Traveling sales crews face greater risk of vehicle accidents and in many cases, crew leaders are dri

The startling discovery of the remains of a long-missing 18-year-old girl, Jennifer Hammond, in October 2009, served as a painful reminder that traveling door-to-door sales jobs are very dangerous. A Littleton, Colorado native, Hammond had last been seen in 2009 in a mobile luxury rental car los angeles home park in Milton, New York. She failed to show up at a designated pick-up spot two hours later. A hunter found her remains in a forest in Saratoga County, New York six years later.
Parents luxury rental car los angeles should not allow their children to take a traveling sales job. The dangers are too great. Without parental supervision, teens are at too great a risk of being victimized. Traveling sales crew workers are typically asked to go to the doors of strangers and sometimes enter their homes—a very dangerous thing for a young person to do.
Under pressure and scrutiny from advocacy groups and state law enforcement entities, it appears that the traveling sales sector today rarely hires individuals under 18. However, in recent luxury rental car los angeles years, there have been isolated reports of minors and more frequent reports luxury rental car los angeles of 18- to 21-year-olds being hired.
In March 2011, two men in Spartanburg County South Carolina called police and asked them to take them to jail because jail seemed like it would be better alternative luxury rental car los angeles than the traveling sales crew they were in. Vincent Mercento, 19, and Adam Bassi, 21, told police they needed to quit going door to door asking people to buy magazines. They said they were tired of being wet and selling magazines and tired of the abuse from the company that employed them which seemed "cult-like." Their lives were so bad they thought jail would be better.
In February 2011, Columbia County Georgia authorities arrested a traveling luxury rental car los angeles sales crew of 17 individuals for peddling without a license. Five of the arrestees had criminal records, including one individual on probation for child molestation, another with a conviction for statutory rape, and a third for not registering as a sex offender. Would you want your son or daughter luxury rental car los angeles to travel in such company?
All 17 individuals were crowded into one van. With vehicular accidents being one of the most common causes of death for young people, NCL urges teens not to accept any job like those on a traveling sales crew that involves driving long distances luxury rental car los angeles or for long periods of time.
The Better Business Bureau (BBB) warned consumers in May 2009 that deceptive sales practices are common in door-to-door sales—the luxury rental car los angeles group had received 1,100 complaints in the prior year. "Experience tells us that customers aren't the only victims of [these scams]," said Michael Coil, President of the BBB of Northern Indiana, luxury rental car los angeles "the young salespeople are also potentially being taken advantage of by their employers and forced to work long hours, endure substandard living conditions and have their wages withheld from them."
Unfortunately, young salespeople are also vulnerable to violence by crew leaders. The New York Times reported in October 2009, that "two young people working as itinerant magazine salesmen" in Lakewood, Washington were beaten with baseball bats and golf clubs after they told their bosses they wanted to quit. The victims, luxury rental car los angeles whose names and ages were not identified in the article, were hospitalized and their six assailants arrested.
The industry's out of control as far as violence, Earline Williams, the founder of Parent Watch, one of the groups that follows the industry told the Orlando Sentinel in a December 2009 article that reported the beating of Brian Emery, a sales crew member called "The Kid" by his colleagues [Emery's age was not reported]. New to traveling sales, Emery told deputies that his team members gave him $12 to buy beer in Osceola County, Florida, but became enraged when he bought the wrong brand. Two men were charged with beating Emery, one of whom broke a beer bottle across his face.
In May 2008, police in Spokane, Washington investigated a 16-year-old's claim that she was held as a captive worker by a door-to-door sales company. She escaped luxury rental car los angeles after the sales crew leaders beat up her boyfriend because he wasn't selling luxury rental car los angeles enough magazines.
Many youth desperate for work are lured in with promises that they will earn good money, travel the country, and meet fun people selling door-to-door. One young man was told that the experience would be like MTV's Road Rules.
The reality is often far different. Many salesmen work six days a week and 10 to 14 hours a day. Unscrupulous traveling sales companies charge young workers for expenses like rent and food, essentially requiring them to turn over all the money they ostensibly make from selling magazines or goods. When workers try to quit or leave the crew, they are told they cannot. Disreputable companies have been known to seize young workers' money, phone cards, and IDs and restrict their ability to call their parents. Drug use and underage drinking are not uncommon. A New York Times report in 2007 found that crew members often make little money after expenses are deducted. On some crews, lowest sellers are forced to fight each other or punished by being made to sleep on the floor.
Few of the magazine sales teams do background checks on their workers, according to Phil Ellenbecker, who runs an industry watchdog group based in Wisconsin that has tracked hundreds of felony crimes and over 80 deaths attributed to door-to-door luxury rental car los angeles vendors. "It's not uncommon to get recently released felons knocking on your door trying to sell you magazines," luxury rental car los angeles said Ellenbecker.
One salesman who spent 10 years on crews and eventually became a crew manager told the Indiana Student luxury rental car los angeles Daily newspaper, "I regret a lot of stuff I did….I'd become this monster. Lying to kids, telling them how good the job was, and it wasn't a good job at all."
A tough economy has made it tougher to sell magazines, and according to Earline Williams of Parent Watch, that has meant more violence on crews and more sales employees abandoned. "It's gotten meaner," she told NCL.
• In November 2007, Tracie Anaya Jones, 19, who was a member of a traveling luxury rental car los angeles sales crew, was found dead of stab wounds. Originally from Oregon, Jones was last seen working in Little Rock Arkansas before her body was found 150 miles away in Memphis, Tennessee. Her killing remains unsolved and was featured on America's Most Wanted Web site.
• Although not part of a traveling sales crew, a 12-year-old selling luxury rental car los angeles candy for a school fundraiser in a Jacksonville, Florida luxury rental car los angeles neighborhood in March 2009 was robbed by three individuals who drove up to her in a car.
• In Lawton, Oklahoma, a19-year-old Nevada woman was selling magazines door-to-door in February 2009 when her potential customer invited her in. The man gave her something to drink and she awoke several hours later and realized she had been raped.
• A 19-year-old Ohio magazine salesperson was assaulted by three men who expressed an interest in buying magazines. The victim was waiting for a pickup by co-workers when she was approached, abducted, and sexually assaulted (April 2003).
• In May 2011, Ruben Barradas, a door-to-door salesman was sentenced by a judge in Omaha, luxury rental car los angeles Nebraska to five to eight years in prison for convincing a woman that she and her 7- and 10-year-old daughters should submit to sexual examinations.
Traveling sales crews face greater risk of vehicle accidents and in many cases, crew leaders are driving without licenses or driving luxury rental car los angeles on suspended licenses. Vehicles are not always maintained properly and the use of 15-passenger vans in some cases presents safety concerns.
• In November 2005, two teenagers were killed and seven were injured when their van flipped near Phoenix, Arizona. The vehicle crossed a median strip, and ended up in the opposite lanes of a freeway. All nine occupants, who worked for a magazine subscription company, were thrown from the vehicle.
• A month earlier, 20-year-old, James Crawford, was ejected and killed from a van in Georgia. Eighteen young adults were crammed into the 15-passenger van. The driver luxury rental car los angeles fell asleep and was allegedly driving under the influence of marijuana. The occupants were heading north from Florida to sell magazine subscriptions.
• Two young salespersons, age 18 and 19, were ejected from a vehicle and pronounced dead at the scene after a vehicle accident in which 15 salespersons were crammed into a 10-year-old SUV that rolled over on a highway in New Mexico (September 2002).
• In 1999, seven individuals traveling as a sales crew were killed in an accident in Janesville, Wisconsin. Five other passengers were injured, including one girl who was paralyzed. The driver of the van, who was trying luxury rental car los angeles to elude a police luxury rental car los angeles chase, did not have a valid driver's license and attempted to switch places with another driver when the accident luxury rental car los angeles occurred. The fatality victims included Malinda Turvey, 18, who has inspired ground-breaking legislation—Malinda's Act—which passed in Wisconsin in April 2009 to regulate traveling sales crews
The young salesman told NCL about some of the driving dangers, which included luxury rental car los angeles unsafe vans and unsafe drivers: "You've got drivers that have licenses but they're suspended. They shouldn't be driving [and] they let young adults drive under the influence."
[We were] a whole group of 18 and 19 year olds, and every night we drank more alcohol, and smoked more weed than the wildest college kids. It was the way we relaxed after some of the days we went through. We were out there rain, sleet, or snow all day, just like little soldiers. From the scorching summer days in Alabama to the near freezing temperatures of New York winters. We had only one mission: bring back the money and that we did. And for all that we went through, dealing with [the crew leaders] screaming at us when we didn't have many sales, to refusing to take us to eat if we didn't have any sales. To people slamming doors in our faces all day. We felt like we deserved to escape for a little while. And since we weren't luxury rental car los angeles allowed to have our own vehicles on the road, we were stuck at the hotel. So