1-800 Contacts reviews

3.9

71% would recommend to a friend

(634 total reviews)
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John Graham

84% approve of CEO

73% positive business outlook

1-800 Contacts has an employee rating of 3.9 out of 5 stars, based on 634 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The 1-800 Contacts employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Retail & Wholesale industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

634 reviews
1.0
Jan 31, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

It’s a remote job… so that’s nice.

Cons

I am extremely disappointed that this company thought it was a great idea to send all managers on a cruise while leaving their hardworking employees to struggle with zero support. To make matters worse, we received nothing in the way of a Christmas gift, bonus, or even a small token of appreciation, even though their hardworking customer service reps are the reason that 2024 was their best fiscal year to date. Do you understand how demoralizing this is? We break our backs making this company millions every day, only to see the profits of our hard work spent on managers who don’t even work their full shifts. These same managers were also given a fully paid week off at the end of the year—when we needed them most. Since December 23rd, my own manager has maybe worked five days, leaving early every single time. And yet, that laziness is completely acceptable to you. Meanwhile, if we want to leave just an hour early, we have to fight to use our limited PTO or points. Why are you rewarding managers who don’t even do their jobs—who don’t know company policies and constantly misinform new agents—while making regular employees take on more and more of their responsibilities, including training new hires, with zero extra compensation? I’m tired of doing my manager’s job. I’m tired of being unrecognized and unappreciated. It is exhausting to work here. I don’t want to be part of a company that thinks this is an acceptable way to treat employees. So I ask—what will you do to show us that you hear us and actually care enough to change things? Now, regarding the Quality department: Last week, I had to work all four of my days off just to manipulate some 4 scores and save my metrics. This system is broken. Having peers grade each other is unfair, especially when QA agents can see the names of the people they’re reviewing. The results are completely inconsistent—one QA agent will give you a perfect score for something that another will dock you for. How does that make sense? If you’re going to make this subjective metric such a crucial part of our jobs and bonuses, at least make it attainable. There’s no reason why getting a perfect score should be this difficult when we’ve been here for years and aren’t making policy mistakes. We go above and beyond to get perfect scores, yet if a QA agent simply doesn’t like you, they’ll score you poorly—over something as minor as using a hotkey slightly too early or too late, or not capitalizing enough letters in a sentence. If we aren’t violating policies and we’re meeting all of the required criteria, then our scores should be perfect. Period. Instead, we’re subjected to QA agents who seem to be on a power trip, don’t fully understand the policies they claim we violated, and managers who refuse to back us up when we dispute unfair scores. Hands down, this is the worst part of working here. Customer interactions would be so much more natural, smooth, and positive if we weren’t forced to check off every single box like robots—just to avoid low QA scores. And yet, we still get nitpicked. This system isn’t actually benefiting the customer. Ever since Seekwell took over, it has been a nightmare to work here. Promotions are not based on qualifications, no matter how much they claim to promote from within. It’s a popularity contest—if you’re not best friends with upper management, you don’t stand a chance.

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1-800 Contacts Response
1y
I appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts and recent work experience. While not every decision made by management will meet all expectations, we are committed to using feedback to drive meaningful improvements here at SeekWell. We understand that seeing managers go on a trip while others were working hard felt unfair. The intent was to recognize leadership, but we recognize that appreciation should never feel one-sided. We’re actively reviewing how we recognize and reward all employees, not just in moments of celebration, but in day-to-day support and compensation. Your concerns about the Quality process are also important. Evaluations should be fair, transparent, and supportive—not inconsistent or unpredictable. We’re continuously looking at ways to improve our QA process to ensure everyone is given a fair opportunity to succeed. Additionally, leadership accountability is a priority—we want managers to be present and supportive, not disengaged from the realities of the job. I want to personally thank you for your contributions to SeekWell. We remained focused on refining our processes to better serve both our teams and customers. Best, Customer Department Management
1.0
Jan 10, 2025

Your employees deserve better.

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Work from home. Ability to trade shifts, or give away time, if other agents are able/willing. The friends you make on your team, as you grow close with each other trauma bonding over working here.

Cons

The CEO just recently told us that instead of raising our pay (1800 does not have competitive pay at all, it’s very mediocre) they would offer us a financial advisor to talk to. A financial advisor cannot help people who are simply only paying for the necessities like bills (rent/mortgage/utilities/internet/etc) and groceries (which we can hardly afford if at all) that live off of a sad salary. The reason they are doing this is because the “anonymous” surveys we take had a trick question that could have been interpreted as EITHER 1 we don’t make enough money or 2 we don’t know how to handle our money. Most people understood the question as the former, but the company is treating it as the latter. They always make the excuse for mediocre pay, or no appropriate bonuses/raises besides the ones we have to destroy our mental health to try and get, that inflation is preventing them from doing so. Inflation is also hurting your employees, the ones who make you MILLIONS every single day. Christmas of 2023 we had a meeting where we were told we made the company hundreds of millions of dollars more than ever before and then in the same breath were told we would not be getting bonuses or raises and only a “thank you” and “happy holidays” while the managers take their mandatory week off when they are not the ones doing the dirty work or deserve the break. This same mindset has continued through to now 2025. There are employees who have been here for 2-3+ years and have never gotten a raise, or only $0.25-$0.50 one time, even though they are working their hardest and deserve more. If they weren’t doing their jobs they would have been fired, as the turnover rate of over 100% here shows due to how quickly and easily you fire people, so they clearly deserve more. Your CEO’s are living luxurious lives while in the same breath saying “I don’t know what you guys do, don’t ever ask me for help and ask someone else” while we are praying we can keep our houses and have something to eat until our next paycheck. Also STOP TAXING OUR BONUSES! Outside of the pay, your employees have no proper support. The workload was raised without warning (but again, pay was not raised with this which is disgusting) yet no other metrics adjusted with this and it has shown and proven time and time again since this change from 2 to 3 max chats that it has hurt your employees and your business more than benefitted it. Expectations and metrics need to be lowered when work load is raised. ART, availability, the minimum RPC, all of that needs to be adjusted to counter the influx in service chats that come with the more chats we take. A lot of this could have been avoided if the job wasn’t watered down as customer service with minimal sales, and instead is actually “make all of the sales or get fired and do customer service without sales but also it will hurt you for doing so” and a different department was made for customer service without sales. It’s absolutely possible to separate the department into sales and service even though you claim it isn’t. On top of this, the availability should not count against you OUTSIDE OF YOUR SHIFT. You have an IT team that can easily make this happen. Stop punishing your employees for their shift ending and them wanting to get off chats, and making it so they don’t have that time to use earlier in the day to get off for breaks/lunches, use the bathroom or simply to just take a breath. On the same topic of support, QA is not handled appropriately. 9 times out of 10 if we receive a low score that is not warranted we can tell you who did it without even seeing their name first and regardless of how many times this is brought up it has not been fixed. We also do not get the appropriate opportunity to dispute these scores, we send them to our managers who will most of the time give their “feedback” and not escalate it, or when they do rarely escalate it to be changed then the reason we get for not being able to adjust it is just completely wrong. People who have never done our jobs or the level of work we currently do, including our managers (who NEVER have taken 3 chats at a time), should not be telling us how we could have and should have done better. This shows a lot in the scores, especially when some agents will get 0’s-2’s for what other agents get 4’s for. The training for new hires has diminished so much. The time is cut shorter, they are thrown onto chats before they even learn a single policy or how any of the systems work, and the other agents that have been here are left to clean up the mess while hurting their stats to do so. We understand new people will make more mistakes than long time workers, but a TON of these mistakes wouldn’t be here if training was done properly. You have regular agents training employees so that the managers and trainers don’t have to do as much work, and AGAIN additional pay is not given for this. We are also pulled to help other departments, which is not what we were hired to do, and you have taken away the ability for the work we do in the other departments to benefit our stats. This work needs to benefit our stats or it needs to not be thrown upon us without a heads up or option to decline. Other departments are sooooo very rarely pulled over to chats when we are absolutely drowning, stop taking us off of chats to go help where it doesn’t financially benefit us. We work to make money and most of us are trained in 3-4+ departments but don’t see the financial gain of that extra knowledge or workload. In the end, as you can clearly see, your employees deserve better. Better pay, better support, better environment.

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1-800 Contacts Response
1y
I want to thank you for your comments on your work experience here at SeekWell. While we understand that not every experience at SeekWell will meet every expectation, we remain committed to improving where it makes the most impact for our associates. We know that compensation, workload expectations, and employee support are critical factors in job satisfaction. While we aim to create an environment where everyone feels valued, we recognize from your feedback that we have areas to improve. We understand the concerns around pay and workload balance. While we have made adjustments over time, we know there’s always more to evaluate. Feedback like this is crucial in helping us shape future decisions, especially when it comes to expectations around chat volume, metrics, and support. Our new partner, My Secure Advantage, is a financial planning option for our associates to plan for the future. From family planning to retirement, this benefit can offer you and your family future success at no cost to you. This benefit is provided by our owner, KKR. Not only does KKR provide vetted financial planning through this new program but combines that benefit with stock options for all SeekWell team members. My hope is all our associates will take advantage of our ever-expanding benefits. We also recognize that employees turn to anonymous platforms because they may not feel comfortable sharing concerns directly. While we encourage open conversations, we also know that trust needs to be built for those conversations to feel productive. We take feedback seriously, whether it’s shared internally or through platforms like this, and we remain committed to improving the employee experience. Thank you again for sharing your perspective and feedback. Best, Customer Department Management
4.0
Jan 10, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good pay and everyone gets shares I. The company after a certain amount of time.

Cons

Not a lot of upward mobility unless your in Utah.

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1-800 Contacts Response
1y
Thank you for your honest review! We are pleased to hear you have had a good experience on our team and we appreciate all you do. If you are looking for further opportunities, our People Department is always here to support your career growth. Please reach out for support at any time. Have a great day!
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Glassdoor has 644 1-800 Contacts reviews submitted anonymously by 1-800 Contacts employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if 1-800 Contacts is right for you.