Here is a article that was published in a local free weekly newspaper here in Halifax, the thing i find so funny about it is that I personally know everyone involved.
Its a bit long but very well written
A call for help
by Lis van Berkel
World Wide Source, a Montral-based telemarketing company with offices in Halifax and Dartmouth, is not allowed to phone Vermont.
Last April, Vermont's Attorney General, William Sorrell, announced that he had settled consumer fraud claims against World Wide Publishing Inc., which is owned by Pavlos Angelatos of Montral and sells listings in a US-marketed business directory. The Attorney General charged Angelatos with violating the Vermont Consumer Fraud Act and fined him a total of $125, 000.
In his case, Sorrell argued that the Montral-based company WWS used a false Vermont return address while selling-to companies in that state-two-year listings in a business directory called the American Business Index. His case stated that the company further misrepresented itself by: offering "renewals" for new listings; referring to its publication as the Yellow Pages; overstating the circulation of the directory as one million when in fact it is closer to 35, 000; billing many customers without their authorization; failing to provide customers with their legally-required three-day right to cancel; and overcharging customers for a 399.95 directory that is of limited value to most businesses.
An e-mail from Sorrell's office confirmed that the fine has been paid in full, and that Angelatos has made restitution to Vermont businesses that purchased listings.
But WWS is still open for business in HRM. Currently, the company employs about 70 telemarketers in its Dartmouth office on the tenth floor of Queen's Square.
Exiting the elevator, I locate a set of large glass doors which open into a reception area, where no sign or logo indicates the company name. "Look for the glass doors, " the building security guard told me. "They're the only one up there." I ask the receptionist if I am at World Wide Source. Even she hesitates before saying yes. WWS is actually a company with several monikers-it is variously known as American Solution Information, WWS and also Amerisource, the other company named in the Vermont case. All three companies are owned by Angelatos.
The receptionist says she will get someone for me to talk to about WWS. I take a seat in the tattered chair beside a framed poster of a water droplet which states "Attitude is Everything." Behind me is a framed Chronicle-Herald article from October 19, 2000, a few days before WWS opened for business in Nova Scotia. The headline exclaims "New call centre to hire 500-We came for the workforce, not the handouts, Montral firm says."
In the article, a WWS vice-president explains that the company preferred Halifax over other Canadian cities because Nova Scotia boasted the most friendly and educated workforce in the country. The company was also boasting, saying that with a $10 per hour starting wage, it paid more than other call centres, plus it had just signed five-year leases on the Queen's Square space and on a smaller space in Purdy's Wharf Tower 1.
After waiting several minutes, I am approached by branch supervisor Ryan Kidney who tersely asks me what I want. I left a message for Kidney two weeks earlier, which he never returned. I explain that I am looking for information about the connection between the Dartmouth WWS office and the fine against WWS in the US. Blanching, he asks me to come with him as he walks to a back office with another manager named Melinda Lee. Kidney sits behind a desk and Lee sits between us half-facing me.
Neither one invites me to sit and a white-faced Kidney, his eyes tired and angry, says immediately that he will not talk to me about WWS. "I know why you are here and who has been talking to you, and for legal reasons related to that person, I cannot talk to you, " he says simply. I push the question about Vermont on him again, but Kidney says I have to talk to the head office in Montral. I ask if that is where I can reach Pavlos Angelatos, and when he says yes, I ask for the phone number, which he writes on a Post-it note.
Over the next two weeks, I leave three messages for Angelatos, and none are returned. The most peculiar thing is that the number on Kidney's Post-it is answered by a pre-recorded service which states simply: "You have reached corporate headquarters." Again, no name. I have no idea whether I have reached WWS until I talk to a receptionist (who also doesn't identify her office) but always tells me Angelatos is not in and asks me if I want to leave a message on his voicemail.
Nancy Carr-who does not want her real name used for fear of reprisal and because she signed what she calls a "gag order"-sold listings for the American Business Index until late last year. After a series of confrontations with her bosses, Carr was fired for what she says Kidney termed "unprofessional conduct." But, she insists, she wasn't the one behaving unprofessionally. According to Carr, who was approaching two years with the company, it's WWS that crosses the line between professional and unprofessional conduct. She believes the real reason she was fired is that she began to question their business tactics. Prior to being fired, Carr called The Coast to push the paper to cover the story.
"We had to tell customers four things, " Carr explains. "That we were updating their listing in the American Business Index, a yellow pages directory for American companies. That it's published by World Wide Source. That a listing costs $399.95. And then we asked them: 'Are you authorized to purchase? ' And that would be drilled into our heads, sometimes three times a day: 'What do you tell these people?
What are the four key points that you have to mention to make a successful order? '" That opening gambit she made 150 to 200 times per day.
Carr says that WWS requires that its staff be very aggressive: "We were told that customers might play stupid or pretend not to speak English or pretend to be someone else, " says Carr. "But that we can call them back three times in the run of a day. We were told to make concessions, to find ways to make the sale. To tell them that we'd offer them a $99 cancellation fee to never bother them again. And yes, it works! "
Carr felt demoralized by having to manipulate people into sales. She questioned her supervisors, and was first moved over to American Solutions Information, which is what WWS calls its collections side, where her morale improved: "I felt refreshed for awhile. But then a man"-another employee in that department-"was fired for standing up and asking how come he was supposed to call a woman who had paid seven times? She told him she had seven cheque numbers for having paid seven times. And he wanted to know why was he supposed to collect for an eighth time? "
This scenario is familiar to Dennis French, the accounting manager with a mill in Red Bluff, California called Louisiana-Pacific Corporation. He has refused to pay fees which ASI alleges Louisiana-Pacific owes because he has a large complaint with WWS. He
last heard from the company in November, when the WWS representative played back a tape containing a so-called agreement: "We had a new administrative assistant who got a call earlier in the year from World Wide Source, " says French. "And they used manipulative language to back her into a corner, asked her if she was responsible for things in the office. But there was no real definite request for anything. Then they said, 'So you can do this? ' And she said yes."
That ASI is actually the same company as WWS comes as news to French. When Louisiana-Pacific got the WWS invoice, French baulked at paying it, which resulted in a phone call from ASI, which he supposed was an independent collection agency. "I told them I didn't believe the place where they got the account was on the up and up, " French says, "and that they might want to think twice about who they do business with."
Yet French, who never took his complaint to the Better Business Bureau-unlike more than 2, 300 other companies counted on two BBB websites-has some empathy for employees of WWS, like Carr. "It was like we were role-playing, " he says. "We were friendly: I was supposed to react and she was supposed to insist. WWS probably thinks that a big corporation can afford to lose a couple of hundred bucks. But the lack of integrity was so obvious, the innuendo. And they were so vague, so I refused. If anything had lead me to say we made a mistake, I would have paid them. But not like this."
Another burned client-who works for a construction company in Virginia and who wrote a 2-page letter of complaint to WWS, which Carr also showed me-is not so trusting. She refused even to discuss her grievance when I phoned because, as she put it while hanging up, "I'm not sure you are who you say you are."
"Maybe in about 40 to 50 percent of the cases customers actually owe the money. We just try to convince them all that they do, " admits Angela Vautour, a current employee of WWS, who also asked me not to use her real name. "I talk to them all day long, and I see that they
were misled. They say their secretary was tricked, they were told it was free, I know that."
While looking for other work, Vautour is in the difficult position of reviewing tape recorded contracts-like the one that angered French-with lawyers of disgruntled customers. She is also unconvinced of the ABI's value. "I believe a large corporation could benefit from the directory, " she says. "But not a beauty salon in Timbuktu." So why would people want to be in the ABI? Basically, they don't when they realize what it is. The ABI is about the size of the Halifax Regional Municipality's phone book, and it purports to serve the business needs of any American company by selling them a listing which can connect them with other businesses across the US. The listings are arranged alphabetically, and are not separated by city or state, which makes
the book fairly difficult to use.
"We would market to everybody: jewellery people, restaurants, other telemarketers, which I thought was really ironic, " explains Carr. "Contractors, solicitors, churches, newspapers, photographers, attorneys-and this is now what's biting the company in the ass, because all the attorneys that got scammed are now not very happy.
They're saying, 'This is a fraudulent bill.'"
The ABI's ineffectiveness was not lost on Missouri's attorney general Jay Nixon, who, last July, filed a legal action similar to Vermont's against WWS. In his filing, Nixon called the ABI "of limited, if any, value to most businesses" because it is distributed only to businesses that purchase listings in the directory and not to any customers, making it essentially a vanity publication; and because, in spite of covering a large area, it does not have a geographical index. "For example, " Nixon continues, "if a Missouri business
actually used the directory to locate a contractor, they would have to go through over 50 pages of contractor listings."
Nixon also took issue with their misleading use of the trademarked designation "Yellow Pages." His petition states: "The alleged violations [of the Missouri Merchandise Practices Act] include deceptive representations, and omissions concerning the nature of the products and services being offered, charging customers without authorization and unfair pricing." And like Vermont's attorney general, he states that WWS does not disclose its true address.
Finally, Nixon also pointed out that WWS began selling "renewal" listings when it was still a new company in October 2000-which happens to be the month it opened for business in Nova Scotia. The Registry of Joint Stock Companies says that a company called
World Wide Source Publishing Inc. registered in Nova Scotia as an intraprovincial corporation in November 2000. All corporations operating in Nova Scotia are legally required to register with Joint Stocks, including those operating intraprovincially. But according to Joint Stocks, WWS's membership was revoked for non-payment in October 2002. Payment was not made under WWS's other names.
Non-payment at Joint Stocks should indicate that a company is no longer operating in the province, though clearly World Wide Source is still in business here. The registrar's office says that the usual fine for a company operating in the province without registration is the annual fee multiplied by each day they operate. In the case of an intraprovincial company, that would be $200 per day.
Fred Morley, vice-president of the Greater Halifax Partnership, says that his office used to focus more on attracting call centres to Halifax. The Chronicle- Herald story mentioned that the Partnership assisted WWS in 2000, although cash wasn't part of the lure.
"No incentive is provided by us, " Morley told me. "We provide information about labour force availability and office space, we maintain a lot of detail on our website, we get some calls. If a company asks us a question, we provide customer service. And we try to make Halifax an attractive business climate for companies."
At the same time, as an economic development organization, the GHP is "not interested in Halifax being a safe haven for companies like Enron, " says Morley. And because it does not provide any incentives other than information, the GHP does not follow up with the companies that use its services, to ensure the businesses are operating above-board. Morley indicated that would be impossible anyway for an information-based organization like his, which gets one-and-a-half million hits on its website annually. Nor is it the Partnership's job: "There are no incentives at play; we don't owe them money and they don't owe us.
"There are an awful lot of good employers in the call centres that are established here, " Morley says, careful not to generalize. "Very reputable and straight-up and paying decent to really good money-Xerox, Convergys are examples. Sometimes the sector gets kind of a bad rap. This business"-WWS-"sounds like it is one in a
thousand."
Carr distinctly felt that a chill was mounting against WWS during her tenure.By the end of last year, WWS employees had stopped calling not just Vermont and Missouri, but also Kansas, which happens to be
one of 27 US states (including Missouri and Vermont) with "No Call" legislation. The laws vary state to state, but basically any resident may request that their name be put on a no-call list. Companies selling a product or service within that state must purchase the regularly-updated list or risk violation-and stiff penalties. In Kansas, any telephone solicitor calling a number on the list after the enforcement date is subject to civil penalties of up to $10, 000 per violation.
The US legislation has more teeth than its Canadian counterpart, the Canadian Marketing Association's voluntary list. Although the CMA does not maintain marketing lists, according to its website, four times a year the names of individuals in both Canada and the US who registered for the Do Not Contact service are distributed to Association members. Members are merely obligated to delete these names from their new-contact marketing lists.
Bill Hoyt, of the Kansas Attorney General's office, says that according to their No Call staff, WWS is not prevented from calling businesses in the state, they just seem to choose not to call: "As far as we know, this company is not banned under any sort of agreement. They may just be under the impression, because we have a No Call law, that they can't call."
Minnesota adopted similar legislation as of January: businesses calling Minnesota must purchase, for $125 per quarter the first year (the price will drop each subsequent year), a quarterly-updated list of residents who do not want to be called, or face penalties up to $1, 000 per solicitation. This is good news for Tina Rennemo, an administrator for the city of Kelliher, who contacted her attorney general to complain about WWS. "My experience with WWS was not a good one, " Rennemo says. "I think the company uses fraudulent statements to coax entities into an agreement and I think that they prey on entities. The last call I received from WWS was very aggressive and the rep was very unprofessional."
The Upstate New York Better Business Bureau has saddled WWS and Amerisource with an unsatisfactory business performance report-"due to the pattern of complaints alleging misleading sales practices and because they failed to substantiate their business practices upon request." In February 2002, the BBB sent a letter to WWS requesting background information such as a copy of their directory and promotional materials, distribution methods and statistics and the names and addresses of 10 satisfied customers. As of this week, the company has not responded to the request for information.
The ABI was an elusive directory even for WWS employees. While still working for WWS, even Carr never saw the book.
Carr lives in a comfortable apartment in a low-rise complex just off a busy Dartmouth thoroughfare. She is in her mid-20s and a mother of two, and she wants me to blow the lid off her former employer. She stuck with WWS because it paid well, she says. A salesperson earns $10 per hour plus commission after meeting a weekly quota ("You need five to stay alive! " would start each week), which is a fairly strong unskilled Nova Scotia wage. But she came to hate herself for doing it.
Carr is ambitious. Her language is unpolished but she has a professional demeanour, and she is angry, and tireless in her effort to convince me of WWS's misdeeds.
I don't really understand why Carr didn't leave WWS on her own. She confirmed all of the attorneys general's findings. She also felt repeatedly belittled by management. "They would come out all the time
and say that we were lucky, we could be working in a burger joint for minimum wage, " she explains. "Instead, they said, all we had to do was make phone calls for seven hours a day. People with kids and families to feed are much more likely to take this option."
One of her biggest gripes is over employee elations: "If we hadn't had a performance report for three weeks, they would issue warnings about quota anyway. But I would ask, 'How can we meet our quota when we haven't seen a report for three weeks? ' Their answer was, 'Shut up and deal with it or take the door.' I was told that we could keep our uneducated opinions to ourselves. And that would be fine for someone who felt they were at least getting something out of their job, treated like a human being, but when you're being treated like cattle, it's a little hard to take it up the ass from upper management on a daily basis."
Nor was getting paid a straightforward procedure: "Our orders would dupe"-as in duplicate-"out all the time, screwing over your paycheques on a regular basis. And there was constant problems with hours missed. Every single pay period, 20 different people had their
pay cheques screwed up and some people didn't even get a paycheque at all. And it would come to the point that people would have to threaten the company with the Labour Board in order to get paid."
Vautour, the WWS employee who was demoted late last year, no longer has access to the ABI directory. She is fairly candid about her ambition: "I truly believe the company should not be operating. I would like to help them shut it down."
WWS works hard to appear legitimate. The local offices are in prime locations. On the phone, salespeople are encouraged to pretend that their computer is down if a customer wants any information about their account-though no one working the phone actually has a computer in front of them. Instead they work from 3-inch by 5-inch index cards which contain client information and phone call history taken from other directories-information which is, according to Carr, frequently inaccurate. The office has a dress code for its employees. They are never permitted to fax written information-they can only read it over the phone-and they are not permitted to say "yes" on the phone in response to questions about a current listing or past payment, or "renew, " "re-list" or "expire."
A page Carr tore from her training sheets reads like something from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: "American Solutions Information believes that language frames our world and so the words that we choose to employ to describe our task must reflect this intrinsic belief. We do not have collectors; everyone else in this world does.
We offer Collections Coordinators. We are not interested in simply coercing people to pay, but rather we seek to guide clients toward a Mutual Concession." Vautour is on edge because she still works at WWS. "Knowing they were scammed and that now I'm trying to scam them out of more money, that is stressful." She asks me where she can find a lawyer interested in shutting down her employer. Yet she talks to lawyers regularly who are interested in just that. Why doesn't she talk to them, I wonder?
Jim Cameron, a psychologist who teaches in the Department of Psychology at Saint Mary's University, says that Vautour probably won't last. "In general, people are uncomfortable acting in ways that are inconsistent with their personal standards, and social psychological research indicates that we often respond by reducing that inconsistency, " he explains in an e-mail. "In this case, if the employees don't rationalize lying by adopting an accepting attitude (i.e.by endorsing lying themselves), they are likely to change their behaviour either by disobeying their supervisors, if possible, or by quitting their jobs."
Nor is it healthy for anyone involved: "So encouraging employees to lie is not only likely to be sychologically detrimental to them, but it might also be counterproductive for the organization." As one would expect, the research indicates that a company which requires low ethical behaviour will turn over staff at a high rate.
Carr, who has been calling Human Resources Development Canada, the Human Rights Commission and the Labour Standards Board-"I don't have 'welcome' written on my forehead, and I don't like being walked on"-sums up it up this way: "A lot people aren't happy with the place. You wouldn't believe the amount of work that doesn't get done there. Sometimes people will just stop and sit in their little groups and chit-chat with their headsets on. Because you can't lie to people all day, you need some truth, some validation. You can't leave your job every day and feel smaller and smaller."
She contrasts WWS with another call centre where she used to work. "You know, the only thing that bothered me about that place was the unprofessionalism of upper management-like they'd have water fights while we were trying to work. But they were having fun. They weren't hurting their employees. And the money they raised went to charities, I saw the money go there. With WWS, they're just lining their own pockets, " she insists.
"You don't know where the truth starts and the lies end with WWS, or if the truth ever starts. It's all somebody's version of it." a Lis van Berkel is a Halifax journalist. Comments about this story are welcome at [email protected].
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