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Customer service reps for Disney and Airbnb who have to pay to take calls (2020)
- prirun 4y agoI thought one of the most interesting parts of this article was the section discussing the tests used to determine if a person is considered an employee. Quoting from the story: ----- To determine if a worker, no matter how labeled, is actually an independent contractor or an employee, courts have fashioned an “economic realities test.” In Pendergraft’s case, the arbitrator, Deborah Hankinson, a former justice on the Supreme Court of Texas, weighed the test’s six factors, checking off those that suggested Pendergraft had been an Arise employee. Did Arise exercise significant control over Pendergraft? Check. “Arise closely monitored all aspects of her work,” Hankinson wrote. Were agents like Pendergraft vital to Arise’s business? Check. “Without CSPs, Arise would have no service to sell,” the arbitrator wrote. Was Pendergraft’s work the kind that required no specialized skill? Check. In the end, Hankinson checked five of the six factors — and the sixth, she determined, could go either way. “Ms. Pendergraft was an employee of Arise,” the arbitrator concluded. In her ruling issued in February 2015, Hankinson found that Arise, as Pendergraft’s employer, had been required by federal law to pay her the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. The company also had to pay for her training time and equipment expenses. Added up, that came to $5,841.82. But that wasn’t all. Employers who violate the Fair Labor Standards Act face lower damages if they can show they had reason to believe they were in the right. An employer, for example, could present evidence that it had consulted labor law experts and followed their advice. Since Arise made no such showing, Hankinson doubled the damages, ordering Arise to pay Pendergraft $11,683.64. -----
- rpigab 4y agoThis is horrifying. And I thought Uber & others were bad (I still do, but didn't expect worse)...
- alistairSH 4y agoI read articles like this and wonder how the people running these places sleep at night. (Some) People really suck.
- ineedasername 4y ago>But the company [Arise] does not enlist agents who live in certain states. Currently on that list: California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon and Wisconsin, nearly all of which have tighter rules protecting workers.
- nicolas_t 4y agoIsn't Arise setting itself up for some enterprising lawyers to contact all employees on Facebook and start mass arbitration? They are forced on their side to respond to each and every arbitration and they are pretty sure to lose any time the 6 factors check is used to determine if the "contractor" is an employee or not. So, unless I misunderstand something, that's a big existential threat for Arise.
- essentialfloss 4y agoThere are some legal hurdles, but, yeah, basically.
- pksebben 4y agoHeck, forget Facebook. Just start calling up customer service! Bonus points for hiring former arise contractors to form a call center. "good magical morning! thanks for calling Disney cruises" "hi, this call is being recorded for quality assurance. am I speaking with a contractor for the arise corporation?" "wait, this call is what? that's my line. I'm not at liberty to..." "yes, we know you signed a non disclosure agreement. as a matter of fact, we all are former contractors for the 'mouse client'. we are calling to inform you of your legal rights pursuant to the binding arbitration agreement between you and the arise corporation..." a fantasy, I know, but I can't resist dreaming of such poetic justice.
- ck2 4y agoWalmart right now across America has figured out to make as many jobs as they need into "contract hires", from stocking the stores, order "pickers", doing deliveries, to answering customer service voice/text/email It's insidious because I am virtually positive the people doing deliveries are making less than minimum after vehicle costs (fuel etc) There are no tips required and no fees with "walmart plus" so I bet on some deliveries the people foolish enough to work for walmart under "contract" are making less than what it cost in time and materials to get it to a customer's door. One day there will be a lawsuit but it will be class-action so everyone will get $1 while the lawyers get millions from walmart Congress could end this overnight but since corporations buy the laws they want, it will never happen.
- kthejoker2 4y ago3 takeaways: * Collective action is hard, seems like good work for a startup / law firm to simplify the experience of suing for backpay, winning arbitration, navigating NLRB paperwork, etc. In exchange for 10% of the proceeds. In the article they called one such arbitration ruling "drips and drabs" compared to their revenue. But what if the spigot opens up? * As usual follow the money, the "links in the chain" model described is ridiculous when you see all the work performance requirements and controls are governed by the company at the top. They should be named and shamed, but also some enterprising folks should be working to pierce that veil. * Similarly, we need to support UBI and more social programs to raise the floor for these low margin fungible worker churn buckets.
- dtagames 4y agoChatGPT is made exactly to take over this kind of work. And will be better than treating people this way.
- gcanyon 4y ago"After paying about $1,500 for home office equipment: a computer, two headsets and a phone line dedicated to Arise; after paying Arise to run a check on her background; after passing Arise’s voice-assessment test and signing Arise’s nondisclosure form; after paying for and passing Arise’s introductory training, to which she devoted three days, unpaid; after paying for and passing a certification course to provide customer service for Arise client AT&T, to which she devoted 44 unpaid days; after then being informed she had to get more training yet — an additional 10 days, for which she was told she would be paid, but wasn’t; and then, after finally getting a chance to sign up for hours and do work for which she would be paid (except for her time spent waiting for technical support, or researching customer issues, or huddling with supervisors), Tami Pendergraft spent three weeks fielding telephone calls from AT&T customers, after which she received a single paycheck for $96.12" That may not be illegal, but it sure as heck should be.
- ec109685 4y agoAt the very least, immoral. Shameful companies support this exploitation.
- buildbot 4y agoNot a lawyer, but in washington at least I am pretty sure this would be straight up illegal.
- fragmede 4y agoWhat a perversion of capitalism!
- bfgoodrich 4y ago[dead]
- techhazard 4y agoThis is no perversion of capitalism. Companies have only one responsibility: to increase profits to the shareholders. All other responsibilities have to be legally enforced; stuff like worker safety, food safety, minimum wage, 8-hour workday, no child labour etcetera. These are all things companies will gladly ignore if it profits them. Minimum wage in this case, through a loophole of payback.
- mydogmuppet 4y agoZwangsarbeit Nazi Germany all over again. Shameful America.
- bagels 4y agoSeems more like wage theft and fraud than forced labor. Maybe I missed the part you're referring to?
- vxNsr 4y agoSo this is why I’ve found even stateside cs to be so bad, I’ve been cursed at by local reps and now it makes sense I too would be furious at life itself if I was treated this way and then had to answer for the very company that was screwing me over.
- rippercushions 4y agoDon't worry, the next time the agent's supervisor, excuse me, the Onshore Brand Advocate's Chat Performance Facilitator, reviews the call, they will be docked 100 points for being Confrontational and that will result in an Enhanced Deskilling.
- whoosh3 4y agoThey will be promoted to customer.
- throwawaysleep 4y agoHow does this company ever find people? Are they just all mathematically illiterate? You would do better scavenging for refundable bottles.
- synu 4y agoHaving been poor and worked for these kinds of companies, they tell wonderful stories about how much money you can make. They don’t tell anyone that they structure the work so that almost nobody makes anything approaching what’s theoretically possible. The companies don’t care, extracting cheap labor as they churn through their victims is part of the business model.
- polygamous_bat 4y agoI would imagine these parasitic companies have practiced their psychopathic techniques on a host of desperate people until they found the best ways to string people along through the whole process. "Just set up this home office, it will pay for itself in a month!" "This one week training, and then you'll be taking calls in no time!" This and that, and also, sunk cost fallacy is helluva drug, and you don't need to be mathematically illiterate to fall for that.
- csydas 4y agoThe information is asymmetrical here in most cases; Arise knows exactly how it works while presenting it as something else. A quick search on Google for Arise Call Center and the first three pages are lacking of any critical articles on Arise and some Glassdoor/SEO-spam blogs fake-answering the "scam" question. And looking at an actual posting on Arise, it looks quite legit: https://www.ariseworkfromhome.com/opportunity/remote-customer-support-intuit-turbotax/ https://www.ariseworkfromhome.com/opportunity/remote-custome... You could expect this on basically any tech job aggregator posting aggregator site or even most companies' own postings. The only big giveaway that something is off about it is the last line: > *This is not an offer of employment. It is an opportunity to enter into a business-to-business relationship with Arise®.* If a person is fortunate enough to see that and check the FAQ [0], hopefully they realize how much of a mess this is and that you're basically paying Arise to maybe get paid by someone else, but how you get paid is up to you and might as well be a mystery. But for those who don't check that and are in desperate need, yeah, I can easily see how Arise at face value looks perfect and desperation goggles hide the flaws: - Site looks very normal and legit - The work it discusses is shit call-center work that no one wants to do so there's likely lots of openings for someone who really needs money - No training needed, you will be trained so a bad job history/no job history isn't a problem - Criminal records don't seem to matter so if you had issues in the past, it's no big deal - Work at home so no need to worry about commute/office hours - The site is "up front" about you needing to pursue opportunities, so that makes it more "honest" and trustworthy It's a very nice blend of honesty mixed in with the misdirection that likely its enough to get many people to pay the initial fees, maybe for a training or two, and even do a few hours of work for basically free during a high volume period. Arise pays pennies for the work, gets $$$ from the companies for getting the workers, and ropes in tons of cash from the agents. It looks and feels like a normal employment offer to get enough money out of a person to justify the efforts, and then the person is saddled with reality that they don't have a job, they basically paid for the opportunity to pay to get a few $$$ at awful rates. It's a gross and exploitative company. I think our ire should be focused on that part instead of people who don't realize it's a scam. [0] - https://www.ariseworkfromhome.com/faq/faqs/ https://www.ariseworkfromhome.com/faq/faqs/
- boomboomsubban 4y agoI expected this to be bad, full of things like "forced to buy own equipment" and "only paid for time on phone," but it's so much worse. Days of training you need to pay for? Two different companies charging you monthly fees to work for them? Just absurd.
- smugma 4y agoDon’t forget the $150 “Contract Termination Fee” when you quit your shitty job.
- toss1 4y agoIf that's the case, just give out more (properly deserved) refunds than the quota and let them terminate the contract
- Spoom 4y agoYou don't think they penalize agents who are fired?
- toss1 4y agoSure, but how much more than they penalize for quitting? Their limit is pretty much how much they can dishonestly withhold from the last paycheck, and considering the shitty pay, probably minimal. But true, the key is to read the contracts in detail and find the least costly way out. Or, better yet, to read it before starting and realize that the only winning move is to not play the game.
- walrus01 4y agoIntro, a dark home office, 12:17 AM Pacific time. A bored pasty nerd sits at a computer on a mid priced IKEA desk, lit only by the glow of several LCDs. Clicks link about some new, novel form of large-scale customer service abuse of call-center type low ranking employees. Reads article. Nerd mentally adds it to the list of a hundred other employee-abusive things he's seen in the telecom industry.
- ROTMetro 4y agoIs IKEA now considered mid-priced and not low end/budget? Really puts into light how bad things have gotten.
- kderbyma 4y agoNotice how the big 'successful' companies are nothing more than the greediest, meanest, fakest, and most untrustworthy companies in the back room.....makes you start to think the pawn shops and loan sharks are pretty decent people :/
- kderbyma 4y agoor said another way.....success is just how much you fuck over the next guy.....
- Bombthecat 4y agoIn America? Absolutely. It's a bit like the hustling mentality in Russia lol
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- davedx 4y ago2020
- antihero 4y agoThis is the sort of thing that makes people become the most aggressive form of communists.
- sofixa 4y agoYep, one of the fathers of communism, Engels, started because he was appalled by the conditions for workers in industrial Manchester. Many others, such as Che Guevara also got radicalised like this.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- gorbachev 4y agoAlso workplace shootings. I bet Arise corporate offices have good security, and those guys are paid well.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoI doubt it. It is probably a low margin business that gets pumped up with debt and passed around PE firms / family offices at increasing multiples due to low interest rates. It was bought and sold a few years ago by this family office in Dallas: https://www.straitlanecapital.com/news_post/strait-lane-announces-sale-of-arise-holdings-inc/ https://www.straitlanecapital.com/news_post/strait-lane-anno... https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/strait-lane-capital-partners https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/strait-lane-capital-... Then Warburg Pincus thought they could flip it, so they bought it: https://vivtera.com/ https://vivtera.com/ https://www.vccircle.com/warburg-pincus-backed-vivtera-acquires-business-process-platform-in-debut-deal https://www.vccircle.com/warburg-pincus-backed-vivtera-acqui... https://www.vccircle.com/warburg-pincus-backs-indian-it-execs-to-buy-build-bpm-biz-with-1-bn-commitment https://www.vccircle.com/warburg-pincus-backs-indian-it-exec... As you can see, all the executives at Vivtera are Indian, and have a background at Genpact, so they have connections and know how in India for setting up cheaper labor call centers or whatnot. They probably are paid well by Indian standards, but the big money is in being able to find the financing to flip these businesses, like what Straight Lane and Warburg Pincus do.
- helsinkiandrew 4y agoIs there a website that lists companies that have policies like this (or more likely use companies like this). Some kind of blacklist where you can see if a company you might use has values that align with your own? There are companies that do ESG reports on companies, but something like glassdoor for consumers would be easier to use
- Bombthecat 4y agoAll of the big ones do it.
- boudin 4y agoEach time I read about abuses of the "gig" economy, it reminds me of this book https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germinal_(novel) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germinal_(novel) This way of running a company is why workers fought to obtain rights in the first place.
- optimalsolver 4y agoI think everyone should work customer service at least once in their lives to truly appreciate what it's like being on the other side of these calls.
- cudgy 4y agoUnfortunately, being on the other side of these calls was the only positive side to this terrible gig.
- soheil 4y agoThe world is not as simple as you want it to be. It’s a negative feedback loop. The current customer service is so bad that people who call get traumatized so next time they call they put up their defenses and sound more of an asshole than they typically are. The customer service reps then assume (as you have done) that people who call in are absolute assholes and therefore give less of a fuck when answering calls next time. The cycle repeats.
- optimalsolver 4y ago>people who call get traumatized Perhaps, but I think a greater cause of this is people feeling more free to be their "true self" to a voice on the phone, behaving in a way they never would if confronting someone face-to-face.
- essentialfloss 4y agoI used to do business negotiations as an attorney. COVID shifted those negotiations to video chat/phone. People are much more entrenched, much less willing to compromise, and they generally act like even wider gaping assholes on those platforms than they do in person. Hence the "used to."
- RektBoy 4y agoAmerican dream, right?
- kennend3 4y agoFigures "Rogers" is on the list. If you are Canadian you will recognize them as one of the most hated companies in the country. "Rogers Communications (TSX:RCI.B)(NYSE:RCI) consistently ranks as one of Canada’s most hated companies. " The level of greed shown here is astonishing. Paying for training and doing it unpaid as well?? WOW, just WOW.
- version_five 4y agoStill sounds better than how Rogers treats its customers
- kennend3 4y agoSeems consistent, greed on both ends. On the customer end Rogers attempts to maximize ARPU (average revenue per user) by being as cheap to upgrade, and charge the most they can for their often sub-par service. I had a corporate Rogers cell phone, near-zero coverage where i live and where i spent a lot of my time and had to move to Telus. On the Customer service side, we see them doing everything they possibly can to get people as cheaply as possible. I'm sure rogers execs were "excited" at the idea the CSR's would pay for the training costs.
- spikeagally 4y ago[dead]
- amelius 4y agoThis is where developers will end too, if Apple gets its way. Because really, why wouldn't managers pursue this? They don't have dreams of making great hardware because they are not engineers. Their dreams are in the realm of squeezing money from people.
- hgsgm 4y agoHow would your app work without an OS on the phone?
- awesomeMilou 4y agoI don't really understand how this relates to the article or to Apple. The article describes unfair labor practices that puts one side (the service rep) at a heavy legal disadvantage which leads to them getting exploited. Apple has a "sort of" similar setup, with them deciding what goes onto the app store but I really can't see how these two situations would be comparable just yet.
- amelius 4y agoThe gig economy is based on (digital) platforms, where the platform owner makes the rules. I used the example of Apple's platform, because this is a community of mostly developers. The theory of the platform economy has not been fully developed yet, but some patterns are quite clear. The power of a platform owner where the barrier of entry is very high is of course greater than when the barrier of entry is low. Airbnb is technically just a CRUD website that links supply and demand, while Apple holds much more power. We should be very careful in assuming that Apple will not abuse its power to a greater extent. In absence of competition, many of us might very well end up as low-pay gig workers.
- qwytw 4y agoAirbnb provides a commodity. This is not really applicable to most very successful app on the App Store. Developers have several magnitudes more leverage than any host on Airbnb, or Uber driver even if it's still limited. > end up as low-pay gig workers Or you know switch to developing other software. As long as this is possible individual developers will be still in a much better position than low-skilled gig workers.
- stevespang 4y ago[dead]