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Report: #1122608

Complaint Review: Blain's Farm & Fleet of Janesville - Janesville Wisconsin

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  • Reported By: Undisclosed — Janesville Wisconsin
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  • Blain's Farm & Fleet of Janesville 2421 Old Humes Road Hwy 14 Janesville, Wisconsin USA

Blain's Farm & Fleet of Janesville What it's like to work at Farm & Fleet Janesville Wisconsin

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What it's like to work for Farm and Fleet of Janesville.

 

The place likes to go on PR campaigns where they self proclaim to be a "family business." Meaning having a family atmosphere for the employees. Let me tell you it is my opinion that they are no more of a "family business" then Wal-Mart, or a Citgo gas station is. Yes, a family owns Wal-Mart. And a family probably owns your neighborhood Citgo. Sadly, most consumers fall for the PR hype, though.

 

Basically anyone can manage the place. One of the managers was grandfathered in when he was a teenager. The rest of them don't seem to have much of a college education. The managers that are good, and are human, quickly lose their human side once greed over-takes their minds, and eventually all they care about is how big of a bonus they can get so they can go out and buy a $40,000 truck. Meanwhile, they pay minimum wage to the slaves that work underneath them so they can get that big fat bonus and big fat salary check.

 

Regardless of how slow or how fast foot traffic is coming into the store, they religously cut hours severely every 1st quarter. It could be as busy as a Saturday in December, but simply because it's January, they will slash everyones hours. Of course, the only people NOT taking a cut in pay are the MANAGERS. Now, if the company really wanted to save some money, shouldn't they slash the management's pay just like they do to the hourlies during first quarter? 

 

Blain's Farm and Fleet does a h*** of a business, year round. I'm all for it, like most people probably are. But it just shows the corporate greed of the place when they make hundreds of millions a year and still refuse to pay better, or offer better benefits. And they will argue that, "Retail in general doesn't offer such and such benefits, so we are chosing not to as well." EVEN THOUGH they could easily afford to offer sick leave, more vacation time, better pay, or even something as simple as an employee discount. Yep. That's how family oriented they are... they don't offer any employee discount.

 

It just kills me how they are always telling us all how bad the retail environment is in general. (Even though they are raking in millions upon millions, and the bad retail environment really doesn't apply to them.) But they tell us this as a way to justify poor benefits, poor pay, and poor morale in general.

 

I know what some might be thinking right now: Why not quit if you are unhappy? Well, that's not the purpose of this. The purpose is to expose that the public image this company portrays is not what employees feel it really is. They want to make the public perception to be that they treat their employees wonderful, and that we get treated better then employees at competitors, for example. In my opinion, they are no different than any of their competitors.

 

Blain's Farm & Fleet offers what are called "BEST" plans. It stands for Blains extended service terms. It's extended warranty. Seemingly innocent thing to offer customer's, right? Well, read the attached copies (images) of memos issued to employees in regards to the BEST plans. Employees have been threatened to be fired, demoted, or not given full raises because too many customers decide not to purchase a BEST plan on something. So the company takes it out on the employee, by telling them it's their fault for not selling the customer a BEST plan because they aren't a good enough salesperson. 

 

It is a well known fact that extended warranties are often times just not worth the money on many items, no matter where you shop. And when you look at all the exclusions to the extended warranty, that supposedly goes "above and beyond" the manufacturer warranty (yet for most of the plans doesn't kick in until AFTER the manufacturer warranty expires,) it really doesn't seem like a fair thing to be selling to customers. The elderly seem especially suseptable to getting suckered in to buying BEST warranty plans. As you can see in the attached image files of memos, the company uses slimy tactics to sell these warranty plans to people. They hope that you lose your receipt by the time the manufacturer warranty expires, so if you did need to redeem the warranty, you would be out of luck. By then, you probably just want to by a new whatever anyway. They demand that a certain amount of BEST plans be sold each day.

 

Next, they push the Blains Farm and Fleet credit card, which has a whopping 29.99% interest rate!  They station only cashiers at the entrance door, (no one else in the store has to be stationed at the entrance door) to attempt to sign people up as they walk in for the Farm and Fleet credit card. They offer 10% off, up to $100 off the first purchase to lure people in. Just think how long a $500 balance would take to pay off making only the minimum payment at 29.99% interest. Why would any reputable company try to take advantage of it's customers in this fashion? 

 

And, just like with the warranty plans, the company gets very upset when too many customers laugh at the 29.99% interest rate and refuse to sign up for a card. They actually have daily "goals" where they expect a certain amount of customers to be signed up for a Farm and Fleet credit card. And when too many people say no, they don't want a Farm & Fleet credit card, we the employees get the blame. They hold it against us on our yearly reviews, and keep track of who "sells" credit cards and how many they sold, just like with the warranty plans. 

These warranty plans and credit cards are cash cows for the place, that line the pockets of the management and corporate staff, not the entry level employees who are forced to sell the things. 

This report was posted on Ripoff Report on 02/10/2014 05:22 PM and is a permanent record located here: https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/blains-farm-fleet-of-janesville/janesville-wisconsin-53546/blains-farm-fleet-of-janesville-what-its-like-to-work-at-farm-fleet-janesville-wisc-1122608. The posting time indicated is Arizona local time. Arizona does not observe daylight savings so the post time may be Mountain or Pacific depending on the time of year. Ripoff Report has an exclusive license to this report. It may not be copied without the written permission of Ripoff Report. READ: Foreign websites steal our content

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