National Electronic Warranty Reviews

Pros

Ease of access
Work at home
Help from managers

Cons

Have to have your own equipment
When service was down you could not work so that was no pay.

Advice to Senior Management

Give employees more options for working.

Pros

Decent benefits available such as full coverage health, life, and dental insurance. I also got nearly-free Directv service (paid about $10 per month)
No experience required. It's extremely easy to get a job with NEW due to the enormous turnover rate. Just be polite during your interview and you'll probably get hired.
Management sometimes tries really hard to make you feel appreciated, for example often they would feed everyone at the call center at no cost other than showing up for work.
Most employees, including supervisors are glad to help with any issues.
The company offers as much overtime as you want, so if you need the money you can work virtually as many hours as you can stand, but most employees don't dream of wanting to be there any more than is required.

Cons

Really poor, unprofessional work environment. The hiring standards are so low our call center was crawling with ignorant, unprofessional, immature employees. Almost any time I came to work someone had their car pulled up to the front door blaring obscene rap "music" at full blast. Many employees would hoop and holler in the cubicle right next to you while you're trying to assist a customer on the phone. The call center was filty a lot of times, especially the break room which was rife with flies and just nasty most days.
 The training program offers little to no preperation for the actual job. My training was about 6 weeks long. Most days we would sit in a classroom for 8 hours doing next to nothing. Once you actually start taking phone calls you are faced with questions and issues that you have no clue how to resolve which frustrates both you and the customer.
 The work schedule is really absurd. You are assigned a very rigid schedule that begins when you complete training. My schedule was work from 3 PM to 12 AM, Friday thru Tuesday. You will work a lot of times when your friends or family are off work, i.e. nights and weekends. This is made clear to employees up front, but it doesn't make it any more bearable. The only way to get time off outside of your schedule is to take vacation days in advance, which you only have a limited number or days, or find someone to work for you which is very rare because most employees savor their time off dearly. I worked at NEW for roughly 18 months before finally geting a schedule where I was off every weekend (schedule changes are awarded by seniority) but I still had to work 1 PM until 10 PM every day.
 The most noticeable negative aspect of the job is the job itself. You'll sit in a tiny cubicle just large enough for a computer on the phone for 8 solid hours a day. You are given two 15 min. breaks and one 1 hr "lunch" break. The job is very repetitive. You will take calls from different customers about the same issues over and over. You are required to try to get the customer to work with you to resolve the issue over the phone, which in many instances aggravates the customer. Many of the customers who call are just not operating their equipment properly and have caused the issue on their own, so you will take a lot of phone calls from elderly people or others who are just plain ignorant. This results in a lot of frustration for the employee.
 When I started at NEW, employees who did their job well were awarded with time off the phone for training, team building activities, coaching with your supervisor, or sometimes just to relax. Eventually though our managers selected a single "team" of about 20 employees who were the only ones in the whole call center allowed to do these activities. Obviously this caused a lot of animosity and also removed what little incentive other employees had to do their job well.
 I would advise you stay away from NEW unless you are extremely desperate for a job. If you are really desperate you can at least go through training program, which is 4 to 6 weeks long, and get paid $9.50 per hour for doing virtually nothing before you actually have to start taking phone calls.

Advice to Senior Management

Give employees incentive to do a good job. Most employees realize being employed at NEW is a dead-end job, but you can still reward those who do well with raises (better raises than an additional 25 cents an hour!) or a little time off the phone (instead of showing favoritism to one group of employees). Also, reward the folks who stick around. Trust me, you can't pay these folks enough money to put up with the crap they endure daily. If you don't believe me, try taking phone calls for a week and see how bad it is. I know you realize the turnover is astronomical and you can replace anyone, but that doesn't mean the replacement will do as well as someone who has done their job well for multiple years.

Pros

Very relaxed dress code and somewhat liberal attendance policy. When you call in sick or whatever you are generally not hasseled because there is a limit to how many days you can miss and it is not negotiable.
Benefits (Free Directv) are excellent.
Pay is decent and pay reviews are available twice per year.

Cons

Floor Supervisors tend to be completely out of touch with current issues that we deal with on the phone. I see a lot of busy work but little interaction between employees and supervisors. That's not all bad- I hardly ever talk to my supervisors. However, on the rare occasion that I need help, I don't feel confident that they are able.
Also, contests of many varieties are instituted to help reach company goals- But they often are not followed up on. Many times I've "won" contests only to never hear of it again. One of the reasons I left my last employer was for promoting fake contests all the time and not following up on them later so these have left a very sour taste in my mouth.
One of the things that excited me the most coming into the company was the promise of a weekly "coaching" - one-on-one time with my supervisor for one hour a week. I thought, at least I will have their undivided attention once a week for questions or concerns. This does not take place. In over a year (52 plus weeks) I can count on 2 hands how many coaching sessions I've had with any supervisor. When we do, they are unable to answer technical questions and are often chatting online with other supervisors instead of paying attention.

Advice to Senior Management

We do one-on-one interaction with customers on the phone, but the company has an endless need to push this "team" concept. It isn't a "team" sport. It is discouraged to ask for help from people sitting near you since they are also on the phone and may not have the correct information. The "team" situations we are put in are only for show and serve no purpose.

Pros

If you like the work from home environment, this would be an ideal job for you. You can sit in your p.j.'s all day, keep your kids at home (if they're quiet), and not have to worry about high gas prices. It is decent pay if you're looking for something above minimum wage. There are also opportunities to move up if you can make it through the bad.

Cons

You will constantly be harped on for having too short or too long of call times, nothing you do is good enough, there's no face to face interaction with the customer, phones can make you sound too quiet or too loud, you have to buy your own equipment from computer to special ear piece and phone, too many restrictions, something is always changing, management can be rude at times, the list goes on...

Advice to Senior Management

Find out what is going on with scripts, outages, etc. and be aware of it at all times to help the employees out a little bit. Also, a little positive reinforcement is always good!

Pros

Free DirecTv
Choose your own schedule
Decent pay

Cons

Hard to get time off
To much emphasis on metrics
Very difficult to change schedule

Pros

You are able to work from home in some instances.

Cons

Lack of feedback or help from your supervisors. Empty promises. I had a supervisor who trained me to do much of her work with the promise in return that when other Sup positions became available I would be "highly recommended." Never happened. I spent 8 months doing many aspects of her job while still managing calls, and no recommendations come time to apply even with excellent reviews and stats. Lazy....

Advice to Senior Management

Treat your ccr's with a little incentive. Pay more attention to your lower management

Pros

Better sense of direction prior to merger. Prior JD Power and associate qualification process was demanding but provided areas of growth and accountability at the end the day.

Cons

Direction after merger was not clear. Call center environment has the potential to be quite stressful due to unfair practices.

Pros

Insurance is the best in this line of work. Same day time off is ususally available. Holiday pay for all of the major holidays. Human resourses at my location is 2nd to none. Direct supervisor that I have now is awesome. Great people in my location. The company cares about the quality of Customer Service delivered and also the stats that we have in handle time, after call work etc.

Cons

Sometimes the stats are figured too much in the day to day operations of a CCR. We are at the mercy of the consumer when it comes to how long a call takes. There is no spanish direct line, so we have to use interpreters, which greatly increases the handle time. The main problem that I have is that if you have a supervisor that is awful, there is no recourse to either get off their team or have management deal with them.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep an eye on which supervisors work with people and which ones dont. Other than that, keep up the good work

Pros

Work from home program is convienent. NEW University teaches courses during downtime.

Cons

They are not good on communication at all. The company is failing and lost key accounts in 2010 and left a lot of people in the dark. They try to terminate over 100 people and deny unemployed. I had to take legal action against the company before they would release my benefits to me.

Advice to Senior Management

Be better to your employees and communicate mergers and closings better.

Pros

It a work at home position

Cons

unfair practices and terrible compensation

Advice to Senior Management

watch your Sr. Leadership and make sure they are doing the right thing