Pros
I was not micromanaged. This is subjective because some Team Leads are very hands-on but mine was excellent and he allowed me to work through my leads how I wanted. Very nice co-workers. Everyone willing to help when you have questions and management has an open-door policy. One thing that impressed me particularly is that the CEO Brad Stroh would come and visit the Tempe office and make himself available between certain times in order to answer any questions or concerns that you might have. This is the only company I've worked for where your concerns can be taken right to the very top with a face-to-face discussion.
Cons
First off, there are some very accurate negative reviews here that are dismissed as "just a bitter ex-employee" or "someone really negative who has a vendetta" and I can assure you that I am neither of those things. I am grateful that I was one of the "couldn't hack it" guys here because my struggles with FDR led to a much better sales job for me. One of the reviewers mentioned personal accountability and I also believe in being accountable. To be fair, I am an average salesperson with an above-average work ethic. I'm nothing special but I'm also not the lazy twenty-something who expects to be handed a high-paying job either. Accountability runs both ways, I am accountable to the company to sell and be professional and I expect the company to be honest and fair in their dealings with me. At the end of 2012 when our minimum sales quota was raised by over 15%, management didn't bother to tell anybody. In my interview I was also told about the long tenure of most employees and I found this to be entirely incorrect. Within six months half of my training class was gone either through corrective action because they couldn't meet quota or because the stress was too much for them. Don't take my word for it, just look at how often FDR posts jobs for new sales people and you'll start to see a trend. I was extremely skeptical of the $12/hr starting wage but I took the job because of the commission potential. After being here a while I was consistently meeting quota and my commission was usually between $1,100-$1,400/month. I received an hourly raise to $14/hr + commission. Do the math and we're talking about 29K base and 15K commission. We're talking about a $44,000/yr job. In your interview it will be presented as paying much better, but I can tell you from being there a few years that you can expect to make between 40-50 thousand if you're average like I was and probably 50-60 if you work lots of overtime or you're above average. I also made quite a few friends there and they've been telling me that the scripting now has gotten to the point where you are almost reading a script word-for-word in order to pass compliance reviews. One other thing I wanted to point out was that I find it curious that some of the recent reviews like the review posted on December 20th gives a 5 star rating for every category. Really? So even though this is a call center sales job, that particular reviewer believes that this job is a 5 star job for "career opportunities"? Every call center I've ever worked at has basically the phone reps and then the managers. No movement, no change and no new jobs. How is this a 5 star job for career opportunities? Where can you go here after being on the phone for two or three years? I thought that "career opportunities" means the ability to move up and be promoted right? People in call centers usually just move on, but most don't move up. This review makes me think that someone in HR has the task of putting positive yet false reviews on this site in order to protect offset some of the harsher and more realistic views. You can take my review with a grain of salt or label me however you'd like, but I will say that I've had far worse jobs and this job isn't awful and I made some great friendships there but it was nothing like what was presented to me in my initial interview. I hope that information helps.
