I met with the head of the Philadelphia office of VIP in Feb. 2010. I went with my 18 year old son. They are apparently a legitimate business with a nice-looking office; but they use cheezy, high pressure sales technigues similar to those used by car salespeople and time-share condo salespeople to rope you into paying them about $1600 to attend a one-day event in NYC (at your own expense) at which you are supposed to meet unspecified representatives from the industry (modeling, music). They also have $2,500 and $3,999 “packages” for attending multiple events.

They didnt even bother to listen to my son’s demo CD before deciding he was “qualified” to work with them and pay $$$$ to attend their next networking event. And the only thing they did to assess his modeling potential was to look at a few cell phone photos and ask him his height.

If, after hearing the sales pitch, you ask for time to think things over even for one day you will be told you can’t have it; they told my son he’d have to pay a minimum of $495. that day (nonrefundable), on the spot or wait a whole year to possibly work with them. Felt sleezy to me.

I am a Harvard educated lawyer with a PHD and found the language on the agreement they ask you to sign vague and incomprehensible! It troubled me that they weren’t willing to call the agreement in question a “contract”, which it clearly is. If the terms of the agreement were confusing to me, I imagine most of the people shown the agreement don’t really get that they are agreeing to allowing VIP to use their name, photographs and samples of their music or other performancers for free for 5 years for their marketing and advertising purposes, even with respect to opportunities they did not create and had nothing to do with, simply because you have become one of their “member” talents. I had to drag this explanation out of the owner of the business who became hostile. There was no negotiation or give and take. Sign this, pay or leave.

Be careful.

BEWARE OF THIS SCAM.

VIP talent connect must pay someone to check out every website that questions their legitimacy. I will answer your question directly. They are a complete SCAM. I am going to be speaking with the Better Business Bureau about this company.

I have had issues with them since the beginning, as have a few of the people I have met along the way. The representatives at this company are neither kind nor gracious. I think that this is a brilliant tactic. It puts one in a state of perpetual confusion and anxiety. Notice that they speak quickly and without a sense of direction. They keep mentioning names that you don’t recognize, with such bravado that you begin to wonder why you aren’t important enough to have recognized them as well. All you realize is that they expect money and for some reason, you feel you owe it to them.

Watch out for Alyshia (she’s the big brown-haired one). She will be throwing “important” names at you as if you were some starving child from a third world country, while artfully insulting you at the same time. Mind you, these are names you have never heard of.

Once you make it past this narcissist, you will be taken upstairs to be interviewed. You will be asked to pay a great sum of money (something between $400-1,895) off the bat. Jackie will speak fast and incoherently so that you feel panicked and stupid. You will discover that you are paying them monthly for what? You are paying additional amounts for “events” that you will find most disappointing, and for a photo shoot that is mediocre and ghetto at best. She will not keep in contact with you after the second interview…or even be available. She is much friendlier, though. By the way, they do not get your measurements like they state on the sheet Alyshia will hand to you beforehand.

I wish you the best of luck.