Cambridge Whos Who Ripoff Preys on your ego self esteem, impulse Uniondale New York

I am a former employee who has taken the time to write because I felt so uneasy even working for the company that I had to bow down. This is the biggest scam I have ever seen in my life. It preys upon its "consumers". The company sends out mass mailers to people they view as "easy sells" telling individuals that they have been recommended for their Who's Who directory and have them fill out a card saying "YES! I am interested in being a member of the 200x Cambridge Who's Who Directory of Professionals and Executives I understand there is no charge or fee to be listed" and they fill out all sorts of info about what they do for a living. A few weeks later, representatives begin to try and contact that said individual. Upon contact an "interview" is conducted in which at the end all members are allowed in. In fact, the interview conducted is completely scripted, as is everything one is to say during the conversation. The interview starts "I see here youre the x of X? How long have you been in that capacity for? And what is your highest degree of education? From what school? In what area of study?" and continues to ask questions that seemingly on the surface is a "tryout" to get into the book.. its not.. youre getting in.. I inducted a rubber tube maker in a warehouse for sweatpants... a regular run of the mill warehouse person... I inducted a waitress at Dennys.. I inducted a girl still in school with no professional experience...

The employees there have rebuttals to any possible objection you may have to not buying their program once youre "inducted".. rebuttals to anything from "I need to speak to my husband/wife" to "I do not have my credit card" to "Send me some literature" The canned responses are posted all over everyones desk and are simply read back to the consumer.

If the sale is made, we were instructed to never answer an incoming phone call.. if someone calls back to cancel, it goes to voicemail and transferred to a cancellation department which is really 3 jackassess sitting in offices making you feel like crap for trying to cancel and telling you your phone calls were recorded and the line all sales are final is said during the call... everyone with half a brain knows all sales arent final.. and guess what... theyre not even recording the calls... they have someone with a headset on monitoring calls but even that person is only listening to one call at a time, and there are 100 on the floor...

The worst part of it all is the fact that if you dont buy.. you dont get in.. they send you to some half assed web site where you can log yourself in for a basic listing.. one that youll never know if you got or not because you didnt buy the book.. well newsflash.. you didnt get in...

Initially when I started I thought this was a great job - it paid well.. hours were nice... people were ok... but then as i started seeing buying patterns and who would buy, and who wouldnt.. i clearly saw the scamminess of this enterprize..

Employees moan and groan when they get a male for a lead as men are not typically impusle buyers... employees get pumped when they get an elementary school teacher... slam dunks... doctors... groan... nurses... hooray...

the book is 85% women for a reason... typically theyre more of an impulse buyer then the men..

I left the day I made a woman cry. She cried in joy when I let hre in, and she cried in sorrow when I had to turn her down because she didnt have $900 to be in a book... The employees are taught to "sell soft, close hard".

I must admit from a psychology of sales point of view, they have a seamless script if its stuck to.. but at the end of the day a networking directory filled with elementary school teachers, nurses, waitressess, students, and impulse buyers..

They throw in plane tickets and gift cards to jewelers to entice you to buy... what they dont tell you is the plane tickets are only good if you stay at a specific resort or hotel... a top end one that more then offsets your "free" tickets.. and the gift certificates you receive for $300 is great... if the jeweler had items worth less then $4000 in their catalogue..

The book should be renamed "Cambridge's Catalogue of American Suckers" because that is all that are actually in the book.. people who have no networking use from the directory... simply a stroke of ego thats been bullied via strong sales tactics into paying big bucks to have that ego massaged

Oh yea... good luck getting the same manager on the phone.. Ive heard them all use several names none of which their own.. Johnson, Johnnston, Johnstone,

Buyer beware - unless youre looking for a nice little ego stroke to the tune of almost $1000 you are being ripped off..

Keep an eye out.. they change their name often.. they were Manchester, now theyre Cambridge.. they merged with Empire.. The merger is really two close friends who both started scams targeting easy to sell people who decided to join forces now to create a larger directory as a better selling tool...

If youre already in the book - congrats - youre a sucker... if youre not in the book and youre reading this after you were left to feel like a jerk because you didnt buy into it... youre not the jerk... they are

John q
stonybrook, New York
U.S.A.