Complaint Review: Pac Marketing / Merl Group - Indianapolis Indiana

      I was excited when I first got the job at PAC Marketing. The employees were professional, friendly, and nice. The company seemed legit, young, and successful. There were things in the beginning that stood out as warning signs. First you are required to use your own vehicle. Second you are not given a gas allowance. Third the miles/wear and tear you rack up on your vehicle is supposed to be "written off on your taxes". Upon employment I was aware of these 3 major setbacks, but decided to give it a try anyway because of the promise of "rapid advancement"; Big Mistake! During my week long training period I rode around town going business to business in our "assigned territory" soliciting/selling office supplies for "Quill" trying to meet our goal of 2 sales a day. You have two choices of income at PAC. The first is $300 a week plus 10% commission or straight commission at 28% of whatever you sold. I talked to many employees who boasted an average of $500-600 checks weekly. Yet they fail to factor in gas, food, and wear on their vehicles. So basically the company's model is genius. Here you have fresh out of college grads looking for jobs, you train them, give them a standard catalog to work with, and they pay for all the overhead expenses.  As a new trainee I chose the $300 a week base pay with 10% commission until I got my feet wet.

                To make a long story short my second day alone in "the field" I made a sale and my commission would have netted me a profit of about $25 for the entire day; roughly the same amount I spent in gas and food to work there for two days. I was excited because this means I was starting to bounce back from the approximately $250 I spent in total cost to work their thus far.

                Day two of being on my own was spent driving to South Bend, IN for a Road Trip into uncharted profitable territory, meaning nobody had pitched that area for a long time. So I drive up to South Bend spending about $60 to get there and back. I go to my assigned territory pitch; the first six businesses I see, and come to find out all six of the places already use Quill Office Supplies; so Ive just wasted two hours of my life and made zero money for the day.  It had snowed a ton the night before and on my way up the driveway of the Southside Christian Church located 1329 E. Jackson Road South Bend, IN 46614 to pitch, I slide off the snowy drive into some small trees. So here I sit already in the hole for working this job, Ive now wrecked my car, and Im stuck in the snow! I called up my team mates for help only to be met with were busy. So at this point Ive got two ladies employed by the church trying to push a salesmans car out of the snow.  My car is totally stuck I had to call a towing service, pay $85.00 for a 10 foot tow backwards, and at this point Im on the phone resigning from PAC.

                All in all I would say working at PAC for the week and half I did, cost me roughly $700.00 through gas expenses, food, car damages, towing fees, business supplies..etc. Oh lets not forget the icing on the cake! So I didnt get my guaranteed $300.00 base pay because I didnt meet the required amount of time to work there to receive it and to this day I still have not received my $25.00 check for the one and only sale I made!!!! Seriously how much more professional can we get here? (That was sarcasm) Ive left at least 5 messages with the company and my former boss, who will remain nameless. Ive never been treated like this by an employer in my life!  Unless you like to pay dearly out of pocket to work 10-12 hours a day and realistically on average bring home a net profit of $200-300 (in my case zero dollars and zero cents) for 50+ hours a week Do Not Work At PAC Marketing or anything affiliated with the Merl Group! If you were to total your vehicle on the job, you would receive zero money for it as I did!  I hope this helps someone save the money I lost.  Check out the front damage done to my car in the picture!