Wireless Advocates Employee Reviews about "upper management"
Updated Nov 20, 2023
Found 129 of over 1K reviews
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Excerpts from user reviews, not authored by Glassdoor
- "Pay was good and if you knew what you were doing you were basically left alone which was nice." (in 64 reviews)
- "Districts Managers don't care about anything but hitting the numbers to get their bonus." (in 52 reviews)
- "If you try and stand up you get screwed by your district manager who is most disrespectful and talks negatively to others even when smiling in your face and telling you how great you are." (in 28 reviews)
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Reviews about "upper management"
Return to all Reviews- 1.0Jun 24, 2014Kiosk ManagerCurrent Employee, more than 3 years
Pros
Decent pay not great. Member base is great because of costco. Nothing else good to say but I need 20 words minimum.
Cons
Work/personal life balance is terrible. Manager not only has to sell majority of the phones but do the paperwork, recruit.. etc etc. Often obligated to go recruit off the clock and no help is provided from upper management. Very backwards company on how they operate. From training to sales model to everything. Stupid kiosk binder is worthless and waste of time and paper. NO INCENTIVE given to tenured employees to stay. Company doesn't focus on field level employees that do the hard work at all. I can go on and on but I will rest my case. I think the only reason this company is in business is because they are inside of costco. Without costco, wireless advocates won't be around for long.
2 - 1.0Jan 25, 2021Kiosk ManagerFormer Employee, less than 1 yearTimnath, CO
Pros
Besides working in Costco nothing.
Cons
Lack of training, lack of upper management response, lack of IT support, lack of support by the carriers you represent, customers come back unhappy when carrier do not honor trade in deals for perfect equipment, hours, lack of kiosk staff. All in all a total lack of upper management caring about what goes on at store level. Also, lied to about the amount of money that I was going to make. No work/life balance.
- 1.0Aug 22, 2018Anonymous EmployeeFormer Employee, more than 1 year
Pros
Flexible schedule and many of the employees are wonderful
Cons
Pay. Hours. Working condition. Treatment of employees. Training. Used to be a decent company but they have completely changed their upler management staff and it is horrendous. The pay structure is a joke. You can make more serving fast food or even mowing lawns. Upper Management views associates as dispensable and only cares about numbers with little regard to employees.
4 - 3.0Jan 5, 2018Store ManagerFormer Employee, more than 3 years
Pros
great income potential and work life balance
Cons
Upper Management about DM level very uninformed and out of touch
1 - 3.0Aug 26, 2019WIRELESS SALES EXPERTFormer Employee, more than 1 yearCranberry Township, PA
Pros
Earnings based on performance Flexible scheduling
Cons
Poor hiring practices led to consistent bad hires Upper level management seems very disconnected from employees
2 - 2.0Oct 16, 2016Wireless ManagerCurrent Employee, more than 1 year
Pros
Great money!!! You have to bend over backwards to get to where you need to be. If you're a busy kiosk that's the only way you can make money. Since they don't do any marketing it is all up to you.
Cons
Training - They'll send a manager for a week and after that the company wants you to use their intranet for everything else. If you need help, management says they're available but you'll see how quickly that goes away within a month. So when it comes down to it there's minimal to no training. Operations - The company wants you to do EVERYTHING. The belief that you need to run this as your OWN business is ridiculous. The return is minimal and the support is non existent. From inventory count, daily operations, to selling. Yes! They expect you to sell on top of managing your employees. They also want you to be the number one guy in your kiosk which in turn takes away from your employees' sales. Sales - Wireless Advocates (WA) will increase your budget if you are consistently successful. They ONLY work on a three month trend and LY budget has nothing to do with it. There is no yearly goal for your kiosk, there is only a monthly goal. The yearly goal is given as a district. If you're doing really well, numbers from a kiosk who's not up to par will be given to the successful ones. This is why my title is punished for being successful. Corporate and Upper Management - They don't recognize you as anyone but an employee. You truly are just a number and as my boss said to me 'I can ALWAYS find somebody else.' No one at corporate knows what you're doing in store. The communication between corporate and the kiosks are always impossible. They only work weekends and retail's busiest time is on weekends! If you have a problem well then you're on your own until Monday. Inventory - You'll never get what you need to sell. Replenishment and inventory will forecast the whole year. If you ask for a special request for items that you know will sell in YOUR kiosk, you must go through a three channels before it gets approved. Their favorite saying 'sell what you have'. What I'm saying is who knows your kiosk better than you? I have a lot more and wanted to be more specific but this should suffice.
4 - 1.0Jun 19, 2015Kiosk ManagerFormer Employee, more than 5 yearsSan Bernardino, CA
Pros
- Paycheck (not a good one, but a paycheck) There's really not much else positive to say about the company. It has a toxic corporate culture that just goes through employees without a care about them. (As management, I was told at one point that we had a 70% turn-over rate!)
Cons
- Constantly changing commission structure - Complete indifference to field employees - Indifferent and inept upper management - Corporate Headquarters is poorly organized, does not execute well, and blames the field employees for their mistakes.
2 - 1.0Jan 6, 2010Sales AssociateCurrent Employee
Pros
Wireless Advocates does offer a competitive pay plan as far as commission is concerned. Their benefits package is good, also they offer options such as matching a percent of the employee's investment into a 401K.
Cons
I have been working for Wireless Advocates for several years. Wireless Advocates used to be a good company to work for. However starting about two years ago the company started a downward spiral as the owner and upper management has become very greedy. -It is almost impossible to move up in this company, their system for scheduling is terrible. If you are an excellent salesman and have one bad month, the reason doesn't matter your hours get drastically cut, and you will be written up. -New employees are unable to receive sufficient training. The system for assigning who gets full time positions with benefits are designed to make sure no one receives benefits with the exception of management. -The upper management only cares about money being made, if it means screwing a customer or employee there isn't a second thought. -Work equipment and merchandise are sub par. -Extremely incompetent upper management.
- 2.0Feb 4, 2015Wireless Sales ManagerFormer Employee, less than 1 year
Pros
Because it was located on a military base, inside an exchange store, the customers were not typical mall types and were normally polite and considerate. Although I did have to spend considerable time and energy fixing 'reputation' issues when I took over, it was easier because it was a military environment and people were level headed. There was also the added bonus of being within a military host store that we could offer the customers the option of paying with their military credit card. The upper management were nice and personable, just did not do enough to make it a profitable and positive working environment. Tech support was awesome (trust me, you get to talk to them often). If you are working for a kiosk located on a large base that has family housing and a busier exchange, you can potentially make a decent income.
Cons
Lack of training or support. I had 5 hours of shadowing manager at a different kiosk and some inefficient online simulations to take over and manage an already struggling kiosk with no staff. After figuring out the many different systems to sell, trouble-shoot and activate devices on 4 different carriers; I was able to hire and train another sales rep. It is next to impossible to get people to work for you - pay and hours are unpleasant and it is very difficult to get base access. My employee and I typically worked open to close shifts, many of them alone so that one of us could get a day off. The upper management is not very available (I did not see my DM for several months after starting). There is little advertising or signage to even build a customer base (and it is limited to who can get on the base), and nothing happens when you ask upper management for these things. At the host store where my kiosk was located, the average day saw 10 customers (I would coax as many to my back corner location as possible); so the promised pay of $60k per year was a joke, I barely made 1/3 of that. Which was a serious drop from what I was accustomed to from working in mobility for a few years. Not allowed to sit, no place to put your things (because you are in a host store). The attire was very unprofessional for wireless sales, it was the same as Walmart.
4 - 1.0May 27, 2018Kiosk ManagerCurrent Employee, more than 3 years
Pros
You work inside costco so they havebdecent hours. Decent discounts on wireless bills
Cons
Wireless Advocates as a company the upper management dont have a clue how to run a business. They changed the pay scale for wse rhey prety much took the commision from them except for the stores that sell 200 + phones a month. Managers are WAY under paid i did the math wireless advocates only spend 0.15% at most in payroll. Over half the stores in my district are short handed because employees keep quitting because of the pay. I made $37k last year as a Kiosk Manager my base pay is $13 an hour for a manger costco starts their employees in my area off at 13.50 an hour. Cashiers make more than i do just standing there ringing up people all day. Than you have the upper management crying that if you dont improve sales than we will make changes and you wont be a part of that. My kiosk was betwe1 to 3rd in the entire compant 1 in my district i went 2 days where we didnt sell a phone because it was slow my regional manager called my DM ( Distre Manager) and said rhis kiosk isn't doing and you need to do something with them NOT KNOWING I WAS IN THE TOP!!!!i mean wtf you see the store 0 out twice in the middle of the week but dont see we are stil in the top 5 of the entire company wtf. Wireless advocates you need to fix the pay i am looking for another job im sick of working 40+ hours for crap pay no sick leave and no pay holidays costco even pays for the holidays . I had an emergency surgery and because i had already used my vaction time up i didnt get paid for the time i was in the hospital where i almost died i had to go back to work 2 days after having my surgery because i couldnt afford to be off . Yet the upper management gets paid holidays sick leave plus vacation . Oh and wait i wirk in costco 40 + hours and you cant even work a deal out where we get a free membership like costco employees do. Wtf no sick leave come on how cheap can a company be no sick leave or paid holiday.
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