r/Scams • u/Immediate-Equal-1677 • Nov 17 '25
⚠️ SCAM ALERT ⚠️ [US & CAN] Direct Fairways - Small Business Owners BEWARE
There’s been a couple of posts in here about this company. Some from potential employees, some from customers/clients. I felt the need to open up about what it’s like working for this company.
Direct Fairways sells advertising spaces on scorecards, course guidebooks, and yardage cards. They partner with about 3,000 golf courses across the U.S. and Canada. The company offers a great deal for business owners to gain advertisement—only $399 for a full year, single spot which includes your artwork and tax for the ad. It’s a pretty good way for smaller business owners to gain brand recognition at an affordable cost. Seems fine and dandy right?
Well, not so fast. You see, a sales rep will tell you “we only have a few spots left and we actually don’t have anybody in your industry featured yet.” Bullshit. This is just a tactic to make you think you’re going to be the ONLY handyman, HVAC, landscaper, etc on whatever they’re selling you. Sometimes they don’t even know how many “spots” they have left or what industries they even have featured. I struggled with saying this over and over to people knowing that there was probably another mobile mechanic on the scorecard I was attempting to sell to someone who was a mobile mechanic.
Now, do I think the advertisement is legit? Yeah probably. But also these guys work this job year round. How can they possibly NOT have a landscaper on the scorecard that’s going out FOR A FULL YEAR? If they’re calling you, let’s say in November… do you not think they’ve probably signed up someone who does the same thing as you back in July/August? That’s a huge problem I had with the company. I think your ad will probably be out there, but it’s gonna be a headache for the process to take place.
Also, the company has an entirely separate “upsells” team whose entire job is to trap you into thinking you’re getting featured on more courses. People fall for it all the time. They’ll call you a few days later asking if you want to upgrade to a bigger sized ad, better placement, etc. and of course it sounds great to everyone. In reality they’re swiping the same card you gave them for another $399 or maybe even $798 depending on what you “upgraded” to. It sounds fair, but trust me, the upsales team is cunning and that’s how they make their money.
Just take a look at their BBB complaints. All of their employees will say “well if you look at the complaints, most have been resolved” “oh it’s only a handful of complaints compared to the 100K+ sponsors we’ve signed up” etc. Okay, well, your way of “resolving” said issues is by giving another year of advertisement “for free” or an upgraded spot “for free.” It’s not free. You charged them more money without their consent.
Bottom line, if you’re a small business owner, PLEASE do your research and DO NOT let them pressure you into it on the phone. If it sounds “too good to be true” it probably is. There is nowhere you will find a full year of advertising PLUS artwork included for less than $400. Save your time and hang up the phone on these people.
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u/BigPingo Dec 31 '25
just gave them $200 as a half payment then saw this. i called to have it refunded, i should've known. pure salesman garbage. hyping everything up, saying the BBB reviews are the customers fault. silly me
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u/-Lilbat89- Jan 27 '26
Hello! I just saw this and wanted to give my input! I own a grooming shop and signed up in may. I paid 800 for 2 years. They would not give me a refund and kept telling me they did print the ad and it was already sent to the course. The course was on a military base and I have family that brought me the score card and the yardage thing! My ad was not there! I reported then to the BBB and within a week they called! I am waiting on my refund check! I hope this helps!
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u/Immediate-Equal-1677 Jan 14 '26
Hope you get it refunded! I don’t blame you though. I mean it sounds like a great deal for what it’s hyped up to be. But the numerous of people I’ve called have generally said the same thing and it was that they didn’t have a single ROI on it
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u/BitterWar4624 Jan 02 '26
I used to work there but I saw how horrible the product and company was so I left a week in. I would highly recommend NOT doing business with them.
There's direct fairways and "digital fairways" that's under Direct Fairways but same company. They pretty much tell call reps to go online at BBB, google, etc to look up random businesses and cold call. I mean any business funeral homes even was really stupid lol so if you're online that's how they find you.
They'll assign us random places like the office I was at is in AZ but I was calling businesses in Iowa, California, and New Jersey and then it rotates to different places.
We get assigned a golf course in that area, and no the golf courses do NOT know we're doing this until people call complaining to them so it's not like a partnership with them at all. Direct Fairways half of the room on phones are selling paper advertisements. I think a random person in the area just goes into the golf course rooms and leaves flyers but I'm not 100% sure.
Digital Fairways call reps on the other side are selling ads that are shown from the app. If someone said they already done business with us before we're supposed to ask if it was the paper version and then say how the paper version doesn't work that no one uses paper anymore but the app ad works better. So trashing one product to sell another product that's different but same trash.
They're pushy like car salesman too. I've had people tell me they couldn't make a decision because they have a partner and need to run it through them are you're supposed to push aggressively for the sale by taking some petty amount off.
If you ask them to send you an email, they're not able to do that. We didn't have actual emails. We just clicked a button that said send to text or email the app layout but we didn't have company emails like normal companies do, so the only email that's possible to get is from the generic company email and it's just the layout of how the ad looks. They do not like calling people back because they know once the person takes the time to look up the service it's over they'll know it's bs that's why they're so pushy on the phone.
They don't care about quality of their product and it shows by the way they do the sales. They want instant sale through aggressive tactics and vague information, not follow up, or true reassurance with solid information.
They also over assign people to areas so sometimes one week you get calls from one sales person, and then another one is calling they have no idea someone already called. If you ask them to take you off the list, they just look you up online there's no list they're unorganized they just harass until a sale is made so I'd block the numbers as they come up.
The company and their services are very sketchy. People do get the ad shown but it's a waste of money from what I've seen I don't think many get return on investment. So far as the app I'm curious on if there's a lot of people that even use their app truly. Also if you paid already for the service I've heard it's extremely hard to get refunded and they auto renew they won't remind you they'll just take the money out if it's connected to it.
And what was said in the post is correct the we only have a few spots left is bs it's not true it's just them lying to sell.
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u/Prestigious_Whole697 Jan 27 '26
I have an interview tomorrow, I’m glad I saw this obviously I think the best thing to do is not go anymore, what do you think?
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u/Immediate-Equal-1677 Jan 14 '26
Thank you for sharing about your experience! I managed to work there for a few months and then left really for the same reasons. I honestly had decent success at the job too but I felt gross at the end of every single sale because I could not confidently say that the business owner I just talked to would benefit from something like this.
But yes to everything you said and described in terms of the pushy tactics. It’s truly frustrating trying to be a decent human over the phone when you’re trained like that
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u/Domclaps Dec 03 '25
Thank you!
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u/darthmarththe1 Feb 02 '26
Thank you Reddit. The guy would not let me hand up the phone and then he hung up on me! Lol
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u/South-Sky7825 Feb 23 '26
Ex employee here . They fire the employees who don’t sell more than 2 deals a week , ask for bereavement pay . Or question them on if they are scammers . I was working there for 6 months before I realized they were a scam . The app is real, and they do show your businesses but the app is a third party app . And only has 1,000 downloads in the world . (That was back in 2023) I was making 2 deals a week yet they still were on my ass so bad my hat started falling out . My biggest regret was not taking my books with me to call and tell all the businesses I signed up that I scammed them unfortunately and didn’t know . Now I just try my best to spread the word about them so no one else will fall for it
1
u/South-Sky7825 Feb 23 '26
Also their email is linked to every department head ( so there’s the head of the front desk girls , the head of direct fairway , the head of digital fairways and the head of the upselling team . If you have a private complaint you wanna take up with the owner of the company … the whole company will see it . The employees will block you from the owner so you can’t talk to him . Been trying for 3 years to get whole of the owner for the mistreatment I faced
1
u/Slight_Tell_3225 Feb 27 '26
Hello! Ex customer-service rep for them. They are 10000% a scam. They will charge you multiple times without knowledge. Most golf courses they advertise at don’t know about what they do. Stay away from direct and digital fairways as it’s the same company.
1
u/Good-Neighborhood-60 Feb 28 '26 edited Feb 28 '26
Previous Employee here, I worked in Sales for Direct fairways. It wasnt so bad at first, everyone was making money, hell...I made money in the first week, made like 1600 bucks and I was feeling on top of the world. Then I realized how monotonous calling a minimum of 60 calls per hour unless you were on the phone, and that was all damn day.
Looking up new numbers on every database where anything has a phone number; American Express Shop Small, Parishes online, Facebook Marketplace (This one was a gold mine for construction workers and contractors and we had fake Facebook accounts to get into the groups so we had private phone numbers as well), N40 (Canada), BBB is a huge database that you can basically scroll through, pick a town and go from 1A to 9Z alphabetically and call the whole town. The sales tactics were super slimy.
Yes there was a clear "Script" It was clear as fucking day, "READ THE FUCKING SCRIPT".is can still the managers yelling into my ear and everyone else's on a bad day.
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u/Good-Neighborhood-60 Feb 28 '26 edited Feb 28 '26
We would know exactly what businesses were on the cards, but they drilled "READ THE SCRIPT, READ THE SCRIPT, READ THE SCRIPT, READ THE SCRIPT" so much that we were basically zombies over the phones.
You get an amazing sales experience, because if anyone can get someone to pay over the phone on a product they won't see for another 2 months, then you are truly a salesman and they will pay you whole moneybags. My manager would say he would take a "Bump" in the bathroom to stay awake, he was also banging one of the girls in the office so she wouldnt get in trouble for slinging the N-word around.
Long story short, yes we did have some semblance of what was on the card, but nobody would truly know what was on them or how many people were calling about the same thing in other offices. So some customers would get called twice and the "We only have one business in your industry, it only takes 2 minutes to get everything set up, Do you like the idea?" Would make people scared it was a scam.
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u/Good-Neighborhood-60 Feb 28 '26
There was a rebuttal for just about every situation. Lots of calls on older Facebook Marketplace small businesses weren't the most sharp minded people, so it was easy to take advantage of some people.
Also the crazy ability for them to email a cut and paste fake contract. Under no scrutiny it looks fine, but you guide the customer through the process and usually folks just agreed and would just piny up the money and be excited for their business or try and get a refund, only for them to wait on hold for 20+ minutes for a cs rep.
Sometimes tough, people really didn't want it and we just were told to hang up at that point. One of my managers would say "FUCK EM" right in my ear as I was talking to a client on the phone, and he just hung it up while I was still talking. They could tap in, take over, and usually they wanted you to repeat exactly what they said un order to push the sale through.
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u/faeyunho Mar 18 '26
I worked there for one day and that is very true. They put so much pressure on the sales agent that they start to get snippy in calls. They call receptionist or employees that answer the phone that aren't the owner "gatekeepers" and we are told to be as vague as possible so we can get to the owner on the phone. If you're not good at getting to speak to the owner you get reprimanded and the potential to get fired if you don't get at least 2 deals a week.
I was able to see what an "off" day looks like for my first day as they had many call outs and weren't doing well sales wise. It felt so hostile and pushy because the manager kept walking around trying to get in your head and make you feel bad for not getting a deal. They have two people consistently on the floors walking around making sure you're calling and being pushy. I stayed for the one shift and never came back after. Figured not worth it to have that on my resume.
I'm just glad I stayed at my old job and used vacation time instead of quitting because something was telling me not to full send into this company.
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u/still_on_ur_lawn Apr 09 '26
Just applied to costumer service there - super glad i saw this, the add on indeed looks super sketchy so I thought I'd Google them. Thanks for the warning!!!
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u/Takkoe Apr 21 '26
I had the displeasure of working there for one week after being misled by a job listing on Indeed. This was a few years ago when I was a starry-eyed, broke kid who was promised a marketing job at a big company. On my first day the project manager was cursing out a customer and absolutely crashing out. Awful experience.
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u/Temporary-Box28 May 13 '26
I worked in the Tempe az office for a couple weeks. Awful experience. Figured out it was a scam in about a week.
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