Pros
The pay is actually not bad. Your first 3 months you are guaranteed a commission check of $1,292 (taxed at around 43% however) plus your base pay of 32,000 salary which is actually hourly. It's just based on 40 hours per week, so you can get overtime. I averaged around 60k over the years. If you are decent at sales you can hit 100% of your quota to make that $1,292. A lot of coworkers I had however would make 75% - 90% of that because they did not achieve their quota many times. But you can have some good months where you can make say around 140% of that. That quota is based on a certain number of new numbers to Verizon and a certain amount of upgrades you do per month. What qualifies as a new line has changed many times over the years and upgrades become important then not important then important again. You also have a sales bucket to achieve. To fill your sales bucket you must sell accessories which you get 35% of an accessory put in your bucket (to be clear you do not pocket that, it simply goes into you sales attainment towards your bucket), selling "pull through" which is things like a connected tablet, hotspot, connected smartwatch, Hum (basically onstar & AAA), and selling insurance on devices. There is great benefits offered, you get 50% off of your Verizon data plan line access (depending on the plan), and you get 25% off accessories and 50% off the accessory of the month.
Cons
Retail hours suck but hey it's a lifestyle that some people don't mind and I did at a few jobs for about 6 years until now (didn't realize what I was missing) I couldn't decide what was the worst thing about Verizon so here's a few things: 1) When I first started, it was the best job ever and I told everyone how happy I was to be there. I could hit 170% of my quota every month even after being there for 5 months! The commission structure of how you get paid has changed so many times over the years, each time making it harder to make money. They tried to filter down messages about how you have the same opportunity to make the same money you just have to do this or change this. I honestly tried for so long to be positive, always drinking the coolaid because I wanted so badly to move up in the company. I even tried to convince my peers all the time that it was okay and here's how we can make more money. But unfortunately in the last year or two, me, a once big money maker and 170% every month achiever would struggle to hit 100%. I would actually be super happy when I would hit 110% because that would be more than I made last month and most of my peers were making even less so I still felt like I was succeeding. 2) There is absolutely no customer loyalty anymore. When I first started, if a customer came in and we saw they had been with Vzw for a few years and they were nice then we would ask a manager if we could waive an upgrade or activation fee. For no reason other than they had been with Vzw for a while! Now there is absolutely no way you are getting your upgrade fee waived unless there is an offer automatically generated in the account which is random based on regions, number of upgrade eligible phones on the account, etc. You may have luck getting an activation fee or two waived when you add lines to your account (new numbers to Verizon not transferring from another account already on Verizon) but you will have to ask and you may be told no a few times but you need to be willing to leave and go to another store or ordering through telesales. If a customer had an issue with their account because they didn't understand something that a rep had told them or maybe the rep just lied or mislead (yes it does happen, not everywhere but I have witnessed it from multiple people over the years) and their bill is higher than they expected or they are paying for something additional on their account that they would not have gotten had they fully understood what they were being told, management will not do a damn thing. They will print out your receipt and say you signed this agreement right? That's your signature. There's nothing we can do, I'm sorry that you didn't understand, I get it, but nothing I can do. ---- That makes me so angry because...leads me to reason #3 3) You are pushed so hard to sell pull through(tablets, watches, hotspots, hum, etc), insurance, accessories, insurance, new phones, & did I mention insurance? And look, I get it from a business standpoint why you would increase kpi's and other targets but it doesn't make sense when YoY door swings into your store are significantly down because so many people order online now but unfortunately for verizon reps quotas keep getting higher and kpi's keep getting higher. If you come in and get just a phone and nothing else because you want to buy everything else online, that really sucks for them. Let me break down the journey of Verizon's kpi targets from 2015 -2019. 2015: accessories - $80/phone or tablet insurance - no one cared but around 35% of phones/tablets pull through - 20% per phone/tablet new phones - counted the same as pull through 2019: accessories - $120 per phone/tablet (hello everyone shops on amazon. how tf do you expect this to happen?? Honestly I did make this happen most of the time but you really have to get creative) Insurance - 80% per phone/tablet (WHAT!?!?) Pull through 40% New phones - about 1 in every 4 upgrades you sell (unless you're in an area that isn't already saturated with Verizon customers, they aren't walking in to switch from another carrier very often. So you have to self generate that. How do you do that? Well find out in #4) 4) I have seen management encourage shady stuff. I have witnessed leaders encourage reps to add a new phone to their account to get a free phone or discounted phone to get the promo then switch some things around later behind the scenes or instruct the customer to do something so they can keep the promo but are still saving money. They do this because they want their store to show they are selling new phone lines and the reps don't say anything because it's the only way they are going to get paid. I have seen a manager tell a rep to put insurance on a customers phone even though the customer said NO multiple times and that they would deal with it if the customer called or came back in later on because the insurance numbers weren't looking good that day or month. That's NOT OKAY! But again, I understand the pressure that manager felt from feeling the heat from their boss. 5) There is no room to move up in the company, at least in the Western PA, Ohio, and WV area. Myself and multiple others had tried for years to move up. Myself in particular had done EVERYTHING I had been told do do in order to move up. Driving metrics myself, completing leadership programs, making contests to boost morale, mentoring new hires, speaking to higher ups when they stop in, reach out for best practices and bring them to my team to gain more success, move to certain stores in order to gain more exposure and put up higher numbers for higher traffic stores, took on a management role unofficially while we were down managers, took over a business rep role when we were down a business rep (keeping business numbers consistent and hitting my own numbers as well), and I don't know probably a bunch of other things I can't even think of right now because this subject in particular really gets me upset. I was ready. For multiple roles but could I get one? No. The hiring manager would hire their friends or someone that was a little higher on the leaderboard but a lot of time I had worked with that person or knew of them and knew how shady they were and how they put up those numbers. Matter of fact, I feel like everyone typically knew but if you put up monster numbers they didn't say anything about being shady unless a customer escalation would get passed the store manager to their manager. Sorry but I have a different idea of what a leader should be and I wanted to do it the right way which was very effective by the way. I also tried to get into business roles because the pay was better and their were more options towards the end in the business roles. I could probably list a few more things but I feel like I have just written half a thesis and should probably move on. I hope this helps someone!