Man Wins $25k But Never Receives The Money

Chris Walters — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 09:01:07 EDT

Back in January, Herbert Hawks made a hole-in-one on a golf simulator at the Maryland State Fairgrounds, and he won $25,000. (You can watch the winning shot here.) WBAL TV reports that as of late July he has yet to see the prize money, and every person or company the TV station has contacted passes the blame on to someone else. At the bottom of the list is Golf Marketing Worldwide, a company that insures hole-in-one contests and has a history of not paying out on contests and/or doing business in states where the company doesn't have a license.

Here's the line of blame as tracked down by WBAL:

Maryland State Fairgrounds said they only rented the space.
Contest sponsor Recreations Unlimited said they were unaware the payment hadn't been made; a spokesman for the company said it "was out of his hands."
The company that brought the golf simulator to the state, World Golf Center of Orlando, Florida, "claimed it is having difficulty getting the insurance company that backed the contest to make the payment" even though all requirements have been met.
Kevin Kolenda, CEO of the insurance company called both HoleInOne.com and Golf Marketing Worldwide, says not all requirements have been met.

WBAL writes that they "discovered Kalenda and the company haven't always paid as promised. Massachusetts, North Carolina, Oregon and other states issued cease and desist orders, claiming they were not licensed to sell insurance in those states." That got us curious about Kalenda and his company, so we did a quick search on Google to see what we could dig up. This 2002 article from a Connecticut business journal shows that Golf Marketing Worldwide has done this before:

Both the [Connecticut] Insurance Department and the state attorney general received complaints in 1995 that accused Golf Marketing of not paying when contestants sunk their shots.

...

In May 2000, Woody Harford sunk a 100-foot putt in New York City's Central Park for $1 million at the launch party for the now defunct Maximum Golf magazine.

Golf Marketing disputes the logistics of the shot, and did not pay Harford his prize.

"Man Wins $25K Contest; Insurance Doesn't Pay" [WBAL Baltimore] (Thanks to Stanton!)

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"Golf insurer happy with 'minimal' fine" [AllBusiness]

Walmart Uses 4,300 Unpaid Teenagers As Baggers In Its Mexican Stores

Meg Marco — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 10:19:47 EDT

Walmart is Mexico's largest private employer, according to Newsweek, and that doesn't include the 4,300 unpaid teenagers that it lets "volunteer" to bag groceries at its Mexican stores.

The teenagers work for gratuities and Walmart says the teenagers "cannot be considered workers," and are therefore exempt from Walmart's "code of ethics" that prevents "associates" from going unpaid.

Meanwhile business is booming in Mexico for Walmart. They have plans to open 125 additional stores and "reported net earnings of $1.148 billion in 2006 "

So why are the baggers going unpaid, relying only on gratuities? Local custom. From Newsweek:

The use of unsalaried youths is legal in Mexico because the kids are said to be "volunteering" their services to Wal-Mart and are therefore not subject to the requirements and regulations that would otherwise apply under the country's labor laws. But some officials south of the U.S. border nonetheless view the practice as regrettable, if not downright exploitative. "These kids should receive a salary," says Labor Undersecretary Patricia Espinosa Torres. "If you ask me, I don't think these kids should be working, but there are cultural and social circumstances [in Mexico] rooted in poverty and scarcity."

In a country where nearly half of the population scrapes by on less than $4 a day, any income source is welcome in millions of households, even if it hinges on the goodwill of a tipping customer. And Wal-Mart did not invent the bagger program that, as a written statement from the company notes, pre-dates the firm's arrival in Mexico, nor is it alone within the country's retail sector in benefiting from the toil of unpaid adolescents. But in Mexico City, for example, the 4,300 teenagers who work in Wal-Mart's retail stores free of charge dwarf similar numbers laboring unpaid for Mexican competitors like Comercial Mexicana (715) and Gigante (427).

Can Walmart not afford the Mexican minimum wage? Newsweek says its less than $5 an hour. Just from a consumer's perspective, we'd be annoyed at having to personally pay the wages of our grocery bagger, but obviously that is the cultural norm.

Teens at Work [Newsweek](Thanks, Molly!)
(Photo:Marco Ugarte/AP)

Consumerist: unpaid

Man Wins $25k But Never Receives The Money

Walmart Uses 4,300 Unpaid Teenagers As Baggers In Its Mexican Stores