Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Interesting What APAC is allowing.....(warning Post is explicit)

Wow is this what APAC has come down to? Holy Crap

Link is below:

http://tucson.craigslist.org/mis/1759632140.html

I have heard many rumors of this over at APAC, but this one takes the cake.



Nice Legs At APAC! - m4m (APAC EAST)
Date: 2010-05-25, 5:01PM MST
Reply To This Post

We work together at APAC. You're in the Prepaid department and I work in Postpay. I always catch a glimpse of you in the break room or in the restroom and evrytime you take my breath away!

Today you wore a yellow shirt and white shorts. you have the hottest hairy legs in the building! I know you've seen me checking you out and I hope you find this ad.

Let's hook up! SHoot me an email and let me know what I was wearing..

Friday, March 5, 2010

A Team Leader at APAC Speaks out

this Email was reprinted With permission with consent the emailer


I was employed at APAC for 7 years, 5 years of which I was a Team Lead and involved in several meetings with the upper management crew in the directors office. I was absolutely horrifed at the discussions that took place in these daily Operations Manager meetings.

Not only did this company take my health, my dignity, and my family away from me for 7 years, they fired me after taking an FMLA leave due to health related issues caused by their workplace environment.

I came to my senses after being off of work under FMLA, and realized they are using brainwashing techniques on their employees. They even tell their employees during the so-called training classes, where else are you going to get a job and make this kind of money, McDonalds? That is degrading within itself. I heard many employees say that is a common comment in training classes, and I have heard it myself in regular training.

APAC bases everything on "Integrity" and having a "positive outlook", however this only pertains to the employee, not to the company and upper management.

In response to Team Lead's covering up favored employees, that is true. Being a Team Lead for so many years, it was very simple to impose rules on some and not others, that is a common practice among many team leads, not all, but many. The Team Lead's managers are so busy overloaded with work for the week, they don't have time to double check all the Team Lead's work and corrective actions, the Team Lead's know this and know what they can get away with. If they don't like a poor performer on their team, they simply follow the rules to the book and walk that employee out the door with all of the documentation. If the team lead has a great performer that has some other issues they simply overlook the other issues to maintain their team stats and keep the employee on their team and in APAC's employment.

In my opinion, you have to really be a fake person and agree with everything they tell you to do and say to get any type of a promotion to Operations Manager in the company. I was a Team Lead for 5 years and had a perfect record and perfect attendance record, no corrective action and had received a substantial raise on my review, my boss was fired without notification or good cause, they simply said he was fired for not following sop's (standard operating procedures) which was untrue, anyway, I applied for his position which would be a substantial promotion and I was well qualified for it.

I submitted my resume and received an informal interview for a professional position in a cluttered office that lasted about 10 minutes and with 3 interruptions for my interviewer. Very unprofessional! I then found out that the candidate that had been chosen had only been on our site for 1 month and had already been named as the new operations manager before I had even had my interview, and the entire management already knew about it. I was humiliated by them.

They claimed that I didn't have the Assistant Operations Manager position experience required for the position. However, this is position that is no longer available at APAC, it is not a title any longer, the position was eliminated several years ago. I had been acting as an informal assistant to my Operations Manager that was fired for 3 years and he had taught me his position and I knew how to do the job, so that was just an excuse on management's side.

This company does not care about it's employees, it uses brainwashing techniques in all of it's training classes, and by this I mean that all they preach is remaining positive at all times, if you show any type of alter opinion, or don't agree with something and speak your mind about it you are looked down on and possibly fired for not agreeing with them. This happened to me many times when trying to stick up for my team employees.

They use these techniques to keep their employees afraid to speak their mind, they become stressed out robots that are afraid of losing their jobs if they say anything at all, most of the people that work there have family's to take care of and believe they cannot get a job anywhere else making the kind of money they make at APAC. Many employees talk about wanting the Union in there, but are afraid to do anything for fear of being fired.

APAC changes the rules of everything on a daily basis, you never know what is going to be the rule or standard procedure from day to day, they have a bonus structure that is based on Star, A, B, and C rank. However, even though it is a bonus structure, you can be fired for being a C ranking for 6 weeks in a row. You are put on what is called a Chronic C status and your Team Lead is responsible for working with you 4 hours per week, if you haven't attained at least a B status by the end of 6 weeks working with your Team Lead then you are terminated, and this is the bonus structure.

APAC is this underhanded little technique they pull though, they change the goals when the employees are making to much bonus. When the bonus payout sheet starts creeping up over $8,000.00 payout, they increase the goals that the employees are to meet that makes it impossible for the employee to meet anything above a C status!

When the bonus sheet first came out, I remember that it totalled about 65,000.00...they realigned the goals so fast it made my head spin, everyone dropped from a Star or an A status (required to receive bonus)to a B or C status within One Week! The next bonus payout sheet was only around 6,000.00, quite a savings for the company. They realigned the goals at least 7 times in less than a year that I know of before I was fired for FMLA leave.

They claimed to have a lower attrition rate in 2006 than any other year, however I know this is not true. They fired or laid off almost every employee on the Wellpoint floor in 2006, going from 450 employees to less than 50, and on the Outbound floor, they went from 267 employees in July 2006 to less than 50 in December 2006, and on the Inbound floor they went from almost 500 employees to around 120.

They then lied to their Outbound employees telling them that they didn't have any outbound work for them and put them in inbound calling, assuring them that they wouldn't be sent home, they would be able to work their entire shifts. However once they started calling Inbound they were sent home on a daily basis, causing more terminations and employees quitting.

It's just my opinion but it sure seems funny that APAC is opening 3 call centers in Manila, and firing or making it impossible to complete the work duties due to the high goals and stress level and keep employment in the US calling centers.

In response to emotional distress...YES....it is more than emotional distress, it is complete emotional and physical breakdown. I had to meet 100% goals as a Team Lead, if I had a person that called on the phone for only 1 minute out of the entire week, and just per se they got sick and couldn't come back to work for the week, I was required to have a complete 30 minute documented coaching session and 2 separate monitors submitted into the system for them or I wasn't meeting my goal for the week. If I missed 1 required person, that put me at about 90% which wasn't acceptable. Here again an impossible goal to meet.

A Team Lead is only supposed to have about 15 on their team, however in the entire time I worked there I had anywhere from 20 - 50, my average was 27 members on my team, all of which I had to perform 2 monitors per week, a 15-30 minute coaching session with each one, hand deliver,discuss and document each person's quality monitor from quality control and the 2 from myself, maintain reporting on absenteeism, quality, training and efficiencies, in 3 different systems and handwritten folders for all of my employees daily, not to mention corrective action for any issues, daily manager meetings, training, interviewing people that came in to apply for jobs, human resource issues involving my team and anything else assigned that needed completed, including 4 hour per week sessions with chronic C employees.

There is not enough time in one week to complete all of the tasks they require you to perform and meet your goals, I was always working at least 50-60 hours per week and would be there until sundays at midnight trying to get it all done. Yes, I had a breakdown and I have stress related illness's now that are disabling, I have absolutely no tolerance for stress anymore because of APAC, I become violently ill, can't breathe, have transient anxiety attacks and massive migraines.

And does APAC care? No, they do not.

I'm sure I've missed a lot of things in my evaluation here, so if you have any questions, just ask, I'll be very happy to give a response.

Don't EVER EVEN CONSIDER WORKING FOR THIS COMPANY!

More Displeasures with APAC

These Emails were Reprinted With Permisssion by the respective Persons

apac in tucson , az is the same as the other apacs sites.This place is horrible.I cannot wait to get out of there. I have been looking for work for a while , I am starting to think of taking Apac off my resume, maybe then I may get a job offer. The pay is under what it should be for what they expect and demand you to do. They pay low because they will always have other idiots(like me) come and apply and work for them because this place is a meat market(in and out). It is the last place I wanted to go for employment, but i got desperate. Respect(what is respect) this place does not care about you , they just want your butt in the seat, so you can get screamed at and harrassed by the callers. who cares if someone in your family dies or you have an emergency, you better be at work or you will have to use points. Screw their point system, it is lame. Benefits (i never really used them cause they suck.)Job security(yeah right) no-ones job is secure, you are just a number to them. Work/life/balance , what is a life?? Career potential growth, they make the incompetent people team leads, who have never taken a call.and when you ask them a question they give you a made up answer. Which then turns your call into a supervisor call, which you cannot get any of them to take either. They leave the customers on hold , hoping they will just hang up. Work environment, what a joke, if your not freezing, you burning up. It is a hostile place, they yell at you across the room to get out of acw instead of getting off their butts to tell you in private. They intimidate you, and make you feel stupid all the time. THey send out threatening memos a few times a week to tell you to do this and do that or you will be terminated. Apac tucson is going down hill, the workers are getting frustrated and overwhelmed with what they expect from us. We are people not machines.


From another Email We have Gotten:

These people dont have any souls, to say the least common sense. i have been working at apac for 7 and a half months and i cant wait to get the hell outta here. the pay is pretty descent considering the fact that Tucson is minimum wage central.the benefits.....well i got screwed with my schedule, i would be damned to have them put their dirty hands in my paycheck. Respect....yea freakin right! My aunt passed away recently so suprisingly they gave me time off. there was absolutly no emotion in it at. they tell you , "oh well Aunts are equal to 3 days grievance, so sign here!" No sorry or an ounce of empathy in their expression. They obviously heard us in and out like cattle because 8 days off a year sure as hell aint realistic. so if ur down to zero ur outta there for another unlucky sucker if a newhire to replace you. or they like to make you think. im way past the limit by -17 points. All i can say is that i wish i had known better before signing onto this ass backwards company. Its tough....it really is.


APAC is sincerely the worst employer I have had the dishonor to work for. They handle calls for several companies that have outsourced their own call centers to save money, so their starting pay is MUCH lower than standard call centers. Here in Tucson, with a lack of transportation to the far ends of town, it's hard to get a job in a standard call center anymore, and took a job there because it was close to home, thinking since I was saving on transportation, I could afford the pay cut after I was laid off my last job (this was a $4.50/hr pay cut, and I was unemployed for almost 5 months before giving up and accepting this job). APAC pretty much just preys on people who can't find employment due to a failed economy and makes promises of advancement, schedule flexibility, benefits, and all around job satisfaction to lure them in.

The first thing to realize about a call center is that if you call in to a company and request to speak to someone higher, usually that person has more authority and is seated in a bank of other people of authority, separate from the person you've originally called. This is how it's worked in every call center I've been employed in, it's efficient, and it helps with consistency when all the higher ups are designated people who sit together. At APAC, this is not at all the case. When you call an APAC center, you get another agent who may have 5 minutes ago been sitting next to the agent you called originally, taking the same calls, who is now walking around offering assistance to other agents. Granted, this agent may know more than the original agent, but they have no extra authority. So you're really not able to properly escalate a situation. Furthermore, since these are regular agents, they could change from day to day and minute to minute. Policies and call handling strategies could vary wildly from call to call. This, in and of itself, makes being a customer service agent frustrating and discouraging. You could be an agent on the floor one minute and a supervisor to someone on the phone the next, with no increase in pay, only responsibility. Oh, and you get to walk around the whole call floor aimlessly waiting for someone to request your assistance. Sometimes this can mean just that, hours of hapless puttering; sometimes this can mean you're running from one end of the building to the other for several hours because you're the only one "selected" to do the job.

Attendance policies are supposedly very strict, they run on a point system. Start at 8 points. You're late, that's a half point you lose. Gone a day, a whole point. Three days, three points, without a doctor's note (if you have a doctor's excuse from work, you only lose one point, regardless of how long you're gone. This is of course assuming you could afford to visit a doctor, but we'll get to that later). If you don't call and don't show up, that's 8 points. When you reach 0 points, you're fired...in theory. There are people in the Tucson center with negative 100+ points, who are still employed. There are also people who got to 0 and were walked out of the building.

Schedule changes, within reason and adhering to staffing needs used to be something one could request with a valid reason. For instance, school, child's special needs, recurring doctor's appointments, etc. Now, they only make schedule accommodations for school, and even then it's just around school hours. So if you get out of school at 11 am, you should be able to get to work at 11:30 and work until 9, so you can get up and start fresh as a daisy for your 6 am classes. Recurring doctor appointments? Too bad. Need to be there to make sure your kid gets on the school bus? Tough, that's what daycare is for. Which, of course, nobody could afford at APAC wages.

Benefits are a laughable matter at best at APAC. I qualify for state health insurance for myself and my children at those wages (along with other services offered by the Department of Economic Services, like food stamps), and so does pretty much anyone else who works for APAC. Why pay for their ridiculously overpriced health plans which cover so little? I was unaware I qualified for state health insurance (medicaid) until I fell ill with the flu this last fall*, I could not afford APAC's health insurance option, so I was uninsured. I had to go to the emergency room after a week of not being able to speak or get out of bed, the bill was well over $1000. I only went so I wouldn't lose 8 points for being out of work sick, so that I could get that doctor's note. The people at the hospital informed me that I should at least try to get medicaid, so I applied, and I was told when I qualified that I may qualify for other services and to apply for those too. It's sad when a company pays so little it's employees are encouraged to apply for economic assistance from the government to get by.

You may have noticed in reading this tale, I am not entirely satisfied with my job. You may say outright unhappy. Well yes, yes I am. All the amenities which would normally come with a call center job (comfortable and supportive seating, desk and team assignments that don't change very often, occasional bonuses) are not offered at APAC. It is the bottom of the barrel, literally, of employers. Currently, I am stuck in a schedule which interferes with my son's medical needs and can't change it; the seating used in my department has caused back problems which I am on heavy medication for and have had to take several days off work for (can't get an ergonomic chair unless I pay for it, even with a doctor's order); I'm constantly second-guessed when I am doing my job, but when team leaders (supervisors) don't know the answer to a question, they ask me; I'm unable to advance due to poor attendance (due to my back problems caused by APAC and their unwillingness to modify my schedule); and have been looking for a new job for 8 months, which is since I got out of my month-long training.

If you are a company looking to hire APAC to fill your staffing needs, look elsewhere. Their employees do not care about your company or your priorities. They care about getting off the phone and going home to look for someplace else to work. Invest the same amount you would pay APAC employees and hire your own. It may be less than what you would normally pay employees, but it would be more than APAC would pay them. Those employees would also be more liable to work well for your company, unlike those agents who worked for programs like Harrah's, Egencia, Qwest, and any other company who cancelled their contracts with APAC due to poor customer service.




*This is one last point to consider: with a lack of enough chairs and computers to accommodate all the employees who work in the center, one cannot sit in the same seat every day. So the germs from the person who sat in that seat earlier in the day get to be yours when you get to work. When I got the flu, over 100 other agents did too due to this policy of "bleeding a resource".

So you see, We have the backing of many people...drudge on you APAC sheep. You will be here once you leave them.

A Deposition by a former Apac Employee

In this state it is true you have the right to work and is good when employees are respected. There are many companies who do follow this philosophy: Keep the employee happy so they will produce.
However.
When the rights of an employee are blatanly violated, when selfish matter distract of the common cause to train, to spend the time to to give expertize or increase experience; that company has a problem. Be it so especially when hidden behind legalaties and alternate motives.
For those who say "enjoy your unemployment" or "I find no problem where I work" I tell you this:
1.- Training is to be conducted in an unbiased matter.
2.- Rules posted for the conduct of operations to be followed.
3.- Employees challenges to be positively address.
3.- Unbiased dealing when conflict arise (this goes both for the management and employees)
4.- Opinions not based on facts are not to be taken serious.
5.- Open door policies to be taken with and for the benefit both of the company goals and able bodies who have made a contract of exchanging employee time to do a task for the employer in agreement of payment for that time given.

APAC seems to have lost such, if not many. Compared with the attrition rate it has become a revolving door since favoritisms; which there are some who turn their heads and pretend not to see or are not concerned in taking the job serious, fail to acknowledge. Times are hard and we will endure. That is a given. Yet whose pockets are we filling? To those who feel 'safe' by keeping their post, good like and may God help you. To those who have been fired for minimal things considered tantamount by APAC, I urge to make your voice be heard if the complaint is valid.
Many, like myself, have a life outside work for which we need the capital to function: Pay bills, feed family, taxes, food, etc., etc. Those who fail to or may laugh at this necessities of life, your time will come and you may challenge that notion. But it will come.
State the facts and don't waste your or my time with responces better spent at a bar brawl. Your maturity is based on your responce.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Flaggers On Craigslist: A Response to our ad on Craigslist

Not only did I flag your post, I turned it into CL legal department. And I will EVERY TIME. I don't give a rat's ass about your experience at APAC. What I use this site for is to look for a job. That is CL terms. And that is what this site is for.

This is not your personal bitch board.

If you have a claim against APAC then sue them, otherwise;
what you are posting is deragatory, inflamatory and libelous. You can be sued by APAC for it. I am positive CL does not want to be involved with that and will remove your posts. If you continue, I will continue to turn them into legal until your rights are revoked. This is how the scammers, weight loss folks, poker buddies and all the crap on here that does not belong on here, gets removed. Trust you me, I have the ear of the legal department.

I am also positive your posts have been sent to APAC.

So, the real question isn't when will the flaggers get it, ITS when will YOU get it?



Our Response to this:

You Know Something,

People like you are what makes the world go round. My Posts are not inflammatory or whatever you said they are truth. and yes We are going to go up to the highest authority. You Can not and will not violate my second amendment rights for free speech. Nor Can Craigslist. There is a thing called many emails from many other posters. Why dont you flag them too, because it will not stop even if you get the legal department after me. APAC doesnt give a rats ass either of what is said about them . Look at my blog. Look at the links that I have posted. Have they gone after then....No they have not. I have verified it with each and every one of the posters on that site as well. If you look at Craigslist Terms and Conditions I am not doing any thing to APAC at all. I am Telling the Truth about their boiler room and wrongful practices.

My Final Word to you. Flag all you like talk to the legal department all you like because it will never stop comming in until We are satisfied with getting people to understand and Cry out NO MORE. Do as you will!



Side Note: The goal of this blog and of our readers is not to post derrogatory remarks and comments about APAC, Our Goal is to expose the wrongdoings that this compny has done to many of you hard working employees that have left for one reason or another. Apparently this person who flagged our posts just doesnt get it.

No What you as the Flagger of our post is infringing our rights to free speech given to us by the First Amendment: It states this about free speech.

From the US Constitution:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."



I suggest this flagger and Craigslist take note of what the First Amendment is.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Oh And Lookie what We Have Found!!!!!!!

For your Reading Enjoyment:

Apac Seems to have quite a following.......Not!

Check It out:

http://www.jobvent.com/apac-customer-services-job-reviews-C1446

And Even More To Read:

http://www.ripoffreport.com/Search/Company/APAC-Customer-Services.aspx

If you look at one of the rebuttals on this page you will see A TEAM LEAD Rebuttal and let me tell you it is not pretty.

A Good Example of One hand Does not know what the other hand is doing.

I got a Call today after Leaaving APAC stating "Do you know that you are being counted as a no call no show?" My Response was "Oh Really? Do you people even keep up with your management descisions. I No Longer work there you dumb bitch!" Then I hung the phone up.

This is a classic example of disorganization and not knowing what one hand is doing as opposed to the other. I mean Come on now! These idiots at WFM did not even know that I was no longer there. Pfft! Stupidity breeds inefficiency I guess