NW List svc $ 185.00 (Spokane: rent, crime, job market)

[kagicre]

Hello, my husband and I are looking into Spokane, if relocating there would be a good idea. My husband is now a truck driver and at the moment we live at the Oregon Coast near Portland. Spokane has the right size for me, it has a lot of beautiful nature to go for hikes with our dog Angel, and most of all, it has about 50% less rain than Portland.
So I was looking for jobs on The Spokane Spokesman online and most of the ads had this: NW List svc $ 185.00. It seems some kind of an agency, but one that once money from you, seems to be a scam. Can anybody tell me what this is all about? Is this a scam and if so, is the job market bad - because most of the ads have this "NW list...."
Thank you for your help.

[redhead]

don't know what that stuff is but do know the job market is tight here as with everywhere else. i lived in portland too and love it here. portland has a hi tec job market whereas here it's more blue collar, with lots of health care, but they are cutting back as well. so your lower pay service jobs are more prevalent. but it's also lots cheaper rent here and utilities seem to be lower as well. i love it here, the people are more open then in portland. i found people in portland real fond of themselves and sorta glumy. it's more conservative blue collar as has been pointed out elsewhere on this site. but there's still some progressive/liberal activities. not as many cool bookstores as portland though. but the public transit here is even better then portland even though there's no max the surface street buses run very frequently and broadly cover the entire metro area. police department is not good so crime is higher then it should be and the police are trigger happy so be alert to that. spokane requires smog checks and has a ridgid smog criteria, more so then oregon. the big big plus is that property values are very much lower here then in the portland area. good luck

[fractured_kidult]

It's a scam. You give them $185 and they give you a piece of paper of places hiring. THEY DO NOT HELP YOU FIND A JOB IN ANY WAY.

[kagicre]

Thank you for your input. I thought it was a scam, but I wanted to know if anybody here on the forum could tell me more about it. And why is the newspaper printing a scam like that in the first place?

[Opyelie]

As I understand it from an ex co-worker that got caught with it - you sign up and they don't even send you a "list" but you have to go to THEIR offices to access the "list" on their computers.

As to why the Spokesman allows it, guess they don't care as long as they get the revenue. If you look at the NW List ads they're all for little or no experience in positions that allegedly pay above what employers round here are currently paying for the same jobs.

Unless you're a degreed professional or in the healthcare field the Spokesman classifieds are pretty much a waste of time over the past 2 years. Prior to that they actually used to have REAL ads for real jobs.

Spokane is also an area where it's who you know, and filling vacant positions by word of mouth and over the past two years that has just gotten worse. MOST jobs here don't even make it to the ads as everyone "knows someone" that's looking.

[kagicre]

Thank you Opyelie, we have now a much better picture about how things are working in Spokane. Your response is really helpful.












mod interpose: any further discussion on this topic may constitute T.O.S. issues. Thanks for the responses. Thread closed.