Complaint Review: West Telemarketing - Universal City (San Antonio) Texas

You are absolutely right on several points. West is for high schoolers, where they can have a job and know what to look out for in an employer. I've witnessed a TL being sexually harrassed by one of their own subordinates, and then blow it off because the person was one of her friends. It was a really obvisious, dirty look by the way. My biggest problem with West was with how they calculate the lunches and breaks. One 30min lunch and two 10min breaks on an 8hr shift. I was fine with that. Then i started to pick up 4hrs at the end of my shift, usually everyday. This would make a 12hr shift following current "break schedule". Take lunch at 2:30-3:00 and work until 11pm. So, 8hrs without a lunch. I talked it over with 2 TLs, whom told me to take 2 lunches and 2 breaks. When i started to do this, i started to get schedule infractions every week. Turns out, the 2 TLs were wrong, they told me they would fix it but between the lines i read "No more second lunches". They consider that you have one lunch per 8hr period. Not how long has it been since you last had something to eat, or a chance to eat something. Violating labor law anyone? Yeah, it annoys the crap out of me when your supervisor (whom is supposed to know more about the system than you), cant answer any detailed question. Basically, they just stand around, chatting it up, and writing reports. Another thing is advertising. A local radio station said that location had jobs starting at $10/hr. Even a TL starts at $9.50. Would i ever want to work for this company again? Heck,no. I regret the 4mos i spent there.

Another thing I forgot to mention. Do not work late hours unless you have no choice. The reason being you will feel very tired and that seems to be the time when Clients do their test calls. This is when a client will call and pretend to be a customer to see if you are representing their product correctly. This is how you can tell that you are on a test call. First the "customer" will immediately interrupt and go "Excuse me, what did you say your name was again?" This is so they know your name to begin grading you on a sheet they are writing on. When that happens be on your toes. Do not yawn and do not read too fast. Second; if they correct you on a word then that's a red flag because they already know what you should be saying. They wrote the script. Read everything in a fluent and cheerful manner. Third; the client will make little fake interjections like "Oh boy, that sounds like a winner!" or "Wow, you can't beat that!" When you hear this just buy into it by saying "Yes this is a great offer!" Next, they will ALWAYS do what I call a hesitation test. This is when they will go "Um, well ya know, that sounds too expensive" or "I'm sorry I don't want to hear about the extra offers I just want my product." They are saying this to see if you are going to do a rebutal or tell them about the required policy of mentioning the offers. Once you say you are down to the credit card portion. At that time the "customer" will tell you that they are a client and grade you. Behold, don't mess up. That's your job immediately.

I am glad that you agree. I tell everyone that West is only good for high school kids with no responsibilities. I have updated what I wrote.

Hey I completely agree with you! I filed a report here in 2004 or 2005 after I got fired. To make the long story short, my hubby (then boyfriend) worked for ---- @ west back in 2003-2004 and he loved it, but to be closer to me in a city 100 miles away he quit. After a couple of months we got married and moved to san antonio again. he kept bugging me about this place called 'west' (in san antonio)he worked at and that if we were to both apply we'd get hired. it sounded too good to be true..we really needed a job. It amazed me how everyone who walked in there automatically walked out with a new job. we got hired for the Voom project, some lame satellite company that went broke a couple of yrs ago. I knew there had to be a catch. i started noticing things werent right with the place during training where you could be fired for basically looking the wrong way at someone. Then I really started to notice something was up when after training our team leaders were sort of slow....it was disturbing. I had come cool TL's though dont get me wrong. But the whole thing was sooo twisted. they would send us home ALL the time because of callflow. it wasnt normal. i figured out the catch. in the end I got fired for making an outbound call, and my husband he went back to ----- but got bored and got a job at time warner ----. heres the part that pisses me off the most: i tried to apply again a couple of months later: DENIED. I tried applying again 1 yr 1/2 later at the universal city location: DENIED again. Apparently what I did was extremely wrong? when they look up my social they say i am uneligible for rehire. Although I do find it funny how a coworker got into a fistfight on the PREMISES and only got a slap on the wrist. But thats west for you. Completely unethical, unorganized, uncouth, and inhumane. UnHUMAN, really.