****NOTE****
I PREVIOUSLY LEFT AN IDENTICAL REVIEW UNDER A COMPANY CALLED REACH-LONDON. THAT WAS A SUBSIDIARY OF BERKELEY. THIS IS PARENT COMPANY SO I FELT IT TO BE BETTER SUITED TO LEAVE MY REVIEW HERE AS WELL
This will be a long winded review of the cons because there are so many.
Firstly they lie to you about the job description and salary on Indeed/Reed and make it out to be some kind of management trainee programme. They continue the lies during the interview process using verbiage such as "we've worked with major clients such as BT" "we have investors that want to see us create future managers" , during which they make out as if you're one of the "lucky chosen ones" they have decided to accept (More on that later).
During orientation they will start to reveal what you will actually be doing, door to door sales. They then of course try to put a positive spin on it by telling you it's fine because you are gonna be a manager of your own office in 6-8 months and "everyone has to start from somewhere". You then learn that the £24k annual salary advertised is not actually the base salary but rather what you can "achieve" through commissions. The base salary is actually closer £14.5k annually. Which makes you think how can anybody legally employ somebody with such a low salary? Well that's the day you realise you are not an employee but rather an independent contractor. They of course tell you that the base salary is nothing to worry about because you will strike gold on commissions.
The first day you will notice everyone is in the office dressed to impress and they will give positive and motivational speeches to boost team morale. The workspace is located on a back street in Angel Islington and is rather cramped. Staff will over enthusiastically cheer on the mumbo jumbo speeches made by management which gives it a cult like feel. By the second/third day you'll realise you're not one of the "lucky ones" but one of dozens who are consistently recruited to join this sham of a company on a weekly basis which include people as young as 16/17.
The actual door to door sales job feels like you're bothering and harassing people who are clearly not interested. Even if you feel this way about the job, you are quickly reminded by management that you just need a positive attitude and to be persistent. Even worse we have to continue to do door to door sales in appalling weather conditions.
In order to make more than the £300 a week you have to make more than 10 sales in a week, then on your 11th sale £17 gets added on and so on. The best sales people make 14-18 sales a week which means they can make over £400 in a week which is still minimum wage money. It gets worse when you factor in, in order to achieve these sales a lot of people work 10am-9pm 5 days a week sometimes 6 days a week to hit these targets. Travel and luncheon is not provided so you will have to fork out money for your own travel card and food while out, even if it means travelling to some unknown area in Zone 5-6 . Some people are travelling from out of London to come here which makes it even more ridiculous. Weekly costs for food and travel is £80 at the bare minimum for someone who lives nearby the office and is very good at budgeting. For people who make the commute into London (taking in the factors that they have to wake up extremely early and go bed very late) they could be spending anywhere between £150-£200 a week. But all in all when you take into considerations bills/rent/transport/food you end up losing money as the weeks go by. The only people who can avoid losing money are the teenagers and some young adults, who still live with their parents and don't have any real financial responsibilities yet.
HOW I FOUND OUT IT WAS A (MLM) PYRAMID SCHEME
By my second day of working here I realised something was wrong being at this company and so did my friends. They were brutally honest with me when they found out I was doing door to door sales after I told them I believed I was soon gonna make six figures. They were also wary about the pyramid structure of the company and how if you wanted to get up the ladder you would have to get recruit more people and "your team" would have to make an unrealistically high amount of sales. By the third day I realised that something was definitely wrong in this company when another new recruit voiced his suspicions to me. He told me I seemed liked the only person who hadn't bought into this cult like group. We then both discussed the financial issues we would have if we stayed with this job. When I went home that day I did my research on the company and what my role really was. It turns out it was a Multi Level Marketing scheme I was in. Which is illegal in some countries (as it is outright regarded as a pyramid scheme.) but not the UK. The reason why Reach is not considered a pyramid scheme in the UK is that PS focus on recruiting to uphold the pyramids, whereas MLM claim to focus more on sales. But the truth is MLMs need a hybrid of sales and recruits to keep it going. The majority of MLMs are very careful to not emphasise on the recruitment aspect of the job should it start to look more like a pyramid scheme. But the truth is at some point Team Leaders are incentivized to recruit more people into the system if they want to start financially benefiting off the people below them in the totem pole. Most people after a few weeks tend to leave once they realised what's going on (of course management presents it as a "they weren't cut out for the job"). People who have worked their way to team leader start getting delusional and do not leave till a couple months later after they realise they are never making it to the next level of the pyramid.
To conclude, this job only targets young, naive, desperate and/or gullible people. It's crazy to think I fell into this job, thinking I would strike it big when in actuality I was getting paid more from my per hour retail job. I'm glad I decided to leave after a week but I'm afraid a lot of people won't see what's really going on before it's too late. I know a few friends and acquaintances who have told me of their own experiences falling for MLMs and they all have similar stories.
There have been many petitions to brand MLMs as illegal in the UK but none have succeeded. I guess because it stands to benefit major corporations who hold influence over politics it will not go away. But make no mistake Reach-London is a pyramid scheme that will only serve to enrich the people at the top and rob the people at the bottom. Avoid this place at all costs!!!!!
