The email offer seemed enticing:
… you’ve been selected to become a Personal Shopper in the new SHOP YOUR WAY Personal Shopper program. It’s free, it’s easy, and it’s profitable! (You’d be surprised at how easy it can be to earn $1,000 per month!)*
Well, since MrConsumer likes to shop, the opportunity to make an extra $1000 a month without a lot work seemed too good to be true.
The email went on to give a simple example:
When a client makes a qualifying purchase—for example, a new TV at $2000—you earn 1%, or $20 in this case.
Huh? If I am going to earn only 1% on purchases, how in the world is making an “easy” $1000 a month possible? I’d have to find 50 people who each want to buy a $2000 TV a month, every month for a year. Sure, that is real easy.
Actually, the mailer says once you get 20 clients, you earn 2% on purchases. Now I would only need 25 people a month to each buy a TV every month of the year. Whewww.
Put another away, I would have find people who collectively spend a total of $600,000 to $1,200,000 a year in order to make that “easy” $1000 monthly. Easy. Real easy.
Oh, did I mention the purchases must be made at Kmart and Sears?
An accompanying brochure gives another example of how easy it is to make money:
Lucky Susie, she only has to get her other eight clients to spend $94,400 a month every month to earn that easy $1000 monthly.
So what is Sears’ example of how to make $1000 a month? The answer is in a fine print footnote in the email:
*MOUSE PRINT:
*Make $1,000 a month when you get at least 250 of your friends and family to spend $200 a month in Qualifying Purchases with Sears, Kmart, Lands’ End, Sears Outlet, Sears Auto, mygofer and Sears Home Services.
Of course, now I only have to make 245 more friends and get each of them to spend thousands of dollars a year at Kmart and Sears.
The sad part is that it is believable that someone will try to do this.
Can anyone say “pyramid scheme”?
Come on now, that should be so easy, I mean, everyone has hundreds upon hundreds of “friends” on facebook…..
Wayne R, Koka, James & Edgar: Looks easy enough for me. I think I’ll try it. Can I put each of you down for one flat screen TV?
If I get 250 friends to spend 200 bucks a month from a limited amount of stores they are still spending 50,000 a month. That is so much better than getting 20 people to spend 50,000 a month.
Sure it is easy if all your friends are shopaholics and you have hundreds of them. I like James and his idea though.
It only took me a couple minutes to locate the Hispanic Woman Using Laptop In Home Office istockphoto for so called Suzie….
I will say though this service is junk if the best you can do is only 2% back though.
So let me get this straight. This is a scam perpetrated right out there in the open my no less than SEARS??
Edgar replies: Bob… no one is saying this is a “scam”, but rather a ridiculously exaggerated estimate of what people can “easily” earn.
my opinion of making and saving money would be to have vendors sell quality lasting merchandise at a fair price. think of how much money I could save by not purchasing disposable expensive items. Of course, when you sell quality, you run out of customers needing to replace or repair and you run yourself out of business. big box stores can easily decrease the price between cost and suggested retail price. i can earn money by not paying high prices.
It would actually be easier to get my friends to give me 2% a month to not harass them into doing things like this.
Edgar: Who was the email from? All of the firms mentioned are strung across the top of Kmart’s Home Page. That can’t be coincidental. Does the same holding company own these separate names? Could these stores be behind this silliness? After all, the merging of Sears and Kmart doesn’t seem to have made two floundering chains any less so. More like Studebaker and Packard trying to fend off their inevitable demise by “marriage of convenience”. And where does the “secret” part of shopping enter into it? It appears this is more akin to getting “cash back” from using a credit card than assessing retailers’ practices.
Edgar replies: Marty it was from “Shop Your Way Rewards” which is a program run by Sears and Kmart (and includes also purchases made at Lands End).
Oops, my error…I read “personal” shopper and the old brain remembered “secret”. But the whole thing still says “Multi-level Marketing”.
Edgar replies: Since this is the second time that “multi-level” has been mentioned, let me jump in. Multi-level marketing refers to a system whereby you form a multi-layed network of people, using selling something. So I get 10 people to work under me, and they each get 10 people to work under them, etc. Then I get not only commissions from the people under me, but also commissions from the people under them. That is NOT the case here. There is no multi-level aspect to their stated program.
Amy is 100% right….
Well Edgar Shop Your Way Rewards would NEVER say You’d be surprised at how easy it can be to earn 20$ per month!
They have to make the program look good somehow…
Beware the magic incantation “qualifying purchase.” Even if you could convince your friends (your soon to be ex-friends!) to spend $thousands, it has to be spent on the right stuff which might be stuff that isn’t selling well, i.e., the less desirable stuff. Would tablets (alleged to be big sellers this Xmas) qualify? Perhaps not?
I not sure Staples would like you using their EASY button.