Suddenlink Communications Reviews

I have been working at Suddenlink Communications full-time for more than 8 years

Pros – Decent pay and benefits
Friendly employees and plenty of room to advance if you are willing to relocate.
Management listens to concerns and is willing to assist.
Provided with tools, uniforms, vehicle, and free service.

Cons – No domestic partnership benefits even though they promote diversity.
Management pay is lower than equivalent positions in other telecommunications industries.
Work order technology causes employees to rush to their next job.
Technologies are delivered before they are tested, which hurts customer's perception of company.

Advice to Senior Management – Put your money where your mouth is when you speak of diversity. Promote it within by supporting different employee groups.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Suddenlink Communications full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Excellent benefits. Free cable and Internet

Cons – (Call Center / Tech Support Dept.) After new management stepped in in 2011 they shifted from customer service to how much more can we squeeze out of our customers for a profit. They replaced knowledgeable supervisors with babysitters to make sure we were making sales ( i.e. the billing and tech departments). As the good supervisors left one by one, so did the veteran agents. Which lead to more calls from even more upset customers because all the rookies on the floor were not up to the challenge. I was there 5 years. The first 3 years would get 5 starts ~ year 4 was a 3, and I finally had to leave after the new people were getting better score cards than me when the only thing they did was sell stuff - not fix anything.

Advice to Senior Management – You people forgot what customer service was all about. Taking care of there needs .. not trying to sell them services they don't want.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Suddenlink Communications

Pros – Laid Back environment, free internet services

Cons – poor poor management, terrible training

I worked at Suddenlink Communications full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Great Coworkers, free cable and inet service

Cons – Low Pay, in Q too much

I have been working at Suddenlink Communications full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Free cable/internet if you live in one of their markets.

Cons – It's a very "Title-Driven" culture. Employees are not treated equally - the bigger/better your title, the higher your value to the company. If you are unfortunate enough to rank lower than a Director level, and you forget your "place" in the organization, upper management will very quickly remind you.

There's an extremely high level of mistrust among everyone. It truly is an "every man for himself" environment.

Pay is lower than average.

There's no since of "fun" or "family" throughout the organization. The corporate mentality is very old-fashioned, and even chauvinistic at times.

Advice to Senior Management – Value and recognize your employees and invest in their career development. Most of the attention is focused entirely on sales staff and management...all of the others (support/admin staff, etc.) are forgotten or ignored. And update your culture - take a cue from other cutting edge organizations like Zappos.com, Google, etc. who have happy employees and put into practice a 21st Century approach.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Suddenlink Communications full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Decent pay, great benefits, good people to work with.

Cons – Pay could be better but who doesnt think that they should be paid more!!

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Suddenlink Communications full-time for less than a year

Pros – Benefits are decent- health, dental, 401k, free cable are a plus. Pay is decent for Tyler area...

Cons – When more big companies come to Tyler, there will be more of a need for competitive commissions, but in the past 2 years, Suddenlink has used all the creativity it can muster as a company to figure out how to pressure agents to sell sell sell and pay them as little as they can possibly get away with for their trouble. What was once a thriving, pleasantly competitive & lucrative sales environment has been reduced to a floor of agents buckling under the pressure to force every product down a customer's throat, regardless of the reason for their call- and pay them peanuts for all the stress & effort. It's sad to see.
Nepotism, favoritism & greed are the norm here. If you have "it", sups love you, promotions come quickly & easily & you pretty much do what you want. If you don't have "it", you'll be threatened with termination for the same things others are freely getting away with... it's all a matter of who likes you.

Management jobs go to those who are well liked, not those with the best skills to lead. If the supervisor likes you, you'll be ok. If they don't, forget getting anything but the bare minimum from them. The direction a Suddenlink employee's career takes can rest largely on the supervisor they end up with, so the odds are definitely NOT good at all.

Sales goals and expectations are inflated for the current economy and are a result of corporate greed. Businesses expect to make a profit, but this goes well beyond that. The majority of expectations are not feasible based on the given circumstances and trying isn't enough.... agents have been forced to call cusotmers back if they couldn't close the sale, etc.

Advice to Senior Management – Get back to being a company that is customer focused and treats employees like assets, not like slaves to the company's bottom line, charged with obtaining sales at any cost. Empower your employees instead of making them feel they are in a vacuum where effort doesn't matter and nothing is ever enough.
I envision a workplace where employees are smiling because they feel they are part of something awesome. (See 100 Best Places To Work: Google) Happy employees make happy customers and happy customers buy! Remember that mentality? Get back to it!

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at Suddenlink Communications full-time

Pros – free cable and internet and a pay check and a work truck to drive home that's about it

Cons – where to start. supervisors in my system are all more concerned about them selves looking good than anything else even if it means throwing a good tech under the bus. I am a service tech. they recently said we have to score a certain score on all categories across the board on our score cards and some of it I understand but the sales is the one that I don't agree with. I did not sign up to be a sales man I signed up to be a service tech if I wanted to be a sales man I would have signed up to be one. if we don't make that score they want we get punished but my job is to fix and install services and make sure my customers are happy suddenlink has sales people on staff to sale services. management is far out of touch with the people under them. they do not care about us at all. we get worked to death and every week at our meeting they announce a new policy that makes our job harder. we have 45 minutes to complete each job but we have to fix the problem and check behind all of the wall plates go up to the top of the pole check the connector there check all of the phone wiring if the problem is the drop that takes like 45 minutes its self to replace so basically keeping your points per hour good on your score card is very difficult. there is ALOT OF FAVORITEISM in the bryan college station system. supervisors perform very harsh quality control checks on techs that they don't like. but take it easy on there buddy's. they lie to us and then punish people for reporting it to hr if they find out who it was or who they assume it was which violates the open door policy so now techs are afraid to say anything to anyone because a target WILL be painted on there back I have seen this too many times. management punishes us for not following safety procedures but I have seen first hand them not following the same safety procedures that they punish us for. one supervisor in particular put me in a unsafe position. he put my ladder on a pole I told him I was not comfortable climbing because I could not put my ladder on it in a safe position according to how we were taught in the training course. There are ALOT of techs here that are looking for other jobs and the things that I have mentioned are just a few things that are going on here. and I thank hr needs to meet with the techs one on one every once in a while to discuss how things are going that way hr can hold people accountable for there actions or try to make changes that would benefit everyone. HAPPY TECHS = GOOD WORK AND ATTITUDE GOOD WORK AND ATTITUDE = HAPPY CUSTOMERS

Advice to Senior Management – practice what you preach, treat all techs fairly, try to make this a good place to work as we are as important as the customers, stop lying to us all the time, be fair, give us time to clean our trucks we need it very bad, hole your selves accountable for things instead of pushing it on us, treat us like the good people we are, lead by example, take care of your techs and they will take care of you.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Suddenlink Communications full-time for less than a year

Pros – Free cable and internet.. Insurance was good for family prices. Discounts on other memberships and things as well.

Cons – Contractors do the home installs a lot of the time. I already had internet with this company for years and years, but when the courtesy service was turned on it took three separate trips (on different days) for them to resolve the install. Apparently making sure you didn't break someone's internet connection after installing cable tv is not a standard practice.

Had a technician lie to me. Told me they stopped by at 6:30 pm , knocked but no one was home. I had been there since 6:00 pm and no one showed up at all or called me until I called them two days later, no robo or real person follow up.

They hire from within a lot because they expect you to know the industry. Good luck if you weren't already answering phones or installing cable modems for them.

Long hours. I mean 60-70 hours a week. Salary.

This job taught me to not trust your co-workers.

Advice to Senior Management – Train your employees. I had more training in safety practices than on my core duties..

Don't hire under-educated people just because it's cheaper.

Stop berating employees past and present.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Suddenlink Communications as a contractor

Pros – It was a paycheck.

There is a minimum word criteria here but honestly, the regular check coming in is the only pro that comes to mind.

Cons – The management at this company is all about spin and how to make themselves look good to executive management, even at the expense of the employees and contractors under them. Project managers are not allowed to manage projects, they only fill out endless paperwork and baby the project team to suit their every whim. You don't need project managers in the industry sense for that kind of work. You need data entry workers and file clerks that agree with you no matter what the situation or circumstance.

The good ole boy network seems to be the standard method for hiring and advancement. This is the bias, favoritism, and nepotism referenced in another review. Morale is ruined for anyone not in the club.

Advice to Senior Management – The culture and values that you plaster everywhere are not what this company is about in the slightest. For starters, your VPs are arrogant and belittling, like a clique of middle school children. They set the worst example possible.