Complaint Review: Merl Group - J9 Executives Stephen Kordella

Employees of The Merl Group, Inc. will not hide behind anonymous names and defame those who have written negatives against our company. Those that have written have actually worked for our company for more than a few months and obviously know we are a growing firm that produces results or they would not have continued to work for the company. We are a very competitive company and unfortunately not everyone will choose to complete the tasks required to manage one of our offices or clients. When an employee completes the management training program they will run offices for At&t, Staples, Verizon and other Fortune 500 and 100 companies. These are all large clients who would only work with the most professional companies like The Merl Group, Inc.

In the negative articles written by past employees who either quit or were fired for causing inappropriate scenes, they have written false statement due to either frustration or emotional anger associated with not being promoted or being released from the company. I personally am one of the managers of The Merl Group, Inc. and I fortunately chose to work hard and complete the program and understand that those who have chosen to defame The Merl Group, Inc. only do it because they chose to not succeed in our program.

A few of the articles claim that we go into business face to face and do sales. This is absolutely true, but only a part of our training program. We are outsourced by the companies mentioned above because it is more cost effective to outsource. We are very well respected in the community and we do not call and do sales over the phone because telemarketing is ineffective. At&t and Quill and Verizon has hired The Merl Group, Inc. do all of the face to face in the Midwest. We produce millions in revenue for our clients. Ethics are very important to me and I train people to up sell when possible and bundle different packages, but always to be clear with the business that we are taking care of. Our reps are not trained to be unethical and unfortunately sometimes people choose to do the wrong thing, but we strive to weed those people out of our company.

There are rejected orders if a customer cancels, but not everyone deals with those. The sales reps that do their job correctly rarely deal with rejected sales. It seems to only be those employees, like the ones on here who wrote negative things, that seem to deal with them. If someone does not clearly explain the products and services being ordered or make a sale that is ethical, then I agree it should be rejected. Most reps average between $600-$1000 a week in our company based on their performance.

Due to the economy, we now offer a base plus commission or a commission option. We can offer a salary at the managers discretion, but choose usually not based on the fact that people will take advantage of our company. We are all W2 employees and we are corporation that runs its payroll

First off, thanks to those of you who posted negative things about this company. They are a pyramid scheming scam company at its best. They are directly linked with Cydcor, and if anyone there tries to tell you different I went to the National Conference, I know. They dont like to tell you about that affiliation though b/c if you look up Cydcor you'll find loads of bad feedback on them. These companies such as the Merl Group are all across the country scamming young adults and college grads daily. Its really sad to see that people like Steve do this to people. Yes these pyramid scheming Cydcor companies do work for a SMALL portion of people ever hired. If I had to throw a number out there it'd be much smaller than the 1 out of 100 number that was already given. They go threw about 100 empoyees a month atleast. If you count all the offices that are shoved into that one office it's probably even higher. I was a witness to one of these offices failing. J9 Executives used to be in the same office as the Merl Group. They were the brother company to the Merl Group at one time. Dan the ex owner has since quite entirely. He was in the business over two years and was convinced to move to Indianapolis where he'd make 100K plus. Hah....We see that he obviously didnt. Another office was recently closed in Columbus. It gets better just wait. Soooo A group of people out of the Indy office that Steve trained moved there to take the place of that office that failed. Just to run through the same d**n places that had been run through and failed the last 2 years. Also, some girl who I dont know the name started a new office to take the place of J9 and run through the same d**n territories that had been run through for the last who knows long???? Doesnt this all seem ridiculous? I hope that someday these d**n people get shut down. For now we can only post stuff on here and hope the excited people who are about to go to an interview or have already went and got suspicious read this!!!!

First off, thanks to those of you who posted negative things about this company. They are a pyramid scheming scam company at its best. They are directly linked with Cydcor, and if anyone there tries to tell you different I went to the National Conference, I know. They dont like to tell you about that affiliation though b/c if you look up Cydcor you'll find loads of bad feedback on them. These companies such as the Merl Group are all across the country scamming young adults and college grads daily. Its really sad to see that people like Steve do this to people. Yes these pyramid scheming Cydcor companies do work for a SMALL portion of people ever hired. If I had to throw a number out there it'd be much smaller than the 1 out of 100 number that was already given. They go threw about 100 empoyees a month atleast. If you count all the offices that are shoved into that one office it's probably even higher. I was a witness to one of these offices failing. J9 Executives used to be in the same office as the Merl Group. They were the brother company to the Merl Group at one time. Dan the ex owner has since quite entirely. He was in the business over two years and was convinced to move to Indianapolis where he'd make 100K plus. Hah....We see that he obviously didnt. Another office was recently closed in Columbus. It gets better just wait. Soooo A group of people out of the Indy office that Steve trained moved there to take the place of that office that failed. Just to run through the same d**n places that had been run through and failed the last 2 years. Also, some girl who I dont know the name started a new office to take the place of J9 and run through the same d**n territories that had been run through for the last who knows long???? Doesnt this all seem ridiculous? I hope that someday these d**n people get shut down. For now we can only post stuff on here and hope the excited people who are about to go to an interview or have already went and got suspicious read this!!!!

First off, thanks to those of you who posted negative things about this company. They are a pyramid scheming scam company at its best. They are directly linked with Cydcor, and if anyone there tries to tell you different I went to the National Conference, I know. They dont like to tell you about that affiliation though b/c if you look up Cydcor you'll find loads of bad feedback on them. These companies such as the Merl Group are all across the country scamming young adults and college grads daily. Its really sad to see that people like Steve do this to people. Yes these pyramid scheming Cydcor companies do work for a SMALL portion of people ever hired. If I had to throw a number out there it'd be much smaller than the 1 out of 100 number that was already given. They go threw about 100 empoyees a month atleast. If you count all the offices that are shoved into that one office it's probably even higher. I was a witness to one of these offices failing. J9 Executives used to be in the same office as the Merl Group. They were the brother company to the Merl Group at one time. Dan the ex owner has since quite entirely. He was in the business over two years and was convinced to move to Indianapolis where he'd make 100K plus. Hah....We see that he obviously didnt. Another office was recently closed in Columbus. It gets better just wait. Soooo A group of people out of the Indy office that Steve trained moved there to take the place of that office that failed. Just to run through the same d**n places that had been run through and failed the last 2 years. Also, some girl who I dont know the name started a new office to take the place of J9 and run through the same d**n territories that had been run through for the last who knows long???? Doesnt this all seem ridiculous? I hope that someday these d**n people get shut down. For now we can only post stuff on here and hope the excited people who are about to go to an interview or have already went and got suspicious read this!!!!

If you were to go through all the paper work you and the other employees do are you saying that all the orders were called in by the customer and the sales rep, were all the pricing written on the paper work correct, all the people that you signed up were the actual decission makers rather that 18 yr old employees that have been working there for 2 weeks? NOOOOOOOOOO.. You sign up anyone and will do anything possible whether you have to lie or cheat. If the Better Business Buruea would come in there would you feel comfortable I dont think so because you know that half the people that you force to sign paper work IS NOT the authorize decission maker. IT IS A SCAM AND YOU KNOW IT your to blind to admit it but in about 6 months you will realize it and will be in New Jersey and itll be to late to do anything about it.

If you were to go through all the paper work you and the other employees do are you saying that all the orders were called in by the customer and the sales rep, were all the pricing written on the paper work correct, all the people that you signed up were the actual decission makers rather that 18 yr old employees that have been working there for 2 weeks? NOOOOOOOOOO.. You sign up anyone and will do anything possible whether you have to lie or cheat. If the Better Business Buruea would come in there would you feel comfortable I dont think so because you know that half the people that you force to sign paper work IS NOT the authorize decission maker. IT IS A SCAM AND YOU KNOW IT your to blind to admit it but in about 6 months you will realize it and will be in New Jersey and itll be to late to do anything about it.

If you were to go through all the paper work you and the other employees do are you saying that all the orders were called in by the customer and the sales rep, were all the pricing written on the paper work correct, all the people that you signed up were the actual decission makers rather that 18 yr old employees that have been working there for 2 weeks? NOOOOOOOOOO.. You sign up anyone and will do anything possible whether you have to lie or cheat. If the Better Business Buruea would come in there would you feel comfortable I dont think so because you know that half the people that you force to sign paper work IS NOT the authorize decission maker. IT IS A SCAM AND YOU KNOW IT your to blind to admit it but in about 6 months you will realize it and will be in New Jersey and itll be to late to do anything about it.

If you were to go through all the paper work you and the other employees do are you saying that all the orders were called in by the customer and the sales rep, were all the pricing written on the paper work correct, all the people that you signed up were the actual decission makers rather that 18 yr old employees that have been working there for 2 weeks? NOOOOOOOOOO.. You sign up anyone and will do anything possible whether you have to lie or cheat. If the Better Business Buruea would come in there would you feel comfortable I dont think so because you know that half the people that you force to sign paper work IS NOT the authorize decission maker. IT IS A SCAM AND YOU KNOW IT your to blind to admit it but in about 6 months you will realize it and will be in New Jersey and itll be to late to do anything about it.

First off I also currently worK for The Merl Group and Steven Kordella and I would like to tell you that I cant wait to find a better job and quit! David, just how brainwashed are you to not see whats happening to people on your own team! Adam was ranked #2 insales overall on the AT&T campaign during the month of February in the nation! This also means he had a low number of rejects for that month! I also believe that he ranked higher than anyone else in Steves office at any given time! He was also one of the nicest and truthful people in the office! I always went to him for advice and the way he was treated by Steve and Mike was ridiculous!

He was there everyday on-time unless he had something to do with his son. Which hardly any of us in the office know anything about so where do you get off talking bad about him for that!

Futhermore, he was usually one of us leaders that made the most money everyday and also overall for the week! Myself and more of the top leaders in the office think that Adam was right for standing up for what he believes in and we are glad someone finally told Steve how they felt! APPLAUSE FOR ADAM!!!!!

I would just like to end by saying thanks to all those who have posted here and also to those who showed me what was really going on in our office! No wonder Steve wants to give up his office, move to another city, and start a new campaign! I just hope that you get Indy David so you can deal with the mess that you feel so desperate to defend! Did you ever think that if all these post were lies, WHY HASN'T STEVE OR MIKE STOOD UP FOR THEMSELVES???

I've been an employee of the Merl group for a while. I think the above post, the one before it, and the one from Adam make some good points.

Lets start with the expectations of an employee. Be at work on time in the morning, go do sales during the day, report back to the office in the evening, give your best effort every day, and don't make excuses for poor performance. I guess management just expects too much.

How about responsibilities of one of our Account Executives? We're expected to network with other offices via conference calls, train newer employees, take attendance to see if guys like Adam actually show up on time, and run meetings to set the goals for the day. I guess management just expects too much.

What about bothering customers during their work day in order to give them better phone rates and services? (I personally get mostly welcoming responses from customers. Of course there are a few who are just angry people, but thats life.) The majority of my co workers treat their customers with respect and help them save a few dollars on their phone bill. The people who write these reports are the ones who habitually do unethical sales and treat their customers poorly. No wonder there are angry business owners out there.

Thanks Adam and the other anonymous person whose post I am responding to. You've made us all aware of the "truth." It seems that the truth you have revealed to us is your way of allowing yourself not to feel bad for having a poor attitude, showing up to work late every other day, constantly complaining when you're held accountable for being lazy, and having pitiful sales performance.

Glad you're gone.

I've been an employee of the Merl group for a while. I think the above post, the one before it, and the one from Adam make some good points.

Lets start with the expectations of an employee. Be at work on time in the morning, go do sales during the day, report back to the office in the evening, give your best effort every day, and don't make excuses for poor performance. I guess management just expects too much.

How about responsibilities of one of our Account Executives? We're expected to network with other offices via conference calls, train newer employees, take attendance to see if guys like Adam actually show up on time, and run meetings to set the goals for the day. I guess management just expects too much.

What about bothering customers during their work day in order to give them better phone rates and services? (I personally get mostly welcoming responses from customers. Of course there are a few who are just angry people, but thats life.) The majority of my co workers treat their customers with respect and help them save a few dollars on their phone bill. The people who write these reports are the ones who habitually do unethical sales and treat their customers poorly. No wonder there are angry business owners out there.

Thanks Adam and the other anonymous person whose post I am responding to. You've made us all aware of the "truth." It seems that the truth you have revealed to us is your way of allowing yourself not to feel bad for having a poor attitude, showing up to work late every other day, constantly complaining when you're held accountable for being lazy, and having pitiful sales performance.

Glad you're gone.