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Businesses Technology

Samsung Sales Reps Say the System Makes Them Work for Free (theverge.com) 65

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Independent contractors are pushed to handle customer service without compensation. From an investigation: When Samsung announced its new Galaxy S22, the biggest Android smartphone launch of the year, Jennifer Larson was ready to finally make some money. On February 9th, she logged into the Ibbu app, where she sells phones to waiting customers at Samsung.com via online chats. Typically, the yearly Galaxy Unpacked showcase is a huge sales event for Samsung and a potentially big payday for her. "They built it up like it was Christmas, I got all pumped up," Larson says. But on this product release day, Samsung's website was experiencing widespread glitches; customers couldn't complete orders, and some were getting blank screens. If they could connect to the chats at all, customers were frustrated. Larson gave up after about two hours and called it a day.

And really, why would she stay? She thought Unpacked would be a break from the increasingly grim reality of her job, which has been to field a growing number of completely unpaid customer service calls. Instead, it was more of the same -- hours of customer complaints she wasn't going to get paid for handling. Samsung's experts are commission-only, with no hourly rate. So if they don't sell anything, they don't get paid. Originally, the money was good, but a once-promising work-from-home job has deteriorated into a confusing mess of misdirected customers and inconsistent directions from superiors, Larson and her co-workers say. Meanwhile, Samsung customers looking for support may not be aware that they've been routed to someone whose only financial incentive is to sell them a new product. Larson and her colleagues are portrayed as subject matter experts there to help customers -- think Apple's Genius Bar -- but the expert's goal is really to close sales. Even if they want to help, they aren't trained in customer support.
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Samsung Sales Reps Say the System Makes Them Work for Free More

Samsung Sales Reps Say the System Makes Them Work for Free

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  • It's insidious and widespread as hell. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Kremmy ( 793693 ) on Thursday April 14, 2022 @02:32PM (#62447400)
    There are entire classes of business owners who honestly believe they're entitled the labor of their employees and feel justified in things like only paying on commission. The sheer number of hours these people expect for free is absolutely mind boggling. They are totally disconnected from the concept of actually paying for the work you're asking to get done.
    • Actually nobody is literally only paid on commision. Even employees on commision must still be paid minimum wage if the commision falls below that. This 'work for free' stuff is hyperbole.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kremmy ( 793693 )
        There are still some places where they can pay you two bucks wage because you're a food server and local laws let them count your tips against the minimum wage. It's not anywhere near as common as it used to be, but it's still out there. And don't even get us started on the kinds of unpaid internships that tend to go along with the businesses those six figure guys are getting paid to goof off in.

        • There are still some places where they can pay you two bucks wage because you're a food server and local laws let them count your tips against the minimum wage. .

          That is almost exactly what the poster said

          Even employees on commision must still be paid minimum wage if the commision falls below that.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Kremmy ( 793693 )
            That's the thing, the 'minimum' wage in those cases is significantly reduced and explicitly doesn't need to be made up by the employer if they don't make enough in tips. For a reasonable place it shouldn't be a problem but if Gordon Ramsay would flip then those employees are getting screwed. Jobs that don't even cover the gas to get there...

            • Restaurant employees always get the tipped minimum wage. But if they don't earn enough in tips, the restaurant is supposed to pay the difference between tipped minimum and regular minimum wage. In practice, that rarely actually happens and they never get held accountable.

            • Actually they are explicitly supposed to make up the difference between tipped minimum and regular minimum and explicitly don't and it isn't so much some places as the federal labor law which sets the minimum wage. The same law that pretends programmers are managers.

              However this is drifting into an edge case that is rather far off into the weeds. This began by talking about people on commission and I've never heard of food service paid on commision.

        • and at some places the servers can make more then the manager

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by torkus ( 1133985 )

            and at some places the servers can make more then the manager

            And the good dancers make several times what the servers do...

      • If you convince someone they are a business owner / sole proprietor you don't have to pay them minimum anything as they are not an employee. To get yourself properly reclassified as an employee after abuse of this takes a lot of court time.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Strauss ( 123071 )

        On a quick look; Outside Sales [shouselaw.com] folks can indeed [hg.org] be paid commission-only. *Inside* sales (come stand on the store floor all day and sell things...) do have a minimum-wage requirement.

        • Wow that is a very shady loophole. These workers are simply remote workers and not independent contractors doing 'outside sales' which that is intended to cover.

          If they are required to be logged into a company system while they work I doubt this nonsense actually holds up.

          • Yeah, but that requires winning in court when they have a mandatory binding arbitration agreement to prevent you from even filing in court! Even if you do take them to Arbitration, and even if you somehow win (which is really hard when the firm handling the cases is paid by the employer and will likely lose the contract if they decide against them very often), it only applies to your case. Everyone else is still screwed and has to take the company on one at a time, instead of as a group and, more often th

            • Submit an anonymous report to the labor department. The government can afford to fight the case.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by torkus ( 1133985 )

            Wow that is a very shady loophole. These workers are simply remote workers and not independent contractors doing 'outside sales' which that is intended to cover.

            If they are required to be logged into a company system while they work I doubt this nonsense actually holds up.

            Have you heard of Uber?

      • Actually a lot of people are literally only paid commission.

        https://help.ibbu.com/hc/en-gb... [ibbu.com]

        As an ibbü expert, you work for yourself as an independent contractor

        https://work.chron.com/minimum... [chron.com]

        The Fair Labor Standards Act does not apply the minimum wage payment requirement to independent contractors.

        Maybe next time, don't try to correct people when you don't know what the hell you're talking about.

        • Independent contractors work for themselves. The terms on which they pay themselves are offtopic.

      • Well, not in Canada: car sales folks at most dealerships only make commission (some of them are leaving the business because of this, as there are few cars to sell). Not sure if the supply-chain problems are maybe causing some dealerships to change this policy, but I wouldn't bet on it happening to the majority. You don't get to be the owner of a bunch of dealerships by NOT being a ruthless bastard.

        • Probably but once you go international then obviously all bets are off. Here in the US someone pointed out an exception for the 'traveling salesman' model of outside sales as well. I doubt it holds up to a challenge though if these workers file a complaint, not when they log in and work within samsung systems where time is consistently logged..
      • Actually this is incorrect. Iâ(TM)m Jennifer Larson. I can tell you that the Samsung product experts using the ibbu/ iAdvize platform are only paid 1.5% commission there is no base pay or hourly pay. Only the commission after any discounts, trades etc are subtracted from the sale price.
    • Many business owners cannot even grasp the concept that his workers are human beings like him with the same rights, duties, and needs.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by torkus ( 1133985 )

      Fun example: Friend works in food service (bartending/waitressing). Yah, the whole crying over tips thing but they do just fine at the end of the day ... in this place at least.

      The boss gets this great idea to have 'theme days' a few times a week where employees dress up (80's, 90's, goth, etc.) and bla bla bla the restaurant get more customers because they're doing something extra. *However* costumes are mandatory for anyone working those days and the staff are required to create/buy/provide them on the

  • Same business model as Herbalife and such like. Exploitation for scraps, and no upfront commitment to any form of compensation.

    • I watched my wife do this for a year or so for Pampered Chef. She wanted to earn a bunch of Pampered Chef stuff without paying in cash. She gave up after about a year of slaving for it. Another year out and those products are falling apart. She threw out my set of nice German made kitchen knives (without telling me first) and replaced them with Pampered Chef knives from China - all the China knives are now rusty and never worked as well. That Pampered Chef stuff is really junky, just stay away.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by _merlin ( 160982 )

        Assuming this is true, why would you marry a woman with such poor critical thinking and decision-making skills? My wife would never throw out any of my knives, especially not to replace them with something inferior.

  • ...But there are a shit ton of jobs out there.
    Companies are BEGGING for workers, Wal-Mart just posted STARTING driver jobs for up to $110k/yr. Sure, that's probably 70 hour weeks with 10 years of experience, but actual starting jobs are still in the 60k range.

    Sorry for the subject of this story, but only a fucking moron takes a 100% commission gig unless you know the business enough to be confident that you can be well compensated.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kremmy ( 793693 )
      Even McDonald's is hiring at 16 dollars an hour these days. It's truly time to let the 100% commision gigs rot.

    • DOT Hours of Service Limits

      The hours-of-service rules dictate when and for how long you can drive. Drivers must comply with three maximum duty limits at all times:

              14-hour driving window
              11-hour driving window
              60-hour/7-day
              70-hour/8-day

      • Does this meaningfully change my point?

        FWIW there are also minimum rests associated with those times as well. Still doesn't impact my point.

    • The thing is in the beginning it was a good gig. The issue is now that itâ(TM)s mainly customer service which we are not paid for.
  • That you are going to the main sales page looking for support.
    You need to go to the support pages. Which is usually something entirely different and almost always involves a dumbass bot to deal with first
    Also, that for some reasons I don't understand, the support site uses a whole different set of creds than the main one.

  • Independent contractors (Score:4, Insightful)

    by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Thursday April 14, 2022 @03:13PM (#62447530)
    If you want the benefits, lifestyle and security of being an employee be an employee. If you want the benefits, lifestyle and freedom of being an "independent" contractor be an independent contractor.
    BTW I have been an independent IT contractor for 30+ years. It is a different lifestyle. There are both pros and cons but in the end it is completely a personal choice.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by OzPeter ( 195038 )

      If you want the benefits, lifestyle and security of being an employee be an employee. If you want the benefits, lifestyle and freedom of being an "independent" contractor be an independent contractor.

      BTW I have been an independent IT contractor for 30+ years. It is a different lifestyle. There are both pros and cons but in the end it is completely a personal choice.

      Totally agree. I'm an independent contractor and have had maybe 15 billable hours in the last 2 weeks. All this spare time has enabled me to do some self learning on a system I'm trying to get to know better because it is another skill in my toolbox that will make be more marketable.

      OTOH Last year I was working so hard that I made 40% more than my typical yearly income.

  • Labor laws need to fix this IC abuse needs to end.

    If they want to work CS waiting for an call then they better pay for the time setting there ready to take.
    Just think if the firemen only got paid per call but needed to be at the station ready to go at $0/hr (and had to other tasks for no pay)

  • Find a company that will pay you.

  • Samsung has no idea how to serve the high end (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Pinky's Brain ( 1158667 ) on Thursday April 14, 2022 @04:27PM (#62447798)

    I don't like Apple for various reasons, but they really have no fucking competition.

    • I thought Apple were kings of "I'm sorry we can't fix that for less than it would cost to buy a new one, would you prefer the new model be in white or black?"

    • Serve? Why do you want to be served? My ideal piece of tech is one that I buy and then *never* have to communicate with customer service again.

  • I've been seeing this for a while (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday April 14, 2022 @04:30PM (#62447810)
    in both directions. Tech employees would be converted to paid commission employees and vice versa, all to avoid paying wages. It started in 2008 when the economy crashed. Mega corps and small/medium businesses alike did everything they could to shuffle the cost of work onto the employees.

    It's no different than Uber and the "gig" economy (I love that phrase, it's designed to make working for less than min wage with no benefits sound "fun") or than how the force Big Rig drivers to "lease to own" their trucks, often times sending them a *bill* instead of a paycheck (John Oliver has a good video on this practice).

    They're doing it to everyone. Make no mistake, they'll come for you too soon. We need to switch to a European or German style system where everyone belongs to a Union. We're not snowflakes, we're workers, and with the exception of a few math geniuses and a few of us who's dads got us jobs we're all in a weak bargaining position by ourselves.

    Every time you see somebody on TV tell you you don't need a Union to negotiate on your behalf always remember every one of those fuckers has an agent.

  • So, if I buy a new Samsung phone, have problems, and call Samsung for help, I'm going to get routed to some schmuck who's not really there to help me but to sell me something? What, exactly, are they trying to sell? A new phone case? Some overprice Bluetooth headphones? Are there not legitimate customer service reps who handle complaints and don't try to sell you something?

    • Lol. Thatâ(TM)s fairly accurate. Iâ(TM)m the one named in the article. Trust me I can tell you so much about the Samsung customer service team and the product experts. Anyway yep. Want some headphones for your broken ice maker.

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