Smartech Smartech-csi Trained Technicians paid LESS than minimum wage , Internet

 before you accpet a posisition with this company, google & the company name & include the word scam.

All that you read is true. The most you can make is $66 dollars a day. BUt you will need to spen at least $30, depening on how far you are willing to travel & the cost of fuel & the rate of fule your'e vehicle consumes.

Do not forget you provide your'e own cell phone ( with data).

A tip on if this is a good company to work for:

they do not answer the phone. You are in a constant voice mail loop. If you are a tech and need a answer, tough break.

they pay net 30. And the battle you will get into over completed orders will be awlful. And we are talking about $7 dollars.

This company will treat you like a dog & wll not respect you at all.

What this company does supports the argument for Unions and Government intervention.

The company charges back Unisys $65 dollars per call ****+ MILLAGE ******

you get paid $11 dollars and provide your'e own resources, smartech keeps the 55 cents per mile.

Think about it $11 an hour, u are getting screwed. A good computer tech should make up $30 an hour. You are a bargain. I get paid $25 for local calls taking me a half hour. When I say local I mean within 5 miles range of my house. Also $0.23 a mile? WOW the feds say it cost you $0.56 a mile to operate your car. In actuality they are making money off you driving your car! B/c they write off your mileage at the fed rate. I was offered that one time too and it made no sense. By the time I do my write offs at the end of the year the money they pay me as a contractor is tax free. I do not run around the country for nothing I upcharge when I need to by rejecting the call in alert and stating my fees right in the notes. If they don't wanna pay it, I don't do it. I have had days doing this after paying for gas i've made over $40 an hour. Just watch your back and never run a call that is not in alert and always double check calls in assigned status for rates, if they are not right do not accept and run on the premise they will make it right, they will not unless you email Shawn Moore relentlessly. Always have the right rate on workorder, I've rejected the same call 4 times before cuz it was not right, I've learned. Sucks it has to be this way but gotta watch your own back. I've even held parts hostage until my rates for closed calls has been made correct. They may threaten that they will contact authorities. I said go ahead I will tell them my side of the story when they come and I know they will agree with me. I asked a sheriff about it b/c it never got that far, and he said yes I agree with you, case closed.

I was contacted by this company and told pay rates are now per hour starting @ $11/hr with paid admin time for taking calls, cell phone allowance and internet allowance per month. Mileage is paid @ $.23/mile. Available 401k 100% vested and matching up to 4% plus medical and dental insurance.

The company has issues internally. Bad ones.

As a contractor on the East Coast, I work with 3 companies in the overflow Queues. Smartech is the absolute worst and I have had the worst time with them.

Basically, they have issues getting themselves to adhere to their own policies. You have to accept a call in their system, Alert, to get paid. Which is great... when calls actually make it to their system. Instead, you get a spreadsheet from Dispatch and for myself, I have to then call and request multiple times for them to be placed into the Alert system. I've learned to not set them up until they are, which usually kills a day getting that to be done as the CRCs and Dispatch tend to be a bit lazy overall.

If you accept the call, you're stuck with it. If the rate is wrong, you're stuck with it. If you accept it without being in Alert, don't expect to get paid. On several occasions I've been told to just run the call and they'll get it in the system while I'm onsite or they'll close it for me once they get it into Alert and take it from there. Only, you won't see it in Alert ever and won't be paid for it as they'll "have an inputting glitch and will take care of it once the system is fixed". If the work order isn't printed from Alert but instead you hand wrote it in, they don't pay you for it because it isn't in Alert. You can close your tickets via the phone (the method they want you using) but if it's not in Alert, there is no official record to pay you.

You have to be very careful in dealing with this group as they'll assign calls via the spreadsheet outside the normal $18 pay rate and if you catch it, you'll be told they'll work to get you the higher pay rate but the calls will never make it to Alert and instead get assigned to another tech in your immediate area in hopes they won't catch it either.
I've already been burned on a few calls for not catching it when I first started with them.

I won't even go into the issues or the abuse I've taken at the hands of my CRC when I've questioned why things aren't being done the way they were outlined in the Training class.

Best advice, stay far away from this group... there are other companies that do overflow service like Barrister that are much more dependable and have a working system that makes sure you are taken care of as the tech. Sure, all companies want to make money, but they shouldn't be like Smartech is where it's at the expense of the technician.

IM that paul u speak of and I was never a contractor for smarttech, I was in fact a employee.



Though I considered contract, I was even told by one of them to not be contract as they would in fact (locallly that is) rip you off.. I assumed initially that was just disgruntled person..



Turns out it was a warning.. .and if I had taken what I heard seriously I would have walked away from this  job.    As it is Im glad the local outfit lost work per being incompetent or downright criminal in some ways.





Fact is they are decent in some areas as I have a cousin doing ok... but locally they were not.



ANd the reality is that you dont want to document anythign till you finish the work with them.



And also, you do want to pick & choose what calls to go for as some will take more than you have time or pay to do.   Fortunatley I now dow similar work for a lot more and would never consider workign for them no matter how bad the economy gets.. Fortuantely along with regular work I do , I can do the same thing for a nother outfit and they litterally are a better outfit on pay & procedures.

Like that other Paul that created the complaint, I started in Tulsa as a 1099 contractor.   I feel the other Paul might not have been aware how 1099 contracts work, or somehow got the idea that he was going for a W2 position right off.  I had previous contractor experience, so I knew the ups and downs and that you really do get the pay out of it if you put the hustle into it: You do better some days and worse others.  The company provided training and a lot of leeway regarding how I ran my contract operation, and would send me as many jobs as I could handle.

Quickly, though, the company decided they liked my work enough to hire me on as a W2 employee, an opportunity I jumped on.  The company pays my miles and my hours on time, every time, and is extremely concerned with getting it right.  I still have a decent amount of control in how my day goes, the company provides continuing training to further expand my skill set, and is quite supportive when I run into problems in the field.

If you've never worked at a contractor or run your own business before, go look into that before signing up for a 1099 type position with any company, as you will technically be operating as your own business.  It's not for everyone.  But if you've got the skills and the hustle, you will have a bright future with this company.

Paul Johnson
SMARTECH Field Service Engineer since 2012.

Im surprised they are still in business.

The manager of the local location for smartech while a good technician himself was definately incompetent as a manager.

proof was in the fact that he would send unqualified people out on calls, and despite my having a lot of $$ in bank I was looking for new challenges and yet he claimed he felt sorry for me and was giving me work.

Not even close to reality, sending me out on laptop warrantys when I stated often that I knew nothing about laptops despite bing a major pc tech on desktops (and definatley expert on them).  

I would never consider working for them ever, unless I got a contract that guaranteed  a hourly wage and mileage..              

Depending on ones view, I they still owe me $500.   At a minimum they still owe me for calls completed that were unpaid...unpaid per their people closing the tickets before it was done.

The local office would often close tickets rather quickly after I left.

If I did work for them in future, I wouldnt even document the ticket or etc till I finished the call.

They were often requiring pre-fill out..  Which I wont do.