I recently took a volunteer group of 30 people to a go carting track, to thank them for their efforts. Out of my pocket, I was willing to spend $600 for the efforts of the people who put their hearts out to help others. We were told by numerous Smart Circle representatives, and the head of it, Tim Chase, said we would have a blast. When we arrived, we were told that Smart Circle coupons were no longer taken.

No problem, everyone is pretty flexible so we went out to eat. But then when we tried to get a refund (which still hasn't happened) we were told to go through this supervisor, that director etc. and they would not issue a refund for the services they said they would provide.

I advise not using Smart Circle since they lack any type of business ethics, honesty and integrity

I am not a pissed off employee, I actually like the company and the people I work with. However, you need to know the truth. They are just sales people and they have to lie to you. First off, they never stop hiring, ever. They will always be hiring because your only way to get promoted to management is through taking people out on interviews and making them join the company.

This is a commission only job, there is no base salary. They call it profit sharing, but it is the same. You make 20 - 40 dollars a lead but if you piss the boss off or if he feels like it you will make 20 a lead with out him telling you until after you are paid. Then he will give you a lame excuse as to why.

For your interview, be prepared to drive all the way to Bethesda, then you will have to follow behind someone in a car to some Home Depot or BJ's 30 minutes or so away. You will walk around the store with them as they pitch people and as there job is to also pitch you. They are not allowed to tell you the pay scale until lunch because they know most people will leave. They make you promise to save your questions for lunch. Then if they like you and have convinced you that you actually can make money in the job, then they make you drive all the way back to Bethesda by your self for a 'test' and another interview. They do not pay for your lunch or gas.

As far as work goes. You come in between 9-930 you are trained how to pitch and different theories you need to learn. You then have a meeting from 10 till 1045. Then you have to drive everyday to a different store far away from the office. You can go as far as Annapolis and Waldorf over 1 hour and 20 minutes away. Then you work until about 7 in the store walking around talking to every person in the store trying to sign them up for free consultations.

Then you have to drive all the way back to the office to turn in your leads and by the time you leave it is almost 830pm. If you are promoted to a leader then it is almost 9 or later because you can't leave until the distributors have left. Then you repeat that 12 hour day for five days then it is mandatory that you work on saturday if you want to get promoted. That is from 10 until 6 pm. That is a 68 hour work week. They Do not pay for you gas.

Did I tell you there is no base pay! If you get no leads, which does happen, you have worked 12 hours for nothing. The most I ever got in a day was 6. Which isn't bad if they pay you the 35 to 40 dollars per lead they are supposed to pay you, however if you piss the boss off or are late or any other reason, they change it to 20 a lead and that is not so great. You won't find out if they have changed it until after you get paid.

You don't have quota's, but they push conversion rate on you. Now conversion rate is when your generated lead actually has a person go out to the home and try tp sell the product. The problem is that they don't have enough people to go out and they don't go to all the appointments for whatever reason they make up. clients will come back to the stores and tell you of the experiences. In the end you should have 100 percent conversion if the sales people would go out like they are supposed to. They don't so you won't.

Setting up the leads. You have to call a call center based in Florida. You use your own cell phone which they do not pay for. Now these people have to qualify the people. They can completely screw up the lead for you. For example, we were told that they can reface metal cabinets to make them wood. Which our designers will do, but if you customer says that to the call center, they will not go out. Why you ask? No good reason, the company does reface the metal cabinets. The call center will tell you they don't but the sales agents will go out and price it and tell you they do reface them.

Now the results are true. You can make it to management. You can open your own store. You will have to lie to everyone you interview. You will have to alway be hiring to stay afloat. You will work long hours and never know if you can pay your bills or not. The choice is yours. If you have integrity and don't feel like risking being broke then I would not recommend taking this job. If you are a criminal or an ex drug dealer and can't get any other job. This is perfect for you. I hope I did not miss anything.

Do not buy advertisements from Smart Circle Brochures! They are a rip-off! They came in to our salon and spa and offered a great deal to us, they said that they would do our advertising for a small fee and sell it for us. They offered to put our packages together and get back to us on how we thought it would look. They made us sign a contract and said they would get back to us. The guy who sold it to us left us a number if we needed to get a hold of him for any reason. It ended up being a fax machine!

That next week we got so many calls to come in, and we hadn't even seen what they would be selling for us. We had people coming in that said they paid only $40 dollars to get 4 services which included a spa facial and wax, a spa manicure or spa pedicure, massage and hair. That is over a $200 dollar value that we as independent contractors are doing for free! We are trying to make money because we have rent to pay and we are doing these services for free!

We have not seen any money from smart circle, and we cannot get a hold of them to cancel this. They are making money off of our name, and when we cannot accommodate 200 calls in a week we don't know what to do!

Do not fall for this scam, do not do business with SMART CIRCLE! Be very very aware, I have looked them up on the internet and they go by different names too. BEWARE!!!