SMC Complaints

SMC Complaints – How Warranted Are They?

The Specialty Merchandise Corporation undoubtedly appeals to a ubiquitous dream – the dream of becoming your own boss and making enough money to live prosperously.  The famous TV ads featuring the late, much-loved actor Tom Bosley definitely work on this deep-seated wish lurking in the breast of most whose working life has become a drudgery with little prospect of advancement, or which simply fails to make ends meet.  By subscribing to SMC, people are offered the opportunity not of joining a conventional sales force, but of becoming owners of their own small businesses.  Members gain exclusive access to SMC’s vast range of giftware products at slashed-down wholesale prices, which they then sell through their own businesses at a profitable marked-up price.  All the profits are kept by the vendor – SMC isn’t a franchise, so it doesn’t request a “cut” of any of the money made.

SMC Complaints Truth

However, judging by some of the hostility SMC has attracted (most of it confined to the internet), you could be forgiven for assuming that the company might more realistically be described as a great “SMC corps scam.”  In this Specialty Merchandise Corporation review, we will take a look at the negative publicity and measure it against the facts.

Perhaps the first point to note is that the company’s promotional material does offer a positive view of its products and the opportunity they present for profit, but this is a characteristic it shares with all advertising – commercials are designed to persuade and evoke positive interest, not to dissuade or repel.  Provided it isn’t misleading or untruthful, this is a perfectly legitimate activity.  But why has SMC evoked such scathing accusations?  Why are bitter SMC Complaints popping up on the web?

Clearly, negative publicity needs to be examined, and complaints need to be reviewed – that is part of good customer service.  However a clue that all might not be quite as it seems can be found in the tone adopted in some of the more flagrantly hostile articles.  Some of SMC’s more visceral critics appear to be howling “scam” just a little too loudly, and there is a good reason for that: many of them are not spontaneous outpourings from ordinary people but negative publicity pumped out by some of the SMC’s less scrupulous commercial rivals.

Some of the testimonies from individuals appear a little more genuine, but even here, one still needs to read them with a degree of circumspection.  No one likes to discover that their dreams of a brighter tomorrow have turned to dust, and disappointment is sometimes a prelude to hunting for a scapegoat.  The fact remains that setting up your own business is rarely, if ever, a walk in the park; this is what SMC is inviting prospective subscribers to do – work for themselves.  The idea is a straightforward one: we are more prepared to pull the stops out and walk the extra mile when we are working for ourselves than when we are working for someone else.  But if our efforts don’t hit pay dirt, we no longer have a boss to gripe about, unless we take a look in the mirror. Clearly, there are cons as well as pros to working for oneself.

Making a success of SMC membership takes a lot more than paying a subscription fee; it involves adopting a hard-headed business approach to your new enterprise, working out which products you believe you can sell most profitably, and developing a viable marketing strategy to sell them.  If you can tick these boxes and you are prepared to put in the work, there is no reason why you shouldn’t make money with SMC.

Those SMC Complaints are not true.