Perfect Job. Great Pay. Business Practices?

So what do you do when a recruiter approaches you regarding the perfect job, or better yet several high paying perfect jobs, but a quick Google search reveals serious questions regarding the company’s business practices? Pursue the positions or pass?
Creative Networking or Cyber Stalking?

So I received a message in my Facebook Inbox one night from a recruiter who had seen my profile on LinkedIn and wanted to contact me regarding a few positions I might be a good match for. I know that LinkedIn offers paid options allowing you to contact members you are not linked to, so I found it a little odd and a lot cheap that he had contacted me through Facebook instead. With both hope and hesitation, I responded and he started sending the jobs through. They were great. Amazing positions. Exactly what I had been dreaming of!
Would you like my Credit Card Number along with my Social Security Number?

So he also emailed a request to fill out a job application, available online as a PDF and for a copy of my resume. I emailed my resume after verifying the company as much as possible. He had several recommendations on LinkedIn and searching for the company online, all looked fine. I opened the application, began to fill it out, and stopped. Did this application seriously ask me for my social security number? What do I do? I had heard absolutely to give out my social security number only if I was filling out a job application in person. I also know that email is not secure which is why you should never email a credit card number or social security number. I stared at it for a few minutes, skipped that part and went on with the rest of the application. The rest of the application was pretty standard, just some position names, dates, job addresses, and references at the end. No big deal. What could someone do with this information? I kept debating about the identity-theft-ability of the information and concluded it was a risk I was willing to take, but the social security number was not getting filled in. So feeling very uncertain, I emailed the job application and we arranged to speak at 10am the next morning.
Great, Growing Company, Top Rated… oh yeah, and if you’re offered a job, you better take it

So I tried to call the recruiter at 10am, as we had discussed, and just ended up with voicemail. Panic started up immediately and I was sure my bank account would be drained within the hour. Something just seemed weird. A few minutes later the phone rang and I was a little more at ease. We discussed the positions and everything kept sounding better and better. Salary started where I left my last job at and went up from there. The company was growing and had been for years. Classmates.com was one of their big clients and Buy.com just made a deal with them. They were acquiring other companies and they were on this list and that list of “great” or “growing” or “to watch” web companies to work for. He told me the name of the company and asked me to write a paragraph stating why I would be great for one or all of the jobs. He would forward the paragraph with my resume to the company.

Oh yeah, this was also the worst market he’d seen in years and if I was offered a position, I really needed to take it.

Was that a threat or a warning?
Oh, you trick people. Good to know that makes a fast growing web business.

So I look through the company website. It appears they make money for all their clients and give free things to customers. Mmmm…. and you do that how? All I could find was that you needed to have a shopping cart and the ability to add scripts to your pages. Not a big deal, that’s true of affiliates and any site that needs to track your sales information for CPA, like Microsoft Live Cashback. But funny, I still can’t tell what you do.

Let’s check Google, shall we?

So Google’s top 10 revealed some interesting information. Ripoff Report, Consumer Reports, and a CBS investigation all showed up and offered some informative reading.

Still attempting to give the benefit of the doubt, I checked the Better Business Bureau. The BBB gave them a C rating and showed over 1500 complaints in the past 36 months. Wow. Reading through the BBB report and after reading the other information I had found, I now had an idea of what the company did. In fact, my husband had learned about the business model firsthand the week before.

I will state that I was not able to connect the business that my husband dealt with to the company I was looking into, which is why I have not named them here. However, the only website my husband has ever entered his credit card information into is Classmates.com and the business practices seem to be unmistakeably similar. In addition, the state listed on his credit card statement just happened to be the same state the job was located in.

So what happened to my husband? He received his credit card statement and looking through it, noticed two charges for $19.99 that he did not recognize. He called them to find out that it was an identity protection subscription that he had been paying for for a few months and the company agreed to refund all charges.

When did that happen? The way it works is a consumer fills out a rebate form or clicks YES to get something free and their credit card information is passed from the website to this third party company without the consumer entering their credit card information again. They are now a subscriber to a discount or protection program. They just don’t know it yet. If anything gives e-commerce a bad name and is still legal, this would be it.
E-Commerce Best Practices? Uh… no

I have spent the past few years learning e-commerce best practices. These were not them. I quit my job over 2 months ago and these jobs paid really well. Could I do it? I needed to write a paragraph selling myself and explaining why I would be a good fit for the company. Was I?
You must mean the lawsuit

After extensive thought, I knew I couldn’t do it. Unfortunately for my bank account, I was way too ethical to work for a company I felt had questionable business practices. So I emailed the recruiter to let him know I had looked into the company and was not interested. His reponse was quite amusing.

He called me a few times the next day leaving messages. (I was busy all day interviewing for other positions.) The first message let me know that I was not the first person to have responded that way and he wanted a chance to explain. The second message said that I had found misinformation online and he wanted to clarify. The third message was the best. He said that I must mean the lawsuit and that it was frivolous. He then sent an email with more information regarding the lawsuit. The lawsuit? What lawsuit? You must be kidding. Oh, now I knew I had made the right choice.
Thanks, but not for me

I called him back and he was trying to convince me to keep an open mind. The most ethical people he knew worked there in executive positons. He had placed several people there over the past years. I explained to him more than once that due to my husband’s recent experience, I really wasn’t interested. He didn’t get it. Dude, let it go.
It appears you may be a fit…

The next day, I received an email from someone else at the same recruiting company regarding a position with the same title. She thought I may be a fit.

I let her know I’m not.