Complaint Review: SoftRock

To be clear: SoftRock is legally established in the state of Florida; pays its employees their salaries; reports to the IRS, etc.  But just because SoftRock complies with the usual requirements to be established as a legal business in the United States, does not mean that they are not a ripoff.

SoftRock is a ripoff because they claim to be a software company, when they absolutely are not.  SoftRock is nothing more than a glorified, high-pressure, call center with a huge turnover of call-center slaves who quit or get fired very soon after they start.  This strategy in practice and effect allows SoftRock to pay most of its hundreds of employees/slaves training-level salaries of less than $1,900 a month ($475 a week).  Other high-pressure call centers in the U.S., that do not outsource to India or Mexico, pay salaries of between $3,000 to $5,000 per month to their hard-working employees.  And let us not kid ourselves; call center work is one of the highest-stress jobs in the world!

So the question begs: how does SoftRock manage to effectively pay their slaves $1,900 per month?  The answer is easy.  While serious-minded call centers like AT&T carefully select, train and spoil their employees and keep them for years, often for decades, SoftRock openly lies about their business purpose, which allows them to hire hundreds of unsuspecting victims per week... and fires them or forces them to quit at the same rate.

SoftRock brings anyone to a "first interview," regardless of the person's qualifications, age, gender, experience, nationality, criminal background, religion, etc.  During this 1st interview, you are told that you do not need to be a software engineer to work for SoftRock.  And since you are such a wonderful individual, you are invited to a second interview because, to them, "you are worth $50,000 to $70,000 a year."  No mention of the company's true nature (that of just being a call center) is made during the 1st interview.  If you are stupid enough, like I was, you fall in the trap and go to the second interview, in which they waste even more of your valuable time and tell you more lies about their business.

So, here is the jewel: SoftRock is a master of deceit, riding on the immense possibilities for profit presented by the billions upon billions of dollars that flow every year from the Department of Education and private banks through unsuspecting and innocent potential students, more so in today's economy of unemployment, towards higher education institutions.  What does SoftRock's piece of the pie consist of in the overall scheme of the higher-education scheme here?  Easy: SoftRock taps on the Internet's job boards' data bases, apply their "algorithm" to carefully select potential candidates for higher-education degrees, send out millions of emails everyday to their preselected candidates, and wait for calls.

So here is where you, the SoftRock call center rep/slave, come in: when the potential student calls into the call center (SoftRock), you confirm his/her identity, address, phone number, email address, etc.  Then you push hard to convince him/her to pursue an academic career; this is ALL you do, ten hours a day.

SoftRock will ride you so hard that you will quit in two weeks (97% possibility of this happening)... or they'll fire you after a few days.  Why?  Because if they kept you, they would have to pay you a fair salary of at least $4,000 a month. Get the drift now?  That is SoftRock's REAL "Secret Formula."

Is SoftRock involved in an illegal activity?  Maybe not.  But does it SUCK that they lie about the fact that they are nothing but a crappy call center ?  Undoubtedly so!