Services Unlimited Plus ripoff WARNING Door-to-door Sales Crews Abuse, exploitation Glendale Arizona

Young people pushing magazines are themselves the victims as much as they are the victimizers. They are part of a coast-to-coast underground economy that one public interest group, the Child Labor Coalition, calls the sweatshops of the streets.

Here's how today's door-to-door industry works: Clearinghouses contract with magazine publishers to sell subscriptions for them. The clearinghouses turn around and contract with subscription subagents, who are the traveling crew operators. Operators then hire the teenagers and young adults who knock on doors in neighborhoods, college campuses and even military bases, across the nation.

In March, I spoke with a former door-to-door magazine salesperson. (Her real name has been withheld for fear of retaliation by her former employer. In this story, I call her Megan Jones.) I scammed people for a living, said Jones. In May 2000, at age 19, she joined the Mountville, Pennsylvania company Atlantic Circulation, Inc. We charged an astronomical amount for the magazines, and the extra money didn't go to P & H [postage and handling charges]. That money went to the managers and owners. They make really good money and the agents get $20 a day.

Subscriptions promoted this way are routinely sold at prices double those one would pay directly through the publisher. After pounding the pavement for ten to twelve hours a day, youngsters turn their earnings over to managers who in theory keep them on the books and deduct expenses like food and hotel fees from each seller's account. Frustrated by the flimsy cash flow, Jones admitted that after peddling from a list of about 150 titles, including Harper's Bazaar, Glamour, Us Weekly, Reader's Digest, Psychology Today, Nickelodeon and Disneyshe and others turned over checks, but secretly pocketed some of the cash.

Beyond such unlawful practices that violate the buyer, Jones says in her four months selling magazines, she witnessed a long list of illegal activities within the crew itselfincluding drug use and prostitution. Her very first day of work, Jones said her manager instructed her and another young saleswoman to sneak onto an Air Force base in Spokane, Washington. In a matter of hours, the two wound up in jail for soliciting without a license. Jones later realized that such runins with the police were part of the job. Licenses that most municipalities require of solicitors can cost up to $50 per person and she said her higher-ups never sported the money to buy them.

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Anonymously concerned
Anywhere, New York
U.S.A.