Offshore Outsourcing & Scammer

The following list give you an overview how you can identify a scammer and bad selling products without making a background check - only by reading their offers with an open mind:

• Earnings in the spotlight
  Every advertising, which puts the amount of earnings into the spotlight, is nothing else than scam. As higher the promoted earnings are, as less reachable they will be for the case it is not a scam.
  
  
• Pay per sale
  Even the client knows that his product is hard to sell.  If the client has an easy selling product, than he would offer only an hourly rate for the sales people.Each business is done for making profit. Nobody likes to pay more than absolutely necessary.
  
  
• High commission per sale
  As higher the promised commission per sale is as more difficult is it to sell the product. Nobody likes to pay more than it is absolutely necessary to find someone to doing the work.
  
  
• Offer without a picture of a real person or of a celebrity
  The salesperson already cannot show his face in public.  Maybe he/she has scammed already some people and need to hide himself for this purpose. It is also possible that such a person gets searched already by the police or Interpol. They are browsing the social networks too.
  
  
• Offers without an email address
  Such an offer is only a time waster. Such people even don’t know that the world has 24 time zones and are expecting that everybody is waiting for them.
  
  
• Calling data (phone numbers with names) are not provided by the client
  Address agencies are already to expensive for the client. He expect that you are making with already heavy used data a big business. Hopefully the client will be able to pay the center for their work,
  
  
• “genuine” offers
  Where is only written about a “genuine” campaign or product  than it is only scam. The person, who is offering something like that, does not even know what he is offering.
  
  
• Email me for more details
  That is only a time waster. Such people are only collecting email addresses. Maybe they can sell It somewhere. A normal salesperson will describe his product very well, because he has less work with false requests in this case. Why he should make more work for himself than necessary.
  
  
• Call me for more details
  That is even a larger time waster. Such a person is already afraid from the written words, which can get used against him. For this he likes to speak only. Such offers are in each case only a scam.
  
  
• Act fast phrases like "Last Chance", "Limited Slots", "Limited Seats", "HURRY UP", etc.
  The best translation would be: Don’t prove the offer or make a background check. In such a case you’ll find the scam immediately.
  
  
• Any upfront fees – however they are getting called
  That is the plumpest scam ever. If a client likes that you are using special software, than he has to pay for it. Maybe the client is already nearly bankrupt and cannot pay already the products, which you should use. In such a case he would even not be able to pay you for your work in the case it is not only a scam.
  
  
• Royalty fees
  It proves only that the “broker” has no contract with the client. For this is it already scam.
  
  
• Security deposit
  A security deposit is given normally to this one, which is working and has some investments to do. This is in the case the call center, because they are investing in staff and phone minutes. The broker gets paid from the client for whom he is working.
  
  
• Exuberant praising a product or campaign
  You will not be able to sell such a product to normal people. Such products are normally overpriced and trash. The purpose of such a behavior is to find stupid people, which will buy it. With the exuberant praising of a product or campaign the salesperson likes to hide the known problems of the product.
  
  
• MLM – Multi Level Marketing
  In such a system are getting low quality products for a very high price sold. The product price needs to pay your upline and need to be a winning for the company. You need to be happy if you are at least earning the costs you have with it.
  
  
• Repeated posting of the same campaign
  Real campaigns need to get posted only once, they get very fast taken. If a campaign gest posted longer as a few days then is in any case something wrong with the campaign.
  
  
• The offer sounds too good to be true
  In this case the offer is only a scam

As more from the above points are fitting to an offer as higher is the risk for running into a trap.

If the offer is interesting than you should continue with making a background check to avoid getting scammed.

A list of proved scammer can get found in the menu entry Scammer Exposed.

Offers from trusted and validated brokers can get found in the menu entry Fair Campaign Offers.

The broker/scammer are learning and thinking that $250 getting paid easier and without some requests than the fantasy sums from before.

Only the arguments have not changed:

"im not sure with that. thats always been the SOP. even our center here made the same arrangement to the client. the client has been with us for 3 years now and so happaned they are expanding. we tried to get centers before without the reservation fee but we were just burned. we made all trainings, installations of dialers etc and then on the first day or second day, center will just inform us that they cant push through. I understand your hesitation/s about the reservation fee, if your are not comfortable or okay with it its ok. once we have probjects that wont require reservation especially inbound, i will inform you both. "

My argument in this case:

• A real client, which like to outsource is giving everything for free, because he knows that he will save a lot  For this he even makes the training by himself or pays someone which makes the training.
  
  
• A customer needs to be happy that a center owner informs him that his campaign does not perform. That he needs to change the data or something else. If he has own staff it would be more expensive! 

We have in German a proverb: "Just as the rogue is so he thinks". In such a case think that you'll get scammed and ask for a security deposit for your own expenses.

See how a minimum security deposit gets calculated:

• The salary for the agents
  that is easily calculated. Simple add the gross sum of the salary including taxes and fees of all your agents together
  
  
• The place of the center
  If you pay rent than take a monthly rent of the place. If you own the place than you need to take the price of the building divided by 360 (30 years deduction of the value)
  
  
• The electricity
  That is simple to calculate. You know how much is the monthly energy bill
  
  
• The internet connection
  You know how much you pay for the Internet connection each month
  
  
• The investments of their technical equipment
  The technical equipment has an average financial life time of 3 years. So divide the value by 36 to get the value for one month
  
  
• The investments into their furniture
  Furniture and other investments are deducted to a zero value in 7 years, So you have to divide the value by 84

If you have calculated your own monthly costs, than you divide this costs by the count of seats you have to get the costs of one seat per month. This value you can easily use for all such offers. You simply need to multiply it with the count of requested seats in this case and add the value for the "up front", "security deposit" or however the fee to get the contract gets called. You can ask in such a case for an irrevocable bank guarantee about the resulting sum to reduce your own risks.

Alternative you can ask for a contract with the power of attorney, which has to get legalized if more than one country is involved. The fees for this process is carried in each country by the citizen of the country. Such a contract is able to get executed in front of the law court too.,

Account General Info -real state inbound- - word format(1).pdf (113.85 kb)

GUIDELINES FOR REAL STATE INBOUND CAMPAIGN APPLICATION.pdf (178.25 kb)

For this we need to know first why companies like to outsource to offshore call center.

The answer is very simple. They like to maximize their earnings.  The average income in the high wage countries for telemarketer is around $20 per hour (Source: indeed.com from February 2015). Depending on the country are here additional expenses for the staff necessary. The real costs of a staff will be up to 50% higher than the salary of the staff.

A good and usable product is getting sold automatically if you present it in shops. There are other products like insurances, mortgages, etc. which are getting offered from brokers. Most of the insurances are offering combined packages, which are offering a discount. If the customer takes out one package of this group the price for the remaining things in the package will rise.

If a company offers a new combined package, then it has to have better conditions for the customer.  In this case the company needs to sell more of these packages to have the same winnings. No one gets money as a gift and the company needs to earn money too. This cannot be done by lowering the price for the customer without lowering the cost of sales too. The commission for the sales people will decrease for maximizing the profit of the company and their shareholders. Such a procedure results in a downward spiral in price and performance.

The costs for hiring offshore telemarketing centers are around at a quarter of the onshore prices. Mostly are their products simple not sellable or even the winnings not big enough for paying per hour. For this the most companies found here are offering only pay per sale.

This behavior is very short-sighted, because local people are losing their jobs. People, which have lost their job, have less or no money available. These peoples need to reduce their expenses too for having enough to survive until they find a new job. For this the companies are losing potential buyers. This is leading to the next downward spiral, where the products need to get cheaper and cheaper to get new customers. As nobody can offer the same performance for less money, the performance gets reduced too until the product is getting useless.

Such products shall get sold by using offshore call centers. In the most of the cases the companies are too greedy for supplying data (phone numbers and names) for the call center. The call center should even take the risk about the data. As the most serious data provider in the high wage country are selling data only locally, the international traded data are already heavily used and for this reason more or less useless. Nobody can perform with such kind of data.

The result is: SUCH COMPANIES ARE TO GREEDY AND DESTROY WITH THEIR GREEDINESS THEIR OWN BUSINESS!

You can use the following translation for the offers found here at LinkedIn or Facebook:

• Pay per Sale
  The provider does not believe that his products can get sold or The provider does not believe that the call center can sell the products
  Why in this case he likes to go offshore?
  The reason is mostly that it is the last try before running into bankruptcy
  
  
• High commission rate
  As higher the offered commission is as harder is it to sell the product.
  As higher the offered commission is as more useless is the product
  As higher the offered commission is as more financial problems the company has
  
  
• No data provided
  The call center shall even take the risk and invest into the data for selling the product.
  The company has not enough funds already to invest into good data
  
  
• Upfront payment, security deposit, etc.
  The company has not enough funds to pay the broker or to survive with out the payment of the "rich" call center owner. It is already too much what they are offering for this service.

Call centers be aware from the “refundable” security deposit. All this offers are nothing else then SCAM. In the normal world a security deposit is given to this one, which gives a value, which cannot get retrieved fast (in leasing, rentals, etc.).

In the case of call center work the given value is the phone bill and the work of the agents, which cannot get retrieved. For this you are able to ask for a security deposit. Especially if the agreed billing period is longer than 1 week you should ask for a security deposit.

A security deposit should include the agreed counts of agents * hours of work during the agreed working time * hourly base + any payment for the broker! A security deposit can be done by an irrevocable bank guarantee, which needs to get accepted at your bank. Don’t start working if your bank does not accept the given bank guarantee. In this case you’ll never see your money.

Call center friends, don't get scammed, a contract should be only valid if you get your security deposit paid.

Definition of a security deposit from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_deposit):

A security deposit is a sum of money held in trust either as an initial part-payment in a purchasing process (often used to prevent the seller selling an item to someone else during an agreed period of time while the buyer verifies the suitability of the item, or arranges finance) - also known as an earnest payment, or else, in the course of a rental agreement to ensure the cost of repair in relation to any damage explicitly specified in the lease and that did in fact occur.

In certain taxation regimes a deposit need not declared as part of the gross income of the receiving party (person or corporation) until either the depositing party or an arbitrator agrees the funds may be used for the intended purpose.

A 1990 United States of America ruling[1] provides that a deposit differs from an advance payment because the depositing party has dominion over the funds and retains the right to insist upon repayment in cash. On the other hand, the party making an advance payment retains no right to insist upon the return of the funds as long as the recipient fulfills the contractual agreement.

The rationale behind the court’s decision is that the recipient of the deposit does not enjoy - complete dominion - over the funds and is subject to an express obligation to repay so long as the customer fulfills his or her legal obligations. Additionally, both the timing and the method of refund are largely within the control of the depositing party, as he or she can choose to insist upon repayment in cash or apply the deposit to purchase services. The recipient’s right to retain the funds of the deposit is contingent upon events that are outside of his or her control.

An important note is that although the recipient may receive an economic benefit from the deposits - i.e. interest - the prospect that income will be generated provides no ground for taxing the principal. However, any income that the recipient may earn through the use of the deposit money is, of course, taxable.

 

In leasing

Security deposits are required most often by lessors of automobiles, apartments, and commercial real estate.

The security deposits required by many residential landlords of their tenants are the source of much dispute and litigation. Many states and municipalities have enacted laws that specifically regulate the landlord's ability to withhold tenant security deposits after a tenant moves out. Some states and cities require that interest be paid to the tenant as it is earned on the security deposit.

In some legal regimes the deposit has to be placed with an independent escrow agent or licensed deposit taker such as a bank so that the risk of fraud is reduced and the funds earn interest at a fair market rate.

In the United States of America, Washington DC, Alaska, Illinois, and Wisconsin have notably more tenant-friendly legislation in place than states like Indiana or Michigan, for example. The cities of Madison, Wisconsin and Chicago, Illinois have in place substantially greater protection of tenants' security deposit rights than the surrounding areas.