Alan Webb, the one time Regional Manager of Elephant Wireless, partnered himself with a poor, vulnerable man named Bill to create a company throughout Maryland called WIRELESS HOME... A Verizon Wireless retailer. I used to defend Elephant Wireless on this very site, as I was a very loyal, and dedicated employee, and unknowing of their bad business practices, which ultimately shut them down completely.
I began working for Wireless Home in the summer of 2007. I left a great job as an Assistant Manager at Record and Tape Traders, because foolishly I believed I would make more money and be treated well by Alan, as he had always treated me fairly before.
Knowing that I had a proven track record of excellent sales with Elephant Wireless, they assigned me to a low volume location, hoping I could bring sales up. With virtually NO traffic coming through that plaza, I was hardly making enough to support myself, my rent, and my $400 car payment. I had to secure myself a part time job working 7pm-2am just to scrape by. Yet still, I kept my job at Wireless Home because I had faith that Alan would soon send me to a better location (promises of a management position at a store soon to be opening in Hampden were what kept me hanging on). I attended absolutely every single company meeting without fail, drove phones all over creation to other stores, even assisted other employees by giving them rides to work, completely out of my way.
I soon became frustrated when memories of Elephant Wireless came back to bite me in the ass. A month or so into my employment, we started getting shipments of refurbished phones, that were VERY outdated (3-4 years old), not to mention problematic. We'd had this very same problem at Elephant, and that is what ultimately caused them to close (toward the demise of Elephant, every single phone we were supplied with was refurbished, sometimes damaged, or came in shipment with the previous owner's information and contents still programmed, or the phone was programmed in a foreign language). We initially were told to sell the phones as prepaid, and we were given the typical Alan Webb hype-"This is a great phone, with excellent battery life, good reception, and a color screen..." OOoooh... A color screen? Really? Don't ALL phones have that now?
Now that I became weary of the whole "used-phone" scenario, customers STILL weren't coming in, so, being the good employee I was, I marketed our company to every business in the plaza. Between my rent, my car payment, my car insurance, and everything else one needs to make it in this world, $8 an hour with little to NO commission sometimes, I was struggling, despite my (much more lucrative) part time job. I was unable to pay my car insurance, and eventually, I lost my insurance. I was determined to obtain new insurance, and my ever so wonderful boss at my part time job offered to give me $300 to get myself new insurance.
The day before I was scheduled to work at my part time job, Alan Webb decided to hold yet another employee meeting. I informed him that I COULD go to said meeting, but I HAD to cut out early. He knew my situation and said all was well.
The next day, their "district manager", who had NO PREVIOUS RETAIL OR CELLULAR EXPERIENCE, informed me that they would be cutting my hours down to 2 days a week because I left the meeting early. I was absolutely crushed. I had done SO much for this company, and because I missed 30 minutes of the same redundant banter we were exposed to every few weeks, they were going to do me so wrong.
It's up to you if you want to work for a company such as this.
Let me tell you, if your store is dirty, they'll take money out of your check (yes, I know it's illegal AND ridiculous, but they did the SAME THING at Elephant).
If your drawer is even $5 short, everyone gets that $5 taken out of their check. So yes, they not only make a profit off of employees thieving from them, but they illegally dock your hard earned pay still!
P.S. If you buy ANY phone from them, inspect ALL the packaging, down to the owner's manual and the way the charger is wrapped up... If it's missing, you're probably getting a returned phone, a used phone, or worse... A REFURBISHED piece of aluminum.
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