Jobseekers, beware! The sales companies convincing Sheffield’s young people to slog round the clock

Good morning readers — and welcome to today’s Tribune.

When Nigel left his job with a Sheffield sales company after the better part of a year, his horrified parents told him it sounded like “a pyramid scheme with loopholes to make it legal”. In hindsight, he reckons they may have a point. At first, working there was intense but exciting; particularly after he secured a “promotion” in his second month on the job. Even when he began hating it, it took him two months to finally pack it in. “You are told that in normal employment you don’t have progression opportunities like this,” he claims. “It makes the thought of leaving quite scary because, if you do, you’re wasting this massive opportunity.” 

Like multiple people who spoke to The Tribune for this story, all of whom asked to be anonymous or for their names to be changed, Nigel was called by a recruiter out of the blue shortly after finishing his university studies. After he left last month, he noticed the business’ website seems to have disappeared. In its place, just in time for a fresh class of university graduates to enter Sheffield’s workforce this summer, a seemingly new business has emerged. Even more concerning, evidence suggests it’s not the only employer of its kind in the city. 

We’re biased (we work here!) but in our opinion, today’s story is an absolute belter. You’ll need to be a paying member of the Tribune to read it in full. Signing up doesn’t just give you access to this story, but our excellent back catalogue of political reporting, electrifying investigative journalism and cultural deep dives. You’ll also be able to join the digital conversations beneath our articles and secure invitations to our events. 

Your Tribune briefing

🗳️ We published our pre-election piece about the Penstione and Stocksbridge constituency yesterday, for which MP Miriam Cates sadly didn’t speak to us. She did however speak to the local democracy reporting service for this interview in The Star. In it, she admitted that her party had shot themselves in the foot by changing leaders so often, but claimed that all the problems we face, from inflation to long waiting lists, would be worse under Labour. Our piece is here.

🗞️ A Sheffield Facebook page which plagiarised content from other outlets has been criticised for failing to control hate speech in its comments. Sheffield Online routinely lifts work done by other journalists, most often from The Star. A piece they lifted from Now Then which focused on inequalities faced by LGBTQ+ people in the housing market attracted a host of unpleasant, and in some cases possibly illegal comments, but the page has done nothing to take them down.

🪰 Sheffield-based purveyors of easy listening electronica I Monster have just rereleased their classic 2003 album Neveroddoreven. In the Yorkshire Post, they talk about how mixing charity shop records with drum machines and vocoders gave them a Top 20 hit with Daydream in Blue. If you don’t have a YP subscription, there was also a piece about them recently in Now Then here, and there are still tickets left for their homecoming show at The Leadmill on Friday night.

Things to do

🎛️ To celebrate the solstice, on Friday, Sheffield Pattern Club are putting on an algorave at Sidney and Matilda. If you’re unsure what an algorave is, they are dance music generated by computer algorithms, with everything created or manipulated live by proper musicians, often with the code projected for your pleasure. If you’re still unsure and need a fuller explanation, see this piece in The Tribune last year. Tickets are priced £8-£12 and the doors open at 7.30pm.

🎪 Saturday sees the return of Heeley City Farm’s free family festival, hopefully just in time for some better weather. On the day there will be live music, family entertainment, local beer, lots of food vendors and arts and crafts, plus a samba band, fairground rides and entertainment for everyone. Farm volunteers will also be putting on animal handling sessions, giving children the opportunity to meet some of their animals up close. The festival runs from 12 noon to 8pm.

🍔 On Sunday, enjoy delicious barbecue food and live jazz in the beautiful surroundings of the General Cemetery’s Samuel Worth Chapel with Chef's Counter. The Sheffield-based social enterprise runs public dining events in “unique, iconic and underused” spaces, and will be at the chapel every Sunday from now until 21 July. Music on the day (12pm-4pm) will come from Blue 7 jazz, and there will be a full range of both veggie and non-veggie food, plus a kids’ menu.

Jobseekers, beware! The sales companies convincing Sheffield’s young people to slog round the clock

Towards the end of our conversation, in a shockingly matter-of-fact tone, 22-year-old John claims he has “spent maybe three or four commutes in the boot of a car”. On the final occasion he alleges this happened, during the six months he worked with a Sheffield sales company called ACI Associates, he claims the boot in question was broken and he “had to hold it shut from the inside”. The company’s two directors Jacob Hancock and Angela Cocirla, themselves just 25 and 23 years old according to Companies House, did not respond to this allegation or any other messages from The Tribune. However, one of John’s fellow former “associates”, Nigel, claimed he was in a car with John riding in the boot on one occasion.

According to John, there’s a simple explanation. Every day, at ACI Associates’ rented office space in Devonshire Works in the city centre, the entire workforce — who worked selling broadband packages door-to-door — would attend a two-hour “atmosphere session”. From 10am until noon,  over blasting music, they learned high-pressure sales techniques, practised their pitch and got pumped up for the long slog ahead, occasionally playing games like Hangman or Duck, Duck, Goose. Once that was over, they’d split into teams and travel to wherever they were selling that day, which could be anywhere in South Yorkshire. The cost of travel, like every other expense, was not covered by the company, so people often carshared to save money. “If the car was full,” John says, “somebody would be expected to get into the boot, and that would often be me because I was smaller.” 

After speaking to a number of people who worked with ACI Associates, both those who now believe they were exploited and those who don’t regret the experience, it’s obvious this kind of extreme frugality was par for the course. For example, those who went on “road trips” — week-long excursions to sell in areas outside of South Yorkshire — would stay in AirBnBs they paid for out of their earnings, which would never have enough beds for everyone present. People would share beds with someone they’d only known a week, Nigel alleges. “Things that should not be happening in a professional environment.” John claims he attended one road trip to Retford where two newer staff shared a bed, he slept on a sofa and his superior slept in a sleeping bag on the floor. “Where you were in the company decided how comfortable your experience would be,” he claims. “The newer people would be given a nicer experience to try to keep them there.” While neither director responded to this allegation, it is supported by accounts from other people claiming to have worked with the company online.

The other defining trait of the company culture, according to numerous accounts, was a commitment to working as much as possible. Despite being self-employed, new recruits felt compelled to work a 60-hour week. Though normal hours were 10am until 6pm Monday to Friday, they were given the “option” to work until 8pm every day and to work an additional 10am-8pm shift on Saturday. “They said it was optional,” one former associate says of extending the shift until 8pm, “but everyone did it so you had to do it as well.” Another claims you were “kind of obliged to come in on Saturday” if you hadn’t hit your target for that week, something he only managed twice. “You are not held at gunpoint but it’s pretty much… yeah,” he adds. On Sunday, there would be calls to plan the week ahead. 

As you’ll know if you’ve ever worked in sales, targets tend to be paramount — the company formerly known as ACI Associates (and, since May, AC Partners) was no exception to this rule. Sales personnel were working on behalf of an external client, specifically flogging 24-month contracts for BT and EE. At first, self-employed “sales executives” were told that, on weeks where they failed to make at least six sales, they would receive a minimum guaranteed payment of £300 to live on. (If they worked the optional-but-strongly-recommended 60 hours a week, this equates to £5 an hour.) If they made six sales or more, then their pay was commission-only, with each sale earning them £50. Multiple former salespeople claimed those who failed to hit six sales for too many weeks in a row would stop receiving this £300 payment and sometimes be “let go,” despite being self-employed. The minimum target each day was two sales, while those who managed at least three would be given a round of applause the next day. 

There’s a high chance that some readers will have been visited by someone working with ACI Associates. In fact, towards the end of his nine-month stint, Nigel said he sometimes realised he and whoever he was pitching to had spoken before. If you’ve opened the door to someone like him, they will have been wearing a jacket or bib with the logos for BT and EE, as well as the logo of Money Expert, a subsidiary of a company called Credico. This company is a client broker for big brands looking to outsource direct marketing, which subcontracts smaller companies like ACI Associates. Nigel says the person on your doorstep, who was most likely between 18 and 25, will have been offering you “literally the exact same deal you could get” if you went to BT and EE directly. Thus, their only means of persuasion will have been high-pressure sales techniques and — some staff allege — misleading information.

Google the name “Money Expert” and scores of angry reviews appear, many of which reference tactics described to The Tribune by ACI Associates staff. The Money Saving Expert, Martin Lewis, has felt the need to publicly state he has no connection to the company more than once. “They exclusively hire people who are selectively blind to ‘no cold callers’ signs,” one review reads. “Always have the same line about how the neighbours have complained about the internet. Target the same street over and over again.” 

But not all of these bad reviews are from residents in South Yorkshire and not all of the salespeople they describe will have been trained by the company formerly known as ACI Associates. This is because, according to multiple former staff, this company — and another company in Sheffield that has been operating under a number of different names since 2018 — are really just two cogs in a far larger machine.