East coast cable & communications East Coast, East Coast Cable, ECC unfair treatment, pay, overtime... missing money for work done...repetitively given low paying work, and bad routes. Wilmington , Massachusetts

DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME WORKING FOR THIS COMPANY!!!

From day one at orientation I was lied to over and over.  I was told I would be reimbursed for using my own vehicle opposed to using a company truck, went out and bought my own truck and then was told they wouldn't pay me for it.  2 years later they recognized their error and payed a full reimbursement in one lump sum for the time that had passed.  Was told that vacation pay was accrued the year before it was usable, therefore if you work one full year you can use a paid 1 week vacation during the second year, just like pretty much every other company.  When it came time to be laid off after 6 years with the company I was given may las tcheck which only included 2 vacation days- woo h*o.  Everything else at orientation was pretty much as told from there on out.

The process at ECC is totally ridiculous, no one is responsible for anything and no one watches over any or the day to day procedures to make sure there is nothing going wrong.  To be a cable, phone and internet technician you need a ladder, a truck, tools and all the different equipment to install for those services, obviously.  I was told all tools and uniforms would be included... I was charged for both, only my hard hat and saftey belt were no charge.  I was charged $25 per week untill my $500 ladder was paid off and other tech got a loaned ladder and were able to return it in any condition at all even damaged when they were done with it or if they needed a new one.  For the uniform the first 3 shirts were included, what a great company they are, they require you to work 6 days a week for 6 years and give you 3 shirts...then you pay for every shirt after that, wow very compassionate people.  On top off paying for the uniform you have to buy your own jeans and boots and have to replace them immediately when they are slighty used and damaged or else you get sent home with no work, no route and no pay.

Anyway now about the processes:  you have to get equipment issued to you and return whatever you didn't use the day before.  Comcast directly owns this equipment so every tech needs to be directly responsible for what they are issued so Comcast does not lose money on equipment when it is lost stolen or damaged, fair enough.  Except for the fact that they have a monkey doing the returns process who can't speak, spell, or count in any language, nevermind english which all the serail number and reports and issue receipts are written in.  So whenever you return your equipment ther eis no gaurantee it was returned properly and it was re-entered into the system so you don't get a bill for the price of a missing piece of equipment and when you do it's usually months later and then they can't find the paperwork, the proof of who had it last and then they take the money out of your check with out asking, telling or even having you sign something stating the pay difference, and the only way you will even know if you are missing the money in the first place is if you majored in algebra with a masters in calculus and keep track of every little cent you worked hard for during the week and keep that stored until 3 weeks later when they finally decide to pay you and then you have the code to decipher your deductions, reimbursement(which there never are) and your actually pay break down of house, points, hours and what ever else they decide to throw in there to throw you off and make it harder for you to notice any money missing.  On top of the returns being horrible the issue of equipment is just as bad.  They have to physically scan the equipments serial number to put it into a computer stored buffer under your name to keep track of all this.  everyday there is items missing, the wrong number was scanned, the equipment was put under the wrong name, it' sterrible and there is no way to track it yourself and they always find a way to bill the tech when they realize a serial number is not in the system and there is no piece of equipment in the warehouse to match.

Every single week I photocopied every little piece of evidence I could to cover myself when absolutely positively one of these stupid mishaps would happen.  Every week I had to shuffle through my own stacks and piles of years of paperwork to prove how much I was really supposed to be paid.  Then when I broguht it to my main manager he told me he didn't have time, he didn't want to help me and when he did it would take weeks to get my money and then it would be shoved into another check that would also be wrong and it was just endlessly impossible to keep track of what I was supposed to be paid.  But when I started there I was paid and fairly and the work was spread out evenly.  There's easy work for new and less experienced techs and bigger harder better paying jobs and work for better and more exeprienced techs.  I moved my way up to being a triple tech wich is a cabel TV, internet, and telephone installer.  So when I started a triple install job paid about 60-80 dollars which is fair for a hard working, experienced, trained and learned tech who spends about 2 hours to make the install exceptional and make sure the customer is satisfied.  Doing all the jobs during the week with the same amount of care, time and precision a tech could expect to bring home $1200 - $1800 per week at usually about 45-60 hours.  I was doing just that and not too many of the blunders of the company were very apparent and didn' tbother me much because I felt I was paid pretty well.  Every year after that they announced a pay cut, with more and more responsibilities per job in order to pass a quality check when a manager or supervisor would check your work and say if you did a good job or not, and if they said you did a bad job then they would not pay you for it, so it was imperitive that you took the time to make that job perfect.  And if you were already paid for doing that job then they would take the money from your next check. So after about 4 1/2 years of pay cuts doing the same amount of work and working the same amount of hours the same tech would make between $200 and $500 a week.  No you see why that tech was in such a bad mood if you've ever had a tech come out and thought to yourself "wow, this is not a good tech or customer service I am recieveing right now." 

Money was taken from my check like this every week.  One time I figured out the amount, brought the issue up to my manager and they agreed on the amount and even recognized the error and apologized for the mistake.  they noticed they paid the wrong tech.  They took the money from his next check and then never game me the money.  A company doing this to an average of 50 techs per week for probably every week since it started gotta have a pretty big piggy bank to be stuffing all this extra money every week.  I wonder if Mike Wallace the company owner or maybe Dan Moran or Adam Noke the 2 top managers are stuffing it all in their pockets.

Well in closing I got laid off when the company got kicked out of eastern Massachusetts by Comcast for having too many complaints and too much money missing through missing equipment, pay check corrections, and straight up stealing.  Being laid off was great and if the economy wasn't so bad lately I would have left sooner on my own before that day had come. 

DO NOT WORK FOR THIS COMPANY.  YOU WILL WASTE YOUR TIME AND NOT GET PAID CORRECTLY IF AT ALL.  DO NOT LET THESE UNTRAINED, UNDERPAID, SLAVES FOR TECHS WORK IN YOUR HOME.  AND IF YOU DO LET COMCAST KNOW HOW THESE CONTRACTORS ARE TREATED @ 1800-COMCAST OR COMCAST.COM