American Media Distribution--legit or scam? Part I

April 14, 2011:

If you're reading this, it means I decided this was not all it was purported to be. I won't publish it until then. After all, they might come back and say, "hey! You wrote something unpleasant about us. Why would we want you to work for us?"

Initial contact:  Several weeks ago, I received some email asking if I would be interested in doing freelance reporting on local events, like restaurant openings, concerts, festivals and such. I was intrigued and followed up with a phone call. At that time, "Phil" walked me through the documents on their website, which seemed straightforward enough. We got toward the end of his spiel, at which time it turned out that I would have to pay them nearly $300 for press credentials and a "deposit," which would be returnable either when I stopped working for them or after I had generated $1,000 in revenue. Hey, what...? I have to pay you to work for you? It turns out the press credentials are optional, but it would prevent me from being assigned some gigs which require the credentials.

Scam?  I've become aware of a number of scams and have a healthy amount of skepticism when it comes to people who offer to part me from my money. While $300 may not seem like much, it doesn't take many people to fall for this before AMD is racking up some serious cash. I did some searching on the internet to see what people are saying about them and even found one person who claims to have written articles and been paid for them.  However, I opted out of the press credentials at this time. 

First assignment:  I received my first assignment to cover a car show but I noticed that the date was wrong. I sent back some email asking if the date was supposed to be April 15 instead of June 3. The reply I received was interesting: that was a mistake, and the April 15 car show had been assigned to someone else who had the required credentials. The June 3rd one is in Red River, which is nearly 4 hours from here, so I declined that one.

Questions: Was that "assignment" a mistake or a ploy? Was it intended to make me impatient and say I'll go ahead and pay for the credentials? Was it a bait and switch tactic? Will I receive another assignment? Will it be something local or will I continue to be offered assignments far away? 

 

 

Comments

[Dana M]

Thanks for your post. I actually signed up with them in December and after reading your post I was somewhat concerned for sure. I must say though that it is turning out really well. I have received 4 assignments (went out on 2 so far) and have been paid for both. Really having a good time with this and making some decent extra income. I give them a thumbs up so far. FYI, I did check them out before coming aboard and they do have an A rating with the BBB and when I checked, they never had a complaint from anyone. I'm thinking that if they were really aiming to do some funny business, it would be pretty hard to keep that rating so high. Anyway, just my 2 cents.

[innkeeper]

I also checked them out and only found one favorable comment. Most people were getting nothing and felt like this was a scam. I didn't think about checking BBB. If they're legit and you're getting assignments, that's great! It's nice to know they are doing something positive.

[Troy Young]

I too was contacted by them a few months ago and did some searching on the internet but wasn't able to find much information that wasn't by them personally. I have to say that the paying for credentials thing sent up red flags for me though and upon further searching I found your blog post here. To this day I don't know for sure if it was legit or a scam but I opted not to pursue and further activity with them.