cutco knives? is it a scam?

[mopinko]

my 19 y.o. was offered a "job" selling cutco knives. when i said it was a scam, she got pissed at me. ( i could say the sky is blue, and that would piss her off, but..)
anybody been there done that?

[WindRavenX]

1. oh yeah

I got suckered into an interview with them...

[mopinko]

2. then what happened? nt

[WindRavenX]

5. basically

You're promised a lot of money-- it's a pyramid scam.

You have to buy a really expensive "starter kit" that allows you to start selling...

[mopinko]

7. that's what i thought

i think a friend of mine'd kid did this. sold a few friends, ended up with some over-priced cheap knives.
sigh. the kid hates me anyway. i hate bursting her bubble.

[Runcible Spoon]

3. I had a friend who tried to ole Cutco scheme..

she ended up buying $700 worth of "demo" knives and then selling 3 $50 knives. sucks...

[amitten]

4. Oh, yeah. Run far, far away from Cutco.

Good God, who wants to sell KNIVES to strangers from door to door? It's practically like asking to be murdered!

[Zookeeper]

6. "If it sounds too good to be true....

it probably is."

Anytime you have to buy the goods before you sell them, it's likely to be a scam.

But, good luck convincing your 19 year old of that.

[mopinko]

8. especially this 19 year old.

she really hates me.
there is some stuff on wikipedia, which she might trust.

[Dora]

9. I don't know about the scam - that sounds like it's real.

But my mother does have a set of Cutco knives that she's had since 1964, and they've performed admirably over the years.

[Yollam]

10. Amway also has some good products...

...but that doesn't change the fact that it is mostly a big con game where most of the salespeople lose money, and those at the top of the pyramid make money off of them.

[Dora]

24. I don't argue with that.

Nope.

[Indy_Dem_Defender]

11. I did something similar

selling stuff out of the trunk of my car. Did this for two days, We didn't have to buy the stuff just got a percent of what we sold. The company would get Misc. merchandise (kitchen Knives, stuffed toys, BBQ sets) and we had to go door to door at businesses. You'd sell a set of kitchen knives for 10 dollars you would get to keep 2 on commission. It was just hard when your going into a business usually a secretary turns you away if it was corporate owned business. I was actually the top seller my second day on the job over all of the sellers, when I got luck and knocked on a door of a lawyer who bought all my sets of kitchen knives (20 total). When I say top seller for the day, I made off commission like 50 bucks for 10 hours work. So basically I made below minimum wage at 5 an hour and had to use my own vehicle and gas to get around. So I told them to shove it and told everyone that worked for them they are idiots working there and they all called me a quitter. :rofl:

[Dangerously Amused]

12. Well, if she is THAT stubborn and if it's HER hard earned money....

...maybe warning her as best you can and then letting her lose it isn't the worst thing that can happen. Getting ripped off like that is a tough life lesson, but it's one we all have to learn sometime. At least she will learn young, lose hundreds instead of thousands, and probably respect your opinion on such matters in the future (even though she'll pretend to not be listening).

Good luck.

[BelleCarolinaPeridot]

13. SCAM !

I tried to go there in the summer of 2004 . I looked up that place on the internet and the way the other teens described the office is the exact same way that the office that I went to looked .Its in the middle of no where . Loud hip hop music glaring on the radio in the waiting area where a bunch of tables are around the walls . When you get through filling out the form there is are piles of magazines and you glance up at the pictures on the wall right beside trophies and plaques . Then you have the hyper receptionist. I did not get a call back - thank goodness.

[ContraBass Black]

14. A JOB IS WHERE THEY PAY YOU. YOU DON'T PAY THEM.

Thank you for listening.

[nemo137]

15. yep. It's a scammity scam scam.

there's a yahoo group of horror stories, the group's acronym is SAVE, that should tell you everything. I did it for a few days last summer.

[pokerfan]

16. DO NOT LET HER DO IT!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutco#Controversies_and_Criticisms

Vector's employment tactics, specifically allegedly deceptive recruitment tactics. Vector was sued by the Arizona Attorney General in 1990, ordered by the state of Wisconsin not to deceive recruits in 1994 and sued by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission in 1999. Each time their legal trouble revolved around allegedly fraudulent recruiting tactics, and each time Vector settled and promised not to mislead their recruits anymore.

[SoCalDemGrrl]

17. Thought so at first but we like the knife we felt compelled to buy from

the daughter of a good friend. What we didn't like was the tactic the sales people use. Our friend's daughter called and
said she was doing an internship and need to practice a PR presentation.

The "presentation" turned into a full blown sales pitch for Cutco. Anyway in spite of this, we bought one serrated knife and
it's become one of our best for cutting veggies & the like.

[ChoralScholar]

18. I went to college with a guy who sold Cutco

He got expelled for threatening someone with a vegetable knife.

All that aside, I don't ever remember him selling any.

[NewJeffCT]

19. I know some fairly smart people that got suckered by pyramids...

How do you tell people that it's a pyramid scheme & is basically bullshit, but also not hurt their feelings by making them feel stupid?

[bbernardini]

20. BIG SCAM. I went to the "interview", and knew what it was immediately.

They were playing Pink Floyd's "The Wall" in the waiting room instead of hip-hop, though. That was cool. :)

[riona]

21. I've used those knives

(fortunately I wasn't the one who bought them). All the steak knife handles broke except for one. Poor quality.

[jmm]

22. The knives are great but it's a scam.

I know a couple that had a pretty amicable divorce except for when it came to deciding who would get the cutco knives they were given as a wedding gift. One of my cousins sold them briefly until an aunt of mine had to get stitches after a demonstration. They encouraged him to "practice" by selling to his family first. That's the main part of the scam. They get young people, promise them easy money, then pressure them to pressure those close to them to buying the knives. At first it can seem like great money. I know somebody that made over $3,000 from them one summer but she has over 20 aunts and uncles. It's not even like Avon where your customers might buy lotions or knick-knacks every few months. Cutco sales people lose their customer base pretty quick and then it's back to a real job.

[eyesroll]

23. I applied for that same "job" when I was 20 or so.

Went in for the interview -- they wouldn't tell me what the product or job was, just asked a bunch of questions about my grades and public-speaking experience. They called me back in for a "second interview" (by this point, I knew I wasn't going to take the job but I figured I could use the interview experience). It turned out to be a giant group presentation about the knives -- complete with oohs and aahs as the salesperson cut throug a tin can and a tomato.

They explained the sales model and that I'd need to pay $300 (or whatever it was) to get a demo kit, which I could either sell or keep at the end of the summer.

They then said they'd give us two days of "sales and service training, free of charge!" Ooooh!

I raised my hand and asked, "is this a pyramid scheme?" A collective gasp! came from the audience.

The presenter gave a non-answer. Later, in the one-on-one interview, I asked incredulously, "you mean you want me, as a 5'2" 20-year-old woman, to go into strangers' houses with very sharp and dangerous objects, that I have to pay for, alone? And you find nothing wrong with this?"

They still offered me the job; I declined it and filed a report with the appropriate state agency. I ended up temping that summer and making a good amount of money.

[Shell Beau]

25. I don't know, but they are good knives!!

[NewWaveChick1981]

26. One of my husband's friends was laid off from his job a couple of

years ago, and he tried selling Cutco knives as a stopgap until he could find another job. He was suckered into it because he was very vulnerable and needed to make as much money as he could at that time. He had to buy the starter kit and ended up selling very few. He'll tell you it's a total ripoff. :(