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December 11, 2009
Another Phone to Phone Inc. Employee Speaks Out
In response to my prior post of a Phone to Phone Inc. employee's email, I got the following email (reposted with permission):
_____________
[begin third party email]
Good evening Mr. Goldman,
I am a former "employee" of Phone To Phone Inc. I looked them up on Google and found your article on New Lawyer as it was one of the top links to pop up. Phone To Phone Inc itself as a company is a scam. They tell you you're on a training period of three (3) days, during which time you will be payed $12.00 per hour, and IF YOU PASS THE TRAINING, you will become a full time employee. However, during those three days, they had me making 150-200 phone calls, 100 E-mails, with expectations of getting a minimum of 3 "links" per day, without ANY actual training!
I didn't even know what a link was, but they felt confident enough to throw me on the phones and put the company name in the dumpster with my lack of knowledge, which I surely did, proudly.
On my second day of "training", another employee I became relativity close with told me the President of the company Borris, along with one of the managers Domenik, brought him in the back room and told him he wasn't working out, and they'd like him to quit. With no second thoughts, he told them he quit. Well, because he "quit", they claimed that there was a company policy (which was NOT made available to sign when given three vague papers to read on the first day of training) that claims if the trainee quits during the first TWO WEEKS of working at Phone To Phone, then the company DOES NOT have to pay the trainee/employee.
On my third day, I get called into the back office. I get asked to quit, because it wasn't working out. Fortunately, I was made aware of their scam by my friend the day before, so I declined to quit. I sat in the office arguing with Domenik for nearly an HOUR before he finally got the idea that I was not budging. I asked him for the papers stating the "not getting paid if quit within 2 weeks", which is when he came back and offered to pay me for one of the 3 days I worked. When I told him paying me for one of the three days I worked was NOT a favor, that I still wanted the papers, he said they'll write me a check without taking out any taxes, despite the fact they didn't even have me fill out any tax forms. (Supposedly, all that legitimate stuff comes after the training period.) At that point, I realized what a scam it was, until they gave me the HAND WRITTEN check of $96.00, that's when I realized it was a JOKE.
Phone To Phone is NOTHING more then a scam, and the sites they represent are far from adequate. You have my permission to use this E-mail on your website or any other resource you so choose, I just ask that you please change my name and do not publicize my E-mail address.
I hope this has given you a better insight as to what Phone To Phone is all about.
[end third party email]
_____________
I then got a follow-up email from the same person addressing my confusion about the myriad of folks who all listed the same job title in their spams:
_____________
[begin third party email]
[a quote of mine from a prior blog post] "Interestingly, Dominic's email indicated that he was the director of marketing. So either they have multiple directors of marketing, or Dominic got the sack (wishful thinking) or everyone who uses their template falsely claims to be the director of marketing."
You are very correct. On my first day of training, I ask Dominic what the name of my position was, and he told I am "free to choose" between Senior Marketing Executive, or Director of Marketing. When I asked him how it's possible I can be holding a "senior" or "director" word in my position name on my FIRST DAY OF TRAINING, he said to me "It just makes the person you're talking to feel like they're talking to someone high up in the ranks." But in reality Eric, other then Dominic and a few others, every other "director of marketing" or "senior marketing exec" are in fact not directors and seniors, but merely college students on a three day "volunteer" training period.
[end third party email]
_____________
All of this helps explain why we as bloggers kept getting hammered in a short period of time by repeated telemarketing and spam despite our opt-out requests. These emails also reinforce that we should be asking some very tough questions about the legitimacy of Phone to Phone Inc.'s practices.
Posted by Eric at 12:27 PM | Blogosphere Issues , Legal Industry | TrackBack
December 10, 2009
Questionable Employment and SEO Practices at Phone to Phone Inc.?
In response to my blogging about Phone to Phone Inc. (1, 2, 3, 4), which operates newlawyer.com, laws.com, attorney.org, science.org and other websites, I recently received the following self-explanatory email from a Phone to Phone Inc. employee raising some issues about Phone to Phone Inc.'s employment and SEO practices. For obvious reasons, I've redacted information that would be likely to identify the author. I have not been able to verify the accuracy of this email, but it is consistent with a telephone conversation I had with someone else who was recruited for a Phone to Phone Inc. position.
__________
[begin third party email]
"They hired me as an article writer for their "websites". Which if you haven't seen... compare the following two of their big ones
www.attorney.org
www.science.org
And click a few links. They had me write 15 500 word articles based on keywords. I spent the day writing 500 word articles with the keyword [redacted]. Where there must be 30 total instances of the keywords in each article and they do zero fact checking.
In order to hopefully gain full employment I would have to show up at their office each day, write 15 of these a day. On the third day, they could let me go, and keep all 45 of the articles I wrote. They bring in about 20 new people a day, having them do something similar. Though most people are hired to make calls, and they have them make at least 150 calls each day for three days before informing them if they've been accepted for employment.
They bring in about 20 "prospectives" a day, and hire very very few. This gets them a lot of "free" work.
You will notice that the articles on their websites are not, in fact, articles based on the content, but based on keywords. Try a few of the links and you'll notice on science.org in one 500 word article the word science appears approx 25 times.
All attempts to get their site to be the number one hit on key terms without having any actual content to speak of."
[end third party email]
__________
This email prompted me to poke around both science.org and attorney.org. I was completely unimpressed by the quality of content I saw. I thought this junk article (I nofollowed the link--no link juice from me!) on "Patent Laws for Inventors" was a fine exemplar of the (low) article quality on science.org. Check it out and evaluate it for yourself. I don't mean to be snarky, but I would expect most seventh graders to do a better writing job than the writing in this article. A few representative quotes:
* "Inventors may come up with ideas that are in regard to machines or processes."
* Referring to design patents, "A design is the face of the product or the company and should be protected. Designs distinguish and separate one company from the next and it is because of this that this type of patent is required for businesses and manufacturers alike." [this was not about trade dress or trademarks; it was about design patents]
* "A patent should not be confuse [sic] with a copyright. A copyright will provide inventors with the rights to prevent any other inventors from producing material in the same way or with the same expression."
* "Keep in mind that not everything can be patented and some things are already, so make sure you have a solid and original idea before you even apply for one."
* "It should be also noted that the process may be lengthy and is not conducted over night."
A sterling contribution to the literature. Anyone who knows IP law can immediately spot ambiguities or outright flaws in the above quotes. Frankly, if it weren't so spammy (out of 516 words, I count 18 references to "patent" and 15 to "inventor"), I'd actually wonder if this was intended to be a spoof or satire about how seriously people take patents. Even if that wasn't the intent, the article has far more value as a satire than it does as an educative piece.
Posted by Eric at 01:12 PM | Blogosphere Issues , Legal Industry | TrackBack