Complaint Review: Empire Today - Moraine Ohio

To Empire Today buyers of future employees:

My name is Sheila and I am a former employee of Empire Today.  I want to warn anyone who is thinking of doing any kind of business with Empire Today.  As a customer I warn want to explain their process.  First, when a Sales Rep comes and visits your home…hold out on the price because they are going to show you two prices…if you hold out they are required to call their sales manager, Keith Watrob at (((REDACTED)))  and if you don’t agree to that price they are to call the  area sales manager Andrew Staraniec at (((REDACTED))) and is you still hold out they are to call Ron Godsill at (((REDACTED))) who will give you the rock bottom pricing.  You will then set up an installation date, which according to their advertisement will be next day.  They can not do a next day install because they only get trucks on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.  Besides that, they were running at least 2 weeks out when I was working for them, we were to say it was because we were so busy to increase urgency, but the truth was we didn’t have enough installation teams.  With that being said, always plan on your installation date to be changed (sometimes without any notice) even if they confirm it two days prior, because of the need for installers.  If you decide to cancel, your deposit may take 4 weeks to be returned, but if you decide to continue with your purchase make sure you demand a price reduction and again call the numbers about to get the best reduction possible, do not rely on customer service because they do not return calls.

As a future employee, here are my warnings:  Training is adequate and you receive $300.00 for 4 weeks.  Make sure you hold on to all of that money because when you start selling you will need all of it for gas, because it usually take 4-6 weeks before you start receiving any money from your sales.  Then you only get dribbles coming in because they pick and choose what they want to pay you on.  I still have not been paid on my first couple sales and it has been since April.  I had quite a few installation cancelations that they promised to pay me on because it was not my fault and I have yet to see any of that money either to the tone of around $900.00.  Another issue is scheduling, Keith who does the scheduling does not listen to when you will accept appointments if you say you will not accept a 9:00 am or a 7pm appointment you will still be scheduled for them because he has to show where he has scheduled them to corporate.  Then when you call to correct the issue he is supposed to reschedule to another rep or with the customer, but I would receive calls from customer service asking why I didn’t go, making me look like I wasn’t doing my job.  Also they schedule every two hours, which most of the time can work, but not when you are measuring a whole house, or when one appointment is in Columbus and the next in Dayton.  They stress don’t be late to an appointment but it is just about impossible to be on time when you measure, show the product, price then have to call several managers, who don’t answer their phones, and don’t return your calls.  So you may spent an hour trying to reach a manager who has to okay your departure so you can get a resolution code to see where you are to go to your next appointment.  If you like 13-14 hour days this might be the job for you, I would leave the house at 8:00 am and not get home until 10:00 pm then have to spend another hour faxing in my sales that had to be in by midnight.  Now some of those days I would only have 3 or 4 appointments so you have to find something to do during the down time.  Another responsibility of the sales manager is to confirm your appointments, but Keith never does that so you may get to a home where they aren’t at home so when you call Keith he has to call the customer, and then allow you to leave or may tell you that the customer will be there is an hour, which automatically puts you behind on your next appointment.  I didn’t accept this job to be made to look bad nor did I have an unlimited bank account to run these appointments to not be paid in a timely manner or at all on some of my sales.