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Report: #1309611

Complaint Review: Living Scriptures Inc - Ogden Utah

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  • Reported By: mrfantastic — Provo Utah USA
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  • Living Scriptures Inc 3625 Harrison Blvd Ogden, Utah USA

Living Scriptures Inc Unfair working conditions and dishonest "employer" Ogden Utah

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I worked for living scriptures as a salesman for a summer.  I never would have done so if the people involved in hiring told me one thing that was truthful.  I will be careful to outline all the lies that I was told in the different stages of my "employment".

First, in there pitch to prospective salesman, they say that 80% of salesman stick with Living Scriptures Inc throughout the summer.  I don't know which year they pulled that statistic from because when I worked there, 2 of my original 11 team members were left at the end of the summer.

When they had their "pizza meetings" they showed a picture of a guy holding tons of electronics and toys.  They promised over and over that even if you didn't do well over the summer you would win everything that guy was holding many times over in sales school, as prizes during the summer, and at the end of the summer event.  I didn't win a single thing at any of those times.  

Before we left, my manager promised that I could leave some off my things in a storage shed he had rented.   He already paid for it and said he wouldn't charge me to keep some things in the corner since he had the extra space.  When I came home he said I owed him rent on the space and had me pay him nearly $200.  Looking back I shouldn't have paid him because I had no legal obligation to do so since I hadn't even made a verbal agreement to pay him rent.

Next, they say that you earn more if you work harder; and that is what makes sales better than traditional hourly jobs.  However, this is false at Living Scriptures Inc for multiple reasons.  They hire their salesman as "independant contractors".  This way, you can work more than 70 hours a week, which I did, and not get paid a dime for it.  You make 100% of your earnings on commision.  Their poster boy salesman do make a lot of money but that's only 10 out of a hundred.  The other 90 lose money over the summer.   Even with my 70 hours a week for this company, they undercut my sales of their expensive product by streaming an entire season of their product on BYUtv for FREE.  They also have some of their DVDs in the $5 bin at walmart.  How am I supposed to sell them for $40 an episode when you can get an entire season for $5 elsewhere?

The pitch that I gave people was packed with false information.  I gave it because I was naive and because I was told that this was a "missionary experience" and that I was bringing people closer to God and all kinds of other religious mumbo jumbo.  The owner of the company, Richard Rich, even came to sales meetings a few times and called our sales a "sacred work" and read us passages from the Book of Mormon and from Joseph Smith's account. NOTE:  The LDS church has nothing to do with Living Scriptures Inc.  The company itself is a sham but the church and it's teachings are completely separate.  I am just pointing out that the company used religious teachings to build a cloud around the salesman so that they would believe all the company's lies.

To give a few examples of the lies we were told in the pitch:  We quote a study from USA Today that 90% of what children watched on TV in the 90's was violent.  We are then supposed to say "That's how it was in the 90's, can't you imagine that it is much worse now?"  I asked the people in charge of writing the script and several managers, but no one could give me a reference for that study.  They made it up so that the pitch would sound legitimate.  

We also tell customers that the reason the DVDs are so expensive is because of the narrow market and because the episodes don't have a theatrical release like Disney movies do.  The reason they don't have a theatrical release is because they are 20 minutes long.  They say that the price is the same as it was 40 years ago but now you get even more content with the bonus features.  These bonus features that make the DVDs so expensive could have been programmed by a bright 10 year old and the qauality of the DVDs is the same as it was 40 years ago.  We have exactly one digitally remastered cartoon and that's the one that we use when showing off the product to people.  That, or we show them a demo on our iPad(paid for out of my pocked) which is so small you can't tell the qauality would be bad on an HDTV.

On the doorstep I am also told to say that "i have been talking with people in the ward" and to drop names of people that I know live in the ward to make it seem like lots of people have been buying my product, even if it is the first house that I visit.

Every morning we practiced our pitch. We practiced techniques to rush people in the precision.  Ask if they have a pen.  Ask to use the bathroom so they can talk about it. Pretend you have a phone call from your boss so they have to hurry.  Have them read one paragraph of the contract and then tell them that the rest is just legal stuff that they can just skip over.  Show them that it will end up costing $4000+ for only a split second and then move on. 

At the end of the summer my expenses far outweighed my earnings.  For 6 months after my "employment" I was paying off my $2000+ debt to them.  I paid to work for Living Scriptures Inc.  They didn't pay me.   Anyone considering working for this company should stay far way.   

Finally, in the hiring process, they told me that even if I didn't do well, I would make at least $20,000 over the summer.  Experienced salesman would earn $80,000.  I went $2,000 in debt working for Living Scriptures Inc. and I demand that they pay me the $20,000 dollars promised. plus $2,000 in damages.

This report was posted on Ripoff Report on 06/05/2016 09:45 AM and is a permanent record located here: https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/living-scriptures-inc/ogden-utah-84403/living-scriptures-inc-unfair-working-conditions-and-dishonest-employer-ogden-utah-1309611. The posting time indicated is Arizona local time. Arizona does not observe daylight savings so the post time may be Mountain or Pacific depending on the time of year. Ripoff Report has an exclusive license to this report. It may not be copied without the written permission of Ripoff Report. READ: Foreign websites steal our content

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