Dennis, I worked in the call center for MaintenX, and I can verify your story. However, I can't demonize the people that do those things, for a very simple reason. The ARCs and the billing lady are under huge pressure. The arcs are constantly overloaded with work, and then threatened on almost a daily basis that if they do not improve and work harder, they will be fired. Burn-out is very fast there. The lady who does the billing has to go home after work and bill for another 10 hours a day just to keep up, or she is threatened. They have a certain dollar mark they have to hit, or they all get called into the conference room to be chewed out about how bad of a job they are doing. I only remember that thursdays were the safe days.
Yes, they mark up the prices, big time. The reason they can do this is because most of their clients dont have huge administrations to go through each invoice. They take special advantage of that because theres no real industry standard for how they bill. If they get caught in one place, then they just take it out on another client. This is why individuals dont use them.
There were good things about that company, but i really think it had alot more to do with who in charge that day was using alcohol or not. when i got fired from maintenx because of poor performance, they didnt stop there. they called my other job, the answering service i worked at that is a client for maintenx and threatened them to fire me or lose their business. honestly, do you really want to work with people like that?
the place is a turn-and-go employer. no one can ever seem to do a good enough job unless they are working 10 hours outside the office hours, which comes up to being paid about less than minimum wage. they are all scared to complain, because if they complain they are fired on the spot. it is a terrible, harrassing place to work.
if maintenex doesnt use bad business practices, why dont you offer up a database of your invoices? certainly maintenex has NOTHING to hide in their billing practices, so this wouldnt be a porblem for them. and i am sure that something like, plunging a toilet to unstop it, isnt a huge industry secret for you.
and i cant say this for sure, but there was a rumor that the cfo cooked the books a little bit to make up his wages. it was probably just some drunk talk at a bar in orlando, but it was said.
i dont care honestly, but if you are really that concerned about it, you can call the corporate offices of cvs and walmart and tell them what you know. walmart will act on it in a heartbeat, because they dont put up with that stuff. cvs probably not, like i said they have no real knowledge about what is being done to them, and it isnt like its affecting all cvs stores everywhere.
good luck dennis, im sorry we both had to work there.