Wireless Advocates Employee Reviews about "work life balance"

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.

Cons

Terrible work life balance because of poor training for associates. They won't pay associates more than minimum wage, so you sacrifice hiring very qualified candidates. No paid holidays, and it counts as one of your days off.

Cons

High employee turnover No work/life balance

Cons

No work Life Balance worked everyday no appreciation

Cons

Very high turnover (even the top management). They are incapable of retaining the best people. High stress environment. They don't care about you as a human. Don't even think about work life balance - not here.

Cons

No work or life balance

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

Not alot of work/home life balance

Cons

- Terrible training - Computer system is outdated - Logistics needs improvement - Poor management - Management is disconnected w/ associates - Dead end job

Cons

- Hardly any work life balance (understaffed) - Large overturn of staff - Management constantly changing policies and systems used