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News

Officials warn of shady salesmen

Adviser: Solicitors who claim to be raising money for communication scholarship offering ‘a pack of lies' 

by JOHN ARTERBURY
The Daily Cougar

School of Communication officials are warning students and community members that traveling magazine subscription retailers have been visiting UH and area neighborhoods over the past week claiming to be students raising money for a scholarship.

The sellers -- who say they are employees of Las Vegas-based Integrity Program -- claimed to be raising funds for a scholarship allowing communication students to intern for the BBC in England. 

"Without question these people are not part of the School of Communication," Les Oliver, a School of Communication adviser, said. "It's obviously a pack of lies." 

Area residents have called the school inquiring about the retailers, who they believed to be students, Oliver said, and some complained about the group's tactics. Calls to the company's only listed phone number were not returned. 

"Anybody that gets approached, whether on campus or not, by anybody saying they're earning credits for the School of Communication, the conversation begins with a lie, so don't believe them," Oliver said.

Periodically over the past six years, magazine sellers posing as UH communication students have approached Houston residents, Oliver said, but it was unknown if Integrity Program had visited the city before.

This marks the first occasion retailers posing as students have visited the UH campus, he said. A student approached Oliver after encountering a representative on University property. 

"Obviously the people don't have a permit to solicit," Oliver said. "Like everybody else, she was told something that was untrue."

Organizations must apply to retail on campus through the University Center Reserve Office, Associate Dean of Students Kamran Riaz said. Selling is usually allowed only at the UC, he said, and no magazine subscription sellers were on record as having a permit. 

"We usually don't give approval to groups walking around anywhere and selling stuff," Riaz said. "If no one has given them authorization, they will be asked to leave." 

Oliver said the company's structure as listed on its Web site matches that of other magazine subscription retailers that travel state to state, often in vans. 

Many young people are lured to the industry with prospects of quick cash and nationwide travel, but after joining they are sometimes faced with low pay, dangerous working conditions and abuse by employers, the Portland Tribune reported in a feature on the trade that included Integrity Program. 

In 1999, seven Integrity Program employees were killed when their van rolled on a Wisconsin interstate. The driver was unlicensed, the newspaper reported, and had been switching seats with another passenger when the accident occurred. 

The Better Business Bureau of Southern Nevada -- of which Integrity Program is not a member -- rates the company as "unsatisfactory," President Sylvia Campbell said, citing 82 complaints filed since April 2006. 

"I would be very cautious about door-to-door salespeople, and make sure they're fully licensed," Campbell said. "You think you're helping young people, but in reality somebody may be taking advantage of them."

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