A couple of days ago I did receive a letter from a company called “Continental Whos´s Who”. Content of this letter basically was a list of compliments regarding the goals that I did achieve in my profession. I now should feel honored because they are about to approve me becoming part of the “who is who” in my industry.

Indeed I did feel honored and I did not doubt that this is a serious association interested in having me in their group of successful professionals. Since they are based in the US we scheduled a meeting at 3pm to avoid inconveniences caused by the time difference.

In this call a Lisa started to ask some questions about my career and about the way I´m doing business. At that point I still had no doubt about their professional attempt. After 20 minutes she finally congratulated me. “You are a real professional that we want to work with, having you in our exclusive group of executives and professionals from around the world”. Man, I really felt proud about this. After all the years of hard work finally somebody was proud of having me as a member.  I almost felt like a celebrity.

Unfortunately this conversation did change dramatically.  After a couple of more questions she than explained that there are two different memberships. Lifetime which goes for $ 899 and a five year plan going for $ 599. Of course all professionals are choosing the  Lifetime plan.#

At that point the red light in my head already did shine and blink like on judgment day.

I was angry at myself. I knew best that nobody in the world ever will give you something for free. Everything in live does cost. Even for death you have to give your live.

Lisa lost in the second she mentioned the amounts. Nevertheless I did want to see how far she goes. It was impressive how much she did push. It became extremely intrusive. Fortunately I already knew how this is going to end up. I kept on playing. During the conversation she came up with new plans that she only can offer for me and that almost will cost her job.  For some reason it seems that they can´t postpone decisions. They want to close the deal during this call.

Ok, I finally agreed on a $ 99 plan for 2 years.

I could hear her breathing out when she finally nailed it down, she thought. She didn´t knew that I was playing since the second she started to talk about money. What came up next almost would have been good enough for an oscar. But I don´t want to go into to much details. At the end even after not closing the deal and not getting my credit card details nor personal information she stopped the conversation by saying:  “It was my pleasure to talk to you”.

Finally I´m not sure about this company. Online I did found tons of reports accusing them of fraud or even scam.  I don´t want to go that far. I just think the way they did approach me was not the way I want to be approached. In my opinion  becoming a who is who simply should be something that can be achieved  instead of bought.

The funny side now will be that I will laugh for myself whenever I see „who´s who“ listed in someones profile. Now I know that this person did not achieve it, he simply did not manage to stand against the pushy sales person of that company. Something that I would not be proud of.

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