scentura creations::SCAM

you have no idea how big of a scam it is. they tell you that you have to work your way from the bottom: up. that means that you sell perfume for them. then once you get real good at selling the sh*t, you get a whole bunch of fake promotions. you work 10-18 hour days trying to sell. you start spending your own money just to meet your quota that day. after you do that for about 2-3 months you get promised your own office, so that you can have people selling perfume for you, but little do you know that once you finally get in your own office, they do everything that can to blow you out. with me they would break into my office and steal my merchandise, so that my inventory would be wrong. my phones were tapped and every time somebody called in for an interview, they would call the person and convince them to work for them instead. i lost my car and my house, because i could no longer afford them. my girlfriend left me and all my friends are gone because i had no time for any of them. now i am homeless, i live on the streets. the only way that i am writing any of this is because there is a library nearby with online access. when i called the people who had promised me the american dream to tell them what had happened to me, they had no sympathy, and they apperently have no time for me since whenever i call they just hang up on me. but i have given up on them, they toy with peoples lives, and don't care who they break. now i am 19 years old, my clothes are filthy, i have 17 cents to my name and i don't know where my next meal is coming from. a year ago i thought i was going to be somebody, now i am not so sure. thank you scentura creations, i am not even 20 years old yet, and i sleep behind a grocery store on a pile of clothes. if anyone has any questions or stories about this company please email me. i dont get to check mine very often but i will email you back. dont do it, there is not much more i can say about this company, just dont do it.

thank you and god bless,
chris

 

Why not get yourself a gun and kill them? If you do, I will pay for your attorney. I hate those crooks.

 

Most of the time the people who write good things about scentura creations have only been involved for a week. Everyone says it's a scam and that you never get a office, well to everyone who says that, I'm in my office. Odd things may go on in this company, but if you can handle the sh!t then they will keep up to their promises. If you can't handle sh!t, you aren't able to run an office anyway.

 

Virginia is about as bright as a blown out
light bulb. Anyone want to bet she's not part of the scam. Every board on here has
someone this bunch of scammers has raped clean.

 

Cancel all that sh!t I just said. This peice of sh!t company needs to be put out of business. Scam or no scam. I don't know if it's the whole company or just Gateway management in St. Louis ran by David Babb. They hire teenagers whom they convince have no other future besides scentura creations. They tell them they will have their own office and be their own boss. Well they live up to the own office thing. But once you get in there and sign the lease and everything goes in your name, then they blow you out or close you for stupid reasons. Then they put someone else in your office, even though your name is on the lease and bills. They don't change the names, just leave you with the bills. Even at Gateway's office, they never pay the bills, every time the phone bill doesn't get paid and they threaten to disconnect it they call and change it. But before you go into your office, you have to work for 2 months without getting paid, all you get is commission and then that you end up spending on gas for as much as you drive, or buying bottles of perfume for production. There are so many lies involved with this company, or at least at Gateway. David tells everyone he's only been in St. Louis for 2 years, when he's been here over 10, I met someone who worked for him in 1987. He says he's only 30 but is so much older. He lies so much, he is a huge scam. They brainwash you into "believing in the product" even though they lie about the product. They tell you it's so much better than the "real thing" so that you can lie to your customers and tell them this sh!t last 12 hours, when it hardly lasts 2. They brainwash you so much with so many different lies it's pathetic. When we opened our office, we called to get caller ID and the phones weren't even under our name, they were under another guys name who didn't even work there anymore, and so are alot of the bills. That poor guys credit is screwed up now, and I bet he doesn't even know. There are so many lies involved with this. Email me and I will explain more.

 

Hi I just had a second interview with this company and have been reading some scary @!#$ about them. What do you mean about the cross country credit card thing? Today I gave them the name of my credit card company, Discover and Citibank, but no credit card numbers. Should I be worried? Let me know.

 

Is it possible that the "Scentura Creations" that you all have written about has recently given birth to BP Rino??? I know someone who just went on their 2nd interview...and it all sounds so familiar!????

 

Correction, Virginia is about as sharp as a beach ball!

 

I tried your email address at yahoo. You have no account with them. What gives?

 

Thank you for the warning. I got accepted and was going to start on july 3rd. NO way
I'm gonna do so now! It does sound too darn good to be true, and well, so it is!

 

RE: scentura creations, DS-Max

hello,
I know what your daughter is going through,
I was with an identical company (WWI / Cobra
Imports / DS-Max - they have various names)
for 5 years. Many of my friends are still
with them (thats 10 years for them!).

It isn't a scam and it is a scam !!??

There really is a payoff for all the hard
work - if you follow the system and work hard,they really will set you up in your own business.

However, 99% of people either quit too early, or just don't have 'what it takes' to make it in this business. You have to develop both your sales skills and people recruitment/management skills to succeed.

Most recruits can have one or the other but almost everyone doesn't have both.
You have to learn to sell and be able to make money at it - not just scrape by for weeks and months like most of them do, staying on in hope of 'making it'. You have to be able to show the people you take out to train, how to make money themselves or else you can never move up the ladder.

Others are good at the sales end but can't train and retain a 'crew' or group of people.
They need to show the management that they can teach the sales to new people and also be able to keep them in the business.This takes people skills - motivation, counselling etc...

Those who can do this end up creating a team
of sales people. They develop the skills needed to actually run their own office.
They will pay for all the expenses of this office - like any other business owner would - except that the parent company (ie Scentura)
supplies all the product on consignment.
This is a fantastic deal for a young person
who has what it takes. The new owner then with her team with her as 'trainers' set about building a larger crew of sales people each one with the opportunity to learn the business and open their own offices. The new owner encourages this since if they can find someone to get to this point, they will be able to recieve an 'overide' or commission on everything that new office sells, just like the person who promoted them in the first place.

The attitude thing seems 'cultish' in that yeah, most people ARE 'negative' when it comes to sales and so when compared with the postiveness - they just cant understand what the big deal is.

They can't stand rejection and they take it personally or they think that sales is 'below them' and only desperate uneducated people would do this type of work. Understand that to make it in this type of business you MUST have a 'can do' attitude and not let anything or anyone get you down. This is exactly the same as any other business out there!. Instead of feeling sorry for yourself when you have a 'bad' day - think about what you can do to turn it around tommorow. Also negative people tend to spread negativity like the flu and the other people who are working hard out there trying to make a go of it may catch your bad attitude.

So. Whats the main problem this Scentura, Cobra, WWI and other types of these businesses?

1) Some people will NEVER make it to a management position since they don't bother to develop themselves (remember you MUST be a good salesperson so you can teach and train AND also be a good people person so you can build and retain a crew of your own in order to to be promoted - an owner who doesn't have these two down cold will NOT be able to run a successful independant office so the company can not justify the investment / risk that it takes to supply the merchandise on consignment).

These people are usually also lazy or get bad work habits that keep them from making a good income from their sales and therefore are not able to teach others to make money.

Some of these people are fantastic in the sales but don't bother to help their crew
(people they personally trained) or others
in the office. They don't realise how their actions and attitudes puts people off the business (so that they quit) and are doomed to keep hiring new people to replace the ones that quit (like bailing water out of a leaky boat).

The truth is, most of these type of people are very young and naiive, have little education or skills & therefore couldn't get a 'good' job anyway,
especially one with the opportunity of advancement and travel and fun they see with these sales companies. There is a very good atmosphere in these companies that young people like and its not to be found in many other businesses.

The VERY SAD TRUTH is that these people would make at least as much if not very much more money just working at a
traditional 9 to 5 job like their friends.
They think they are way ahead when in reality, they would be much better off just quitting the sales company and either going back to school or finding a 'real job'.

2. Some people WANT to develop themselves but don't have the trainer or manager that can set a good enough example of what it takes to succeed (see above!).
They aren't given the training they need to get ahead and are doomed to waste months or years in the field peddling - all in the vain hope of 'someday' getting to the top. They see others making it to ownership and so believe in the system and company and also they realise that these other people are also 'ordinary' like them so they just keep 'hanging on' thinking 'if they can do it so can I...'.

By the way, there are 'bad' managers who do run their own office but are doomed to either never be able to expand by training and replacing themselves or who after a while in business - not really having what it takes in the first place - just lose money as an owner until they are forced to go out of business.

3. Some people get cheated because their manager doesn't want to lose them and the crew they built, so the manager makes it really tough to actually succeed.

4. Some people have the potential to succeed but the territory has been 'raped and pillaged' from too many salespeople coming around all the time bothering customers. some offices hire as many people as they can get and throw them out in a territory, hoping some of them will not quit. A lot of these people haven't developed a good sales patter or attitude and make a really lousy impression on the local businesses. This is especially true when you go in to sell and you are the 10th person there that week selling the same thing. Most salespeople, in a panic to both make money and hit sales targets, resort to stopping people on the street etc... .

5. As mentioned before, some people just like the comradarie of the friends in the office and really have nothing better to do.

There of course are other reasons that people fail but these are the main ones.


You said your daughter works long days.
The truth is that she has to get in early to get to work before the traffic rush (imagine leaving the house at 8 am for a 9 am start - you would have a lot of people late for work everyday) as well as get her stock (there is usually a line up in the office - first come first served) and have team and crew meetings. There may also be meetings with the owner/manager on a one to one basis. Then there are the sales training sessions and motivation sessions. Finally there is the main morning meeting for everyone. All this before 9 am! So obviously to get all this done, she gets to work at say 7 am .
Since this is a training program she won't be paid for the time it takes for all this but then again when she runs her own office she won't have to pay anyone else either... so she understands that the time spent in the morning is all part of what she must learn to run her own office someday.

Then as for coming back late - she should get back into the office by 5 or 6 pm to pay for the product she sold that day. She also needs to get with her manager if she is new or with her crew that she is personally responsible for if she is a trainer. She needs to go over their day and find out how they did to go over any good or bad stuff that may have happened ( so they can learn and not repeat it the next day ). She needs to reassure the people on her crew that they can do it and help them learn from their day.
This is very important because after a bad sales day a good prospect may quit for a simple problem that otherwise could be corrected (believe me most of the time its something small like they forgot to smile during thier sales pitch which could make the difference between making $5 and $100!).

All this training after they come back takes time (as well as the line up of people waiting to pay for their sold stock!).
They could come back to the office at 6pm and by the time they get with all the people on their crew, pay for their products sold, joke around and laugh and chat - the time is already 8pm - then they could go for a coffee or meal, so thats 9pm to 11pm plus travel time to get home after a long day walking around door to door talking to maybe hundreds of people - whew!!!!!!!!
And it needs to be done in order to create the bonds that keep her crew together in this tough business. Unless you spend time in the field, you can't understand how draining it can be and so to be with others who are doing the same thing is important.
You also realise that this phase won't last long if you get promoted so ....

If she can get, say 15 other people like her into the business and trained to a level where they are in turn training others - hey presto! - she usually will be at the point where she no longer needs to work under a manager but will be promoted to learning the bookwork/interviewing etc and then in a few weeks into her own office.

I did this for 5 years. I got my first office after about a year in the field, selling and training a crew (and replacing those who quit). It was a lot of fun. It was major fun!. Plus there was a real opportunity there to get ahead and faster than in say driving a bus or being a data entry operator.

Sadly, the bottom line is that while these companies are not scams in the sense that they are not really giving you an opportunity to run your own business, the fact is that the vast majority of people really dont have what it takes to make it in this particular type of business and because they either were too lazy or had bad work habits / attitudes, or didnt get the right training or worked in a really hard territory or MAINLY******** they just like the fact they have an opportunity and love the atmosphere and people - they don't want to quit (success just around the corner syndrome...) so they stay around WAY WAY to long before they finally throw in the towel,

...They quit, not blaming themselves for not being good enough or more accurately not realising that they just didnt have what it takes, and then they go and tell everyone they know that it is a scam.

And others quit but instead of realising that the odds were stacked against them, blame themselves for not having what it takes instead of realising that they just didnt get the right help... and they feel like losers for a while and don't blame the company or system.

Of course if you quit and you have spent 10-15 hour days making little money, then you are going to think its a rip off. Instead of treating the business as an opportunity they look at it as a job.
Instead of thinking, hey I made $50 but its just until I get promoted so let me make some more everyday or cut back (frugal!) on some expenses, they think hey! I made $50 but I got to work at 7am and left at 8pm so thats like $3.84 per hour! wow what a rip off!. Many owners do make over $100K a year, some are multimillionaires - not many, but a lot of them do end up 21 year old and making big bucks.


Some salespeople dont get to make big bucks and dont get promoted - and if they quit they usually didnt make much at it at all and so call it a scam. They didnt learn to sell and teach others to sell and keep those people in the business. They didnt inspire others and certainly not themselves.

Of course you as Mom don't see the opportunity - you see the $3.84 per hour and that someone is going to make your little girl rich! - Yeah right you think, more like they brainwashed her and she is wasting her time peddling cheap perfume and it must be a cult since she is so 'positive' and she keeps going on about the company this and the company that and shes going to be rich etc....

Of course she doesnt understand how you think as a parent and an outsider. She thinks that the opportunity is real (which it is but the odds of her having the skills and aptitudes are small - which she doesnt understand at this point - she thinks anyone can get to the top if they just hang on!) and she likes the positiveness and rock and roll atmosphere at work (laughing, loud music, fun people, advancement prospects for all.... hey she's still young!). She thinks you no nothing about it and that you just think its a cult (which you keep reminding her of and which probably gets on her nerves) and of course you do really not know what the excitement is all about - but hey now I've told you.

Also you now know what all those hours are about - its just the way the business works.

So is it a scam? Well they say anyone can make it big. They are right if you believe anyone can, say, climb a mountain if they really wanted to. Sure we could all climb mountains in theory but most of us would fail. Its not that we dont have the right skills - those are important but can be taught - its just that we just dont want to go through the hell of climbing one when it comes right down to it!

If I told you that I would give you $10,000 if you would just climb Everest and also I was willing to give you all the training you needed plus the best coaches and food as well as the best mountain climbing gear that money could buy.... would you be able to do it? Well maybe, hey 10 grand is a lot of dough, but once you got frostbite and maybe after a really FROZEN storm then maybe $10K is not really that good looking any more. After then losing your trusted sherpa guide
to a cliff then maybe its time to head back down to earth and stick to watching TV.

What if however I told you that on top of that mountain was your daughter. She was really cold and hungry and that there was no time to train you or give you a sherpa guide or even any new equipment, just some old rusty ones - would the cold stop you? would rusty equipment or naysayers stop you?
Depends on how much you love your daughter but my bet is that hey, your'e up the mountain no matter what.

In this business, this is the difference between your daughter making it or not.
The biggest secret that 99.9% of people dont realise is that its never lack of training that sets you back. Its never lack of good product to sell or a bad territory. Its not even having a bad boss or bad company.

ITS ALWAYS LACK OF SELF MOTIVATION. ALWAYS.
No matter what, anything is possible if you find yourself a big enough reason.

Right now she has a reason to stay with Scentura. Maybe its the opportunity. Maybe its the friends or fun. What ever it is, she will only make it if she really wants it.
MOST people dont have a good enough reason to stay and learn and grow so they quit and blame the system or company or product or price.

She will probably quit soon as most do.
This business is like any other business.
To be successful you have to really work hard and believe in yourself and your REASON.

She may find success in another venture or
get a nice job opportunity somewhere else.
She doesnt see this right now though and so
you should just realise that either she will make it and succeed or in time quit and
'come to her senses' as you would put it.
The cards are stacked against her, I know -
I've trained hundreds of people like her.
Unlike most trainers and owners though, I
used to let people feel ok about quitting
because I knew that they wouldnt make it
(not prejudging but after a while you know who has what it takes). So I would keep in touch with them as friends but wouldn't make them feel bad because they quit but encouraged them to work just as hard at thier next venture/job/study. I wouldn't keep people with a false sense of hope.
I let them move on with dignity, which is funny to say but many owners make people that quit feel bad and talk about them in a negative way - this makes others not want to quit etc...

I guess there is some 'mind control' going on, but not any more than any other sales company or organisation. You have to keep your people positive and happy so that they will have maximum chance of success in the field and as a management trainee - and as a parent you see this even though your daughter is not making any money - hey of
course you think she is in a cult - why would
she work so hard for so little money and yet be so positive to the company and negative to you for wanting her to quit?

I hope this rambling message clears up some
questions you may have had.

No she isnt deranged. Yes, the odds of her quitting soon are very 'good' for you.
Yes she is positive - she likes her opportunity (which you see as a low/no paying deadbeat job)and she is excited about her FUTURE - not as a door to door salesperson but as an owner of a successful business that yes, can very possibly make her a lot of money.

Let her have her fun. Give her some encouragement. Don't call in the deprogrammers just yet ( a joke ). See how she does in the next few months. She is young and when she does get into management she can go back to college part time if you both decide she should as well as keep her business running and hopefully expanding with the parent company's capital.

If you are still afraid or if you want anything else answered, email me and I'll try to clear it up. I could even help her understand the real way to make it in her company and not waste many months of effort.

I know this letter is long but hundreds of thousands of parents worldwide are going through the same exact thing. I know my parents were exactly like you. I now see how they felt and know from experience what the bottom line is from both sides.

Take care and dont fret. She'll be ok.

DS

 

your lies do not fool anyone.

NT

 

Chris,

If you still have this email name would you please email me or call me. I miss you alot and want to talk to you.

Tracey

 

RE: scentura creations, DS-Max

Maybe thats how yours went, but not all of them. A single mom, who has to pay for gas, food, and daycare the whole week, every week, is very motivated, beleive me!
The problem is that they lie, or mislead you. Yes, I beleive you can get to the top. But they need to lay it all out on the table for you, so those who know they can't, won't waist presiouse time, and money.
The comp. that scammed me, and the groups I saw while I was there, said you make $200-$400 a week, alot of people made a lot less than the $200 min., and we had bonuses, almost everyday, contests that had 50, 100, or 200 dollars as a bonus. They told us it would be paid out on the saturday meeting. Sat. came, they say we have selective hearing, the 200-400 is the bonuss that we make. Selective hearing? To me a bonus is extra money, something for a job well done.
Then on top of that, they say oh no, the bonuses are paid out next sat. because we hold your first (check)(cash). Why would they do that if they hadn't even put you in the comp. yet because who knows if your gonna quit the 1st day, or week. Then when you request it they put it off for a few more days, saying they have to check the records.
Then they cheat you, saying that you misunderstood how the bonuses went, this way you get less (money). Then the Best Thing Of All- They Give You The Bonus In Perfume Bottles, they say you sell it and get to keep the money. What they do not tell you is that the minute you sign up with the comp., the IRS redflags you, and you are responsable for paying all the taxes on the bottles.
So if you wanted to meet your quota, so you drop the bottle to the mini. of 20 that you have to turn in to them, then come the end of year, they expect you toput out about 1 dollar per bottle you sold, which in turn losses you more money.
So you spend money for gas, lunch, and daycare for your kid(s),you either make some money, but not anough to cover those bills, let alone make any profit for the week.
Or you make no money at all, which does not give you a profit or cover anything.
I say you can make it in this business, if you are a single person, with no children and other responsabilities, and/or obligations. If you are a healthy person, who can substain 12 hours or more a day, everyday, out on the streets.

I have done a lot of research since i found out I had been screwed, to bad i didn't three weeks ago, when I first started. I tryed really hard, everyday, I went out with them almost every night, on the weekends. I kept a smile, a great attitude, as every one I came in with,dropped out, as I saw all the new groups come, and eventually every last person leave, I was the only one, why? Because, I beleived in them, I trusted them, there were three of them, charles(charly), Samantha(sammy), and Juan. They were all very nice people, and I really needed an oppertunity like this, to support myself and my 10 month old son.
Scammed in Jax, FL