KPJ Enterprises - A Dodgy Company?

ianianian_2 · 27 May 2008 at 8:47AM

Has anyone ever had any experiences with KPJ Enterprises?

A friend of mine recently started working for them and his friends and family are worried that they are taking him for a ride. I cannot find any website for the company; however they occupy every recruitment site with a mass of posts available.

He was told in the interview that he would be on £80,000 within a year or two and given the job immediately. He is expected to work about 60 hours a week selling ‘talk talk’ products for around £300 a month, which equates to less than a pound an hour. The company do not pay his costs and it is often the case that he will spend more on travel than he earns a day. Further to this he is encouraged to employ lying in order to maximise sales.

While we are all proud that he is prepared to work 60 hours a week in a difficult job, the bottom line is that it is costing his parents their retirement money to send him to work (for lunch, travel etc). Further to this he seems to have been brainwashed by colleagues so any advice given regarding the job is taken as the biggest insult and pushes him away from friends and family.

I appreciate readers will likely state ‘stop financing him’, which is fast becoming an option, but I wanted to do some research on the company prior to making any definite judgements and wondered if anyone had had any experiences with them?

Thanks

bakerlad1983 · 27 May 2008 at 9:50AM

I went for a interview with a similar type of company. They work a bit like a pyramid scheme. He will earn £80,000 if he hires so many people at £300 a month and then taking some of the comission from this. I went for this position in Liverpool and it was just people selling gas door 2 door, you only got paid if you made a sale. You got a percentage of this say £15 for getting them to sign up, but the person who hires you gets about the same. I would advise to get out quickly as there are call centres who sell this aswell as cpw.

hth

ianianian_2 · 27 May 2008 at 1:48PM

Thanks,

We've just been looking at national minimum wage, we weren't sure if it applied to commision based jobs, apparently it does and they should owe him about £1000!

bakerlad1983 · 27 May 2008 at 1:53PM

the job i went for said that i would be self employed and i think that is how they got round it from what i can remember.

Zazen999 · 28 May 2008 at 9:27AM

If it seems too good to be true...

Kaka1985 · 8 June 2008 at 10:58AM

Hello There,

In response to your entry I would say tell your friend to quit immediatly. I had an interview with KPJ Enterprises some 8 months ago and the company is a joke. They interview about 50 ppl a day and they will employ anyone. When I applied for the job I was under the illusion that I was being interviewed for a Marketing post. I was Interviewed by some infant of about 18 who informed me that he was the managing director of KPJ Enterprises, which I immediatly thought was suspicious and then had to follow some person around all afternoon while he harrassed members of the public. I was informed that i would be required to work 7 'till 7 everyday, out on the streets selling, and that I would be able to keep £5 pounds for everything I sold. The guy I was shadowing, another "managing director" only managed to sell about 5 all day. I feel so strongly about exposing these companies as they are a con. They lie to ppl to get them to the interview and pay them an absolute pittance with no basic salary. £300 a month for 60 hours a week is absurd, not to mention illegal. Your friend needs to come to his senses. Hope this helps

turgalad · 18 June 2008 at 10:45PM

Yeah I would definitely advise packing it in.

I applied for a job there in March.

The office i visited was in Liverpool, Old Hall Street.

When i entered i had to fill in a survey (handed to me by a receptionist who did nothing but paint her nails, call her friends and play solitaire seemingly all day).

Then when I entered the interview, i was interviewed by Kevin who owns KPJ and apparently founded it, not bad for someone who appears no older than 25.

The next day i went for a field interview. I was going with a girl called Katie who was a trainee manager and another girl called Emma who was in the position i was applying for.

I asked many questions about the company and was given some tall stories as answers.

KPJ stands for Kevin Paul John (Kevin's name)
KPJ has been around since the early 80's (although Kevin probably hasn't)
KPJ promotes Sky, MBNA, Virgin and talk talk (seem's everytime someone applies they only do talk talk though)

I went with them to a small estate in Netherton. The point in this journey seemed pointless...the estate was a basically labyrinth. there were no roads just alleyways leading to houses. The data and maps provided were useless as half the houses we were meant to go to were demolished or being demolished. When we did reach houses all we did was ask if someone from talk talk had visited the previous week.

After 4 hours of this we went to a pub for something to eat and i decided to ask them about the legitimacy of the company.

I explained that i heard that a few people have applied for marketing jobs in Old Hall Street and they have turned out to be cons.

Katie pretended she has never heard of these cons whereas Emma was a bit over the top about the fact she heard about them and assured me that it wasnt a con.

Katie then went on to draw me a chart of how it works.

apparently you spent 3 months as a sales person. You start at 10am, leave the office at 11am, do field work until 7pm, return to the office and go home at 9pm. the pay is commsision based and you earn between £200-300 a week. (this works out at less than £2 an hour)
Trainee manager is next and the hours are slightly more but like £70 more a week and you cant get promoted until all your salespeople are promoted.

There were many posistions after that were you could earn upto £1500 a week.

I was texted at 11:45pm that night to say i got the job and i start the next day. I never even replied to say i was not taking the job and never heard anything since even though I reminded Kevin of himself, he really wanted me and saw potential in me to go far in the company.

I would definitely say that this job is a con.

bakerlad1983 · 19 June 2008 at 4:54PM

that sounds like the same place i went for but at the time was for npower, it is just a gloryfied pyramid scheme where person 1 gets promoted when x amount below are working and then they take x amount of commission off them and so on and so on

wildt · 19 June 2008 at 8:13PM

I wish I had seen this thread before I went for the interviews and wasted several hours of my life! When I applied the job was advertised as a Graduate job and after my first interview I still assumed the same. I was not told about the door-to-door knocking - it was an office based job (I was told KPJ were about to open up 30-odd more offices) in which I could progress to management within 2 years.

I was told to come back the next day to shadow someone doing the same job to see if I liked it.

Even as we were walking through the town centre and I asked where we were going they would not tell me. When I realised what it was I told them it was not what I had been told it was - I was actually angry that they had misled me but all the guy trying to recruit me said was 'If we told people what the job really was no one would apply and give it a chance!'

All questions about pay etc had to be left until dinner time and the constant ranting and raving about how much money they were making from doing this made me stick around to find out how!! We sat in a pub and he wrote out a ridiculous diagram of how I would be earning 75k within months.

Yeah right! It's commission only and the biggest load of bull I've ever heard, but sadly, there were many people being sucked in by it.

There was a lad with us who had started the day before, aged about 19 in his first year at uni. Said he was thinking of dropping out, what's the point in getting in so much debt when I can do this and be on 75k in no time he said.

I'm sorry about the long post, I'm sure you have established what a load of crap this company are by now but I believe the more information on the net about them the better.

Fair enough it's a field sales job at the end of the day, but they should be upfront with people and make sure they know what they are applying for. They should also stop filling peoples heads with rubbish.

When I was waiting for to go in for my interview the receptionist also answered the phone as P&D Marketing (another company who have many of the same adverts all over the net)..so be warned they operate under two names!

Louise_1_2 · 20 June 2008 at 8:46PM

I had an interview there today and got asked to have a trial day on Monday but I have been warned by a friend so I am not going. They did not once say I would be doing door to door sales and my friend said it is £150 a week and £22 from every sale you make!!! They promote the job really well and the title is graduate training but the job spec is nothing like what they tell you.

They should not be allowed to advertise jobs like this where they fool the applicants!

dominic06 · 21 June 2008 at 11:41PM

Everyone can have there own opinion I guess I worked there for 4 months loved the job suited my lifestyle but I feel its unfair to slate it just because it never worked out. I left as I moved back home after uni but would reccomend it to anyone it reads great on my cv!!!

KPJ Enterprises - A Dodgy Company?

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