Mightwhistleblow
New Member
- Jurisdiction
- Nevada
I live in the United States, Nevada to be specific.
I work for a multi billion dollar company that sells a product that a large percentage of the USA uses. This company makes over a hundred million a year selling extra things with the product. The company has a very unethical and possibly illegal way of selling these extras.
Many of our sales are from clients going online and filling out an application and then calling in. When customers call in, we are expected to pull their application and add on any extra things they declined or removed online. We are then expected to give the updated price without telling them what we added and only talk about it if they realize the price we are giving is different than what they got online and object to it.
Assuming they don't object, we move on with the sales process. Right before we process the payment, we must disclose everything included with the product and this is where it goes from shady to down right unethical. We are told to disclose the extra things we added in the middle of the list of things which are included that we are disclosing. We are told to do this because the customer will hear the first and last things we list but most won't hear the middle of the list (we rapidly list everything off) and that will lead to less objections for the extra things included because the customer is literally unaware of them.
This has always been the practice for the past decade I have worked at this company but was always an open secret that no one talked about. The company recently had people go through updated training in regards to this process. During that training, we had to sit through a power point which specifically says to list these things in the middle so the customer is less likely to think they are extras since they aren't listed at the end. The companies trainer then further elaborated why this is effective and specifically said "the customer is less likely to realize these things are included which means your numbers will be better". He of course forgot to mention the boat load of money the company will make because people don't realize we are tricking them to buy things they don't need to. The fact that the company has finally acknowledged that we are doing this in this way for what I believe is clearly an unethical and immoral reason has me at a breaking point and I can't continue to sell this stuff in good conscious.
Is this illegal? Does it qualify for whistleblower status? If so what should I do to make sure something is done about this?
Thanks for reading.
I work for a multi billion dollar company that sells a product that a large percentage of the USA uses. This company makes over a hundred million a year selling extra things with the product. The company has a very unethical and possibly illegal way of selling these extras.
Many of our sales are from clients going online and filling out an application and then calling in. When customers call in, we are expected to pull their application and add on any extra things they declined or removed online. We are then expected to give the updated price without telling them what we added and only talk about it if they realize the price we are giving is different than what they got online and object to it.
Assuming they don't object, we move on with the sales process. Right before we process the payment, we must disclose everything included with the product and this is where it goes from shady to down right unethical. We are told to disclose the extra things we added in the middle of the list of things which are included that we are disclosing. We are told to do this because the customer will hear the first and last things we list but most won't hear the middle of the list (we rapidly list everything off) and that will lead to less objections for the extra things included because the customer is literally unaware of them.
This has always been the practice for the past decade I have worked at this company but was always an open secret that no one talked about. The company recently had people go through updated training in regards to this process. During that training, we had to sit through a power point which specifically says to list these things in the middle so the customer is less likely to think they are extras since they aren't listed at the end. The companies trainer then further elaborated why this is effective and specifically said "the customer is less likely to realize these things are included which means your numbers will be better". He of course forgot to mention the boat load of money the company will make because people don't realize we are tricking them to buy things they don't need to. The fact that the company has finally acknowledged that we are doing this in this way for what I believe is clearly an unethical and immoral reason has me at a breaking point and I can't continue to sell this stuff in good conscious.
Is this illegal? Does it qualify for whistleblower status? If so what should I do to make sure something is done about this?
Thanks for reading.
