Pros
More freedom than most jobs. But the freedom comes with a very high cost.
Cons
100% commission pay structure with employees absorbing 100% of company losses. This means: -You may go to work, and spend the entire day dealing with stressful customer service problems, and not get paid a penny for your work. The stores are scattered from Concord all the way down to Rock Hill, so you may spend an hour or more driving around in one day, to do free work. -If you sell a phone, the commission may be $50-$100. If the customer stops paying their bill or cancels their service within 6 months of the sale, you lose the original commission, plus half of the full cost of the phone. Here is an example: you sell an iPhone and get paid $50. 6 months later, you could lose $280. These are called "de-acts" and they are a huge problem. They can turn your $3000 monthly check into a pathetic $10 per hour job. Save yourself the stress and go work at McDonalds. -While you are paid ONLY to sell phones, there are several other tasks that you are required to complete, such as scanning inventory daily, stocking shelves, shipping unsold products back, fulfilling insurance claims, taking bill payments, troubleshooting broken phones and idiot customer errors, and cleaning the store. Again, you do not get paid for any of this. You may go to work, do plenty of work, and make zilch that day. -Trainings and meetings. There are usually at least 1 or 2 unpaid, 7am meetings per month. The locations vary, but regardless of where the meeting is going to be, or how inconvenient the timing is, you are required to attend. These are absolutely useless, waste of time, "punishment" sessions for not hitting arbitrary sales goals. Did I mention unpaid? You will wake up at 5am to spend an hour driving to a useless 7am meeting that you aren't paid to be at. The meeting will take an hour of your life that you will never get back. Then, you will proceed to go to your shift, whenever/wherever that may be. You might have to be at a 7am meeting at concord and then have to be in Rock Hill at noon and work till 8 or 9pm. Travel/gas/time is unpaid. -Employees pay for missing/lost/stolen inventory at full retail value. You read that correct. If you are at work, and a phone somehow goes missing, the FULL RETAIL cost is taken out of your pay check. For an iPhone, that could be nearly a thousand dollars in one pop. For a typical otterbox case, that is about 50 bucks. Missing inventory charges are a HUGE issue, just like "de-acts" are. -You are expected to be on call via your personal cell phone and email pretty much 24/7. It's your day off? Too bad. You got off work at 5pm and now it's 8 and an issue came up? Tough luck. If someone, whether it's a coworker or a customer, calls or emails, you are expected to answer ASAP. Keep in mind, you are not paid for this. You only get paid when a customer purchases something directly from you. Customers and coworkers all have access to your personal cell phone number. Your personal cell phone number goes on every receipt to every one of your customers, so when they have an issue, they go straight to you, whether you're at work or not. -Lockouts and held checks. If anything at all is wrong with paperwork, deposits, anything, you will be "locked out". This means that your sales account is locked and you can't sell (ie make money) until you get it unlocked. Getting it unlocked may take a few minutes or a few days. In the mean time, you're supposed to keep working your shift, FOR FREE!!!! Also, if any items aren't turn back in on time, they will hold your check until the receive the items. Checks are given out once a month and it isn't unheard of to have to wait an extra week or two to get it due to stupid technicalities. The company will nickel and dime your checks with deacts and missing inventory charges. Customers will treat you like crap. Management will expect you to bend over backwards for them for free. If you complain about any of these things they will say you aren't a team player. Anyone with an ounce of common sense should keep looking for a better job and only accept this one if absolutely desperate. The turn over rate is horrible. Just about everyone working here is looking for new jobs constantly. That's why they are always hiring. Don't be fooled, they will tell you that you will make 40-50k per year here. They will tell you it's an amazing opportunity. They will tell you that getting in is tough. These are all lies. Commissions keep decreasing, and theft and deductions are rampant. They'll hire anyone that knows how to tie a tie. By the way - there is a 2 month delay on pay checks. So, if you start in say January, your first check isn't until March. Whatever is left of it anyway.
