Prestige Management - pmi2000.com Sells Bogus Lead Lists Edwardsville Illinois

I have heard about this company from some people I know & decided to check it out. While I do not believe this company is a "scam" or "rip-off" I have to wonder why in the world an employee would write such awful things about the place they work for. When I read what you wrote all I could think was why would you say such things because it's just going to come back & bite you in the long run. You will wind up taking money out of your own pocket because when people read what you wrote they're not going to want to purchase leads from this company & it's going to hurt your paycheck! You're also very selfish because it's going to hurt your co-worker's paychecks as well! You really are stupid! I hope the owner of this company does find out who you are!

I'm a current employee of Prestige and have worked there between 1 month and 1 year (I'm not going to get specific so they can't target me for reprisals at work), so considering the incredibly high turnover ratio, I consider myself to have a pretty good understanding of the company. Also, since the internet is anonymous, I can post the true story of Prestige Mgmt. without having to worry about Matt staring at me and/or screaming at me for 15 minutes during the "morning meeting", which are in fact very thinly veiled opportunities for Matt to stroke the ego of his office buddies (Sean, Sonny, Monica, anyone that is better than average at conning people into buying our product) or scream at people for making TWO rather than THREE sales the previous day. Matt makes money hand over fist at this company (we buy leads for pennies and mark them up dramatically and then push the idea of our joke of a call center for an additional 750-1000+) and will get red-in-the-face mad if you "only" put 800 dollars in his pocket the day before instead of 1100. Woe betide you if you only make one sale or, gasp, none.

Matt, as you can guess, has an anger problem. From what I hear, he comes off as a nice, professional "buddy"-type of guy during your interview and on into your training; I can attest to him being an okay guy during the training but the minute you hit the sales floor to do calls, it's like Dr. Jekel and Mr. Hyde. I've seen people get yelle

d at within the first 5 minutes they're on the phone for not getting a sale yet. Keep in mind he only expects us to make 3 sales a day, so divide 5 minutes into 8 hours and you can see that expecting a new salesman to make a sale within 5 minutes is ridiculous.

You might think that this is some kind of "tough love" thing or Matt's way of motivating you or something. Nope. If he's mad at a rep for not making a sale within their first 5 minutes on the phone, it's because he expected them to. Matt treats everyone on an individual basis as far as punishment goes. There is no consistency. Punishment/praise are entirely arbitrary. You'll have some sales reps that don't hit their 3 a day quota and nothing really happens beyond a non-angry "You need to try to pick it up a little bit, you owe me another sale today!" response and you'll have another sales rep in the same boat that gets a huge, red-in-the-face, profanity-laced screaming fit. Some employees get better treatment whether they constantly hit 3 sales a day or not. Work at Prestige for a week and you'll know who they are.

It all boils down to whether Matt likes you or not. Can you imagine if other companies arbitrarily handed out punishment to their employees based on whether or not they liked them? I mean, sure it goes on, but it's not out in the open and "the rule of law" like it is at Prestige. If Matt doesn't like you and wants to storm over and scream at you or dial your extension and cuss you out because he's been watching you over his security cameras and noticed you had a .005 second pause between calls, that IS company policy.

I've seen someone from Prestige posting that anyone with anything bad to say about Matt is jealous. I'm not sure who this employee is, but it's one of about 4 people if it isn't Matt or his mom to begin with. Suffice it to say, the rest of us aren't jealous in the least. It's common knowledge at Prestige that Matt does a lot of semi-legal or outright illegal things (more on this in a moment). He's already got a ton of reports filed against him on the BBB website, the state attorney and if you type in "Prestige Management" in Google, there's 3 sites on the first page of hits alone that detail how terrible, untrustworthy and down right dishonest Prestige is. There is NO, repeat N-O, good feedback out there that doesn't come from Prestige itself. Matt is making some money these days, but it's getting harder and harder for the reps to make sales because our reputation proceeds us now and has for quite a while. If you do 100 calls, you WILL get 10-15, maybe even 20, that say "There is no way in hell I'm buying from you guys. I've heard all about you/you burnt me before/I've read about you online" and that is a FACT.

Matt will go down one of these days. He sure as heck isn't saving his money: we're in the process of buying another office building across from our current one, and Matt loves to blow his money on incredibly stupid stuff like someone who doesn't realize the well is drying up. He's been doing this same scam for years, and people are really starting to get wise to it and all the sales reps know it. If he doesn't get sued out of existence or wind up in prison in the next 3-5 years, I'll eat my hat.

Matt runs the office through intimidation. Half of dealing with him is realizing that he acts tough because a lot of people will buy a tough act from someone in a position of authority (a boss, in this case). If you realize he's basically an immature kid that can't control his mouth or his anger and spends his ill-gotten money like a kid who found mommy's credit card, he's a lot less scary. I mean, beyond all the bluster, what's he gonna do? Hit someone? They'd take every last stolen dime he has.

As to the illegal stuff Matt does that I've mentioned, he is required by law to provide employees with a meal/rest period. We have a 45 minute lunch and around 25 minutes worth of breaks scheduled into our days. Sounds reasonable, right? Wrong. Matt has routinely made people work through these breaks/lunch if he feels their sales aren't up to par. This is in violation of Illinois labor policy as he is required to provide at least 20 minutes of break for a work day lasting more than 7 1/2 hours. I've personally known people that worked here (the were terminated for not selling enough) who were coerced into working a day with no breaks. We are to be here from 8:30 in the morning until at least 4:30 in the afternoon (and only if we get 3 or more sales per day). That is 8 hours right there. If your sales are bad, you have to come in at 8 and leave at 5:30. That's 9 1/2 hours. I'm sure there's legal wrangling he could do here to justify what he does, but why what kind of creep would DEMAND a work ethic as extreme as Matt demands and then try to loophole himself out of providing reasonable breaks? At any job I've worked in the past, my employer has MADE me take a break of some sort, even if I'm in the middle of something, in order to be sure he's not violating labor policy. Why not here, I wonder?

Also, I've personally overheard Matt threatening to withhold paychecks if a sales rep doesn't make sales. I'm pretttttty sure "outright refusing to pay an employee for time worked" when they're getting an hourly wage in addition to sales commission violates some statute somewhere.

As for the nuts and bolts of the company, yes, our leads are crap. As I mentioned, we're calling more and more people who have heard how terrible we are and refuse to do business with us. I've personally noticed an increase since I started. We buy our leads for a few cents each and mark them up a ton. Our leads aren't screened for DNC, federal OR state. If anyone comes on here and says we do, they are L-Y-I-N-G through their teeth.

As to how we find our potential clients? Internet yellow pages. Pick a major city, type in "financial planner" or "insurance agent" depending on what you're selling in the search and voila. Call every number that pops up and tell them we have a "special, custom-made list within a 20- (or 30-, 40-, or 50+)mile radius of their zipcode". Then we pretend to "look up" on our computers (which half the time don't even connect to the internet or even run properly because they are utter junk; gotta save that money so Matt can buy a few more signed sports memorabelia) and we just so happen to have X amount of clients. Newer sales reps get a predetermined number to say from their scripts until they're comfortable with the sort of quickfire lying that this job takes. More experienced reps will tailor the number of contacts to the geographic area or ask if they take leads from a nearby larger city, but newbies will often tell some poor yokel in Beaver Creek, Alabama (population: 13) that they have 1200 leads within a 20 mile radius that all have over 350k in a 401k or something. Much laughter ensues. Then much screaming from Matt because, even though under threat of termination for not following the script WORD FOR WORD, he expects them to magically know when NOT to follow the script and risk termination so they won't get screamed at. There's that consistency I was telling you about.

As for prices, we'll sell 500-1000 (which cost us all of 10-15 dollars) for 250-350+ dollars and then try to sell them on our call center for an additional 750+ dollars. Our call center, as other reviewers have noted, is an absolute joke and I have yet to hear one single customer that was happy with it when they paid for it. Of course, Prestige Mgmt won't tell anyone on the internet that. FYI, yes, the "testimonials" on their website are fake. Someone upstairs wrote them all. Maybe Matt, maybe his mom, maybe someone else. Who knows, who cares.

They'll also say that something like 70% (or whatever big, impressive sounding number they want to completely fabricate) of our customers come back to us for more business after buying a list from us once. This is true only if you consider "credit card charge backs, calls to inform them that they're turning it over to their lawyer, etc." to be "coming back for more business".

Cameras/mics everywhere, all wired to Matt's office, I believe. Dude is seriously a creepy guy. They're so that he can "monitor how we're doing on our calls" and that other cameras are for "security" under the pretense that he doesn't want some disgruntled employee walking out of here with a file of potential clients and undercutting Prestige or some load of garbage. Let me now remind you that our "file of potential clients" is literally an internet yellow pages search result for "insurance agent". My take? They're used to spy on employees Matt doesn't like so he can scream at them/fire them. Or perhaps Matt is a protege of Chuck Berry. Someone better check the women's room for cameras.

Got a doctor's appointment? Have to leave early because your sitter can only watch your kids until 5 and Matt wants you to stay until 5:30 because you didn't hit your sales? Any other kind of real world problem that any other employer would gladly work with you on? Enjoy getting screamed at. Unless he likes you. Love that consistency.

That's about it. Eagerly looking forward to a rebuttal saying I'm "lying" or something. Trust me, I'm not. Don't believe me? Search for reviews of Prestige. Check the BBB. Check this site. Check any of the number of results on Google. Look at what everyone but the Prestige HR rep that posts on here says. Totally, utterly negative. If the only person defending your company is an HR rep (which I can almost promise is actually Matt, his mom, another family member or one of the 2-3 non-related yesmen from upstairs) and EVERYONE else is saying the same things I am, does it really make sense that everyone is lying? Either this is a vast conspiracy spanning several websites, states, etc. meant to take down a poor, innocent company for no reason or people have legitimate concerns that they want addressed and the HR rep is lying.

On the plus side, I make enough sales that I fly under the radar most times and make pretty good money or else I'd quit. Much more fun to feed into Matt's paranoia though.

Matt, if you're reading this, good luck finding out who I am and doing anything about this honesty I'm posting about our company. Hey buddy, look behind you! Haha. Just kidding. See you next week, bright and early. :)

I am an Ex-employee I quit. Told them that's not the job for me they call people and beg them to let someone come to there house and look through there personal finances. They wont them to say no 5 times before they hang up on you or you Hang up on them. Watch out Job seekers and business owners don't do business with them they are all bad. I quit I let them know that wasn't the job for me I felt bad begging people to let some one come to there house or go to their office to look through there business I never knew so many people lost all their money do to this economy people would actually start crying. But It's been two weeks and I haven't received my check yet. THe lady Kathy in payroll keeps giving me the run around saying this and that the check wasn't even that much, hopefully I get it so. Thanks for READING

You will find in life that there are people that want something for nothing - They will buy something and use it up and then they want there money back. These are the same people that will go out to eat - eat more than half of the food they order and then they don't want to pay for it, because of whatever reason. Get real! That is why the cost of living goes' up - because of people like this - wanting something for nothing. And they call us the Scammers - These are the same people that will go to the store and buy a new outfit - wear it, and stink it up and then exchange it and demand a full refund. I can go on and on about people that want something for nothing. And note if they do not get there full refund for something they used, they will call that business names. So why would anyone listen to someone like this - you be the judge - NEVER JUDGE ANYTHING FROM SOMEONE LIKE THIS, because they just want something for nothing.

Thank you for letting me write a rebuttal.