This is not something new to you, I am certain. Sometimes things are not what they seem. I get contacted almost every day by people wanting to help me advertise Nia and my business. I am always interested because Nia is not yet a household name. Nia is not yet as big as Zumba. More often than not, I listen to what the caller has to say. I was recently disappointed after I received a call from a rather large company. The woman identified herself as a person working for this large company. She said that they were contacting people in my industry who might be interested in being on this company’s list of preferred service providers. Since I had never had any dealings with this HUGE company, when she asked if she could send me some information regarding being on this preferred list I said yes. I was curious as to how I could be a preferred service provider when I had never worked with this company or for this company. Well, I got my answer rather quickly as this person did as she said. She sent me an e-mail with the information within minutes of talking to me. It seems that all one has to do to be included on this HUGE company’s preferred service provider list is pay, at the bottom of the scale, $395.00 for an ad. Then — boom! — you are a preferred service provider.
I was disappointed, not that I wouldn’t be on the list, but I was disappointed about the list. This list of preferred service providers is provided to the employees of this company. If I were an employee of this to-remain-nameless-HUGE-technological-company, I would expect them to be preferring people that they have had some experience with. I would think that, if I was employed by this company that they would be recommending people to me for some other reason then the company, the service provider, paid them. The pricing started at $395.00 and went to $995.00, with something else (I am not certain what type of ad) for $100 each.
In addition to payment to be preferred the item that was to be advertised on this “preferred service provider list” was DISCOUNTED services. So it was a preferred service provider list that offers discounts to the employees. I honestly didn’t know that is how it worked. I thought the preferred service provider list was more than just advertising.
Also, I would like to point out that while the caller said she worked for the company, she meant as a hired outside marketing company. So . . . not only does this company have a preferred list of providers that are nothing more than people who pay for adverting in a preferred magazine of discounts for the employees, but the company doesn’t even do its own selling of ads in this “prefered service vendor list”. So not only are the service vendors not actually preferred they aren’t even known to the company whose list they are on.
Bummer. Just another lesson in some things not actually being what they seem. If you are one that works for a company that has a preferred service provider list you might want to find out HOW they get to be “preferred”. I guess I just thought of preferred as one having been chosen over another, not just having paid to be so.
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