Complaint Review: Coastal Promotions

For the record there are hundreds of stories worse than mine on the Internet under the company name Scentura Creations. Fox 6 news has been doing stories on this company for years, but they are still around. The San Diego name and location is Coastal Promotions, 6790 Top Gun Street, Suite 5, San Diego, CA 92121 858-554-1156

I answered an ad on craigslist that was looking for an office receptionist. I was called back the next day and asked to come in that day for an interview. I was led to the Executives office, Valerie Aleman (619) 672-0713, for an interview with four other people. After Valerie asked us a few dumb questions, she let us know that there were also positions for Branch Managers and that we didn't need to have any experience. She called me back and told me to come in for a second interview the next day. The next day I showed up for the second interview and was led to a room with about 25 other people. We sat down and Doug Zirbel turned his music down and started asking us what we did for New Years and a few other silly questions. He is a foul-mouthed 48 year old and apparently the owner of Coastal Promotions. He began giving us a motivational speech occasionally barking out racial and sexual jokes. His wife who by the way looks sophisticated, occasionally walks in and tells us that Doug wants us to smile and stay positive the entire time. She is apparently there to make us believe that the things being said are not a lie. They have an entire script is said in such a way that it leads you to believe you are going to be making tons of money after eight weeks of training. After four hours of this he gave us all a time to call back within 2 minutes of each other, and we were told that if we were not picked it was because he didn't think we were the right kind of person for the job. He wanted to make sure that we knew it was also because we were not sitting close enough to the front and smiling enough. He later told the people that were stupid enough to show up that he didn't trust some of the people that didn't come back and that they looked flaky. I will assume he told us all to come back and that some didn't. Anyway, I called back at the time Doug told me to and he let me know I got into his management training course and that I should be really excited and he was going to make me a rock star. I showed up on Monday ready to learn all of his BS and his "be positive crap". In a nut shell he actually told us all to dump all of our family members and friends who were not positive. After about four hours of his cultish motivational speech and giving us a brief description of what it was his company sold, Doug asked us to take a simple test to ensure we were what he was looking for. He asked us to make a list of everyone we knew and asked us to sell his crappy product, the knock off perfume, to the people on our lists that night. He wanted to see who was manager quality. He had slithered his way into most of our minds by this time so we were all sort of blind to the way in which we were supposed to get paid. Basically we didn't get paid unless we could sell his crap. I went through this for a couple more days until the day he had his other trainees drive us to a location that was about 45 minutes away. He wanted us to sell the perfume to businesses, and wanted us to be unaware of what we were taking the trip for. We didn't realize this until it was too late. By the way, we had no food or water this entire time. I refused to do this after walking around in my heels for an hour and finally got to the car where my purse was locked in. I had to find a ride back to Mira Mesa from Vista through traffic. That was after I sat embarrassingly in an industrial park I wasn't familiar with, while people drove by starring at me sitting on the ground. Before I left I was asked to give Valerie the executive back the 6 cheesy bottles of perfume. I called Amy Su Zirbel and let her know I was going to come pick up the money owed to me and leave. She said that was fine. She conveniently left the office before I arrived and her husband Doug gave me the run around. These people have my family and friends credit card information and my SS#. They trick young people to come in and do the same routine every week to get free labor out of people. They have foul mouths and constantly make it known that you are there because you have messed up your life and now you need their company or you will be working at McDonald's. I don't believe this company has a business license and I don't know if perfume peddling is legal. This company scams people to get free labor and wastes your time and money with their lies. Some poor suckers end up believing him until they end up on the streets! Please help me get this company out of San Diego and shut down for good.

Itsascam
San DIego, California
U.S.A.