Working at Dish Network — Reviews by Employees

"CROPS"

Being on the sales floor, I overheard managers talking and heard one state "How are my crops today?"
I didn't read into it too much at the time, but the longer I stayed employed at Dish, the more it became apparent just how accurate a description of "crops" really is.

Breakdown:
Hired = Seedling
Training = Watering/Weeding out the bad
Sales Floor = Yield / Chop
End of Year/Cycle = Chop

The bottom line is that as soon as you are not "yielding" enough to their standards or become complacent, they will axe you and happily plant new little seedlings and start the process again.

You will be dehumanized here. NO-ONE cares about you AT ALL. These are the type of people that will smile at you and turn around to immediately bash you, from the coaches to the managers to QA, etc.

The pay is ridiculous, the atmosphere horrendous, and the customers are a PITA. The turnover is asinine as well.

It's loud on the floor (constant yelling), the managers SNAP at you to get your attention, the coaches are no help and never want to; but they will walk the floor and ask "How many?" 3x per hour and SCREAM how many sales each agent has so they can be tallied. If you are doing good, they'll say you're getting lucky and you suck, if you are doing bad, well then expect to get seriously demeaned and taken off the phones where you will get made fun of AND you're getting reamed for free (sales only pay!! NO hourly rate).
If you get taken off the phone, the mgr will pull up some bs statistics, point to someone and say "He/she REALLY sucks and you are doing worse (or no better)." If they do "try" to offer help, it's just the same BS rhetoric OVER and over again. See the movie Boiler Room? They actually USE quotes from that movie and I'm dead fucking serious...

Listen, I know this is a sales job and sales are tough, however this call center is the model of what-not-to-do. For example. "Team Meetings" just serve to literally tell you that the team "sucks" and how agents should be ecstatic to have a job at all...oh yeah, Auto-In... Negative reinforcement is EVERYTHING here.

Quick note about pay: It's not hourly anymore, it's strictly sales only. So working overtime actually can make you earn LESS because if you fall below a certain closing ratio, your check goes DOWN. The company LOVES it of course because you're only getting paid if you're talking...and that's not even a guarantee (paid or talking!) There's 0 sick days for the 1st TWO YEARS, there's ZERO Paid Time Off (used to be though), and the benefits aren't really benefits at all. A $3,000 deductible is NOT a benefit. These policies are so Ergen and his cronies can save a little bit of money. Ergen's only worth 10 BILLION DOLLARS you know...he needs it.

I sometimes just go to a job site just to see if there are openings, and there ALWAYS are. They also frequently have job fairs, where applicants walk the floor and are given the supreme bullshit treatment. A company that needs to run job fairs with the economy the way it is should tell you something. People abhor this place.

There are so many reasons to stay away from this company it's mind-boggling.
YOU WILL NOT BE HAPPY HERE.


Also, the only reason that the company can claim they charge less per month than your average cable company is because the channel lineup SUCKS for the Bronze100. Add a DVR, more than 2TV's, no phone-line and fees/taxes and you are right up there with the cable companies anyway. Plus you'll get WAY better service and a much better selection of channels. Most customers are locked into a 2yr contract so once you are set up...you are s-K-rewed.

TiVo is suing DISH and I hope it costs Dish MILLIONS. I actually hope the company dies a slow death, but that would only be hurting the "little" guys.

I'm sure by now you get the idea. If you are starving and living on the streets than I guess go ahead and apply (you'll probably get hired unless your pulse rate is erratic). My advice is don't sign up for service and don't work there. I told my mgr I quit and was giddy walking out the door. Never looked back. Well I did...Just now. But boy was it fun.

I use to be a tech in the Kansas city office and the Gm there is a complete fucking ass clown, he is an ex State Trooper he was fired , So in return he waddles his Nepolean ass around around threating his Managers and techs on a daily basis. He probably sits at home and jerks off to ergen posters. Now on to the big shit tards The motto is this is a job where the only limit is your imagination. what you dont see in small letters is only if your managers and Gm dont have it out for you. Ergens worth 9 Billion but I know some of his employees that cant afford health insurance how fucked up is that. This placed is the most fucked up Fortune company on the list I know Sysco and A-B dont treat their people like this. Hey Dish EAT A DICK I HOPE YOU BURN TO THE GROUND SO ALL THOSE WHO GOT FUCKED BY YOU CAN PISS ON YOUR ASHES!!!!!!!!!!

Just to counteract Carlie Ergen's bogus and anonymous rating immediately below (submitted from one of his vacation homes in Hawaii).

I love to work. I can't wait to get to work. I suck up to the boss. I eat at his house. I tell
the boss about other workers who don't love work. I would rather be a my job
because my wife is a Bitch. I never miss work. I stay poor so i can work. All my friends
are at work. I want to move in. I got a tattoo of my corporate logo. I enjoy being at
all the corporate events.

I have never worked for a company that treated thier employees so bad. Corporate office, by badging into the door, they track your hours. No matter what the position, you are tracked for working at least 8 hours and at least 40 hours a week. If you are exempt, worked from 7am to 12am you are still expected to be in the office by 9am and work and hour day or otherwise you will be written up. Lunch can only be taken between 11am and 1pm. If your badge shows you left outside of those hours, you better have a doctors note or you will be written up. There is a cafeteria in the building, which is rather pricey, that may be because the CEO, Charlie Ergen, makes money from the profits there. He is profiting off his own employees. Maybe because he has to support his multiple homes and his private corporate jet with 3 pilots that take him and his family around the world. This I know as I was friends with one of the pilots and I also was in the Human Resources Department. The EVP of Human Resources has also employed his daughter in the HR department because she has no where else to go. She is married so the last name is different, as if no one would find out, she blabs it everywhere. Now if that is not a conflict of interest, I don't know what is.

I'm sure DISH is an okay company to work for but the call centers are fucking horrible. People walk into this place pissed and leave pissed everyday. They do everything for their retarded fucking customers and yet treat their employees like piles of shit. You have to be nice to customers who yell and cuss at you for something that's not you're fault. PAY YOUR FUCKING BILL, DUMBASS! They constantly want a free handout, I know its a recession or whatever but damn, beggers cannot be choosers. Then your "coaches" are the most retarded douches in the world. I walked out and quit, 11 an hour is not worth all of this!!!

Now they are closing the mckeesport pa call center. 600 out of jobs!

I'm just waiting for DirecTV to buy these clowns on the cheap and scrap them for parts (lots of scrap, very few usable parts).

Avoid this company, in all manners, at all cost.

Here it is in a nutshell...

Inbound Sales Rep:

Positives:
Hired @ $15/hr + commission... (*See negatives though)
Full-time every week (40+hrs)
While there are disclosures, you can generally say what you need to close the sale

Negatives: (Here we go)
Pay was changed to $30 per install. Why is this bad you ask? Instead of getting $15/hr no matter what, all agents now get NOTHING if they are idle (no calls in queue...ie-Sunday's), are in any AUX (training, QA, breaks, etc), installs get cancelled,etc.

A TON of uncontrollables that DIRECTLY affect your pay. You see, you must maintain a closing percentage of 27-32%, meaning of course appx 1 out of every 4 calls MUST be a sale and it MUST get installed to get paid. Now you WILL get SCREWED. You WILL get Customer service calls (already installed customers), you WILL get customers with absolutely no credentials (no credit cards, no debit cards and no checking accounts...! A LOT), customers WILL fail the credit criteria forcing them to pay hundreds before getting installed (nothing worse than finally selling a customer that asks a ZILLION questions and he/she fails the credit check), "Somebody speaka Spanish"...yup, Spanish calls hurt, etc etc etc. It gets INFURIATING. Not to mention if the tech goes to install and he doesn't get a line of site, has a bad attitude, etc etc etc, you DON'T get a DIME. You'd be better off being home watching re-runs of Friends, because you just spent an HOUR on the phone with someone that asked a million and one questions, didn't get installed and you get NOTHING. At least before, I was getting something to talk to these idiots.

The managers, coaches, etc will ask you AT LEAST 25 times PER DAY how many sales you have and will YELL EXTREMELY LOUDLY how many each rep has so they can tally each rep at the front board with a marker...this happens every 15 minutes. Better reach for that mute button, because customer DO hear this. If they hangup...you lose.

If you are having bad luck (and it does come down to luck) and are falling behind in sales compared to your teammates/call center, expect to hear it...and be made fun of, and be yelled at and be told to "Go to QA" so the mgr, coach, etc can ream you a new azzhole. And if you have a string of bad calls and are stuck on the same sales total for more than 30 minutes, expect to hear it too.

You see, it could be a decent place to work. Back when I was getting $15/hr+comm I could tolerate all of this and if I did get a bad call, I wouldn't get too upset. NOW if you get a bad call or spend a ton of time on the phone with a customer only to have the customer hang up, you get NOTHING. ZILCH. NADA. A teammate of mine worked 12 hrs on a Sunday (11:30am to 11:30PM)...made 3 sales that day. Ended up getting ONE install and made...YES THIRTHY FREAKING DOLLARS FOR TWELVE HOURS OF WORK ON A SUNDAY. That's $2.50/hr my friends. Imagine going to work on a Sunday...all day...and losing money. RIIIIGHT.

I worked there for a loooong time, and it kept getting worse. It felt sooo great to tell my mgr that I was quitting. Never regretted it.

I am skipping a lot of other bad stuff for the sake of this review (breaks timed down to the second, horrid morale on floor, constant turnover (job fairs every other week there), yelling, cursing, unprofessionalism, bad bad benefits, no time off (2 years to get ONE sick day...and no it's not paid), etc etc etc.

Good LUCK!

i was a subcontractor and although i hear horror stories I did my work and was paid on time, whih isn;t always the case in this industry