Texas
My husband recently left his workplace due to an unbelievable amount of mistreatment by his managers. He worked as a luxury car salesperson and, granted, dealerships are not well known for their fabulous work environment but after the things he's told me, I feel like he was very used and treated poorly. Many of his stories include questionable practices and I'm wondering if they were all legal.
To start, he worked on commission. He had a base pay of $1,500 a month, or more if his total commission is beyond $1,500. If he sold a car, he got 20% off the front end and 10% of the back end. The final figures (and amount paid to him) were determined during the financial dealing done after the sale has closed on part of the salesperson. The problem with this is that the people working in finance have the power to move the money around as they see fit. The person in finance only makes money off the back end, so frequently you would see them move the money around in their favor, and out of the favor of the salesperson, who now only makes 10% of whatever has been moved to the back end.
The thing that really struck me the most was their pay system. The dealership has software that states who sold which car and when. This software is available to everyone - and editable! My husband once went to check on his car sales and he found that the managers could put the car IN THEIR NAME, at their discretion, and take credit for it. They have also actually done the opposite, and taken leads that never came through or had a negative profit and put it in my husband's name instead. Luckily, he caught this and had the name changed back when he realized it wasn't his customer.
Another horror story, one day my husband walked into work and people seemed a little disheveled. It turns out, there was a review online from a recent visitor to the dealership. This reviewer went into great detail about his visit but never named anyone specifically. He had come in and taken a car out for a test drive while his wife stayed behind in the lobby. When he came back, he spoke to his wife and they decided not to purchase a car. The reviewer says that he was going to buy and that the man helping him (which was my husband) was fantastic and he felt bad that he could not, in good conscience, buy from their dealership. Because, as it turns out, his wife was being talked about by a manager and a salesperson right in the other room - with the door open. They made lude sexual comments and laughed at her expense. No one stepped up to this and, for fear of losing his job, my husband never mentioned that he was the salesman or that he knew who the two people were. He immediately went into the leads system to find the reviewer but the name had been deleted, and all proof of their visit with it.
I'm sure I could think of more, but these things seem the most sketchy to me. When my husband went into work this week and found that he was being demoted (despite selling the most cars last month) to cover shifts of EIGHT people who quit over the past two days, he asked for an equal base (everyone else was getting $3,000 per month) they denied him. When he asked to be put on the internet team (where only a hand-selected few can work with 70% of their total leads), they said no. So, they lost another good employee.
All of this is despicable as an employer, but is any of it really illegal?
My husband recently left his workplace due to an unbelievable amount of mistreatment by his managers. He worked as a luxury car salesperson and, granted, dealerships are not well known for their fabulous work environment but after the things he's told me, I feel like he was very used and treated poorly. Many of his stories include questionable practices and I'm wondering if they were all legal.
To start, he worked on commission. He had a base pay of $1,500 a month, or more if his total commission is beyond $1,500. If he sold a car, he got 20% off the front end and 10% of the back end. The final figures (and amount paid to him) were determined during the financial dealing done after the sale has closed on part of the salesperson. The problem with this is that the people working in finance have the power to move the money around as they see fit. The person in finance only makes money off the back end, so frequently you would see them move the money around in their favor, and out of the favor of the salesperson, who now only makes 10% of whatever has been moved to the back end.
The thing that really struck me the most was their pay system. The dealership has software that states who sold which car and when. This software is available to everyone - and editable! My husband once went to check on his car sales and he found that the managers could put the car IN THEIR NAME, at their discretion, and take credit for it. They have also actually done the opposite, and taken leads that never came through or had a negative profit and put it in my husband's name instead. Luckily, he caught this and had the name changed back when he realized it wasn't his customer.
Another horror story, one day my husband walked into work and people seemed a little disheveled. It turns out, there was a review online from a recent visitor to the dealership. This reviewer went into great detail about his visit but never named anyone specifically. He had come in and taken a car out for a test drive while his wife stayed behind in the lobby. When he came back, he spoke to his wife and they decided not to purchase a car. The reviewer says that he was going to buy and that the man helping him (which was my husband) was fantastic and he felt bad that he could not, in good conscience, buy from their dealership. Because, as it turns out, his wife was being talked about by a manager and a salesperson right in the other room - with the door open. They made lude sexual comments and laughed at her expense. No one stepped up to this and, for fear of losing his job, my husband never mentioned that he was the salesman or that he knew who the two people were. He immediately went into the leads system to find the reviewer but the name had been deleted, and all proof of their visit with it.
I'm sure I could think of more, but these things seem the most sketchy to me. When my husband went into work this week and found that he was being demoted (despite selling the most cars last month) to cover shifts of EIGHT people who quit over the past two days, he asked for an equal base (everyone else was getting $3,000 per month) they denied him. When he asked to be put on the internet team (where only a hand-selected few can work with 70% of their total leads), they said no. So, they lost another good employee.
All of this is despicable as an employer, but is any of it really illegal?
