The threat is in the mail

Well, Dear Reader, I've just received my very first threat of litigation.

Earlier this year, I commented on an online forum where another agency had posted a job offer. They, however, stipulated that to qualify for the position, the applicant would have to undertake a 3-day in-house training course at the cost of over $3000.00.

I questioned whether such an offer might not be seen as unethical. After all, if an employer wants their employees to work to a particular methodology, then they should be training their employees at their own expense. Also, how long would it reasonably take to recoup such an outlay?

Here is his response:

****,

It has just been bought to my attention that you posted a reply to an offer of work from *****, on the **** forums in March this year.

It seems you have come very close to defaming me, and I will be asking my solicitors to look carefully at your comments. If you are not the owner of  **** Investigations, it might be wise to consider that the companies name appeared on the post. You had no basis upon which to make those comments, you do not know anything about *****, or me

FYI, yes, people who want to increase their skills at locates, adoption searches, property owner searches or whatever, pay $3,300, for that they are taught everything they weren’t taught at ****, so they learn a lot. I pay my lowest earning investigator $50 an hour, and our highest earning investigator is paid $100 hour, people who complete the training are offered files at $40 an hour

Each person who comes to me for training spends a day or more learning pretexting, they can charge $150 an hour for this difficult skill. They are taught advanced search on Google and other search engines, using advanced operators and other advanced queries that will find for example, every reference to someone or something on Google and including cached, probably 1000% more than a straight query would produce, they learn how to access databases, documents that are meant to be private, confidential. One fellow who is a money finder, is now accessing the fresh data added to the **** lost money database every day, quite legally, with an advanced search string, and earning several thousand a week. They are shown a different slant on how to investigate, to think outside the square

I am not training PI’s only, also money finders, merchantile and commercial agents, credit department staff, so should I charge these people, but not PI’s? It seems you might be a foot in the mouth, act before thinking type, every PI I have trained has been given sufficient work to cover the cost of the training. As I do not offer permanent work to everyone I train, why do you think that I should bear the cost of training? It costs me in lost revenue, around the same amount that I charge for the training, as my time is normally charged out at $100 an hour.

*******

**********

I'm guessing he just doesn't get it.

I'm reminded of those 'job offers' you occasionally see where talent agencies etc advertise they are seeking new aspiring models but then want to charge the applicants $500.00 for their required portfolios.

If you have to pay out of your own pocket, it's not an offer of employment!

I have no problem with companies advertising their training services, as long as they are up front about what it is (and isn't).

Maybe this business model works for them. However, it is not something I would want to be involved with and I do indeed view it as unethical on the part of the company involved.