Coldseal give staff the COLD shoulder! (ColdSeal)

Member Name: Fazel

Product:	ColdSeal
Date:	07/03/09 (119 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: I guess I got to smoke while I was working, It was a long time ago

Disadvantages: No breaks, employer not paying tax, everything is a disadvantage

Coldseal give staff the COLD shoulder!!
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In this review a shall be covering my experience of working with Coldseal windows limited, I shall be covering my downs... and err, my downs as there aren't many ups to chose from with working for one of the worst companies in the UK. I shall also be covering some helpful advice on how to avoid being hassled by cold callers! I shall be uncovering some of the shocking things I herd of or personally witnessed during the 6 weeks that I could stand working there. I worked there during February and March at the Cheylesmore Branch in Coventry.


Intro
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I had spent a few months looking for a job after I lost my previous job due to a undiagnosed digestive illness. I found this job at my local jobcentre the same place where I found the job for my other review about Morrisons, I'll tell you once and I'll maybe tell you twice, be extra vigilant when choosing jobs from the jobcentre as a lot of them are misleading. Firstly I would like to say to anybody who has been victimised by shoddy workmanship and customer service that I feel so sorry for you because the standards in all areas are absolutely appalling! I can't believe how some of the customers have been treated, especially those who still have windows, doors and conservatories with Coldseal. You see Coldseal has now gone into liquidation and anybody who needs to contact them I.E. a customer who has problems and is still under warranty can't get anywhere because everything has gone, none of the telephone numbers work anymore and there's no way of writing a letter because you can guarantee that that place is no longer a Coldseal building. Anyway most of that happened after I left, and that wasn't my area that I worked in. This is what happened when I worked for Coldseal.


Main
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I applied for this job through the jobcentre as my friend worked here too. I was quite surprised to get a phone call from my friend telling me that I had the job, no interview no checks, all they had was my C.V. So I took with me my national insurance details and other bits and bobs. I couldn't take my current P45 because the jobcentre still had it, so I gave them my old P45 which they should have been able to get the info they needed from that. The job that I applied for was for a warehouse operative, but the job that I got was a Call centre operative. Because I had been out of work for so long I didn't question it as all I wanted to do was get back into work and I couldn't be done with anymore stress of having to look for another job. Firstly they took some details of my address, emergency contact and my Phone Number, they scanned my national insurance card and P45, and also my passport. All of which I thought was usual.


So there I was on my first day feeling a bit out of place, as you do. I was just glad that my friend worked there too. She helped me a lot and taught me the ropes. I asked her what I should do, and she said that I should write a script for my telesales. I asked her "Isn't someone supposed to come over and give me induction training or something?" She said "No they expect me to show you the ropes because I'm your mate. You're lucky; I didn't get any training and had to figure it out for myself." I should have twigged then and gave it up straight away, but me being as immature as I was then and being out of work for so long made me think that I could do this. So with my friends help I wrote up my own script, I took my time as I'm really nervous when it comes to talking to strangers on a phone. I eventually finished my script and then I sat in the room where the cold calling came from, at the time I didn't think that this was a cold calling company but I was soon to find out the truth. The people in the room had photocopies of pages from the local phone directory (which I later found out that it was illegal for businesses to use) sat in front of the workers with a list of customers that had been crossed out because they had already been called. Nobody in that room had a call centre microphone and earpiece connected to the phones, so they had to awkwardly balance a pen in one hand, paperwork in the other hand whilst arching their neck that badly that it's a surprise they didn't get whiplash! lol. They said their piece that fast that the customer couldn't get a word in edgeways, and when the customer did get a chance to say "No thanks", they would fire back a load of comebacks so that the customer was inadvertently talked into having a set of windows that they didn't want! Not all of the workers worked this way though, everyone did it differently. I eventually did my first phone call and it didn't go too well, the customer basically told me to f**k off and stop hassling her. The second call wasn't as bad as the first, it was just a simple "No thanks". So when me and my friend were walking to the bus stop after our shift I asked her how the pay worked and you'd guessed it, it was commission based. I didn't worry too much at the time about the pay as I'd been quite successful in commission based work before. And besides I was on a training allowance of £70 per week for the first 4 weeks, or so I thought.


It wasn't until a few days later that I really started to notice that something had gone terribly wrong. For some strange reason I managed to keep this job on for a total of 6 weeks. I don't know if it was because I thought that no other employer would take me on with my past history of bad time-keeping and illness, or if it was because I was constantly being made to think that the money would come. Everyone who worked there had their reasons for being there, they all had problems getting good jobs so they had to settle for the most dead end jobs that even the worst scum in the world would steer clear of. But all of us had our weaknesses, I was gullible and immature, others had learning disabilities and couldn't understand, some had bad past work history, and one or two had drug and alcohol problems. The others that were wise enough began to leave, but I couldn't leave or else it would look even worse on my CV if I hadn't even managed to keep the job.


Soon after I started, the jobcentre sent me my updated P45, so I'd been trying to see the manager to get it sorted. The manager had recently started mysteriously dissappearing, probably because of all the angry customers and staff waiting to bite his head off. So when he did turn up he pulled us all into his office and explained that the terms and conditions of contract were to change, instead of having 4 weeks training allowance, we now only got 2 weeks allowance, and if we didn't get any leads (when a customer is interested in buying a door, window or conservatory) we wouldn't get any pay. I was on my second week by then and I hadn't got any leads that week so I didn't get any pay. I asked the manager what I should do with my P45, and he said that I was liable for my tax and insurance even though they had taken copies of them. Then I asked how the pay structure worked and this is how it worked out: If I got a Dem (where the customer is booked up for measurements) I would get £6 for each Dem and then I would get 10% commission on all work that was completed, and I wouldn't get the commission until the work had been completed. Later on the amount of commission went down to just 2%, along with a whole host of other changes. By now I was beginning to wish that I'd never taken up the job in the first place, but I was trapped by money that was owed to me that they kept promising me was being dealt with, apparently.


By this point my friend was also thinking about leaving too, until the manager offered her somewhere to live because her parents had kicked her out due to lack of rent being paid. Luckily for me I had my parents and partner to help me out financially, so I wasn't too worried as I thought the money would come as I had been paid from them in the past. Some of the other people that still worked there were not so lucky, one person had a child to look after and no other employer would offer her the hours she wanted, another was suffering from an alcohol related illness, same as another was suffering from drug abuse. And the rest of the workers couldn't get jobs elsewhere because of bad job history, didn't stop us trying though. No employer wanted to know, I don't know if it was something to do with the terrible company that we were currently working for or our past history.


Some of the things that were said to customers or done to customers was unbelievable, even if it wasn't said on the phone another customer would overhear it being shouted across the workplace, some comments are so bad that I wouldn't be allowed to repeat them on here. This happened mainly because our team leader was too busy to help all of us at the same time, don't get me wrong he did try, but because of his drinking problem he was unable to perform his job efficiently. So most of us made up the rules as we went along, and we only got corrected if we were caught saying something wrong and it took him that long to notice that the damage to customers had already been done. Some of the other members of staff were so persistent that the person on the other side of the line would say yes just to shut them up, but that made the problem worse, because then they would be booked in to visit you at your house "to give you more pep talks" as they called it and to measure up. The person that used to visit those customers was always off his head on whatever drugs he could get his hands on, it's a good job that someone respectable looking used to go with him. Oh and then there was the smoking, I know I was a smoker too but the smoke clouds were terrible. Because we only got a break if we worked over 4 hours, we were allowed to smoke whilst making phone calls! Because we were allowed to do something that we shouldn't have, we did it all the more. It's just a good job that the non smokers had a separate room next door so that they wasn't choked by the fumes as well. There was no uniform whatsoever, so you could never tell who worked there and who didn't, someone could literally walk in off the street and nobody would have noticed!


The constant swearing and bad mouthing customers was getting too much for me to take, I just couldn't do it because I'm too honest and I care about other peoples feelings. If the person on the other line said that they wasn't interested, I would leave them alone. I didn't see the point in talking someone into buying something that they didn't want. So I just ended up phoning a hell of a lot of customers until I got one that was interested. By now I'd been working there for almost six weeks and I hadn't been paid for over a month, you see they had been telling me that I was getting paid at the end of the month, when the first and only wages I got was only a week after I had started there.


Enough was enough and I had to leave, I could dispute the pay problem after I'd left. They still owe me to date £22, not to mention the other 9 leads that other members of staff stole off me that I couldn't prove was mine, I'm glad that I didn't try too hard to get the money back because it would have been more trouble than it was worth. I think the only positive thing that I can say about Coldseal is that it did teach me how to deal with irate and difficult customers which I did carry on into some of my other more recent jobs.


How to avoid becoming a victim of Cold Calling:
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Here are some helpful tips to help you out of those sticky situations when cold callers stalk people:

* Always ask who's calling. You are well within your rights to ask as by law they cannot conceal their company name.

* Don't just hang up as they'll probably call you again and pester you even more.

* If your not intending to buy any house improvements, just say that you rent your house and your not willing to take up your right to buy. You see companies cannot offer you home improvements if you are not responsible for the buying decisions made in the household.

* Never say ring back later because you can guarantee that if they're desperate they will definitely ring you back and you will never hear the end of it.

* If you are still getting problems, get in touch with your local telephone provider and ask about the T.P.S (Telephone Preference Service) which should block most unwanted calls.

* If all else fails you can register as ex-directory for a premium payment, you won't even be listed in the public directory though, that can be good and bad. For instance I was once looking for a number for my friend and couldn't find it as she was ex-directory, I still haven't been able to contact her, on the good side you get to avoid prank phone calls which can so annoying.

I hope this review has given an insight into what it's like to work for the worst company in the U.K, I just hope that cold calling on customers, by phone, or by door to door, stops...Forever. Never ever buy anything from Coldseal because their products are of extremely poor quality. If you have any questions I'll do my best to answer them. Thank you for all my rates and comments.


Fazel x : )

Summary: My experience of working with Coldseal, some helpful tips to avoid cold calling.