PrimeTV Now Known As Gatelinx ripoff rebate scams Southern Pines North Carolina

I quit this company because of the Rebate Scam. The rebate scam was originally started by a friend of the family, David Madrid, who came in as the new sales manager at the beginning of 2000. I was one of the original PrimeTV salespeople which started towards the end of 1997 and we were selling Primestar then out of the basement of Travel Resorts of America located in Jackson Springs, NC. The owners of PrimeTV, David and Annette Hagan of Southern Pines, bought out their partner who was with TRA when the company moved to the Southern Pines location off Murray Hill Rd. About the time of the move Primestar was bought out by DirecTV and PrimeTV changed from sales of Primestar equipment to sales of DirecTV equipment.

The company had a national installation company to install the system once it was shipped to the customer. In the beginning PrimeTV had the customer pay for the equipment and the install was free as PrimeTV would pay the installers. As the competition increased the price of equipment dropped and became a FREE single receiver system installed for free as well. The catch? The equipment was free and the installation was free after the $99 rebate. When Madrid showed up the Hagens disappeared off the sales floor. They thought that only a handful of the customers would ever actually make them refund the rebate money and they'd collect interest off it until then.

Madrid would have mandatory weekly breakfast sales meetings at which he'd make comments to the sales staff about the rebate being impossible for the customer to get back in complete with copies of bill before the expiration of the rebate. It made me sick that they had stoop to this level and I couldn't lie to the customers anymore, so I quit. Then Dave Madrid told all the people I worked with that I was fired. He didn't fire me I quit. I had made good money with the Hagens and without having to cheat people out of their hard earned money. I never understood the reason for them going bad...they had an awesome thing going on. With the fact that quiting cost me about $25K a year in income I became unable to pay my credit card debt and was barely able to survive.

I've slowly been paying off the credit card companies I aquired during my employ there. My sense of integrity prohibits me from filing BK to avoid paying my debtors. I feel I should be compensated for moneys lost because I didn't want to be involved in their scam. An employer shouldn't be able to force you to do something illegal or immoral and my choice was do it or quit. I QUIT!!! The good news is that DirecTV stopped PrimeTV being their #1 authorized dealer in the US.

former employee
Southern Pines, North Carolina
U.S.A.