This is the absolute worst company I have ever seen in my life, and I am sad to say I used to work for them. I've looked through the complaints, and saw that Jacob Cantu was named a couple of times, and customers were told that he was a new employee that might have made some "mistakes" during the sales pitch. That is a flat out lie. Jacob has been with the company for years and has been paid very well for his high pressure tactics. Let me give you a rundown of this company, and what employees there are up to. PA might go after me for this, so be it. I'm tired of seeing them pull off their scams.
I worked for this company in 2006. They are always hiring. Every Sunday they have advertisements in the Sunday paper that they are hiring. I can see why. They offer a decent wage for people with no experience on selling these security systems over the phone. James (the supervisor), also lets the employees know that if they don't make it during their trial period (fired or quit), all their wages will be changed to minimum wage. The employees are then told they have to buy headsets at around $80 that will be garnished from their first check, unless they have one of their own that can work with the phone system. I have seen for myself that "found" headsets the company gets from employees that have left or had them lost or stolen get sold again.
From the get go this company is all about high pressure tactics. Employees are not given a lunch break, and get one 15 minute break during the middle of the eight hour work day (how they get away with this, I don't know). Afterwords, Jack Grimm, relative of Steve grimm the operations manager, pulls aside everyone who hasn't met the qouta for the day yet, and seperates them into a room where he basically threatens their jobs. It won't matter that the person had a great day yesterday, it is NOW, and what have you done the last few hours.By the way, customers who say "NO" innitialy aren't taken off the list for quite a while. Expect many more calls after talking to them.
After that point, employees are willing to say just about anything to meet their quota, and will lie if that helps. Supervisors and management know this, but shrug it off. Supervisors are constantly threatened with quotas as well, and have no problem doing and allowing what it takes to get that quota for the day met. They know other wise the brothers Grimm will chew their asses out severely.
The scam goes like this; callers contact prospects who have made it on to their lists. They are told a great pitch about security, and led to agree that wireless is the best way to go. They are told the system will cost $blank amount of dollars, and that cost is expensive. After the customer says that is a bit much, the rep then tells them he/she will see what they can do, and puts them on hold for 30 seconds to a minute. The rep then comes back on and says the supervisor said they can give them the system for free to meet their goals (which is always going on), if they can follow certain conditions. The main thing being they sign a contract within an hour, and have that paperwork returned by fax (This may or may not be still the case. Protect America has went to electronic signing since). For customers without a fax machine, this means going to a store near by with one. As you can tell, one hour doesn't give one much time to get to a store with a fax machine, get that paperwork signed, have it faxed back, and leave much time to read the paperwork. This is what PA depends upon. After the customer gets snookered, things get even more complicated from here.
Customers are given a time where they can back out of the deal. The time frame is hard to meet once the equipment gets shipped, and when the customer can return it without the expensive restocking fee. Not only does PA charge the customer a ridiculous amount for re-stocking and shipping, they also charge the salesperson a ridiculous amount for their sale falling through (commision additional costs). PA makes plenty of money off of cancelled agreements. The only people that lose are the customers, and the sales person. This is why the salespeople work so hard to prevent you from cancelling, and when they have friends in accounts payable, they work hard as well to keep the customer screwed into the deal.
After the shipment is sent, the account goes to the install department. Here is where the only person I've seen in the whole company that has an actual license to install security is involved, he is the install department manager. The people they have in here are under extreme pressure once again to make their quota of installs everyday. PA doesn't make their money on the sale until you've hooked up the system, and have had it tested at the monitoring company. Once you have had it tested, they are gold. There are quotas for installers on how many systems they walk people through installing each day, AND how much additional sales they have.
The installers are not chosen for their technical ability. They are people who have sold well in the past, but fell into a slump and the company didn't want to get rid of entirely. No one at PA goes there to apply as walk through installer. Some installers go on to sell a lot better doing installs than they did in initial sales. You have the system, they convince you that you did not buy enough protection. Some are very rude. They will call you multiple times per day to get your system installed, even though you told them you wouldn't be ready till whenever. Like i said, PA doesn't get their money till you install and test. It is these peoples responsibility to make sure you do so. Telling them you will be ready at 8:00 on a monday, will only get you calls starting at 2 that day. They are cut-throat against each other to get you to install with them, and the company highly promotes this.
I could go on more with this company, but if you take the time to read through customer complaints, and look at what I've told you, you should have a good picture. Never do business with this company. This isn't a problem so much with who they hire, but is a reflection on the people at the top who have encouraged this kind of crap for years. The brothers Grimm are exactly that, and from what I have seen are no better than hired thugs for a mafia group, and the owner is completely complicit, and encourages the dirty crap. If this company ever calls you, get away from them as fast as you can, and then expect more calls to follow.
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