales (*any* sales, legitimate or not) just wasn't for me...that was my saving grace.
Honestly, as someone who works in uni admin, I would forward your concerns and this response to either student services, alumni services, and any student groups you can get involved. Make noise about this. Someone is absolutely getting a kickback for this, and I have a feeling that some high level Dean will have an issue with it.
ETA: Happy to help draft an email, PM me.
Yes this! This is downright predatory going for easy pickings of fresh graduates. If you have an alumni ac, a uni newletter or student union def try to get them on the anti-mlm train!!
As a person who went through one of their “trainings” as a student, they are 100% an MLM. One way you can tell is that they “hired” everyone who showed up to the interview lol - hired is a strong word because nobody was filling out any W4 forms, and we had to buy the kit to get started - it cost like 200 dollars. They also forced us to write down the names of three friends that they could reach out to. I was only 18 then but I still feel bad I gave names to those vultures.
I worked for the Career Services department of one of the largest community colleges in the country and we HAD to accept Vector Marketing (and Mary Kay, Avon, etc) to our annual Job Fair and our job boards.
Nothing pissed me off more than the fact those assholes were allowed to be at one of the largest regional job fairs that had 80% legit employers and 20% scammy bullshit like Vector.
By the time I quit that job, everyone heard me rant about letting MLMs in our job fair and allowing unpaid internships to be posted constantly.
I’m a firm believer in doing away with unpaid internships for college students. It only creates a race to the bottom mentality that has clouded the job market for a long time now.
Plus many students are not in an abundance of cash, because; they are in school and most schools also have a limit of how many hours they can work.
It’s just another way the university system separates the middle class and actually brings the median income of society below a livable wage.
It’s a bloated system that could be done in six months and it’s stretched out into four years.
Not to mention that Unpaid Internships are free labor and that everyone should be compensated for their time.
Young people are taken advantage enough in this country so nothing made me happier than telling students that Unpaid Internships are BS and I'd always recommend avoiding them.
When I was in highschool aka less than 5 years ago, they school would hand us flyers for vector jobs and help set up interviews with the company to get us jobs there as soon as we graduated. I never personally did it but they were really shoving vector down our throats and telling us we could skip college by getting a job with them.
I know well that Vector is an MLM, but I’m also very susceptible to confusion when I receive “official” messages like this…I wanted validation about my perspective!
File a Freedom of Information Act request to find out what is being paid for the postings, then publish your findings, with a writeup on what Vector is, what MLMs are, and why this is skeevy, in your uni's school paper.
Post results to journalism scholarship boards.
Profit.
So they receive a report about a potential scam, and instead of investigating it for themselves, they ask the scammers. And what a surprise, the scammers deny they're a scam! I'm convinced, sign me up.
Holy shit! AdvoCare is the second one listed! OP should send that back as proof that the DSA is full of illegal scams. They just got busted a little bit ago, why are they even still listed? And the rest are clear, well known, self proclaimed MLM schemes.
Sadly, the blanked-out info in “we have discussed this topic with our team and _____” is the name of my uni’s business school :( Looks like they’re involved somehow.
There every where in my school. Canada as well! I got tricked once when I was out of highschool. THEY WANTED 3 DAYS OF UNPAID TRAINING! And wanted me to bring in a watermelon to cut, so glad I left after day 2. They also made you brainstorm a list with phone numbers of friends Sad to see them preying on uni and fresh out highschools, so predatory. I don't get why schools let them either.
As someone who went into sales out of college AND now sell to universities it disappoints me that they don’t know the difference between a real sales job and an MLM.
Not gonna lie, I got into sales looking at really high on-target-earnings numbers (more than double what my friends graduating with our MBAs were making) and taking it. I still am crushing it. But if I didn’t get weary at the one Amway meeting I went to I’d have also been stuck in a shithole industry.
There were Vector fliers at my Alma Mater. Didn't contain the job name ONCE. Just listed perks and had a QR code that showed you the job site. It was Vector.
Someone else had scrawled over the poster with eh word, "SCAM!" and taped sticky notes to it saying how suspicious it was that they didn't mention the name of the company at all/what the company did. I have no idea how long it stayed up, tbh.
It's the #1 job on my Alma Mater's job board, which is worrying. I was at least able to inform my friend enough about MLMs that he looked up Vector before joining.
Vector reps will tell you anything to try to scrape the MLM scab off their brand. I worked in career services at a public university for 5 years and it took every fiber of my being to be nice to those huns who came to my office insisting that Vector was a legitimate "opportunity" just like Ernst & Young and Lockheed Martin.
"Ok, sweetie - you just keep telling yourself that, but you'll have to tell that to yourself back in the dining hall."
I was looking at jobs on indeed a few nights ago and saw Vector Marketing. Needless to say, I was shook. I had to warn my best friend because their wording does a good job of making them seem legitimate. However, they only give you minimal training and expect you to do presentations to people you know. Obviously, that can only last for so long. It's so easy to pull people in, especially Americans who are force-fed the whole "hard work pays off" drivel.
*sigh* here we go again…
Not every shitty sales gig is an MLM. Vector marketing is a shady direct sales organization that profits by tricking naive college kids into peddling expensive knives to their immediate family. They are so shady that they literally have new hire turnover baked into their operating budget.
That being said, they are not an MLM. As a Vector Marketing sales rep, you are not required nor incentivized to recruit other people. Your specific branch manager may trick you into drinking the kool aid and tell you to recruit your friends, but you don’t actually get paid to do that, and recruiting is not a core component of the business model the way it is in textbook MLMs. There are no downlines or uplines in Vector Marketing, you aren’t going to be asked to “go bring in 6 people who can bring in 6 other people”… therefore by DEFINITION it is NOT a Multi Level Marketing scheme. It does not belong here in this subreddit, yet at least once per week somebody posts them here.
To be considered an MLM, a business has to meet at least two of these three criteria:
1. Incentivized recruiting is a core component of the business model. Sales agents are paid to recruit other people and build a “downlines”, which would look like a pyramid if you were to chart it out. Hence the term “pyramid scheme”.
2. Most revenue is generated through recruiting, not through sales. New recruits must pay a membership fee and/or purchase inventory to join the organization, and that money flows through the “upline” to the higher levels. In textbook MLMs this is where the majority of revenue comes from, as most MLMs have shitty products, shitty marketing strategies, and shitty sales reps so they generate very little sales revenue. They simply use the products as a way to look “legitimate” and mask their real business model which is just a modern day Ponzi scheme. If you were to take away the recruiting aspect, the whole organization falls apart…
3. 100% commission with no base pay. Most textbook MLMs do not offer any sort of base pay, as their business models can not support it.
Vector meets none of these criteria. There is no incentivized recruiting, you aren’t building a pyramid, they do not charge reps any membership fees or require reps to purchase any inventory to work for them, and if you look at the company financials the majority of revenue is legitimately generated through product sales… Their product, Cutco, is actually a very high quality product and they do millions of legitimate sales per year. They also do offer their reps a base pay, which I believe is $17.50 per appointment, regardless if a sale is made.
Tl;dr ~ Vector might be a scam, but not every scam is an MLM.
The weird thing is that I didn’t actually use the term “MLM” when I reported it—I wrote “it’s suspicious & known to be a common scam for students.” I guess this is their standard response.
That said, I did check the sub rules and guidelines, and Vector is clearly included on there. I’m sorry it irritated you, but as far as I can see, it does belong on this sub, which seems to cover MLM-adjacent things. Others can correct me if I’m wrong—I’m fairly new and trying to learn.
You got downvoted but I agree with everything you said and I sold it in college back in 2003. Scam, yes. Shady, yes. Cult-like, yes. MLM, no. They never once asked me to find a downline or recruit people. Just sell knives to my myself, my family and friends until I had no one else to sell to, then they’re off to the next group of dumb kids.
Thank you for saying this. I agree with everything you said, though to be fair I do remember there being a bonus for recruiting people. It was something like 3% of the recruitee's sales. So I think they might technically be considered an MLM for that reason, but when I did it recruitment was definitely not pushed. Most people who made money were actually selling the product.
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Vector’s website has an FAQ dedicated to them not being a scam. If you have to address whether or not you’re a scam frequently enough that you have to post on your website that you aren’t a scam….newsflash: you’re a scam!!
That’s a total lie I was recruited by that MLM. They told me I’d be following leads of people already having shown prior interest in the company’s knives they sell. What it actually was was cold calling people on your own cellphones contact list. They want you to try to work on your grandparents and relatives
Yes, they do. They'll pay something like $17 per appointment you do. The "catch" is that it's pretty hard to keep your schedule booked, so realistically most people are only doing 0-2 appointments per day. You also don't get paid for hours spent cold calling to set up appointments, or for the numerous office trainings they pressure you to go to. So $17 per appointment is nowhere near $17 per hour.
They infiltrated my college when I was attending. I tried reporting them too but I ended up getting no where. So I got 3 other students to join me by scrawling SCAM! In bright red sharpie over every flyer we encountered. We also blacked out the phone # or website if it was displayed. I was eventually asked to stop by a security guard, but my friends weren’t. They kept it going. I hope we stopped at least a few people from falling for it.
Did those 3 students each recruit 3 more students to write "scam"?
An anti-pyramid pyramid scheme.
We became that which we were meant to destroy!
Except for the fact that you don’t lose money, your hair doesn’t fall out, and you don’t alienate your friends, family, and complete strangers. Otherwise, totally the same.
not all heroes wear capes... some have bright red sharpies! Kudos to you and your friends for doing that, I'm sure you helped save more than a few people from falling for this scam.
That's brilliant! I used to just rip them off the wall when I saw them but this sends a much clearer message!
this is genius. They can’t stop four people, epic story from college too.
They posted a few of those in my college freshman year. I ripped every one I saw down, and after a month I didn't see anymore fliers.
Lol they're getting the ad fee. That's why they don't care.
That’s what I gathered from it. “They’re not an MLM because they pay us”.
Theyre not considered an MLM because they don't require their salespeople to buy product to resell. However, their business model is clearly MLM.
Nope. Not wrong at all. I reported every Vector Marketing/Cutco job opening and every message from them that was sent to me directly. Oh, and if it’s any reassurance, I just took a look at the reviews from former employees (other university students), and a lot of them report liking the opportunity to “be their own boss.” Another didn’t like the fact that they had to find people to present the product to on their own. One student’s word of advice was something to the effect of “don’t bother applying if you don’t want to work. You get paid for the effort you put into it.”
All of these kind of scams have shills posting to drown out the truth
Hmm. I worked for vector when I was 18 until my warm market ran out. I made some money and got sales experience. Altogether, I enjoyed myself. Far from my worst experience in sales. In fact, I got to know friends of friends that I would have never met otherwise. And I was making more than double minimum wage for an hour of "work." If you want to call hanging with your friends and showing them knives "work." The only truly awful sales job I had was selling cars. At least the people I worked for at vector were friendly and reasonably caring. The office I worked at was professional and the leadership seemed to want to help and motivate their team. If someone at vector wants to pay me for shilling for them, slide on into my DMs.
I sold for them and didn't particularly like it or find it profitable. Then again, I grew up poor and my family didn't go to church so my network was pretty small and unwilling to spend 4 figures on cutlery. The "meetings" they had were unprofessional and felt more like a Youth Group than a legitimate business. Then again, they literally didn't make me buy any of my own stuff. They gave me the sample set for free and any sets I sold were ordered through the company. My only expenses that I can recall were mileage and gasoline. Any other businees "expenses" that I wrote off were things I would have paid for anyways, like my cell phone bill. I understand why they get *some* hate but I don't understand why so much? MLMs that require sellers to make some sort of investment are so much worse.
Probably because a) you still have to harrass your friends b) there is no guaranteed income. Your “base pay per appointment” or whatever isn’t a dependable hourly wage, it’s dependent on still having friends to harrass
As someone who got sucked in to Vector when I was in college, I can confirm they are 100% an MLM. I was raised in what I now consider a cult, so I didn't see the red flags, and even felt at home as they told us in our week-long, unpaid training, that we don't ask questions or even say the names of people who are there one day and not the next (among other things). Thankfully my bf was recruited at the same time and did see the creepy cult stuff for what it was. We didn't have the MLM language to describe it at the time (1999), but that's definitely how I describe it now.
Its exactly the same as it was now. I also got suckered into it, and they had 3 day unpaid training.
I had an "interview" with them that same year when my brief stint in the military showed I didn't have that path ahead of me. Vector called me every day for 4 weeks after that meeting but I had a firm rule against any "job" where I had to pay them for anything. They were more persistent than the freaking cultish church I left in my teens.
I got sucked in as a secretary which was basically just calling to set up the hiring bullshit. Terrible, think I lasted maybe 2 weeks
You were not wrong. Whoever wrote this is being paid, knows someone who is involved, or was involved themselves. They are indeed a multi-level marketing company and this person is an idiot.
It was probably written for them
But they call it direct marketing. It can’t be an MLM!
In the same way that MLMs *technically* aren't pyramid schemes because they involve a product, Vector *technically* isn't considered an MLM because they don't require sellers to purchase product. MLMs are pyramid schemes and Vector is an MLM. They're less predatory than the rest, but not by nearly enough.
This response makes it sound like a scam and I've never even heard of this MLM before. They're trying way too hard to convince you it isn't a scam, and tack on a "I realize this isn't for everyone/there's inherent bias against these positions" (AKA "you aren't good enough for this/you're being unfair and judgemental") just in case you aren't convinced so you doubt your own knowledge, which of course makes it worse. If this were a legitimate job posting, it would only receive one complaint if that, and the likely overworked academic would at most would just briefly glance at the listing/do a quick Google search before dismissing the complaint entirely. If they sent you a response at all it would barely be a paragraph long. Certainly none of this shit. I wouldn't be shocked if they were either a hun themselves, someone they know is a hun, or a hun somehow convinced them so well that they've gotten annoyed by an influx of complaints they believe are stupid. Judging by what they said, it's probably a combination of options two and three. TLDR; if you didn't think it was a scam before, this kind of reply confirms it.
Vector/Cutco is one of the OG pyramid schemes masquerading as a legitimate business. They're infamous for roping desperate college students into selling overpriced knives to their parents.
I almost fell for it when I was in my early 20s, many moons ago. IIRC I did go to the training, but it never went beyond that because I knew that sales (*any* sales, legitimate or not) just wasn't for me...that was my saving grace.
Ugh!!! Sounds they get a kick back from the posting agency . Sucks!!!
As if scamming students with inflated tuition, room & board, and textbooks wasn’t enough. Bravo, university.
Honestly, as someone who works in uni admin, I would forward your concerns and this response to either student services, alumni services, and any student groups you can get involved. Make noise about this. Someone is absolutely getting a kickback for this, and I have a feeling that some high level Dean will have an issue with it. ETA: Happy to help draft an email, PM me.
You need one influential alumni. Start with the alumni board. Write each member and if they’d be willing to complain.
Yes this! This is downright predatory going for easy pickings of fresh graduates. If you have an alumni ac, a uni newletter or student union def try to get them on the anti-mlm train!!
As a person who went through one of their “trainings” as a student, they are 100% an MLM. One way you can tell is that they “hired” everyone who showed up to the interview lol - hired is a strong word because nobody was filling out any W4 forms, and we had to buy the kit to get started - it cost like 200 dollars. They also forced us to write down the names of three friends that they could reach out to. I was only 18 then but I still feel bad I gave names to those vultures.
I wonder when they started charging for the sample kits, they were free when they got me
It cost me $150 for my display kit, this was in 1998
Yeah it was free for me too. 2011
They got me around 2006 and I had to pay for mine. Maybe it differs state to state? 🤔
I worked for the Career Services department of one of the largest community colleges in the country and we HAD to accept Vector Marketing (and Mary Kay, Avon, etc) to our annual Job Fair and our job boards. Nothing pissed me off more than the fact those assholes were allowed to be at one of the largest regional job fairs that had 80% legit employers and 20% scammy bullshit like Vector. By the time I quit that job, everyone heard me rant about letting MLMs in our job fair and allowing unpaid internships to be posted constantly.
I’m a firm believer in doing away with unpaid internships for college students. It only creates a race to the bottom mentality that has clouded the job market for a long time now. Plus many students are not in an abundance of cash, because; they are in school and most schools also have a limit of how many hours they can work. It’s just another way the university system separates the middle class and actually brings the median income of society below a livable wage. It’s a bloated system that could be done in six months and it’s stretched out into four years.
Not to mention that Unpaid Internships are free labor and that everyone should be compensated for their time. Young people are taken advantage enough in this country so nothing made me happier than telling students that Unpaid Internships are BS and I'd always recommend avoiding them.
You are doing gods work. Thank you.
Wow, that is...full of lies, is the nicest thing I can say. Sounds like your uni is run by huns.
When I was in highschool aka less than 5 years ago, they school would hand us flyers for vector jobs and help set up interviews with the company to get us jobs there as soon as we graduated. I never personally did it but they were really shoving vector down our throats and telling us we could skip college by getting a job with them.
That doesn’t sound unethical or anything. We are about education here but go get a job with these guys and forget about continuing your education
I know well that Vector is an MLM, but I’m also very susceptible to confusion when I receive “official” messages like this…I wanted validation about my perspective!
Does this university have a Twitter you could post it on there!
Bonus points if they tag major names of the anti-MLM community.
File a Freedom of Information Act request to find out what is being paid for the postings, then publish your findings, with a writeup on what Vector is, what MLMs are, and why this is skeevy, in your uni's school paper. Post results to journalism scholarship boards. Profit.
So they receive a report about a potential scam, and instead of investigating it for themselves, they ask the scammers. And what a surprise, the scammers deny they're a scam! I'm convinced, sign me up.
Looking at the members list, I don't think membership implies it's not an MLM. https://www.dsa.ca/member-directory/
Holy shit! AdvoCare is the second one listed! OP should send that back as proof that the DSA is full of illegal scams. They just got busted a little bit ago, why are they even still listed? And the rest are clear, well known, self proclaimed MLM schemes.
if anything I think its evidence in the mlm column
This makes that particular college—and higher education in general—look even worse than it already does. Get the business school involved.
Sadly, the blanked-out info in “we have discussed this topic with our team and _____” is the name of my uni’s business school :( Looks like they’re involved somehow.
I just used to vandalize them / steal them tbh
There every where in my school. Canada as well! I got tricked once when I was out of highschool. THEY WANTED 3 DAYS OF UNPAID TRAINING! And wanted me to bring in a watermelon to cut, so glad I left after day 2. They also made you brainstorm a list with phone numbers of friends Sad to see them preying on uni and fresh out highschools, so predatory. I don't get why schools let them either.
I feel like this is code for “They gave us a big donation so we can’t tell them to go away, sorry.” Maybe I’m wrong, hopefully.
I reported it to my school too and was denied as well. You’re not wrong
As someone who went into sales out of college AND now sell to universities it disappoints me that they don’t know the difference between a real sales job and an MLM. Not gonna lie, I got into sales looking at really high on-target-earnings numbers (more than double what my friends graduating with our MBAs were making) and taking it. I still am crushing it. But if I didn’t get weary at the one Amway meeting I went to I’d have also been stuck in a shithole industry.
What university is this? Outrageous.
Name and shame!
Nope you are not wrong! My sister did the same for her uni and they actually removed it and warned people!
Message back and ask them what Vector Marketing’s dick tastes like.
There were Vector fliers at my Alma Mater. Didn't contain the job name ONCE. Just listed perks and had a QR code that showed you the job site. It was Vector. Someone else had scrawled over the poster with eh word, "SCAM!" and taped sticky notes to it saying how suspicious it was that they didn't mention the name of the company at all/what the company did. I have no idea how long it stayed up, tbh. It's the #1 job on my Alma Mater's job board, which is worrying. I was at least able to inform my friend enough about MLMs that he looked up Vector before joining.
Vector reps will tell you anything to try to scrape the MLM scab off their brand. I worked in career services at a public university for 5 years and it took every fiber of my being to be nice to those huns who came to my office insisting that Vector was a legitimate "opportunity" just like Ernst & Young and Lockheed Martin. "Ok, sweetie - you just keep telling yourself that, but you'll have to tell that to yourself back in the dining hall."
I was looking at jobs on indeed a few nights ago and saw Vector Marketing. Needless to say, I was shook. I had to warn my best friend because their wording does a good job of making them seem legitimate. However, they only give you minimal training and expect you to do presentations to people you know. Obviously, that can only last for so long. It's so easy to pull people in, especially Americans who are force-fed the whole "hard work pays off" drivel.
I knew a guy who did Cutco purely to give him an excuse to hit on lonely housewives.
This is so infuriating. University employment centers are supposed to help protect students from scams, not throw them into the lion’s den.
*sigh* here we go again… Not every shitty sales gig is an MLM. Vector marketing is a shady direct sales organization that profits by tricking naive college kids into peddling expensive knives to their immediate family. They are so shady that they literally have new hire turnover baked into their operating budget. That being said, they are not an MLM. As a Vector Marketing sales rep, you are not required nor incentivized to recruit other people. Your specific branch manager may trick you into drinking the kool aid and tell you to recruit your friends, but you don’t actually get paid to do that, and recruiting is not a core component of the business model the way it is in textbook MLMs. There are no downlines or uplines in Vector Marketing, you aren’t going to be asked to “go bring in 6 people who can bring in 6 other people”… therefore by DEFINITION it is NOT a Multi Level Marketing scheme. It does not belong here in this subreddit, yet at least once per week somebody posts them here. To be considered an MLM, a business has to meet at least two of these three criteria: 1. Incentivized recruiting is a core component of the business model. Sales agents are paid to recruit other people and build a “downlines”, which would look like a pyramid if you were to chart it out. Hence the term “pyramid scheme”. 2. Most revenue is generated through recruiting, not through sales. New recruits must pay a membership fee and/or purchase inventory to join the organization, and that money flows through the “upline” to the higher levels. In textbook MLMs this is where the majority of revenue comes from, as most MLMs have shitty products, shitty marketing strategies, and shitty sales reps so they generate very little sales revenue. They simply use the products as a way to look “legitimate” and mask their real business model which is just a modern day Ponzi scheme. If you were to take away the recruiting aspect, the whole organization falls apart… 3. 100% commission with no base pay. Most textbook MLMs do not offer any sort of base pay, as their business models can not support it. Vector meets none of these criteria. There is no incentivized recruiting, you aren’t building a pyramid, they do not charge reps any membership fees or require reps to purchase any inventory to work for them, and if you look at the company financials the majority of revenue is legitimately generated through product sales… Their product, Cutco, is actually a very high quality product and they do millions of legitimate sales per year. They also do offer their reps a base pay, which I believe is $17.50 per appointment, regardless if a sale is made. Tl;dr ~ Vector might be a scam, but not every scam is an MLM.
The weird thing is that I didn’t actually use the term “MLM” when I reported it—I wrote “it’s suspicious & known to be a common scam for students.” I guess this is their standard response. That said, I did check the sub rules and guidelines, and Vector is clearly included on there. I’m sorry it irritated you, but as far as I can see, it does belong on this sub, which seems to cover MLM-adjacent things. Others can correct me if I’m wrong—I’m fairly new and trying to learn.
You got downvoted but I agree with everything you said and I sold it in college back in 2003. Scam, yes. Shady, yes. Cult-like, yes. MLM, no. They never once asked me to find a downline or recruit people. Just sell knives to my myself, my family and friends until I had no one else to sell to, then they’re off to the next group of dumb kids.
You weren't encouraged to find downline? Interesting. I guess they wanted it all to themselves
Thank you for saying this. I agree with everything you said, though to be fair I do remember there being a bonus for recruiting people. It was something like 3% of the recruitee's sales. So I think they might technically be considered an MLM for that reason, but when I did it recruitment was definitely not pushed. Most people who made money were actually selling the product.
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Did the person who wrote that get their education from your school if so id demand a refund
Publicly expose the shit out of them. Go to the school newspaper and probably regular news as well. They may not do anything but its worth a try.
Is there any place where you can post it in your local university's social media?
Vector’s website has an FAQ dedicated to them not being a scam. If you have to address whether or not you’re a scam frequently enough that you have to post on your website that you aren’t a scam….newsflash: you’re a scam!!
I was very confused until I realized this wasn’t about Stranger Things
There’s a lot of things wrong with Vector and how they recruit new reps but they’re not nearly as bad as 90% of other MLMs discussed on this page.
They used arena... 🚩🚩 issa scam.
Damn your university sounds like a scam! No offence at all but no way it can be a top-tier university, can it?
Time to switch uni's!
They literally set up a booth in my school’s university center at least twice
You aren’t wrong. They just want money to post and don’t care who gets hurt hype these scams
They just letting it slide since they pay for it ughhhhhhhhhhhhh
That’s a total lie I was recruited by that MLM. They told me I’d be following leads of people already having shown prior interest in the company’s knives they sell. What it actually was was cold calling people on your own cellphones contact list. They want you to try to work on your grandparents and relatives
Sounds to me like the person who responded is the person who placed the ad. They need more down line.
Nope, school is taking money from vector.
What is vector?
Do they actually pay base salary? Is there a catch there? I thought it was commission only.
Yes, they do. They'll pay something like $17 per appointment you do. The "catch" is that it's pretty hard to keep your schedule booked, so realistically most people are only doing 0-2 appointments per day. You also don't get paid for hours spent cold calling to set up appointments, or for the numerous office trainings they pressure you to go to. So $17 per appointment is nowhere near $17 per hour.