Working at Direct General Insurance — Reviews by Employees

I cannot review this company. I do have a question for someone who has worked for Direct General. Is it customary for managers to leave you hanging on whether to offer a job or not? I went on one interview, and I guess it went good, because I was invited back for a second interview. After the second interview, I was told they would let me know in 24 hours. I finally heard back the manager after a month and a half. I called her consistently the whole time. I paid for my own schooling and was going to decide to take the 4-40 course for the state of Florida. She said she wanted her agents to have either the 2-20 license, or the 20-44 license, which is a personal lines only license. After taking the course and finishing it hoping to land a job with this company, I get notified that they are not going to offer a job. This is after taking the course she recommended to take, and going on 2 interviews. I have written a nasty letter to corporate.I just want to know if this is the way this company always treats their agents? If anyone knows of a good company someone can start out in selling property & casualty insurance in Florida with no experience, could someone let me know? Thanks

My comments are primarily, but not solely limited to my experiences as a licensed agent working in Central Florida. These issues directly deal with the professional conduct of the district manager for that district.

The first issue is the confidentiality of employee payroll information for all non-exempt agents within the state of Florida. The DM in question forwarded an overtime report, an Excel Spreadsheet to every sales office within that district manager’s district. This Excel spreadsheet is tabbed across the bottom with the name of each District Manager in Florida. When a district manager’s name is chosen, the spreadsheet opens to the page where the overtime hours of each of the employees within that district manager’s territory are listed with the associated overtime cost. This allows anyone receiving the spreadsheet to view any non-exempt agent’s total overtime hours and the overtime compensation paid. Dividing the overtime compensation paid by the overtime hours, then by 1.5 produces the agent base hourly rate. Very simply put anyone receiving this spreadsheet or having access to a copy has the ability to determine any Florida non-exempt agent’s hourly compensation.

The manager of one sales office, rumored to be a personal friend and perhaps more to the District Manager, is strongly believed to have misrepresented very serious multiple medical issues, with time off given, time off, many believe, in a manner not in accordance with company guidelines. The existence of these medical conditions is at best suspect. Rare is the person who has a liver transplant and is back at work in a week or so.

The above manager has been designated by the district manager as “payroll manager” for the district, doing payroll for the district, given access to the district manager’s company computer and password/passwords in an unsupervised environment, including the home of the “Payroll Manager.”

According to agents who have worked in the “payroll manager’s” office, the “payroll manager” was given Personal Time Off on the clock for doing payroll.

Another issue directly relates to the professional conduct of an agent still employed with Direct (as of the date of this posting.)

The issue was raised that the agent in question had been falsifying insurance applications, changing the applicants address to where, the change of the applicant’s address created a created a lower insurance premium.

If true, many agents believe this to be a violation of Florida Insurance law.

The person assigned by the district manager to investigate the applications in question was terminated. However, the agent whose policies were the subject of this investigation, ordered by the District Manager, is to the best of my knowledge still employed by Direct as an agent.

A complaint raised by many agents within the district is the selection of management within the district; qualified agents that were and that should be candidates for management were not aware of or offered management positions, instead an email from the district manager stated a certain person has been promoted. The positions were never posted on Direct’s website for qualified applicants to be considered.

Branch managers were completely removed from the hiring process, with no input as to the filling of available sales agent positions.

I am not saying that every district has the issues I raised; I am simply stating the issues I saw in one district.

I will not elaborate on my personal opinions on compensation, benefits, the true believer, blind faith (“Direct Can Do No Wrong”) mindset required, of the ancillaries (their value to the client), combos, contests, quoting, the Direct Visa, marketing, work place safety, possible red-lining, cancellation of policies with bodily injury at 45 days for non payment, sales credit and compensation for renewals, nepotism, favoritism, threats of termination, micro management and the fear of reprisal for raising any issues.

You are free to draw your own conclusions.

Leave Your Ethics at Door, Team Central.

I worked for Direct twice and put in a notice last week to leave at the end of the month. I received a better job offer with exceptional benefits and a better reputation for handling employees and customers. I worked in a very unprofessional environment with co-worker that was devious and underhanded. After dealing with her stabbing me in the back and unobtainable sales goals, I had enough. I was told that I had to work until the end of this month to get my commissions that I had sold thus far. If I did not, I forfeited them. I supposedly signed ppwrk when I

I worked for this company for 5 years. I worked 2 offices and sometimes 3. The managers were rude, and incompetent. I found out I was pregnant and a month later I was gone. I loved the in store manager I worked with but everyone else were idiots. The two district managers quit on the same day a week after the year kick off meeting. If that says anything. They have VERY unrealistic goals and the products they FORCE you to sell are crap, not worth the paper used to print. The computers are ridiculous and they refuse to stop keeping paper records along with computers. You have a telephone skit you have to perform when someone calls for a quote that is two pages long and so fake most people hang up. but dont vary from the quote script because one of the callers may be the quote police calling from baton rouge call center to grade you on your quote...and you could get caught by them sometimes 5 times a month all the while getting in trouble because you were the only one there and while doing this fake quote you could not do 5 other quote and missed those opportunities and most of the quotes ended in, Thats ridiculously high or I dont need all that extra crap...which OH NOOOO, is going to bring your numbers down. But most of the time when you see the managers coming you pray they have your separation notice, which means...YAY your out of prison.

I would like to make one comment to the one review that Direct never had any lay off's. Well that is because they have such a high attrition rate. NEVER work for this company unless your only option is homelessness. I've worked for three different insurance companies and my experience at Direct was the worst and I not every insurance company overworks thier employees and just expect you to complete an unrealistic amount of claims. The other reviewers had the company down. They don't replace employees that leave or get fired. There was days when all I did was take incoming claims or calls and never got to make one outgoing phone call. There was a few mondays that there was over 10 claims just for that one day. Management seemed to have no clue as every or most adjusters were behind on thier diary. There are companies out there that do treat their employees well, this company is just NOT one of them.

Buffonery & lies about sums up this place beginning at the top with the prez and down to his good ol boys. The main guy looks the other way, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil and allows this company to be run by power hungry idiots. Don't believe me? just look at the revolving door of managment which tells u everything u need to know. direct needs perseus.

Please do not apply!

Greetings,

I spent 4 1/2 gueling years working for this company. This was my first job out of college and I accepted it with hopes of starting a career. That was a big mistake! Direct has completely turned me off from working in the insurance business altogether and I have changed career paths completely. Working at Direct I felt overworked, underpaid and even worse not appreciated at all. Management likes to pretend like they actually care about the employees who do the real work but they do not. The expectations are not only impossible but lets add ridiculous while we're at it. Management continued to implement new policies, and procedures whithout testing them out or thinking them thruough dooming the adjusters to ultimate failure. They continued to lay people off and even more people quit on a weekly basis with no replacements. Then they had the nerve to say that we were overstaffed. Direct is a sorry excuse for a company, because they treat both their employees and customers like crap. I recommend that if you are reading this and unfamiliar with the dealings of this company that you don't do business with them. Don't become a customer or an employee because once they have you in a contract all hell will break lose. They don't keep promises and the customer service is horrible. They use this prehistoric computer database that has to be older than me. Not to mention slow as freakin malassas!!! And also the office equipment never seems to work. There are files and paper everywhere. Such disorganization!!! This place was a nightmare and I am so glad to be free. I don't care how bad the economy is, if you are so stressed out and overworked that it affects your health, and family life then no job is worth that. I wish them luck because a company like that will probably not survive to much longer.

I call my self a survivor!!! It is that bad.

The people from claims have no idea that it is not just them. They are complaining about no raises and new office furniture being bought. Sales also has no raises. But that really only applies to those in the offices. Sales managers got company credit cards with huge monthly credit limits very few questions on what is charged, motels for them and company paid for, meals paid for and not talking dollar meal, alcohol like $75 in beer and $150 in reasturant's a week, free car for personal use (many have no personal car), gas cards, and so on.

Sales numbers are down. Guess what people have left the state, the economy sucks, and there is an OUTDATED sales model. ONLY AUTO. Many people like to get all the business in one place and stop. Management tells you things like Put flyers on car windows, stand in the HOT PARKING LOTS and pass out cards and flyers. Oh yeah and since you are BAD anyway and it is your fault sales are down, you have to SEND me a TEXT message with pictures with proof. There are also a number of reports that have to be done weekly, daily, monthly, etc. So the sales manager can check off on their list they got them and throw them away.

Attendance. Oh where to start. You are hourly, but not allowed overtime, but offices are open longer than 40 hours a week. You are often the ONLY person in the office that takes cash. OH yeah the offices do get held up and robbed. That is another matter and again the company most likely will make it your problem. You have to take your PTO/Holidays and days off, find some one to keep the office open yourself. Then you get in trouble for your numbers being low that month because you took a week off if you were able to do the rest of the things.

REPLACE REPLACE REPLACE all the time. Just my question is. WITH WHO??? I have seen at least a third of the people in my area go. No one new. The numbers go down, phones roll to call center, etc... It is your fault and their will be action taken to guess what REPLACE you too. They did lay off people this year too. Never a good sign that after loosing a lot of people and not replacing they still lay off. Yet the spending continues at the management levels.

Oh and the sales management what a joke. There they have replaced insurance people with people that managed the cell phone kiosks in the mall. I am not talking one or two of the sales managers. All that they have replaced over the past year or two around the country. Now that sends a LOUD message. NO ONE HERE IS GOOD ENOUGH TO MOVE UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Will not be long before those in sales are standing in the mall asking. How do you like your car insurance? That will be better than as already expected to do it in a hot parking lot, at least the mall has ac. They even had a VP that they hired from guess where. A cell phone place that lasted about 2 weeks.

Times are tough, if you value your sanity and safety stay clear of here.

I worked at this company for just over a year, handling claims. This company is horrible. They made major structural changes without thinking them through. Then everything started to fall apart. Instead of trying to clean up the mess they made, they just told the adjusters to just do their job and do it right. They kept calling the mess growing pains. It felt like someone quit or got fired everyday. And they never replaced the people that left. I remember taking 26 new claims one day and still get unassigned claims the next day. When I talked to my boss about not being able to meet unrealistic expectations, the answer was always that it was my fault because I didn't know how to manage my time wisely. I worked from 7 in the morning until 8 at night some days. Then I worked on Saturdays and Sundays, but could never get caught up. My diary stayed 100+ past due. I asked to be demoted down to a clerical position, and was told that I basically had the position, but when my supervisor and the human resources person got upset with me for taking a half day off, they would not even consider my application for the open position. That was my punishment. The human resources person knows absolutely nothing about human resources and was probably a receptionist in a hair salon before coming to work at Direct. There's no opportunity for growth because most of the adjusters are too educated, experienced, and knowlegeable to work for this company. Management is made up of dummies, who know absolutely nothing about how insurance works or running a business in general.