American TV And Appliance Reviews

Pros

You can make decent money but you will work a lot of hours

Cons

You will work every week end and almost all holidays. Its retail

Pros

Friendly co-workers
Sometimes friendly customers
Good training and the ability to easily get information from vendor reps
Flexible with scheduling around school

Cons

Paid only on commission
Long retail hours
Mandatory 12 hour shifts twice a week
Commission changes daily so knowing what to sell on any given day is impossible

Advice to Senior Management

Don't play with your salespeople and their money. If you have one commission one day and the very next day, without any new stock or purchasing by the buyers, the commission changes, theres something wrong

Pros

Friendly staff at store level
Employee discount
Indepedent work atmosphere

Cons

Expensive health insurance ($255 every two weeks) with high deductibles and copays ($2000 per person in family), unless you work in Madison (corporate or two Madison stores).
Commissions continue to decrease yearly, even when profit % is up.
No 401K company match (WSJ reported recently 75% of companies now matching again)
Horrible sales traffic results in few opportunities.

Advice to Senior Management

The company has tried the past two years to make improvements in operations, deliveries, and point of purchase, which has helped. There have been strong efforts to survive in a down economy. Advice to management- perhaps upper management should take a good look at the condition of the older stores- some have facades from the 1980s and many customers won't even come in to see how nice the interior is- an update would help. Also, lower prices would be wise- customers are too smart to fall for the crazy high prices on some items ($1299 for a bonded leather sofa that a competitor sells for $399?).
Please try and increase pay and negotiate for a better health plan. Many long-term sales associates who want to continue to work at American are talking about moving on elsewhere due to the continual drop in commissions and the expense of having a family health plan. Other retailers like American do charge a lot as well (not as much as American, though) for health insurance, but they have much better coverages with only $500-1000 deductibles.

Pros

Empowered to drive my personal income

Cons

burnout. Long hours. On your feet constantly

Advice to Senior Management

stop penalizing salespeople when they get competitive to take a sale

Pros

-Easy to get in.
-Work hard and you can get a little more pay

Cons

-No communication
-No vision or leadershiop

Advice to Senior Management

Need to care for the customer and not just the short term money. Sales people need to be treated with respect.

Pros

- Good benefits
- TRAINING ! TRAINING! & MORE TRAINING! They make sure you know what your doing for the most part - especially in customer assistance
- Very cool employee referral program
- A pretty laid - back work enviornment
- nice break room with anything you could possibly need
- co workers are like family
- direct deposit

Cons

- the sales managers tend to think they're the 'stuff''
- will put in some pretty long hours
- may not have enough hours to give out
- will have surprise store hours at the last minute ( like the day of 'Hey we're staying open tonight until 8 pm on a Sunday"
-needs a new system

Advice to Senior Management

Overall a good company to work for.. but I feel there should be more raises to the hard working sales people that put in 12 hr. shifts more than twice a week. Also it would be nice if there was someone to finalize deliveries from Saturday on Sunday, becuase when we get returns that were just delivered on Saturday then we have to explain to the customer that there's nothing we can possibly do Sunday to return their item that was delivered.

Pros

A good salesperson can make a fair wage.

Cons

The management is very restrictive and requires sales performance to keep position.

Advice to Senior Management

The concern for improved sales should be towards the consumer and not the bottom line. Work on customer service and relationship and the customer will return and refer in the future.

Pros

Fairly high income for the industry

Cons

After several year of a manager recieving pay increases, you soon become expensive, and they will eventually drive you out of your job and replace you with a "cheeper" enployee.

Advice to Senior Management

Allow you staff to use proper judgment when closing sales and let them do what ever reasonable price it takes to close the sale. If some one is a loose canon, it is your job to reel them in and take corrective action. It is not fair to punish the whole lot for the actions of a few.

Pros

Great training for your first 2 weeks. Corporate higher-ups are really nice people and treat even the newcomers like the seasoned vets, I felt very welcomed!

Cons

After the first 2 weeks it is like pulling teeth to get a manager to even recognize your presence. You are basically an annoyance to them. Corporate has no idea its as bad as it is on the store level which is unfortunate, because it would likely save the company from going under (at least the retail portion of their business).

Advice to Senior Management

After the 2 weeks of training we all receive, work harder to continue it instead of throwing us into the shark tank.

Pros

stunning discount, 50% off furniture, 30-50% off the good tvs, decent deal on computers, co-workers (some managers) very fun and intellectual to work around (for the most part)

Cons

Like the other reviews say get ready to work for free, at least 5 hours worth of weekly meetings, 2 hours of door watching. And if you work in home office be ready to be treated like a dog when it comes to filling in for the door. And if you work in home office, dont let them try to fool you with the prospect of commission. Just sit back and enjoy the 9$ an hour.

Advice to Senior Management

Theres some talented people in there, people with business degrees and boatloads of experienced, most with good minds. Take advantage of that untapped resource that gets looked by each day. Otherwise wake up and modernize, give all the sales staff red shirts and lanyards, a flat hourly rate with bi-yearly .10c raises. The only reason people go to american anymore is because its the only company you can walk in and say "give me a discount cuz i want it" and you'll get it.