APAC Customer Services not a good employer Cedar Rapids Iowa

APAC sounds like they have the same kind of corporate brainwashing techniques as a very major insurance company in the U.S. (think good neighbor).  I haven't been employed with APAC but I know from working at the "bad" neighbor insurance company that what employees and ex-employees are saying is very truthful as to the negatives about the company.

I am getting sick and tired of getting anywhere from 1 to 5 calls a week from APAC - I don't answer calls from unknown numbers so they are wasting their time calling our household.  I'm not sure what they want; but, I don't even live anywhere near any of their employment locations so it can't be for employment.  The only thing I can think of would be either for debt collections or to try to sell my husband on Medicare supplements or sell us health insurance (which will be a waste of their time as we don't buy anything from telephone solicitors nor from door to door salesmen - we may be older but we are not stupid).

I have sympathy for those employees who have experienced the horrible work environments they've been subjected to.  I worked for that insurance company for 11 years (I should say I wasted 11 years of my life there) and what for - to be fired due to the fact I wouldn't force my then adult son to release his medical records to them in order for me to get FMLA protection for my absence to take care of him after he had major surgery (he didn't want some stranger taking care of his nursing needs so it was left up to me to do that).  They'd been gunning for me almost since the first day I started working there because I wouldn't buy into their brainwashing techniques and I wouldn't be a rah-rah cheerleader for the company.  Also, I made it be known that I was a Democrat and would never vote for a Republican - you see they wanted nothing but right wing Republicans really as employees.  

I worked for APAC for a year selling credit card insurance. This was like 10 years ago. Maybe things were better then, but I don't remember it being that bad. I also worked in a small town center. I was always top sales rep because I would lie to customers, but the company didn't endorse that and I did get written up for it. I eventually had to quit because I lived 45 minutes aways and my car got totalled. Again, this was 10 years ago. I was 16 and didn't know any better.

I worked there for a summer, the workdays were nice when my managers weren't asking me to clock out and do drugs with them in the parking lot, or hearing there party stories from the night before. I have never worked at such a disorganized company in my life. People would sleep during meetings and no one cared!

Hearing abuse (including sexual) while the verifiers are listening is part of company policy. Sucicide is also part of company policy If you take on thier control of comunication (I was published twice in the u.k. feb, march 2001 and my resume is with dex tracker http://sourceforge.net/projects/dex-tracker) the retailation will take place outside of work.

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 enviroment.

I came to my senses afer 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!

I work for APAC in Waterloo right now and I could literally go on for hours about how horrible this place is. To me personally it is not the location specifically that I have a problem with. It's corporate who is never there. When we were doing Phone enrollment for Medicare Part D for Blue Cross and Unicare. They had us lie to people. When the plan started out CS became so over whelmed with phone calls no one could get through. People needed their medications desperatly or they could potentially DIE. The only people they could get through was to us.

Eventually they had CS calls go to us. Only do we could tell people I'm sorry we will have someone call you within 3 business days. Which was was more like 2-3 weeks. Alot of people never even received them. They refused to just train us on the program to access the CS info so we could actually HELP people (I know...god forbid. SO they eventually set up an emergency line for people who could possible die Well...it wasn't long before that got shut off. I know one lady got fired because she was going to go to the media about what they were having us do. Within 1 month we went to having over 130 people on Wellpoint to having about 30.


Why did I stay you might ask? I am a single mother of two children. I had hours that worked for daycare and a decent pay. I was already missing alot of work due to my children being sick that I was basically on my first and final for everything. I wasn't allowed to take time off work for interviews and look for other employment without me losing my job. Needless to say Wellpoint program ended at the Wloo location quick but I know it is at their other major locations. APAC closed alot of the little locations because they are aiming at having just major city locations. I could tell you much more worse stories about what they are doing now that they are closing. We are suppose to close 7/24/06. Soo..lets see what happens from here to there. If you would like me to share more I'd be more then happy to :) I'm acutally surprised there wasn't more crap on here about APAC. I get the feeling Mary works for APAC and is feels very near and dear to the company. Wait until one day THEY WILL stab you in your back.

Sounds like a horrible employer - a rate of pay that "pays" your bills AND "works around your school schedule." - Why go back if the employer was that horrible?

They screw up your pay check As terrible as it is at times who hasn't been subject to a payroll error in their lifetime. Unfortunately humans run payroll and they are subject to human error on occasion.

The allegation that APAC requires you to sell to someone who states "My husband just died, and I have to go." - This is a false statement, a statement such as this would fall under "exit judgment" and you would apologize and end the call.

""The team leads are crooked; they fix the books, and cover up for their favorite employees."" One of the values this company has is integrity. The statement above implies an integrity issue, which there is a 0 tolerance for. At any employee request with supporting reason for suspicion an investigation would be completed to ensure that the above was not taking place. My guess is this is speculation on your part based on rumors you overheard or participated in and being the "valued" employee you are I'm sure you continued spreading this rumor and any others you may have overheard.

""Now, recently they are shutting down half of their call centers" - Strategic business moves are most likely well above your level of intelligence however, closing OB call centers was one this company's strategic business decisions. It's funny you do not mention the several jobs that were transferred to other centers to assist their employees and limit the loss of several family's income.

Businesses are businesses and as employees we do not always agree with decisions being made, processes currently in place, or management action. This type of dissatisfaction is present with every company, in every city, from current employees. This is a fact of life What makes the difference is how you approach your dissatisfaction. And what you did is re-apply and continue working for this company. How bad could it really be?

First, they hired me to be a telemarketer. 6 months later they decided to close the call center, and didn't tell us until the day it closed. They don't care about you as an employee. They screw up your pay check. They don't apply rules to everyone, and want you to sell a product to someone even if they say, "My husband just died, and I have to go." I moved to a different call center and only work there because it pays the bills, and fits in with my school schedule. The team leads are crooked, they fix the books, and cover up for their favorite employees. Now, recently they are shutting down half of their call centers. The list could go on, and most of what I could say you wouldn't understand because you have to work there to know the jargen. WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T WORK FOR THIS COMPANY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!