Higher One reviews

* Higher One is bleeding talent, in spite of a stated company goal to retain employees. * Human Resources is ineffective and unorganized. People are afraid of them. * All new hires are in the Buffalo division or in the India office. * No one seems to be really evaluating operational efficiency. * When developers in India write code that has to be corrected by developers in the US, having an Indian contingent costs more than it saves. * When managers who have staff in India are undermined by local Indian management, there is a problem. * Risk & Compliance is loaded with VPs and Directors, all of whom delegate their work to the departments losing staff, even as they continue to hire for positions that oversee and manage rather than positions that do the work in the trenches. * Employees are all in a holding pattern, waiting to find out what happens when the Dept of Ed rulemaking decision is made. Some are trying to wait it out; many are jumping ship ahead of an expected implosion. * Since the departure of the founders, most senior management hires have been those who were unemployed for one reason or another. Higher One hasn't been able to attract quality employees at those levels for some time, and it's showing. Cronyism is rampant.

Like many others at the company, I was let go and no reason was given. This happened to several other managers and employees prior to me but I was still shocked. The Quality Assurance department wound up taking over Customer Service and ran it into the ground with their monitoring of phone calls. People were on final warnings or terminated for saying the word need instead of want. Call could have been great in every other way but call failed if a certain word or phrase was used. QA had the final say even over managers. The place felt like Revenge of the Nerds as it seemed social misfits had taken over and were getting their revenge on everyone. Callers were beyond irate as the company behaved very unethically. College students would get financial aid refunds in the form of a MasterCard branded debit card. It worked like an instant checking account once you activated the card, which was the only way you could get your refund. Of course, you have to pay this refund back to the government at some point. What was deceptive and unethical is that these students were hit with fees for everything. Some poor students wound up owing the company thousands of dollars in over limit fees. Hopefully the government closes up this fraudulent operation soon