The Voice - Consumer's Voice

Is this a real job?

I have been communication with a company in London called Active Event Company (Edward Jones) that has stated that they have employed me as their Travel Event Manager for £4,900 per month and have directed me to another agent to process work permit and visa.

Active Event Company, Argonaut House, Galleymead Road, Colnbrook, Berkshire, SL3 0EN United Kingdom.
Tel: +447031965524
Private Email:mredwardjones0@gmail.com
Email:eventactiveplanning@yahoo.co.uk

I could not locate this company on my own and that's why I request your assistance. Besides I have also gone through unnecessary exchange of emails requesting that I be supplied with banking details to send GBP695. After various exchange of emails they forwarded me the address for the agent for the visa and work permit represented by Beavis Hughe of the UK Immigration Service.

This is certainly a scam, there’s no doubt about it. There are various clues. To begin with the phone number they give for the company is a UK-based cellphone number. The code for the UK is +44 and the next digit is a ‘7’, the first digit of all UK cellphones. Also look at the email addresses they give. They’re both free addresses. Don’t you think a company would have its own domain? Don’t you think a real company would have a landline number?

Then there’s the salary. A monthly salary £4,900 per month is almost P900,000 per year. That’s not the sort of salary a company offers to total strangers. And you are a total stranger to them, aren’t you? They never interviewed you, they never even met you. Real companies don’t offer salaries like this to people they’ve never interviewed.

Most importantly this simply isn’t how companies recruit their staff. When a company recruits a foreigner THEY pay all the costs. They are the ones who pay for airfares, visas and relocation, not the person who is being recruited.

Whatever you do please don’t send them any money, you’ll never see it again.

Is this a real company?

I wanted to find out if it is possible to find out if “Leisure Live Travel Club” is real and not a scam. I recently signed up with them after their too good to be true presentation for membership while I was on a holiday in Durban this past Easter holiday. I paid R500 for registration in order to secure my Easter special deal and awaiting to pay a deposit of close to R4200.

Please help me because the deal sounds too good and tempting and I wanted to know if am making a mistake or not.

I am very suspicious of ALL holiday clubs and this company sounds no different. The biggest issue is that the so-called special offers they present are often no different to the discounts you can get from hotel chains FOR FREE. For instance if you go to www.bid2stay.co.za you can sometimes get huge discounts from the City Lodge Hotels group. The same goes for the Sun International chain, they often have special offers. Neither of these groups charge you any form of membership fee to get these discounts.

The other problem is that they often commit you to very long contracts that they refuse to let you cancel.

As you can imagine my advice would be to seriously consider whether you want that sort of commitment!

Update: The reader sent over a copy of the membership agreement he signed and he was in luck. The South African National Credit Act allows consumers to “rescind” such agreements within 5 business days and he contacted us on day 3. I advised him to get a letter to them as quickly as possible to get out of this agreement. Luckily they don’t have any choice but to accept his decision.