Hey! Have you lost your job due to the COVID-19 pandemic? Are you looking for a way to make ends meet? Have you thought of perhaps taking advantage of others in your situation by picking up contract work doing evictions and putting the property of those whose homes have been foreclosed upon out on the street? Well, do we have a gig for you!
Introducing CIVVL. It's like Uber, but for ruining the lives of poor people who can't pay rent, because they lost their jobs due to a freaking global pandemic. Someone looked at that situation and thought to themselves, "There is money to be made here! Let's jump right on it!"
Their Craigslist ad reads:
Unemployment is at a record high and many cannot or simply are not paying rent and mortgages.
We are being contracted by frustrated property owners and banks to secure foreclosed residential properties.
There is plenty of work due to the dismal economy.
Oh, the poor, frustrated banks! Surely someone must come to their rescue!
Via Vice:
Civvl aims to marry the gig economy with the devastation of a pandemic, complete with signature gig startup language like "be your own boss," and "flexible hours," and "looking for self-motivated individuals with positive attitudes:" "FASTEST GROWING MONEY MAKING GIG DUE TO COVID-19," its website says. "Literally thousands of process servers are needed in the coming months due courts being backed up in judgements that needs to be served to defendants." [...]
The company, at first glance, appears to be some kind of _Nathan For You-_esque prank: siccing precarious gig jobs onto vulnerable people. But Civvl is connected to a larger—and real—gig economy company called OnQall, which describes itself as an app that provides "on-demand task services to non-urban communities beyond main city areas." OnQall is the developer behind other, more believable TaskRabbit-esque apps, like LawnFixr, CleanQwik, and MoveQwik. Given the fact that Civvl is advertising all over the country and that OnQall, though not popular, does exist, it seems as though Civvl actually is an attempt to simplify the process of evicting people who cannot pay their rent during a pandemic.
You will of course be shocked to discover that when people attempt to sign up as contract workers for CIVVL, it costs them $35 and they don't actually end up getting anywhere near six jobs a day, as the Craigslist ad claims they will.
Via Google Play:
To sign up, makes you pay $35 and upload license which doesn't seem legit considering they take a 30% fee for each job. Reading fine print before signing up is a must. It states Civvl can change the user fee (what you get paid) at any time, and charge a cancellation fee if you accept a job then cancel. Does not specify a percentage or amount for their cancellation fee. It also says you can negotiate to be paid less than what the original cancellation fee is. Very shady. I didn't sign up.
***
Totally a scam, guys do not download this. Literally has 0 jobs for you. Would give 0 stars. These apps are the problem with our economy. All leeches. DO NOT DOWNLOAD! YOU WILL PAY FOR NOT EVEN ONE JOB. needs to be off the app store!
Even when you pay for the fee which I did, they will promise you in three days regarding an email they will provide you information on user name and start date but as any well planned scam will do would never come thru.
I wish death on this company.
This is the wrong time to be playing with people's livelihood. To the creators, rot in hell.
The lack of available jobs is probably at least partially due to the eviction moratorium that was recently extended until October 20 by the CDC. However, that has not stopped a number of landlords from evicting tenants, like this family from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Via WISN ABC:
"The sheriff showed up, show me a piece of paper, never put it in my hands, put it back in his hand and said, 'Y'all got 30 minutes to get out, it's not our problem that you don't have any place to go,'" Terrence said.
"It's scary. We have nowhere to go, so now we're at risk for (coronavirus.) I'm six-and-a-half months pregnant and I have a 1-year-old son and a 9-year-old daughter," Jamie said.
WISN 12 News called the Holmes' landlord.
"You know what, I'm telling you, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the sheriff's department, there is no restrictions," the landlord, who is not being named in this story, said. "If there was a restriction, I could not have done it."
There is, of course, a restriction. But there's also a loophole for landlords who really want to be dicks — tenants who wish for the moratorium to apply to them have to sign an official declaration saying that's what's going on. I didn't know that until just now, and I'm sure a lot of other people didn't.
People have to make money somehow, and it's hard to judge people for taking practically any job in this economy. But we certainly can judge a company that comes up with such an idea and also takes 30 percent of the profits from any job. And we should do so harshly.
[VICE]
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Robyn Pennacchia is a brilliant, fabulously talented and visually stunning angel of a human being, who shrugged off what she is pretty sure would have been a Tony Award-winning career in musical theater in order to write about stuff on the internet. Follow her on Twitter at @RobynElyse
