Wireless Advocates Employee Reviews about "wireless advocates"

Cons

Kiosk Management duties really don't differ from WSE duties however the pay sure does. The company does not value higher education. In my region I never once had heard of a KM or DM that had any level of higher education. This creates an unprofessional environment with the leadership of WSE due to qualities and skills are assumed by merit of years spent at WSE and nothing else. Traveling District Managers create an awkward relationship of trust due to lying about spying on WSE employees. Wireless Advocates has an 80% churn rate.

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.

Cons

Wireless Advocates will challenge you and will question your behaviors. They will teach, coach and train you to succeed in the organization but if you don’t bring the right attitude, growing mindset and appreciate learning then this is not the organization for you.

Cons

Great, so now that you've seen my Pro's let me talk about my Con's and frustrations. You should probably have a drink handy, as this is gonna be long. For starters, let's define a couple of key terms and acronyms that will help you understand exactly what I'm talking about. -Wireless Advocates (WA): Wireless Advocates, the company that I work for. They are a third party wireless vendor that primarily sells Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint services. A kiosk of their's can be found within every single Costco, and they also have some kiosks found on military bases as well. -Costco (Costco): The building/warehouse/retailer in which I work. One of North America's largest and successful brick and mortar retailers that charges a membership fee to shop there. Take's great care of their employee's. -Costco Member (Member): The people who shop at Costco. -Commission (Commission): Extra money paid by your employer for selling products or services. A 'kicker' or small 'bonus' if you will. This is sales after all. -Wireless Sales Expert (WSE): My position at Wireless Advocates. I'm one of the people who helps you access your account, sells you products, accessories and insurance, and is the meat and potatoes of WA's workforce. My position can either be part time, or full time depending on the location. I make commission for every product or service I sell. -Kiosk Manager (KM): Every single WA kiosk has a Kiosk Manger, or KM. They have the EXACT same responsibility as any WSE; making sales, hitting goals, and activating products for members. They also have the added responsibility of interviewing and hiring new WSE's, making the schedule, and making sure training is done on time. They have a monthly sales goal that, if met by their team, earns them a bonus. -District Manager (DM): Every Kiosk Manger has a District Manger who operates and runs a district of kiosk's, usually about the size of a state or so (10ish stores). A DM is responsible for keeping his KM's in line, and also making sure that their Regional Manger hits their goals. (This is a sales company after all). Cool, so now that we have these preliminary items out of the way, let me break everything down for you about how I dowhat I do, how I do it, and how I get paid are completely busted. But before I get to that, In case you didn't already know this or haven't read any other reviews about WA yet, let's making this clear right now: ***Wireless Advocates has a 60% PERCENT turnover rate for new hires within the first year.*** S I X T Y P ER C E N T Let's find out why. First up we have my pay plan as a WSE. Make note that KM's do NOT have the same pay plan as me, and we'll cover them later. DM's are salaried. For simplicity's sake, I'm going to estimate numbers up or down slightly so the math is easier to visualize. (Although the exact numbers are worse than what I'm showing you here). -For my hourly pay, I make $9.00 per hour. Cool. For my commission, I make $40.00 per sale. Awesome. So far this sounds great; you could make some serious money doing this job if you do your best and make some sales. -Unfortunately, it's not that easy (why else would I be writing this review?) because Wireless Advocates REQUIRES you to outsell your hourly rate to make any commission beyond what you get paid per hour. Basically, you have to pay them back until you see any extra money. Let's do some simple math to see what this looks like: *An average work day at WA is 9 hours, with an hour lunch, so you get 8 hours on the sales floor. 8 hours * $9.00 hourly = $72 dollars per day base pay. This is your 'safety net' in case you have a terrible month and happened to think that working at Sam's Club was your place of employment. *Every sale you make is $40. $40 x 2 = $80. So if you work a shift and sell two phones you have justttt eclipsed your hourly pay for the entire day by $8. (Keep in mind that these numbers are actually higher than their true vales, as I rounded them for ease of reading). So so far in your day you've made $8. If you sell a third phone, you're up to $48 extra for the day. *$72 base pay + $48 = $120 total pay for your day. $120 / 8 hours worked = $15 dollars per hour. Not bad for some part time work making sales. (Or full time, for that day). -So if you're selling at least 3 phones per day, you're making $15 per hour. Nice. Or, if you're full time at 40 hours per week / 160 hours per month / 1,920 hours per year, you're getting $28,800 per year. Alright, sure. -The average daily store goal is about 4 - 7 phones per kiosk. -However, this systems fails to account for the fact that you're GONNA have bad days. Or zero days where no one buys. Or if you're having a bad month. It happens, sales is random at the end of everyday. You never know what is gonna walk through that door. (thanks PawnStars). So now that you've gotten a glimpse of how the system can be really good for making money, lets break down how it ACTIVELY WORKS AGAINST YOU: -If you ever have a day you make 2, 1, or 0 sales, you HAVE to make them up at some point during your shift. Because the more hours your work the more hourly you make, so you're always fighting your own hours to overcome your base pay of $9.00. -If you're a full time employee, you can break it down and think of it this way; you work 160 hours per month, (160 * $9.00) / 40 = 36 phones per month. You basically start getting paid ANY commission / bonus on your 37th phone in a month. Do any less than that? You get your nice $9.0 0 per hour. -If you're an opening shift employee, you are the one to come into work at about 9am, change the price cards, change the offer sheets, and more. The Costco Warehouse opens at 10am. So A) You get paid $9.00 for the hour you open B) You cannot sell anything during this time to overcome your hourly because the store isn't even open C) It still counts against you for your sales metrics. If you can help it, don't open at ALL because you are literally working for free during this time. -WA has a training. A LOT of training. Basically all of it is done on online training sessions with slide shows and quizzes. WA prefers us to do our training at home, not at Costco, so that we are more available to make sales happen. Except that if you do your training at home, and then log the time you've worked on your time card, you MAKE IT MORE DIFFICULT for you to make any commission, because it counts against your hourly. -From time to time there are required meetings within a kiosk team, your wireless reps from your carriers, or with your DM. These meetings take place before or after store hours as they cannot take place when Costco is open. So, as you've already guessed it, logging these hours into your time card ALSO count against your commission. -Sometimes in a sales environment, you can't walk away from what you're doing to take your lunch break. Understandable; you're in the middle of completing a sale and cannot stop, you're having a really busy day and can't step away, or you're just plain busy. You don't always take a lunch, which can be fine or not (up to you.) But for those of us who sometimes skip lunch? To make that extra sale? Yeah, that $9.00 of extra hourly you just earned for skipping lunch is essentially removed from the commission you're making right now. Good stuff, didn't need it anyway. So that's your pay plan if you're a part time of full time WSE. The take away from this is; it used to be work as much as you'd be scheduled, get your hourly, make sales, and get some commission. With the current pay plan, every WSE is now incentivized to do this; make as many sales as possible IN THE LEAST TIME amount as possible. Because working more hours gets you nothing. So you see how I get paid, now let's talk about my actual job. Being a Wireless Sales Expert and everything we do for Costco Members. -I sell four carriers, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint. I have to know FOUR different activation systems. Four different carrier systems. Four different customer service, and support teams. Four pricing plan structures, their legacy plans, and current promotions. Basically, take the knowledge you would have to know at any other single carrier store and quadruple it. They also mess up and glitch in their own fantastic ways, and are constantly changing. -You will stand for 8 hours per day. If you like sitting, don't be a WSE. Plain and simple. You do get to keep your FitBit happy though. -WA has been around for a long time, and they use a LOT of legacy systems. A lot of manual data entry too. Be prepared to write up a lot of stuff by hand, and print at LEAST 15ish sheets of paper per sale and transaction. (It's 2018; we're in the paperless office I heard.) -WA's computer systems also go down in some form or fashion on about a weekly basis. Got a computer outage? Wait for IT to fix it. Will you be compromised for any time where you couldn't actually sell and activate phones? Did you read the above paragraphs so far? -The actual Costco Members are needy, and rightfully so. They pay to shop at Costco, and they expect a high level of service; which I agree with and happily provide for them. As a WSE you are essentially Sales, Customer Service, Technical Support, and also the person who points to where any item in the store is, especially the batteries. They will also get mad at you for not knowing where things are, knowing nothing about the laptops, or the fact that you can't actually call for a Costco Employee on a radio (because we don't have one). -WA wants WSE's and KM's to be JUST like the DirecTV representatives in Costco; approaching members, trying to lure them over and sell them on products on services. Greeting in the isle and harassing members. Except that nobody actually likes that happening to them. Ever. In any scenario. -If you actually want to stand a chance of making any real money, work the weekends when Costco is busy and people are more inclined to buy; there's usually 4 shifts on the weekends, so good luck getting one. -IT CAN BE HARD TO HEAR YOUR CUSTOMERS OVER ALL OF THE TELEVISIONS, SPEAKERS, SOUND BARS, AND LAPTOPS FOUND IN MAJOR ELECTRONICS AT COSTCO. WHAT DID YOU SAY? So besides what you'll face as your normal job duties in addition to trying to make sales, you also have your Kiosk Manger boss. Who, depending on your location, can either be really good or really bad (try to be their friend). The KM is essentially a glorified WSE that has all of the exact same job responsibilities, but with more benefits and a way better pay structure: -They start at like $13 per hour base, with overtime opportunities. They get like $13 per any sale they make. They don't fight their hourly with their commission. They also get yearly raises. Nice. -In addition to their commission, they can also make an ADDITIONAL bonus IF their kiosk makes their goal. Does any of this extra bonus trickle down to the WSE's at a kiosk? None of it does. 0% of it does. Nothing. Because of this there is ZERO team incentive; every man is for himself, focus on making your own money, and try to screw your coworkers over for additional incentive in your own paycheck. Because anything they do doesn't help you individually. WA fosters this kind of environment. So we've seen the WSE and the KM. What about the District Manger? Honestly, I don't have much to say about them, except that they don't last long. In my 5 years with WA, I have had FOUR DIFFERENT DM's for my store. The combination of KM's resisting against their DM's, and the corporate pressure pressing down on DM's just makes them all quit. They're also salaried, which is cool I guess. You've made it this far, but we still have a bit more to cover. Let's compare working as a WSE at WA vs. actually working at Costco, and just for fun working at Target. -Costco hire's their employee's at $13 per hour per so starting WITH health care. Target starts at around $12 per hour or so. Nice. Come to work, don't worry about making sales, just do a good job and go home. Also don't have to be worried about getting fired for not getting enough sales, or not selling enough insurance. Just don't mess up your cashier till I guess. -At the time of this review, 3/19/18, in my district their are about 27 WSE's. Of those 27 WSE's, only NINE of them are making more money than the $12 per hour that Target will start you at (this is 36% for reference.) Of those 27 WSE's, only SIX are making more money than the $13 per hour Costco will start you at (this is 24% for reference. -At this time as well, of those 27 WSE's only 48% are making ANY COMMISSION AT ALL. We're also HALFWAY through the month of March. -What WA didn't account for is, at halfway through the month when a WSE can't make any commission they just stop caring; helping members only is more work for you, so why actually do your job? Why work even harder to dig yourself out of the money pit that is your hourly $9.00? Why try to make your kiosk goal when the bonus doesn't even affect you? I know I sure wouldn't try nearly as hard. Another fun thing about this job; Costco is now starting to sell unlocked phones through Costco and NOT in your department. You just buy them, put your SIM card in them, and they activate. Our job isn't even needed, we get paid NOTHING for helping these members, they TAKE AWAY from our commission by destroying sales, and they get mad when you tell members to go to a carrier store to activate them. Costco is directly competing with their cellular department. L O L If you don't read anything else above this, at least read THIS here; to put it simply, unless you're an all-star Kiosk Manager, you work two job's, or have some kind of side business, Wireless Advocates does NOT provide a living wage: -For any part timers, you have no benefits. Costco gives every employee healthcare at least if they need, and its fantastic to boot. -In my 5 years of working for WA, I NEVER received an hourly raise as a WSE. I wouldn't EVEN WANT ONE now, as it would make making commission harder. -If you're a full time WSE and you sold 1,000 phones per year (like 83.33 per month or so) you would get $40,000. That's it. If you could be this AMAZING at any other sales job, you'd probably pull $60,000+ easy. Other bits: -WA is a privately owned company. They can do whatever they want, that's fine; their company, their rules. Upper management does NOT communicate AT ALL with the field team, the ones who actually make the money to pay the corporate salaries in Seattle HQ. It's 2018 WA. Be open. Be transparent. Actually tell us how we're doing, where we're failing, and where we're going. You actually have to start doing this though, instead of just 'things happening this is how it is now.' -Some kiosk's in the company have such a low door count that they don't even make commission, they just make their $9.00 an hour and then they might be able to bonus. Except they rarely do from what I can tell. I guess the WSE's there are fine with their $9.00, but why not start at Costco or Target for at least $12? -In my experience in helping train new employee's, it takes about 6 months of on the job working to understand the systems, and know what you're doing at all times. It's not an easy job in the slightest. -Wireless as an industry is becoming saturated and in a slight decline. Yet WA still wants year over year growth. Ok. -WA implemented the current WSE pay plan to promote and keep their best performers. Yet, they still can't keep their turnover rate under 60%. I wonder why. Closing Statement Wireless Advocates, as someone who actually works for you, etc. Please, someone look at and read this. Email me. Communicate more. You have a 60% turnover rate. You expect the world from us, but don't pay us as such. You expect results, but set them too high. You expect us to work like top of the line professionals but pay us in peanuts. Working in Costco, it's almost like an INVISIBLE POVERTY LINE; we stand right next to Costco employee's, get asked the same questions as them, and simply work in a different department (which is located right inside another department.) As a WSE you will STRUGGLE to overcome your $9.00 per hour. While a tenured Costco employee, after about 7 years, will make about $24 PER HOUR for simply existing next to you. They also make time and a half on Sundays, so they stand next to you making $36 PER HOUR. Great for them, they work for a company that takes care of their employees. To the current WSE's and KM's who read this; stop standing for this. Rise up. Unionize. Complain. Do SOMETHING. Or just leave. The numbers don't lie. The dream at this point, if Costco ever begins to care or maybe reads this and wants to provide a better member experience for wireless in their stores, would be for them to tell WA to pack it up and leave, and then employ us all as actual Costco employee's and pay us fairly. We do AS much work as any other department in the store, we are branded to look like them, and honestly we shouldn't be treated any lesser. But WA doesn't see it that way. And if you ever ask WA about why you're not paid fairly? Know what they'll tell you? 'Sell more phones then.'

Cons

Pitiful leadership at the corporate level. Nearly every department in SHQ suffers from a complete lack of understanding of what is happening in the field. What's more, there seems to be no communication or initiative between the departments when they must deal with an issue. There is also no accountability from anyone in Seattle. Typically they will blame those in the field for their deficiencies as long as possible. When reality hits that someone in corporate is responsible for the issue, they will eventually sweep that person away and send out some patronizing email about how the problems are now being addressed. Unfortunately, by that time, it results in nothing more than a lot of eye rolling in the field. Turnover from regional managers on down to the WSEs in the kiosks is a direct result of mismanagement at the top Kiosks are poorly designed and uncomfortable for both customers and employees. Wireless Advocates requires more paperwork to be filled out when purchasing a phone than any retailer I know of, yet they provide no work space to organize the paper work. In many cases there isn't even available counter space for the customer to sign the contracts and customer letters. Merchandise assortment is limited. They usually do get the top phones in, but too often they are weeks or months behind the competition in making them available. Popular phones that are available are often times under-ordered. Replenishment on phones is seemingly random. Devices that sell well at one location and sell out will not receive replenishment while other stores within the same districts sit on inventory they can't move. Compensation is well below industry standard for managers. For the better part of the last 18 months, budgets were intentionally increased to levels where almost no one at the kiosk or district level had any chance of seeing a bonus. Commission on phone sales have been cut nearly 25% per unit in that time as well. To be fair, someone in Seattle finally woke up a few months ago returned budgets to a more reasonable level. The majority of KMs are starting to see bonus again. Medical benefits are costly for what they are. Vacation time is only one week per year for the first 5 years of employment. If that isn't bad enough, Wireless Advocates offers NO SICK TIME to any full time employees, even Kiosk managers. Weeks in which Costco is closed for a holiday (ie the 4th of july), Wireless Advocates counts that as one of your regular days off. Employees receive no extra time off or holiday compensation of any kind. One constant with WA is their consistent use of threats when metrics aren't being achieved. They believe that sales are down not because of poor pricing, not because the phones people want are often times unavailable, but because the sales people aren't doing their jobs. Threats are sent out that people will lose their jobs, and then nothing happens. What is left is a bunch of frustrated employees who not only harbor negative feelings about having their jobs threatened, but have zero respect for those making the threats The lack of respect carries over to the costco side. Costco management holds Wireless Advocates in very low esteem. Wireless Advocates has been nearly tossed out of several Costco locations due to various issues The hiring process is not so much a process as a contest to see who applies on careerbuilder first. Very little effort is put into recruiting, and it iften times reflects in the quality of kiosk personnel. If you aren't fortunate enough to find your own people, you're screwed. The training is abysmal. Wireless advocates has a large and often times tedious online training process. Way too much effort is placed on these online courses instead of having new hires work directly with the KMs to get hands on experience. The online training prepares a new hire for nothing and should be used to supplement hands on KM training. The computer systems are THE WORST I have ever seen. They are slow. They constantly crash. They cause the carrier activation systems to glitch constantly. In all the years I was there, Wireless Advocates couldn't even do so much as get functioning printers company-wide.

Cons

Hourly pay for experienced managers is quite low. Sales goal to get commission paid is sometimes unachievable. In a district of 60+ employees it’s often seen that only 5-8 employees reach their sales quota and get their commission paid.

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.