Attention job seekers! Sales companies convinced Sheffield’s youth to work around the clock

Good morning readers – and welcome to today’s Tribune.

When Nigel quit his job at a sales company in Sheffield after almost a year, his horrified parents told him it sounded like “a pyramid scheme with loopholes to make it legal”. In retrospect, he thinks it might make sense. At first, the work there was intense but exciting; especially after he secured a “promotion” in his second month on the job. Even when he started to hate it, it took him two months to finally wrap it up. “You’re told that in a normal job you don’t have opportunities for advancement like this,” he claims. “It makes the thought of leaving quite scary because if you do, you’re wasting this huge opportunity.”

Like several people who spoke to The Tribune for this story, all of whom asked to remain anonymous or have their names changed, Nigel was called out of the blue by a recruiter shortly after graduating from college. After he left last month, he noticed that the business’s website appeared to have disappeared. In its place, just in time for a new class of university graduates to enter the Sheffield workforce this summer, a seemingly new business has emerged. Even more worryingly, the evidence suggests it is not the only such employer in the city.

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🗞️ A Sheffield Facebook page which plagiarized content from other channels has been criticized for failing to control hate speech in its comments. Sheffield Online they routinely lift work done by other journalists, most often from The Star. An article they lifted from Now Then, which focused on the inequalities LGBTQ+ people face in the housing market, attracted a lot of nasty and, in some cases, possibly illegal comments, but the page did nothing to to eliminate them.

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By Victoria Munro

Towards the end of our conversation, in a shockingly matter-of-fact tone, 22-year-old John claims he’s “spent maybe three or four commutes in the boot of a car”. On the last occasion he claims this happened, during the six months he worked with a sales company in Sheffield called ACI Associates, he claims the boot in question broke and he “had to keep it closed from interior”. The company’s two directors, Jacob Hancock and Angela Cocirla, themselves aged just 25 and 23, according to Companies House, did not respond to that claim or any other messages from The Tribune. However, one of John’s former “associates”, Nigel, claimed to have been in a car with John riding in the boot on one occasion.

According to John, there is a simple explanation. Every day, at ACI Associates’ leased office space at Devonshire Works in the city centre, the entire workforce – who worked door-to-door selling broadband packages – attended a two-hour “atmosphere session”. From 10 a.m. to noon, over the music, they learned high-pressure sales techniques, practiced their pitches, and braced themselves for the challenge, occasionally playing games like Hangman or Duck, Duck, Goose. Once that was done, they split into teams and traveled to wherever they were selling for the day, which could be anywhere in South Yorkshire. The cost of travel, like any other expense, was not covered by the company, so people often carpooled to save money. “If the car was full,” says John, “they’d expect someone to get in the boot, and it would often be me because I was smaller.”

After talking to a number of people who worked with ACI Associates, both those who now believe they were exploited and those who don’t regret the experience, it’s clear that this kind of extreme frugality was the basis for the course. For example, those who went on ‘road trips’ – week-long trips to sell in areas outside South Yorkshire – would stay in AirBnBs they paid for from their earnings, which would never have enough beds for everyone present. People would share beds with someone they had only known for a week, claims Nigel. “Things that shouldn’t happen in a professional environment.” John claims he attended a trip to Retford where two newer staff shared a bed, he slept on a sofa and his superior slept in a sleeping bag on the floor. “Where you were in the company, you decided how comfortable your experience would be,” he claims. “The newer people will be given a more pleasant experience to try to keep them there.” While none of the executives have responded to the allegation, it is supported by accounts from other people who claim to have worked with the company online.

The other defining feature of the company’s culture, according to numerous accounts, was a commitment to working as hard as possible. Despite being self-employed, the new recruits felt obliged to work a 60-hour week. Although normal hours were 10am to 6pm Monday to Friday, they were given the ‘option’ to work until 8pm each day and to work extra shifts on Saturdays between 10am and 8pm :00. “They said it was optional,” says one former associate of the 8 p.m. shift extension, “but everyone did it, so you had to do it.” Another claims you were “somehow forced to come in on Saturday” if you didn’t hit your target that week, something you only managed to do twice. “You’re not being held at gunpoint, but it’s kind of…yeah,” he adds. On Sunday, there will be calls to plan for the coming week.

As you know if you’ve ever worked in sales, goals tend to be paramount—the company formerly known as ACI Associates (and, since May, AC Partners) was no exception. The sales staff were working on behalf of an external client, specifically whipping up 24 month contracts for BT and EE. At first, freelance “sales managers” were told that in weeks they failed to make at least six sales, they would receive a guaranteed minimum payment of £300 to live on. (If they worked the optional but strongly recommended 60 hours, that equates to £5 an hour.) If they made six sales or more, then their pay was commission only, with each sale earning £50. Several ex-salespeople claimed that those who failed to achieve six sales for too many weeks in a row would no longer receive this £300 payment and would sometimes be ‘quit’, despite the fact that they would be professionals in their own right. The minimum target each day was two sales, while those who achieved at least three would be applauded the next day.

There is a good chance that some readers have been visited by someone who works with ACI Associates. In fact, towards the end of his nine-month stint, Nigel said he sometimes realized that he and the person he was addressing had spoken before. If you’ve answered the door for someone like him, he’ll be wearing a jacket or bib with the logos for BT and EE, as well as the logo of Money Expert, a subsidiary of a company called Credico. This company is a client broker for big brands looking to outsource direct marketing, subcontracting to smaller companies like ACI Associates. Nigel says the person on your door, who was most likely aged between 18 and 25, would have given you “literally exactly the same deal you could get” if you went straight to BT and EE. Thus, their only means of persuasion will have been high-pressure sales techniques and – some staff members claim – misleading information.

Google the name “Money Expert” and dozens of angry reviews appear, many of which benchmark tactics described to The Tribune by ACI Associates staff. The money Saving up The expert, Martin Lewis, felt the need publicly declares no connection the company several times. “They exclusively hire people who are selectively blind to the ‘no cold calling’ signs,” one review said. “You always have the same line about how the neighbors complained about the internet. Target the same street over and over again.”

But not all of these negative reviews are from South Yorkshire residents and not all of the salespeople they describe will be trained by the company formerly known as ACI Associates. This is because, according to several former employees, this company – and another company in Sheffield operating under several different names as of 2018 – are really just two cogs in a much bigger machine.