Movie Gallery Reviews

Pros

free movie rentals, discounts on pop and candy.

Cons

when i started it was about the customer in the end it was about the almighty dollar. they don't treat their employees right, you don't get noticed for doing a good job. you are giving unrealalistic goals and told your job is on the line if you don't meet these goals. i was let go because they told me to get the stores numbers up and move 500 spots in the store rankings and i had to do this in eight days i didn't and they fired me. you can not make better numbers when you don't have customers who want powerplay or any other offers when they don't have the money for it.

Advice to Senior Management

you need to get more feedback from the store levels and not uper managment who don't know what people want in the stores. quit giving unreal goals

Pros

Free movie rentals, pre-street rentals on movies, discounts on candy. Effective & affordable health insurance.

Cons

Too much attention is being focused on PowerPlay, rather than the company being focused on whether or not the store is meeting revenue goals. While PowerPlay may be a good idea for those who rent often, the sporadic renter has no interest in PowerPlay. In this economic climate, the last thing people want for you to do is ask for their credit or debit cards to set them up on monthly drafts. It doesn't matter whether or not you sell 10 PowerPlay plans, or 0. You will not be recognized for your efforts, or gain any benefit for yourself. I know someone who was #1 in the district, and the only thing she received was a piece of paper that said "You made it happen." The worst part about it, they spelled his name wrong, too.

The company's loss prevention team's logic is flawed. You must ALWAYS call loss prevention BEFORE calling the police if someone is stealing something from your store. I don't know about you, but I refuse to call loss prevention if I have a gun pointed at me. I feel much safer calling my local law enforcement in situations when theft is involved, not my employer, who I don't trust already.

Advice to Senior Management

Communication is key. Threatening your hard-working employees with their job when they make a simple mistake does not make them work harder, it makes them work less. If you want your PowerPlay program to be successful, start adding incentives for your employees to start selling it. This is what you get when you hire employees, pay them minimum wage, and make them work by themselves in high crime areas. Movie Gallery, please don't be the Circuity City of movie rental stores. You used to be so much better than this.

Pros

There are some great, talents that work for this company. If you are fortunate enough to be assigned to a great supervisor, you can quickly learn to be successful with the company and in future. The work schedule is fairly flexible, as the stores are open 365 days/year and until late, 11pm or midnight. Great for students looking for part-time work.

Cons

There have been many stores that have closed in 2009. Competition is everywhere, with more to come as the customers find different ways to get their entertainment. RedBox and Netflix are big contendors, as are Movie on Demand, streaming video, Tivo, video games. The company isn't moving quickly enough to stay ahead of the curve.

Advice to Senior Management

Utilize more feedback from the field and more test markets prior to rolling out new programs. Run tests for more than 2 or 3 markets for 3 or 4 weeks, to iron out the bugs. Make training and development a priority. Not just 10 hours of training for a newly hired key holder, or 40 hours for a newly hired store manager. Often times we hire great people, only to lose them along the way with poorly structured training and lack of follow up.

Pros

Pretty flexible in taking days off and hours. Lots of flexibility when hiring (not firing). Free rentals. Health insurance. Discounts on candy/drinks.

Cons

Bonuses are extremely hard to achieve. Upper management is constantly belittling the work that associates do in the field everyday. Getting job threatened everyday because of customers not wanting to purchase powerplay.

Advice to Senior Management

Get rid of powerplay please! Purchase more popular items for customers. Bring back rent 3 get 2 free core. Bring back 4 for all. Stop complicating things.

Pros

Free rentals, fun people to work with, great customers.

Cons

This powerplay is killing us. I have a store in a small town where lots of people lost jobs yet im expected to get these people to spend money they don't have on a regular basis. What ever happened to giving the best night of entertainment. Instead we sound like used car salesmen. I feel bad if I have pushed and pushed until someone says yes knowing they really can't afford it. But if I don't I might lose my job. I have been a manager for 5 yrs and for the most part have really enjoyed it. Some things need to chage or there wont be a movie gallery.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to the people in the field. We do have good ideas from time to time. Poweplay is a good plan just bring back the cash month to month.

Pros

Free movie rentals- good customers

Cons

high pressure sales- unrealistic labor alowance (mostly everyone works alone) lots of opportunity for theft of merchandise

Advice to Senior Management

they should promote /demote people based on theur experience not on where they are in the chain

Pros

I enjoy my customers and their appreciation for my work. I believe that the company has strong abilities to adapt and over come the current economic crisis.

Cons

I am not appreciated by upper management. I do not receive proper training for new program roll-outs. My numbers speak for themselves, but am still looked at as less than an asset to the company.

Advice to Senior Management

I believe that the company should get more feedback from customers and less from upper management who are just looking to make numbers seem to stand out.

Pros

I once believed in Movie Gallery. It was the greatest job ever. Getting with my manager at the time on a Friday night and competing with her to see how much we could sell. Meeting revenue every weekend.

Cons

Me being the hard worker that I am in everything I do. It feels like nothing we do for this company is ever good enough. You can be at the top for weeks or even months but when you fall below 10% for the week in powerplay they don't want to hear any reasons. Nevermind that each town is different and each district is different but we get compared to all the stores. Or the associates that work there hardest and do everything without being told there just a number. Are they at 7% or below. I recently had to wright one of my associates up for the first time because she was below 7% for two weeks in a row for the first time ever.
 She was so upset it was like her faith in the company went out the door. She never calls in sick, always willing to lend a helping hand without being asked and does everything without being told. Do you think the company thinks about that. NO Way were all a numbers and if you don't get it then your job is being threatned ever day. They say were not but you know as well as I do we are. What happend to the days of meeting revenue. The company is loosing millions of dollars every day because of powerplay. I dont know about you but I like money is'nt that what keeps our business still going.

Advice to Senior Management

Believe in your assoicates you hired them for reason. Lets focus on what we need to., Making money again for our stores. Not forcing our customers in to doing something there not wanting do. And letting the managers be managers, because were not. We have so much busy work to ldo ike number reporting why because of powerplay a report that they get the very next day. I believe that powerplay was a good thougt at one given time but if you go back and look at what stores that are still open look at the good stores who perform take a look at there revenue there no where near the revenue that they was making last year. And last year wasnt the greatest, but it was way better than this one.

Pros

There are some good benefits. The insurance packages are fairly nice and reasonably priced. Free Movie Rentals and Game Rentals (after 31 days on the Games). Discounts on Concessions/Magazines/Buying Movies or Games.

Cons

Where to start.
Pay Day
First of all I do not agree with the way we are paid at Movie Gallery. I should not have to spend nearly $5 to retrieve my paycheck from an ATM (Card Company takes $2.50 and the ATM takes $2.50-$3.50).

Powerplay
The ever constant threats about losing your job if you don't sell the Powerplay Plans is absolutely asinine. You cannot expect people to sell a plan at a minimum of 10% per week when you require an Automatic Draft out of a Debit Card or Credit Card or 3 Months Cash in Advance (Meaning $129.37 if you want the Diamond Package) and your customer base does not grow enough to accommodate an extra 10% Powerplay per day. There will always be those customers who A) Do not have a Credit/Debit Card and do not want to pay 3 months in advance B) Absolutely DO NOT want to hear your sales pitch or C) Only rent once or twice a month or less and have no use for the plans.

Promised Raises/Bonuses
I have been promised several raises and bonuses by my Manager, District Manager and Regional Manager that I have never received. This would normally not be a huge issue if I was a Manager, however, I am a simple store level Employee who can only earn said rewards when certain deeds are directly witnessed by the above people.

Breaks
If you decide to work for Movie Gallery make absolutely sure that you have both eaten and used the restroom as you will NOT have the opportunity to do so again until after your shift is over. Make sure to keep some pepto on you as well because if you get an upset stomach you are stuck on the floor. If you cannot stand for at least 6 hours then you will not be able to do this job, as you are NOT permitted to sit down at any time save counting the cash drawers at the beginning/end of each work day.

Ridiculous work loads
I am not a lazy person, I work very hard, especially for the minimum wage I earn. That being said, coming in on a work to day to find 75+ After Hour Check ins (Movies must be opened to check for disc, closed, checked in, locked, boxed if a newer movie, and put on the wall), a 150+ Used Movie Pull (Movies must be located, unlocked, checked for theft, transferred to out of rental inventory to sale inventory, stickers removed, re-locked, re-stickered with 2 stickers, sorted and then placed in specific areas even if no room is available), 25+ Inactive Customer Calls (basically we go down the list and call EACH person and try to persuade them to come back in since they haven't been by in a few weeks) plus the normal daily customers which also includes pitching the Powerplay Programs which adds a good 3 minutes to each non-powerplay customer, locating movies/games for customers, checking in and putting away (see above for details) all the turn ins for your shift as well as trying to watch for theft. Granted 3 minutes may not seem like much on the pitch, but if you have 15 people to pitch to, that's 45 minutes of lost work time not to mention the time required to setup the plans themselves. All of this must be done before the next employee comes in which is usually about 5-6 hours. I know it doesn't sound like much, but trust me, it's more work than you think.

Advice to Senior Management

Change the Powerplay back to allow people to do either the Automatic Draft (if DESIRED, not FORCED) or the Month-to-Month Cash option. Better pay for the hard working employees. STOP THREATENING US! Listen to your Store Managers and even low-level employees, sometimes they/we will have good suggestions that could help increase sales.

Pros

Free rentals; great discount on concessions.

Cons

PowerPlay....that is all we are programmed to focus on these days. If you don't sign up at lease 10% of your customers on PowerPlay each week, you will be written up and most likely be terminated. I have seen many good associates lose their job because they are not selling PP. The problem is, most of the time we don't have the product that the customer is looking for, because another PP customer can keep it as long as they want. It's hard to sell something when you can't give the customer what they came in for.

Advice to Senior Management

PowerPlay is hurting our store. For example, we had a customer who used to spend about $80 a month. Now he only spends $39.95 and can keep the hottest game for 2 months, while you have many other customers who come in almost every day looking to rent the game that the PP customer is holding for eternity.