Working at Alltel Wireless — Reviews by Employees

Ok to preface this I started off in customer service and later was promoted to retention (callcenter based).
My total time at the company was just under 2 years. The location was mediocre when Alltel was independent but improved tremendously as soon as Verizon took over. Benefits are great, I was able to take a few of my college courses for free with their tuition reimbursement program after performing miracles with my work schedule. I should also mention the free unlimited wireless service that every single employee receives.
The pay is AWESOME if you are good in sales/retention. My monthly bonus always at least 1,500 and that was considered average. It was not uncommon to see top-sellers drive to work in brand new BMWs and Acuras. Coworkers are also awesome; you really develop a lasting bond with people when you put up with 40 hours of crap a week, which leads me to the negatives of a career with Alltel.
Management is racist and incompetent at best, and employees are expected to pick up the slack on a regular basis. Hours are TERRIBLE and not at all flexible, regardless of a doctor's note or previous arrangement. The job itself is truly an endless fountain of bad karma. I was forced to deliberately lie to customers on a daily basis and dupe them into staying with our crappy service and signing a new 24 month contract. I saw customers pay literally thousands of dollars for service that was unreliable and inferior to competitors.
Ultimately the negatives outweighed the positives for me and I left without looking back. I now make half of what I made while working at Alltel but at least I can sleep soundly at night. The bottom line is that if you don't mind selling your soul and giving up your personal life you will make enough money to live VERY comfortably for as long as you are employed with this company. If you are a moral person however do not bother applying.

I see many reviews here were retail or call center, I won't make judgements on those reviews however I know of retail reps making 50k + with only high school diploma! Someone said pay was decent if you sold? Duh! This is a sales organization, I was in Business Sales for 10 years until the Verizon merger, the review that said check out Verizon baffles me. The short time I was there after the merger showed me I did not want to work for them. I owe everything I have to Alltel, a $200,00 house 2 cars, etc.etc... I know you dont care about that but I made an average 85k over that ten year period and no college degree. I had a high degree of respect form my manager and business clients and have serveral say that they were going wherever I landed after I received severance. I dont blame VZ , when you buy a company you call the shots but I would never freely work for them after my experience. There are still some markets with Alltel brand, I dont know if they will prove to be as good of a company to work for, but give it a shot. I am not currently employed by Alltel, so dont think this is slanted for that reason. If you apply for a sales position... just sale! You will be justly rewarded.

Well, first I worked in corporate and wasn't a sales guy or CSR so I have a bit of a different perspective.

Pay: By far the best pay out of college in the Little Rock area. Nowhere else came close.
Respect: My management always respected my opinions and frequently called me in on meetings with upper management to make presentations.

Benefits: Again, absolutely blew the other company's benefits out of the water.

Job Security: Absolutely secure until Verizon Wireless bought us. I guess that is part of being in an industry undergoing consolidation.

Work/Life Balance: Started with two weeks vacation, one week optional, two weeks sick. Any time I needed time off all I had to do was ask. If I felt like taking the afternoon off because it was nice outside no problem. My boss would let us off at noon about one friday a month. Since I was an exempt employee this never counted against my hours.

Career Potential/Growth: This was definitely there and would have continued to be something I looked forward to. But VZW bought us out.

Location: Close to my house, the corp headquarters are nice. I get my own cube and have at least some privacy.

Co-Worker Competence: My boss did a great job and I had some very intelligent and well-educated co-workers.

Work Environment: We went out to lunch once a month. We really worked well as a team and had a great time. It is a shame that it is all going away.

I would have to agree with the micro-management. What I like about the Micro-management is that they make their management take responsibility instead of sitting back and doing near nothing to help you improve. The company requires 3 meetings a week with the employees as a group called a Huddle to tell about new products, services, and recent happenings. The bad part about this is that you had better keep every piece of paper you get because they are terrible about keeping up their knowledgebase called einstein. The information is frequently inaccurate which causes error while speaking with Customer Care representatives. This is why it always takes 3 calls to get every issue resolved with the billing statement. Depending on the employee they also require the supervisor or lead to stop by the representatives desk, they call this a daily connection tour. It allows the supervisor to assist the representatives in setting daily goals. It's a good place to work if you are interested in team work and need a lot of attention and reaffirmation of your self worth. There is a large amount of fraud within there southern locations. They have issues with representatives adding features without permission and stealing feature sales from other representatives. They also frequently lie to customers to get them to add things that they do not need. They also had to remove the ability of tech reps taking payments after a Little Rock rep stole a customers credit card number. The management does not condone this kind of behavior but the reps feel that it is necessary to maintain the pay and their sales related stats. (they have gotten more lenient on the sales requirement for the technical assistance due to the need of the techs to resolve issues vs selling features that will not help the customers with their current issue). It basically takes a certain personality to work for this company. If you don't have it, don't work there. Before I left the last thing that they established was to score the representative on the customers preception of the call. This is both good and bad. It gives those representatives who truely care rewards for getting scored well with customers and punishes those who you can tell don't care. It is bad in that it is easy for the customer to forget to rate the representative only vs. a lifetime of customer abuse. (Alltel used to have some of the worst customer satisfaction rates due to poor customer service).

In short. It's not that bad, but you got to give 110% everyday.

After reading the whining comments of incompetent slugs, alltel needs a positive review. Alltel is a fantastic company to work for. complaints of being micro managed only come from someone who does not have the desire to succeed. store managers are in place to coach you and give you the tools to maximize a paycheck but also to help you believe in what you are doing. the pay is amazing, where else can you be in a sales environment, taken on with no skills and make 50k a year? as far as career potential, there is always potential, if you are the type to go after it. 5 store managers were promoted from my store and were peers of mine, who also go out of their way to help out if need be. as a wireless consultant you determine your own job security, its a sales job, if you dont sell then you are not doing your job...makes sense. Plus you get multiple opportunities to turn it around before you get let go. work environment is amazing, store managers buy lunch (cant say for sure on other locations) the break room is always stocked with little things to get you through the day. coworker competence can be sketchy, but again mostly based on a persons personal motivation to do their job and not having the feeling that something is owed because they are an employee. My only complaint is that verizon bought us before i got a chance to move up with alltel...but verizon sounds like an awesome company to work for as well so bonus for me!