Is Vector Marketing (company that pays college kids move Cutco knives) really a scam? Is multilevel marketing unethical?

No one has answered your question.

Here's why vector is considered a scam. You pay them in uncompensated time and absorb the cost of running a business. $18 for a 45-60 minute demo. Sounds great, right? Let's take a closer look.

You're hired as an independent contractor. at the end of the year you receive a 1099 and will have to pay the IRS 30-40% of that back as income tax. You're already down to $12/hr.

Now factor in the mandatory 1 hour daily meetings you will be expected to attend. They probably haven't told you this yet but you will have to meet at the office everyday with all the other "salesmen" to get amped up and talk about how great the company is. You will also be expected to train new "salesmen" during this time. You'll also spend about another hour each day being coerced into calling everyone you know yo coerce them into scheduling a demo. So you have about two hours of unpaid work each day and everyone you know will start to dislike you for attempting to use them.

If you don't have any demos scheduled you go home and are not paid for your one hour meeting plus one hour of "marketing". Let's say you did well and scheduled 4 demos. You now need to commute to those demos. Let's be generous to vector and say the commute is 15 minutes round trip for each demo, or one hour total. You're at 3 hours unpaid work so far today.

But you're going to make $78 for scheduling 4 demos, right? Keep in mind after taxes it will be closer to $50. So you have four hours worth of demos, one hour of meeting, one hour of calls, and one hour of commuting to and from demos. Seven hours total. $50÷7 hours=$7.14 per hour.

This already puts you under the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr. And this is a great day where you scheduled 4 demos.

Keep in mind you have to pay for your commute and have 15 hours of unpaid training to factor in as well.

Maybe You'll get lucky and every once in a while some will throw you a bone and buy a knife or two. Unfortunately, cutco knives have a reputation for being low quality and overpriced. A quick Google search of "cutco knife quality" will prove this to you if you have any doubts.

/r/jobs Thread