780-420-0193

Actually I don't work for them at all....so u shouldn't assume because it makes YOU look like the [***] idiot!

Spoken like a true telemarketing sleeze!  In this economy it is not unusual for multi-tasking, job sharing, downsizing etc.  I answer phones along with 2 other people in my office, none of us is "just the secretary" we hold much higher positions than "just the secretary" & after 20+ years working directly with the owner and socializing with him & his family.... I know EVERYTHING about this company and the owner has made it my business to weed out unwanted sales calls.

LMAO!!!!! WOW u sure took that to heart! Did I strike a nerve lol!?! 20 years of socializing with the boss hey......and u call me the sleeze!!! BTW its spelt " sleaze".I'm sure u do know his company inside and out as u put it!

LMFAO.....I'm pretty sure they make a lot more than u would imagine! Maybe even more than you!

Bullsh*t is right! Don't let Markus here get to ya Buddie! This is either a reply from Markus or one of his [***] friends, nobody who isn't Markus or one of his [***] friends would see this many posts of the same ripping off [***] scams their pulling, and give a sh*t to reply against you, in support of people that only sometimes scam working people. What an assh*le. Is it OK that me and these hundreds or so, probably thousands of working, tax paying legitimate people, get caught up in these sneaky recorded double phone call confirming scam? Who could you possibly be Cubanfyah? Just a really satisfied customer that got their business card in a kids book with a thousand other companies for a few hundred dollars? So satisfied that not only did you do that once, you did it twice within a couple months? $600 bucks ish to advertise in two children's magazines, enviro, and saftey, then, feeling as though you have now taken from RMC, you owe them, you study there history, donations, who they work with, solicitor general blah blah, numerous certificate bullsh*t, so you can get on the internet and dismiss people, who have complaints on review boards, trying to find out who is doing this obvious scam to them. Can't wait till you reply to this and settle my mind with more great knowledge of write offs the large company trying to rip me off right now gets to do. Please Cubanfyah, a few more credentials and donation stats thrown my way and maybe i will join you on your quest to tell the complainers on the internet that they're not being burnt by these guys, they should just pay whatever this company says because they have about a third of a conversation recorded. What's wrong with you Cubanfyah?  For you to reply to someone who is having trouble with a company doing sneaky non-transparent business, with the money they give away to other very large businesses, there's something wrong with you. You're an assh*le and your opinion in my getting scammed is moot. There are people that never scam Cubanfyah. Your not one of them.

cubanfyah

If you do not work for the company,
you should probably stop post good faith replies towards them.
You may think you are in-the-right to protect the company,
but you are doing more negative damage than you may think.
If anything your replies have made this thread more visible on Google
and now that creates a negative impression on the company.
Let the company handle their own reputation control, it is their prerogative,
and should be handled through corporate counsel and authorized communications officer.

I do not work for this company, and have learned about it from an unsolicited call.

I have received a call at 9:47 local time, the caller have been lively, cheerful and friendly.
I have assumed the caller is client calling to deliver a complaint to our HQ,
mostly because that's the kind of calls we receive, aside from couriers and account providers.

Caller have spent a considerable amount of time before getting to the gist of the sales pitch. Topics covered pets, Disney, children, a casual conversation about what our company does.
The "small talk" phase was 3-5 minutes and was very un-annoying, as the person speaking was definitely making a genuine effort for a good predisposition.

The sales pitch was introduced very un-intrusively, I have to admit the caller could go very far in this kind of work, have this been the nineties. My overall impression is, as I hope everyone already guessed, was great (putting aside this being an unsolicited call).

The negative/suggestions to the company:

The sales pitch eventually culminated in an attempt to close, at which point I had to take the lead of the conversation, and realistically let the caller know that any such engagements cannot be easily plunged into over the phone, and thus an introductory e-mail would be in order. They did indeed say that they are not able to use e-mail in this situation, and they had to fall back on a fax option. Which they did send, it was much shorter than my post here, was clearly understandable and the advertisement placement sample was included.

Once I've received the fax, I have checked their website (which deserves a few comments too),
checked their BBB accreditation, since they do post it on their website. BBB accreditation checks out, and apparently business have been operating since 1977:
http://www.bbb.org/edmonton/business-reviews/ ... onton-ab-100528

One thing I would say about the classification on BBB website: "Business Category - Publishers-Book",
which I believe to be incorrect, since the gist of their business, from my limited engagement seems to be advertisement sales over telemarketing. They are not making any money on the actual publication of their free books. In fact that part of the business is definitely a money sink - design costs, printing costs, distribution costs, and no returns on the physical publications.

However they do employ an original artist, they employ a webdesigner (a pretty amateur one), and they employ out-bound calling sales agents (I gather that would be the major share of their work-force).

Drilling down to the core of their business: they are a for-profit organization, the fact that they are engaging in "good faith" publications is a positive and a negative for them. Using their politically correct niche as a sales pitch would be (in my eyes) unethical, since they are in it to make money (like any for-profit business), and publishing in the field of drug awareness and other kid related ailments is only a niche that has been working for them. To make an ethical statement that they are really supporting the causes they claim to support, they would have to go completely non-profit.

Furthermore, as an advertisement agency, they have failed on one crucial aspect of their pitch - the audience reach - basically they said doctor's offices and maybe community centers and so forth - so they do not really have any solid numbers (how can they?); as opposed to let's say the free newspapers getting handed out on public transport. When somebody tries to sell you advertisement, you have to consider the audience, sheer numbers, and effective output of the advertisement dollar. Since they are not able to provide this "estimate", and from guesstimating their reach, it is not exactly in 100,000 people's hands every morning, I doubt that it is something that our company would be interested in.

Their website is about 30% of what I would expect from a successful 21st century kid oriented publisher/advertiser:
The layout (of the kid oriented sites) is really basic, they should consult with YTV.ca and Teletoon.ca
Navigation is redundant, and the redundancy is not well highlighted.
Most of their presentation is Flash, which is nowadays is a waste of developer time.
They do have an iPad app, but judging from their comics, the kid in me definitely put up a good resistance to this "adult propaganda", so something they can do is consult with child psychology studies, and perhaps have more "filler story" to keep the kid engaged, rather than reading walls of text of potentially incorrect cliche statements on drugs.
I almost felt like this website could be aiding kinds on disguising their "newly found toys" away from their parents, I would suggest again to be less intrusive/propaganda like.

Conclusion:
Now-a-days having received an unsolicited sales pitch typically generates a lot more hate than back in the nineties - people are more connected - and thus do not value a 5-10-15 minute conversation with a professional conversationalist. They should have the ability to sent template e-mail (in case the company does not want sales agents to have free reign in what they say in those e-mails).
They should have a complete advertisement pitch, including a well argued reach estimate.
They should not engage in un-ethical approaches (none were used in my conversation, except for maybe keeping me guessing the purpose of the call for good 3-5 minutes) like a hard push on their politically correct publishing niche, pretending to have had previous engagements, leading on to believe to have relations to company other than advertisement.

Also, whoever reads this thread, please take the comments with a grain of salt, many people here claim to have received multiple calls in a short time frame - that is bad, but I'm sure a firm warning to them about further calls will suffice. The use of word scam, entails that some sort of a one-sided transaction takes place - somebody gets money/product and the counter-party gets nothing in return.
This is not true, this company has a valid business model, and operates on the pretenses it has developed over 3 dozen years, and it's only natural that the companies are not yet catching on with the times - unsolicited call = -10 karma points. None-the-less I was impressed with my conversation with them today, and thus I am taking the time to write my thoughts on the matter.

Regards to all angry telephone users =)

Well I do answer the phone and own the company and can say that I ask EVERY person that calls where they saw our add or where they heard of us and not ONCE was this magazine mentioned! In fact I have called a dozen doctors offices asking if they have or heard of them and not one had! I am surprised because the very flirty girl that called and told me 30000 magazines were going out in Vancouver stated how much it would help my business yet not ONE person after 30000 magazines went out called!!!

Weird!!!!!!!!

Just a secretary???? Answering a phone! What are they calling on the phone?? SCAMMERS!!!!  A car saleman but yet selling not even a lemon car but rather something that will do NOTHING for you at all!! I want to know where these 30000 magazines went in Vancouver!!! Funny how not ONE phone call came in from them! Not asking much just maybe ONE phone call would be nice!!!

Can you please post where your

the elementary

SAFETY BOOK

for children

got sent other than the people that paid for an add???  I have literally called over a dozen doctor offices as thats where I was told they were going and not ONE received it!!!!  I would assume since the woman that sold me the advertisement told me that 30000-50000 would go out that you could list where 1000 of them went!!! Come on all I am asking for is the proof of say 2% of what you said would be shipped out!!!

Total scam !

These people have been calling my office for a couple of years now.  It is like clockwork every two months ago.  They start out by attempting to catch me off guard by implying that they are one of my clients and telling a joke (usually sexist and degrading to men -  since I am a woman they apparently they think that appeals to me).  They waste my time for about 5 minutes before advising that they are calling from [insert name of whatever [***] magazine they are looking for me to buy advertising in].  I say that I am not interested and they put on the high pressure "don't you care about the children" spiel.  She never wants to let me off the telephone.  

I am thinking about making a complaint with the Competition Bureau.  I'm tired of these idiots.

Well, I got duped.  Now I know for next time as I bet they will be calling again as I am now probably marked with idiot beside my phone number.

Oh well, live and learn.

As an independent business owner, I receive an abundance of calls from marketing companies including Regional Maple Leaf.
They are annoying and a huge waste of my time but, being a professional "Canadian" business owner, when I answer the phone it's always with the intention of providing stellar customer service. This approach allows the unsolicited caller to catch (me) off guard. The bulk of these calls seem to hit from January 15th to mid March every year. I've been in business long enough now that our marketing is all nailed down. No further input or ideas required. Last year in January, I knew the calls were about to start so I adopted a strategy before the first call came in. My answer was going be that our marketing was already in place for the year and the budget was used. They persisted. I dragged myself through more conversations than I care to mention. This year - new plan. It's been working great. I figured out that as long as I'm willing to stay on the phone I'm sure they would be more then happy to keep selling. So I just hang up. No problem.

If they call back, excuse yourself because there's some one at the door and leave them on hold.  

Those jokes they tell are from a listed script and they are absolutely sexist. They have a list of jokes for each gender and each joke is just a hollow way of putting down the other gender. They also have a list of by-lines to use according to which day of the week it is, ex: " boy I'm glad Monday is almost over right ?" Or " I'm just glad it's Friday ". The fact that the manager enforces the script is even worse. I would imagine that a cold calling salesman could hit more numbers in a day if he were just blunt and said " hi this is so so, I represent this magazine and I would like to put an ad for your company in our paper for x amount of dollars over x amount of time" nobody like salesmen because they waste so much time trying to ooze charm. If you have a quality product or service it sells itself. Trust me I know. I worked for a large catering company that has been in business for over thirty years and never once advertised. The sales people are not trained to answer any actual factual questions about the product, and are instead trained to recite scripted lines based on your responses that persuade you to continue with the pitch. They have staff meetings every morning to pump themselves up and preach to themselves the ever mighty art of the sale. Ever seen "wolf of Wall Street" ? Yeah, they're laughing at you after the phone call. Also, these people need to buy a damn clue, $260 bucks for a one inch by 2 inch black and white ad that gets printed in a magazine that nobody has ever heard of is just ludacrous. You can get a full colour ad on Facebook for $0.20 a click, that's an ad that reaches the whole damned Internet and only charges if someone clicks the link, in which case you can get 1300 prospective customers to link directly to your website. That's a hell of a lot better than a tiny black and white ad space in a magazine that no one has ever heard of.

I worked there and am ashamed that I did. It was short lived because they are scammers, I tried to get more info about the books and well as an employee their answers were not very satisfying. I am not positive but am getting the impression that there may only be 5000 books per province. They couldn't show me otherwise... Calgary gets 100 books to doctors offices if the info on my computer was correct. Being as Calgary is so huge and we were told 5000 to each area, I am a bit disappointed. Please ask questions, get proof because as an old employee whom left because they had some serious questions about the way they conducted business. I also had a customer that was very upset that they sold him an ad, the same person called him back a few days later with same pitch and he thought she was confirming his ad but she apparently sold him a new ad... That in my opinion is very sneaky and fraudulent. Be careful when dealing with them. Your best bet if they get you on the phone is to either tell them you already bought or that you no longer have your business or tell the put me on your DoNot Csll list. Not to mention they employees turn over rate is huge...

The material in their book is endorsed my RCMP Foundation not their business practises!  All that means is the data in the books are correct so the RCMP Foundation is endorsing the info is correct! Their businesses practises are very questionable! Someone is getting rich off those books and it is NOT the customers who advertise, that is for sure!

Dude, you must have worked for them too! Their business practices are very sketchy to say the least. The books themselves are great but as a business owner, I would not rely on getting any business from advertising in them! The company will not answer employees questions when they ask direct questions like Are 5,000 books distributed in Calgary or all across Edmonton or across Canada? No one seems to know... Over a million ad views...is that during one year with one book or during the history of the company? These things are important to know as a seller and as a buyer! Pretty sure cubanfya does work there... Heard those same lines out of her mouth at work!

If your company name is
Regional maple leaf communications inc

Yes you are then scammers 100%

You cannot charge customers or send them to credit agencies if the customer doesn't give you a credit card or sign anything.

Total scam artist

It is a total scam
When they don't get anything legal to start credit agencies to retrieve funds

Or to harass people daily via phone calls etc

This is illegal

It's called harassment

Got this message on my phone indicating that this is Charlott   indicated that I had wanted a credit card processed at their office asking me to call back at 1-800-753-0193.  On call display this call showed up as RMC Inc. 1-780-420-0193.  I have never called this company.  Total Scam what ever there story

this is a scam. a company (young fitness) tried to sell me some advertising, then proceeded to bill me for an ad I never authorized. then this federal security company sent me a collections notice. SAME PHONE NUMBER AS THE ADVERTISING COMPANY. scammers.