complaint against ITS Corporation in Denver

Business Reply

ITS and I have settled the dispute amicably. While they had offered to

arbitrate the matter, I am writing to report that we reached a mutually

agreeable resolution of the dispute without having to proceed with the

arbitration

Dear Sirs,

The complaint concerns:

ITS Corporation

7979 E Tufts Ave STE 1400

Denver, CO 80237-2849

phone: 1 303 846 2800

It is filed by Tomasz Nadrowski in New York.

Phone: 917 912 4641.

WARNING: ITS Corporation alias America's Job Network alias Careertransition alias JMAC alias EMS alias McKenzie Scott. Under these monikers hides an unscrupulous operator in Denver purporting to "offer solutions to professionals" seeking employment nationwide. Appearing under half a dozen different names, ITS has sought to sidetrack attention from its value destructive activities.

ITS conducts an aggressive sales campaign, surveying websites in search of resumes posted by jobseekers. Their pressure to sign a contract with prospective clients is relentless and their marketing ploy appears, at first sight, quite convincing. As it soon turns out, this sales campaign amounts to misleading advertising, as ITS's sales reps claim, in oral form, that their resume mailing strategy "will keep (the client's) phone ringing". In one marketing documentation, they go as far as to cite an "average number" of contacts generated by the mailing of resumes.

Having been contacted by Art Schill, ITS's representative in New York, I signed the contract in November 2006. Prospective clients should be forewarned that the contract is specifically designed to prevent a refund should the campaign go awry. Indeed, ITS take s good care of protecting its revenue stream and shoves all the responsibility for the subsequent failure in service delivery over to the client. As it soon appeared, and despite claims to the contrary, ITS shows no interest whatsoever in the client's eventual success.

Having signed the contract, I was taken aback by the sudden silence. In fact the phone did not "keep ringing". It actually stopped ringing – Art Schill was no longer interested in talking to me and the "Campaign Director" (Andy Marchese) took many days to emerge. We eventually had one meeting in early December, where I was presented with "creative documents", i.e. a couple of resumes and cover letters that would be faxed on my behalf to potential employers. We set a date for the first mailings – to recruiters and to prospective employers.

Between December and January we repeatedly missed one mailing deadline after another and I found it increasingly difficult to contact Mr. Marchese. He was invariably "busy with client presentations", would never pick a call and if my calls were at all returned, it happened only 24 or 48 hours later. This was a far cry from the promised 24/7 service, but at this stage I still gave them the benefit of doubt.

The serious problems started when the faxes signed with my name were eventually dispatched. I raised my concern over the total lack of feedback from the alleged faxing "to 1000 recruiters". At that point I had been in contact with about 20 recruiters in New York area and the zero response from the ITS's faxes was surprising, to say the least. I inquired with Mr Marchese on the possible reasons for that fiasco. Mr Marchese promised to come back to me on this issue, but he never did.

Although in its documentation ITS discourages a client from other forms of job searching, such as independent networking, I continued to use these "traditional" methods and lined up several interviews between January and February 2007. ITS claims to have access to a proprietary data base and among services offered, it advertises support in preparing interviews and negotiation of packages.

I repeatedly sent to Denver queries about the hedge funds I was visiting independently of ITS's faxing campaign. In each case it took 24 hours to find out that ITS's "database" had no information about these companies. The most egregious example of lack of professionalism was, however, a complaint from one of ITS's Denver employees who wrote to me that she could not find the company I was interested in "even on Google". It just happens that the company in question is a $55bn market cap global leader in its industry (in other words, there is no problem in googling its name). This episode showcases two facts. First, ITS has no knowledge of the job market, or indeed, of the industrial landscape populated with potential employers. Secondly, its claims about "proprietary database" are not substantiated. In several other cases, upon request, all I received from Denver was information freely available online or simply copied from companies' websites. And yet ITS charges $8500 for such "services."

By this time, I gave up entirely on ITS's online service whose daily updates provided no other information than regular updates available on internet via www.indeed.com, which is free of charge. Nor were the promises of providing access to "emerging job opportunities" ever fulfilled. No service was provided to prepare me for negotiation of packages, despite the promises outlined in the contract.

But the worst was yet to come. Some time in mid-February, ITS claimed that it dispatched my resumes to "thousands of potential employers". Although the initial sales pitch had claimed that ITS's documentation would land directly on C-level executives' desks, the only feedback I received was in the form of preprinted rejection cards from HR officers. One card stood out prominently as it had attached to it a handwritten note stating: "We get thousands of such faxes. They are all the same. They are addressed to a person who has not worked here for 5 years".

I was on a business trip overseas when my wife alerted me to this incident, and I tried immediately to contact Mr. Marchese to express my dissatisfaction with the services, which instead of increasing my chances to gain employment were actually reducing the odds by embarrassing me in the marketplace. The results of the "campaign" show that:

Comment On This

We JUST signed a contact with ITS and read this AFTER. I am very concerned that we just wasted several thousand dollars. Has anyone found a job through this company? Is there anything positive to report?

Comment On This

ITS is the last firm in the world that would use the

high pressure tactics mentioned in the last post.

The truth is you can learn all about the ITS service,

and what they offer, without even

speaking with a sales representative. Just watch the

video's they make available. I did become

a client, and had a wonderful experience with the

staff I worked with. Kathleen was instrumental in

keeping me focused and on track with the

campaign. She had the positive outlook needed to

keep me in gear and the knowledge of how the

outside job hunting world works . She kept me up

to date on the vast resources available for my

search. The follow up calls were always a highlight

of the week because I walked away with confidence

and an uplifted spirit and reassurance. It was a

pleasure to work with Kathleen and I would

recommend the experience to anyone. The website

is unbelievable, it puts every job board, newspaper

and magazine at your finger tips. The amount of

hours saved not running around tracking this

information down is remarkable. You have access to

names of CEO's and Department Heads that make

decisions and have influence over who's hired.

Having being in the same industry for 26 years, I

had not done a resume for a long while. The

resume service was a huge asset. I never knew

there was several different types of resumes. ITS an

outstanding job creating the resumes that got the

message out.

Comment On This

Thanks everyone who responded to this. I will be getting a call from them today to get the high pressure sales call. I will tell them no thanks because of the help from the people here.

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I came across this site last week, and saw the above posting on ITS. The complaint struck me as unusual, but the fact that it was resolved to the gentleman's satisfaction is consistent with my own experience with ITS. This is a good organization.

I first spoke with one of their Managing Director's, Dan, on the east coast. He was very professional in his approach in helping to determine whether the ITS program would be a good fit for me. Once this was confirmed, I met Bill my marketing director, who was assigned to help guide and support me through my reemployment journey.

Bill was excellent in helping me formulate my marketing plan. We revised and fine-tuned my resumes and other marketing materials. He helped me define and target the specific industries and companies that I should reach out to.

Further, Bill advised me on how to organize and prioritize my time in research and corresponding to the published and unpublished job markets.

Finally, when I was interviewing and beginning to receive potential job opportunities, Bill was their to help as well.

Through all this, the website was a tremendous benefit. It was instrumental in providing comprehensive information regarding the current job market. The search agents on jobs and leads kept me busy all the time.

I have now landed as General Manager of North American business for a manufacturer and distributor, and am very happy with the business.

If you need help in a search, at least talk to ITS. The are a reputable firm, and can really help the right people.

Comment On This

Sadly I signed up with ITS in DEcembber of 2007. ITS will do exactly what they advertise, with ineffectual tools, outdated techniques, and low quality materials. In addition, the support staff does not, in my case, have the ability to find out the information they promise to deliver. Finally, the advertised and unadvertised leads that I received were out of date and not of a quality to equal or surpass CareerBuilders, Moster or Ladders.

First the cost for their services is $9000. For this amount of money you would expect to get top quality help, superior written materials, current skills in looking for a position and something, anything, that you can't get for less money and better response somewhere else. For this $9000 you get a glossy booklet that outlines all of the information which you, as the customer, provide them. The information they create in the form of resumes, cover letters and resopnse letters is generally of a high school journalists level with frequent errors. They basically take your words and rearrange them. If you can put two sentences together in a coherent manner, you can do better.

They mass mail faxes that are pointless and useless. I had numerous contacts tell me that they do not hire anyone from faxed resumes. In every case they refused to consider a mailed or emailed resume. The implied position being that if I was stupid enough to pursue this approach, I was too stupid to work for them.

They also create a one page resume for your use. Every response I received from this document, all eight of them, asked for a resume that made sense and, as one HR director said,"send me something that is coherent, at least." I returned to using the resume I brought to ITS in the first place. Plenty of responses to that one, and no rejections based upon materials.

I presented this information to ITS's Atlanta office. Their response was that they used this method to make their clients "stand out." Sadly, their definition of standing out means no consideration for the position. Their response was to send out my original resume to their fax list.

I also got a copy of their contact list to do email blasts. If you are interested in a restaurant, insurance or transportation career this is a great list! If you want a job in any other field, its worthless. Suffice it to say that the email blast did not go out.

After the incident with the contact list, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I sent ITS a list of nearly 200 companies in my industry, computers. After three weeks, they were unable to add any contact information to the list that contained names, addresses and phone numbers. No email addresses, no "C" level officers, no HR managers. Another pointless exercise.

The JMAC site that they tout as a state of the art web site is little more than a series of job search agents to free sites like Job Scout, Career Builder etc. If you are reading this, you probably know how to do that for less than $9000.

I contacted their Denver office with my complaints. They dutifully contacted me and did everything over again under their satisfaction quarantee.

Did I get anything out of my experience? Yes, a valuable and expensive lesson in how not to run a job search.

For the amount of money that you would spend with these folks, you will be disappointed with the tools and techniques that they use. You will also be disappointed with the results you achieve.

Comment On This

I too was given a high powered push to sign up with ITS. After initially making me feel like I could never get a job on my own, the literature (glossy indeed) arrived Fedex within 24 hrs. But I couldn't figure out what didn't look right about all the literature. And the data base concept has been around for years and can be done on your own. D&B does have old names, information etc. like the gentleman referenced in his returned fax. All these concepts were not new or even something I wanted to use - so what was I paying the money for??!! Thanks to your postings I can now sleep knowing I've made the correct decision.

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I used ITS for my job search (was relocating) and actually had pretty decent success with them. I found them to be of excellent quality, and quite responsive.

Instead of relying on blogs, though, which if you think about it are nothing more than anonymous writings on the virtual bathroom wall (could be fake, posted by competitors), why not do some real due diligence? Go to the Better Business Bureau (Denver), or ask them for referrals.

Comment On This

I am trying to check the credibility and legitimate business of ITS Corporation in Denver, Colorado- 7979 E. Tufts ave.STE 1400. I have been in meetings with them and they have offered me a contract. I have read several complaints filed against them in the last 6 months and do not want to get involved with them if this is a "SCAM" and one cannot get a refund of the fees paid to them.

Comment On This

Hmmm

I have been backing my 'agent' off for a few days now and now I know what my stomach was telling me. Amazing how sincere they seem and the materials they send are top notch. I guess if they charge $8500, the least they can do is spend some coin to look the part. Thanks for heads up, it's good to know my intuition is still ok...

Comment On This

Many thanks for alerting me to this before they finished using their high pressure tactics on me. I had a sense that something was not right with all of this.

Please note that they are now using the name "ITS Personal Marketing Services" instead of "ITS Corporation". Same address in Denver. They've done an amazing job of of removing negative or even neutral comments from Google and Yahoo search results, but there are a few other sites including randomconvergence.blogspot.com/2006/03/rest-of-mckenzie-scott-saga.html which show that Mr. Nadrowski's experience is not unique.

Note also that the literature that they are sending out now makes no reference to McKenzie Scott. It all refers to "Bob Gerberg".