Complaint Review: East Coast Wireless

Back in November 06, I started working for a company named East Coast Wireless. I kind of applied their by mistake because I was thinking it was Verizon Wireless because their sign said Verizon Wireless with a tiny sign saying it's an authorized dealer it is highly unnoticeable. The employer was Jerry Edmonds and he interviewed me after I sent in my application. He told me about their company and benefits including: holidays, overtime, and commissions just the basic package that you would get with any company and put me on an hourly rate for a store manager. It was extremely low at 10/hr plus commissions. On the first day, he was explaining the commissions can up to a certain amount he was making it seem like on the average basis I would be getting 1000-2000 dollars a commission check, which is why I stayed with the company. Everything was fine at first until I started notice little things that were wrong about the company. Besides the W4 that was the only thing that I signed. I did not get any human resource package of some sort nor did I get any real introduction. After the second week of employment, I worked over 40 hours and as I explained above, I am supposed to get overtime. Not with this cheap a*****e he said he does not do overtime because I am not supposed to work that much but when you only have two people working at one store then yeah of course, I'm going to go over the overtime. After fighting with him, I finally received my overtime. None of the other employees received overtime so when the girl that does payroll saw that I was getting overtime it leaked out to other employees they started to get angry.

When I was doing the transactions started notice that we charged them a lot more than the regular Verizon wireless stores. We did not sell Verizon wireless equipment it was cheap spin offs from third party vendors for the products so they usually broke in a matter of months and I had several complaints about that. When a customer sign a receipt for an upgrade (which they paid a 20 dollar upgrade charge) they were also signing that if they cancel their contract with the two years not only they would pay Verizon 175 dollars they would pay East Coast Wireless 300 dollars! It is in very small print below the activation sku. It is because East Coast Wireless get their commission refunded if it's within a year so they need to make up the commission somehow which is such a rip off I wasn't even explain about it until when I found out and showed my employees that.

As I worked for a while, I started to realize Jerry is real cheap and lazy. He sits on his a*s all day long with us on remote desktop watching a sales transaction and calling us if there is a problem. We could barely get a hold of him if we had administrative problems or problems about paychecks because he would not answer. They were usually late, some days it did not even to get to the store by 5:00 pm, and he did not off direct deposit.

I was doing extremely in sales and sold over 100 phones for the month so my commission was getting higher. It was not the 1000-2000 dollars a month selling over 100 activations and 10,000 dollars of accessories and phones totaled me 303 dollars! I asked him how commission was paid and then he said we would talk about it later over the phone. I did not even bring it up after three weeks of me asking and emailing him. Therefore, I took upon myself to search through this program to find out how we were paid searching through commissions paid (which I was allowed to do) it set the commissions at 3% if the total profit of the sale. I was like ok until I saw that many things were changed in the system because it would say it has been changed. So I questioned about that and he gave me some bullshit story. Then he told me that he switching me to salary because I worked to much overtime and my commissions were higher. In addition, he did not keep many phones in stock. We are supposed to be a cell phone store and we usually kept five phones in stock the not the phones that were hot but the phones that were most profitable which were the cheap low end phones that we had to persuade customers to buy. So my commissions was cut off a lot because he didn't have any phones in stock I would have to tell the customer I would order it and whenever he feels like ordering the phone he will and that could take almost two weeks to do for the customer. He then said your making to much (which was my salary was only 25,000) and it's cutting the inventory in half because he can't pay for more. I started to believe until he was talking about opening new stores in several locations and he was going on exotic vacations and by him saying we recorded record sales and profits and we are way ahead of the game right now.

None of the employees there worked over one year because they were all short term because I guess they find out how he really was. I found another job so I was going to quit the job and I told him my reasons. I still owed a check so I went into the store to pick it up as usual to realize I did not have a check. I called other store managers to see if the checks were in and they were and my employees got their checks. I called Jerry and asked him where my check was and he said I owed the company money and I am not giving you your check. I asked why I owed the company money he was saying that the phone that I was given was not free and he was charging me for it; but when I first given to me I was told it was free. It better of been free I worked over 50 hours of unpaid money to me that he kept. In addition, he said that he thinks I was giving away phones and I asked how you expect that; and his explanation was he did not receive commissions from Verizon yet from December. That was not my problem nor did I give away phones that his poor way of record keeping and was not my problem I did not sign anything saying I was liable for anything and he should of asked me when I was there and I would of found a solution. I was upset so I called the Department of Labor and they told me he cannot hold my paycheck until after 5:00 pm or he would be face with a 10,000-dollar penalty. I also had to get my parents into this because he was just being the cheapest s****.> If Verizon is reading this he abuses the commissions by training us not to tell customers they have a ?renew for every two? so that we can keep the commissions and still charge them the extra 50-150 dollars for the phone and service. For prospecting employees, he is bi-polar and will go insane sometimes when he is on the phone with you for no reason at all. The salary starts extremely low compared to the actual Verizon wireless and the commission is a joke. He just gives you what he wants to give you so that he can go on trips and be greedy with the money. It was terrible experience and a waste of 4-5 months with that company. Please do not shop there the equipment is really cheap at a high mark-up a Bluetooth headset Motorola HS 850 is 29.99 at some stores and he sells it 159.99 a long with other products that are marked up from Verizon Wireless cost. I know the wait is really long at Verizon Wireless but it will save you a ton of money and the products will work.

Kenny
Bristow, Virginia
U.S.A.