Advanced Communications Reviews

Pros

Some of the customers are nice and you aren't cooped up in an office all day. When times were good you used to be able to make decent money.

Cons

The only thing that stays the same is the constant change in policies, benefits, and how your pay is determined. Meetings are overdone.

Advice to Senior Management

ACI used to be a great company to work for. It's been in a downward spiral for several years. You need to get back to doing things the way you did it before if it's at all possible.

Pros

If you are desperate for money then they have work for you. But you will be giving up the rest of your life to earn it. You will be taught some valuable skills that will aide you in furthering your career with a more reputable company.

Cons

Extremly long hours (12-14 hours a day), 6 days a week; makes it difficult to have a personal life. No respect from management. No holidays. Hard to get vacation time approved so whats the use having it.

Advice to Senior Management

Start treating your employees with respect. Start by giving appropriate notice of schedule changes instead of springing it on us the day before. Also, when you schedule a crack of dawn meeting and everyone drags themself into work early to attend (even though they didn't get home until way after dark the night before) do not cancel the meeting and reschedule it for the next day because you didn't prepare properly.

Pros

.PROS? Well, you have a job, you're always promised it will get better, Comcast will pay higher soon, Comcast calls the shots, Comcast is counting on us. You really feel you're working for something bigger, and everytime you think you just can't do it, you get an ego boost... I guess those are pros...? It may be a decent place to work if someone else (Comcast)wasn't really pulling all of the strings, and actually "cared".

Cons

Work 80+ hours a week for minimum wage PLUS a huge production bonus that is impossible to get. Your numbers are based on what Comcast tells you they are, and 75% of the service issues are related to bad COMCAST equipment, or the in-house guys simply coding out a job to make you look bad. The other 25% are things you could control if you weren't given 30 hours worth of work in a 10 hour day. You have to cheat on your paperwork to make Comcast think you made your time frames, which is absolutely impossible considering the contracting companies get everything left after the oh so delicate in-house guys get all of their work on the same block. This leaves you going 40 miles to an a.m. job, than 15 back to a 10-2, than passt the a.m. to 1 of 5 p.m.'s, finally your 2 5-7 calls at 9"00 p.m. The poor customer are waiting all day, and about as mad as can be at you because Comcast keeps telling them we're on our way. THAN the 20 calls from supervisors a day asking if you're going to make your next jobs time frame... They know that there is NO WAY, but they still ask. So after your 15 calls which 3 you were told to reschedule (per the customer of course). How about the billing??? Just say you did it, and customer will sign!!! ARE YOU KIDDING ME? If you do, ACI gets paid, but you get in trouble for falsifying your orders. We get the broken equipment, non-working remotes, and than told how much we suck. How about feeling like you're going to lose your job every single day...? That makes for a positive attitude, all while you're being yelled at by the customer because Comcast put the ordwer in wrong and they sat on hold for 3 hours 8 different time (that's my fault). God forbid you tell customer you don't have time to run another outlet, than they call Comcast and tell them what a piece of crap you are and no one wants to hear the techs side, we're always guilty. It's literally like being stuck in prison, why do we stay? Well, because it's a job, and you're reminded everyday how tough it is out there.ACI is a traveling circus, we travel to your town, mess it up, and move to the next place where they want you to scare the home teams. Biggest political nightmare since politics!!! Stay far away, or work at Comcast where you get 4- jobs per day and have 3 hours to do a perfect job, get paid by the hour so you can sit behind a strip mall with 5 other guys dodging the work. When you all come back to the pretty Comcast building you get told how great you are because you out did the contractors again because contractors don't care... PLEASE!!! We are the ones working our butts off because you DON'T! I've seen 2 other local companies guys who look just as beat down as us, I'm sure they suck too! Someday Comcast will actually realize it's the perfect little lazy in-house techs that are the problem, than maybe contractors will finally get some sort of respect. NAH!!! They'll just get more free cable, online and phone, get off at 4:00 everyday, and have some sort of real life since they get 2-days off and are patted on the back for completeing all of their jobs and making all of their timeframes. "Good boy Billy, you did 5 hours of work in 8 hours, and you didn't have any complaints"
I bet ACI would truly be great if the supervisors and managers could actually think about anything other than what we did wrong now. I feel bad for all of the contractors out there feeling like every day may be there last because they just can't measure up to the Comcast guys.

Advice to Senior Management

Try to stand up for yourselves. Is Comcast so ignorant that they don't know that they're literally killing you? I know it's not easy to be a supervisor here, but we have to speak up. They have to know we are only human too... Don't they? No one can pass measue up to in-house and they have to know that. They're just pushing harder for their bosses who have never seen a day in the field. They under pay so you have to take as much work as possible just to stay afloat, and you take it, so of course they're going to keep it that way. They want 10 new techs for you to deal with every week so you have to worry about the unemployment, the lawsuits, and the bad equipment that they give us. They cannot truly be this inhumane, can they? I've talked to so many other techs from so many companies, and they all say the exact same thing... "i got a divorce" "I miss my kids", "I forgot how to have fun". We all need to have a contracting companies meeting and TAKE A STAND!!! Everyone is afraid of the cable giant... Customers, ask your tech the next time you get a visit, are you a contractor? Ask them how Comcast treats their company, and while you get that crooked smile and they look away and they say "it's great", take a closer look and you'll probably see there eyes start to tear up.We're pre-programmed to say how great Comcast is, never discuss what's really going on or that we are in a hurry to our next job....ITS COMCASTIC!!! As long as the customer experience is good, we can still have a job. Management, I'm sorry you're stuck, lucky that the people are so close, or we;d have nothing at all. Well, gotta go pay someone to work now.

Pros

The coworkers are the only good thing about working there. It's more like they are your partners in suffering since they are enduring the same thing.

Cons

I would NEVER recommend this place to a friend. At one time I took pride in doing a good job. I did my job and was paid decently for it. Those days are over! They changed the way you get paid there so that for most guys it ends up being minimum wage. The morale as well as the quality of the work has plummeted. They have slashed benefits, cut hours, taken away 401K matches and put in a bunch of fees to take money away from the techs. They charge you a uniform usage fee on uniforms that you bought yourself!

As for management, it seems like their favorite way to spend their time is harassing the techs and finding ways to write up the techs. The reason for this is so that each employee has a documented trail of shortcomings so they can't get unemployment when they leave. It is truly an unpleasant place to work.

Advice to Senior Management

You guys need to get it together and fast! Even management is going to be looking for jobs after ACI self destructs.

Pros

Own work vehicle, some tools provided, and over all friendly co-workers.

Cons

Work overload, time restrictions, paid by job not by hour, not given right equipment or given faulty equipment, very little assistance out in field, long days, and not trained in many situations you will face. Believe me this is not a job you want. It may sound enticing to some but thats exactly the point, their whole purpose is to hire undereducated people having a hard time finding a job in this economy only to exploit them for cheap labor for the ever growing cable giant we all know as Comcast.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't make employees drive to the work site if you don't have work for them. This is a very unorganized company which seems to have a hard time holding onto employees.

Pros

If you get into there little click you can make money....but be aware of those hidden charges that they do.

Cons

$60 wk for the truck or van, No Holiday pay, No 401K, $2.50 wk for uniforms (if you have them or not, you still have to pay that) . Upper Managment and Supervisors do not ever take the techs side for anything they rather write up or fire you, there is no leadership very poor moral. This is the only Company I know you have to pay them to work. I paid more on the van or truck then i did in Federal taxes. there is no insentive to work for this Company at all. They do everything barkwards, they dont give you all the tools you need.

Advice to Senior Management

Take look at your managment team, Field Supervisors, and you lead tech.....these people are the reason way the turn over rate is so high. There are no leadership, communication, and lack of support.

Pros

Fringe benefits... high revenue earners get take home trucks, gas cards, padded hours, exemption from training seminars. With the right combination of work and available billing codes, you can make a fair wage (2K/wk), but don't hold your breath!

Cons

Very little to no communication... poor project planning, management makes decisions based on theoretical goals, not reality. Equiptment problems; lack of proper hardware, improper tools given to employees. A sliding pay scale (L2R) that punishes employees who can't generate enough revenue. I've seen L2R result in an excellent employee working 80 hour weeks and seeing $7/hr on his paycheck two weeks later. Incredible turnover rate... I heard rumors of 157% in 2006.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to the field supervisors... they aren't saying it won't work as a joke!