smartech-csi.com ripoff of labor & services offered Tulsa Oklahoma

I recently drove from Denver to Laramie and back for a service call. 350 mile round trip and over 5 hours of time. They paid me $15.25. Not per hour, for the whole call. This is just one example of how they have been f***ing me over for the last 3 months.

I was not a contractor, I was a direct employe...though about half the guys were independent contractors but the rest of us were actual employees. Ive been a contractor for 30+ years in other jobs and even during this one I was  contractor for HP and employee at Sabre... so I know what it is to be a contractor.

Fact is, the local smartech here was found to be a substandard in mgmt and in some of the people were in fact crooked via how others lost $10k in pay. Not heresay considering I was part of the lawsuit as a witness for the guy who lost it as I could prove how the office would rip us off via individual tickets and more.

If I did ever work for them again I woould in fact not let them know what tickets or calls were being done.

ie; when there before I was required to inform them what the ticket was.

In hindsight I would now take fewer tickets and close them individually via a tablet with my own internet and etc... remember this bad smartech was 2004-2005.

I woudl likely still not do laptops simply per it can take too much time... 

I know from my cousin that they are still known in some areas to be as bad as my local smarttech was.

There are good smartech locationss but there are some who are ripoff artists.

At least at the local smartech.. .there is no taking calls.

any and all warranty service (no matter who it was)...was always via a list on a computer..

The only phone calls made were to verify the  client was on site (work or home)..

In my own case, after the first week I went ouf of my way to avoid doing laptop related..

Yet often the office manager would put laptop stuff on my desk.  

And quite often the tickets were closed on the computer even before I would get to the client.

That alone usually meant losing $20 or more per day. 

The job ended up breaking even, because I had a car acident that cost me $500 which is what I had netted from this job.

Fortuantely since then I worked for much bigger deals and have in fact had to repair work done by smart-tech people who were supposedly more qualified than me.

In 2010 half of my work was per bad warranty work done by smarttech and others.

In  fact some were via people who similarly had no laptop skills and some who had no skills at all.

Also, per dell itself, I have a folder full of official dell documenation that says otherwise.

But as they said, not enough to do anything about it... because they dont actually control who gets todo the work in some areas of usa.   At least in Oklahoma the reality is Dell wont know who does it till the ticket is closed. 

There were no errors, paperwork wise, and it was proven and agreed by smarttech vp that it wasnt my paperwork, they in fact said that I rarely closed tickets which was true in part because the office would close tickets before I finished the ticket itself.. I often would call to close ticket and find the office already closed it ...  definatley criminal in some areas..

The only true mistakes i made whiel working for them was on laptops... often calling the office to state that they needed to send somebody else out to do the ticket.  After weeks of telling them I wasnt laptop capable and them connstaly still giving me laptop work... it was better to quit and go elsewhere.

I was immedateily rehired by COncophillips to do the same kind of work, and did get laptop certified via them though i still did config work on laptops anyway since that didnt require laptop experience.

At least locally, smarttech mgmt was near criminal, and the office manager himself was a decent tech but a lousy person and manager.  

Fortunely per other people getting bad service from them, the local smart-tech lost a lot.

Also, reminder, that in this office, there was a high amt of the office closing the calls often minutes after the contractor left, and it happend to several people over 2 years.    In my own case it was often 50% of my work was closed before I would get to close it.

Often I would wait till afternoon to close a ticket since it was all fluid on when we could close it.

AfterI started tracking it, I found they were closing morning tickets by noon.

If I did work for them today, I would actualy close each ticket after each ticket was done immediately.

Btw, I was specificlally told by the smarttech mgmt to wait till after lunch to get tickets closed.

That was both corporate mgmt and the local mgmt..

Also,I constantly told them I would not do out-of-area calls (outside of Tulsa) without some variant of travel pay (mileage,etc)..    Yet when they would choose tickets for me I would get them.

Fortuantely after a bit, I would put any out of area tickets back on the table for someone else to do.

At the same time, I started verifyin whether it was laptop or a morethanonehour effort before I would even take it off the table.

Thats when it went from 5-10 tickets per day to a max of 1-5 at most.

By then I found it it be a big joke.

As a employer myself now, I will never hire anybody who worked for smart-tech and will never have them doing any work for my companies.

In some areas, the fact was that a lot of the warranty service would take more than 1 hr  (including travel)...and if you took more than 1 hr total you didnt get paid.

Fact is, this particular location did most of oklahoma and was in the end ripping off employees & contractors (btw the only people who were employees were the regional mgmt and the office boss)...

Fact is, they often closed any and all tickets almost before you would get to the client.

The good thing for me is I was able to have the smarttech high end mmgt fired the office boss..

He is banned from ever working for smartech.

I agree that not being certified for laptop is definatley not a good thing, but that was smarttech doing it not the office mgmt.     

Fact is, $20 is the only amt I can prove, but the reality is I was ripped off by $1000 or so.

While a coworker was $10000 and he did sue in court and won.

I believe the local smart-tech is no longer around... as the other guy went overboard and made sure that Dell & others would no longer use smarttech.


As far as what others have said, I disagree..

Locally I have a list of about 1500 people who complained about smart-tech including 5 companies (including American Airlines and others).

I was at that time certified for desktops and was in fact previously one of the top techs at ConocoPhillips  and a team lead..

I told them specifically that I knew nothing about laptops and yet they still insissted on sending me out.

I agree that the $20 is dumbm, but multiply that buy hundreds of events of same.

Fact is, they rarely paid more than $20 per call and even if you got aprpoval to go over the 1 hr, the local office would still mess it up.

Locally Smarttech was criminal in how they managed things... while nationally I might think they were ok, because I have a cousin who worked for them for years and things good there.

But no surprise, I trained him when he was at ConocoPhillips on desktops and he later got highly certified.

As one who now gets a lot of warranty work done on the various business' I now own, I always verify if its smarttech coming out...and advise it must be anyone else.. 

Dell argued one time about it, and I advised I would cancel our corporate contract with Dell if smartech ever showed up.   Also, at the one business If a person puts smarttech on their resume, the resume is tossed away.    At that time I had contract power and advised the owner to switch to another provider.

Btw, Smarttech did at the time have such contracts and did in this area till recently.

I'm currently working with Smartech, and I'm finding it a very good environment.

My coordinator is helpful and patient, and the work is easy (I have 15+ years experience with computer hardware).

To address the matter of not having laptop experience... you should have been certified before you began taking calls. Regardless of your experience or lack of any, the Dell course teaches you everything you need to know about all of their products, desktops, laptops and even servers. If you read the coursework, you should not have been unprepared. Further, if you called the Dell tech service line(which they give you the number to), they would have been happy to walk you through the process, as they seem extremely knowledgeable and helpful as well.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not kissing a*s, I've had my share of shitty customer service and tech support, including people who've read from a script, but these people seem to know what they're talking about.

Smartech sub-contracts calls from Dell through Unysis. if you were told to say you were a mfg tech of either of those companies, they are correct.

Another thing, working WITH Smartech means you are a freelance contractor, accepting assignments from them. SUB-CONTRACTING. This means you are responsible for keeping a set of records for yourself from day one. IF you closed out every call correctly(which is in the contract, if certain information is missing from a call close, you will not be paid for the call) you would have been paid accordingly.

Even before working with them, I had heard of Smartech, in its connection with Dell and Unysis, and from people in the business, had heard nothing but good things.

Every single thing you've said in your argument/report here sounds like you whining about not making enough money due to a probable error on your part.

$20 sounds like a pity party to me, and you aren't those other contractors, so don't speak for them. That's what lawyers and judges call "heresay". It wouldn't stand up in court, and doesn't stand up here, either.