Rike Enterprises ,Final Touch Jewelry Almost scammed! Dallas Texas
I had a similar experience to several others with this company, but thanks to my intuition telling me that it smelled fishy, I checked it out and found the many reports on your site.
The representative never used the name Final Touch Jewelry. In fact, he never identified the company name until he sent me the second letter via email. He had promised to send me some additional information when my resume had been approved by the owner. He sent me a letter showing the company as Rike Enterprises. Only when I started doing a web search did I stumble across the aka Final Touch Jewelry.
Here is some of what they told me to lure me in: "I have just reviewed your resume and I think our company might be a good fit for you. We are looking for a sales representative to call on existing accounts and establish new accounts in your area and also go into our management program." "I look at 100 resumes per day and I pick three to five to contact. If you have any interest, please contact me by phone..." Like others, he contacted me through Career Builder.
Here are the apparent gotcha's: "As an independent contractor the representative will be responsible for the initial sample line which runs from $1500-$3,000. However, after you attain $25,000 in sales volume, which should take no longer than forty five days, the company will reimburse you in full and will reimburse you for travel expenses into our Dallas showroom for training."
I urge everyone to be careful of this. Thanks to those of you who posted, they won't get me!
Mike
Longview, Texas
U.S.A.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Jeanjean
Lake Lotawana,Missouri,
U.S.A.
Misrepresentation by Gary Rike and Final Touch Jewelry
#2UPDATE EX-employee responds
Sun, September 21, 2008
I fully agree with all aspects of the reports written here by everyone else who has been scammed by Gary Rike. I also received the useless account list which was lauded by my recruiter, J. Carroll Hood.
I, too, learned from stores I called on that the pricing of the jewelry was way out of line compared to pricing of similar or better jewelry that they retailed. The contract indeed did state that the purchase price of samples AND our travel to Dallas would all be reimbursed when we sold $25,000.00 of merchandise. I think Mr. Rike felt pretty comfortable in offering that carrot since it would be nearly impossible to ever sell $25,000.00 of that jewelry!
The point that no one else has mentioned but that was most shocking to me, is that I found SIX other Account Managers in my territory who were active within a period two months before and two months after I was hired! I know the contract says "non-exclusive", but I specifically asked Gary Rike at our meeting where the nearest rep to me was and if he could assure me that he was not planning to hire anymore reps in my territory. He neglected to tell me about a rep in MY OWN TOWN that was hired less than one month before me! Another was hired one month after me! In addition, he encouraged each of us to hire five subreps to cover the territory. As it turns out, there were already plenty of us covering the territory...unbeknownst to us, I might add.
Bottom line...I would never have spent my money to travel to Dallas in the first place if I had known about all the other reps. Keeping that information from me, in my opinion, constituted fraud and misrepresentation, and I, for one, would like to see Mr. Rike get his due desserts for that.