CARCHEX reviews

Thank you for sharing your experience as a Vehicle Protection Plan Specialist at CARCHEX. Feedback from current and former employees help us get even better. We are confused about your comments because as a frequent winner of Selling Power’s “50 Best Companies to Sell for Award”, our employees have communicated quite the opposite. In addition, the facts also refute what you are claiming. We pride ourselves in our ability to quickly and effectively train new Vehicle Protection Specialists, so they can hit our sales floor and begin making the amount of money you mention in your review. Most new Vehicle Protection Specialists are making $5,000 a month by the end of their 3rd month of employment and that is just the beginning. On average, Vehicle Protection Specialists who have been employed for one year or more earn $85,000 per year (many make much more than this). Just looking at our September earnings alone, over 52% of our Vehicle Protection Specialists earned more than $5,000 in September, with over 33% of them earning in excess of $7,500 in September. A very attractive benefit of becoming a Vehicle Protection Specialist at CARCHEX, is there is NO COLD CALLING. In exchange for providing hot leads for our entire Vehicle Protection Specialist team, we do have to set economically feasible sales goals that are consistent with the investment we make in leads. You are correct that as we expanded our marketing (resulting in more leads) and enhanced our sales process with additional support staff (resulting in Vehicle Protection Specialists being able to spend more time selling and less time dialing), the goals have increased and the earning associated with achieving lower sales volume has been adjusted appropriately. However, those Vehicle Protection Specialists who follow our proven sales training, easily achieve unit sales that earns them in excess of $5,000 per month. It is clear from your comments that you don’t understand how overtime is calculated and paid. Overtime pay for commissioned sales professionals is complicated and not so easy to understand. We appreciate that feedback because it tells us that we are not doing a sufficient job in educating our Vehicle Protection Specialist Team on how overtime is calculated and paid. We will change that immediately. Interestingly enough, most of the top earners mentioned above work little or no overtime in order to achieve their high earnings. Overtime is not required and purely voluntary. It is most commonly used when a Vehicle Protection Specialist is trying to reach a unit bonus that is within one or two units. Not only does that Specialist achieve the desired unit bonus, they also get paid overtime based on their entire monthly commissions! Finally, you take issue with our pricing strategy. We make it clear from the first day we meet potential Vehicle Protection Specialists in the initial interview that our business model is not based on having the lowest price but rather providing the customer with the HIGHEST level of protection for the most competitive price. We truly care about our customers and strive to provide the best value for their needs, which does not always translate into the lowest price. From your comment, it sounds like we also need to beef up our training regarding our pricing strategy. Thank you for taking the time to provide this review. As you can tell, we have learned some things from your review and plan to take immediate action to improve.

Thank you for taking the time to provide this review. Your review clearly indicates that you did not like working at CARCHEX and we are not pleased about that. We are a bit surprised that we are finding out about your dissatisfaction through this review. We have always believed our senior management team is accessible to all CARCHEX team members to address concerns just like yours. However, based on your review, it appears we may not have been as accessible as we believed. We will take that to heart and make sure we do a better job of being accessible. Designing an effective and fair commission plan is challenging for any business, so thank you for acknowledging that we have designed a great commission plan. We are, however, confused that you believed that we did not pay commissions on time. We have a fixed payroll schedule that does not vary - Specialists are paid on the 15th and last day of the month. The paycheck on the last day of the month pays commission on sales from the 1st through the 15th of the current month The paycheck on the 15th of the month pays commission on sales from the 16th – last day of the prior month PLUS all bonuses and overtime earned for the prior month. We are confused as to your statement regarding overworking our Vehicle Protection Specialists. Over the past year, Vehicle Protection Specialists averaged approximately 3 hours per week of overtime. However, many of our top performing Vehicle Protection Specialists averaged less than 1 hour per week of overtime. We stand by the fact that if you follow our proven sales process, utilize the coaching of our sales management team and work efficiently, you can earn top dollar without working more than 40 hours per week. If you felt overworked, we wish you would have let us know while you worked here so we could have coached you on ways to work more efficiently while still maximizing your earnings. Finally, regarding lead distribution, all Vehicle Protection Plan Specialists are assigned leads from the same sources once they have over 30 days of experience. Distribution of leads is accomplished through our proprietary CRM system and Sales Managers do not have the ability to steer leads from any particular source to certain Specialists. If a Specialist’s employment is terminated for not meeting sales goals (which is typical for any sales organization), it is only after coaching and training has been exhausted and the Specialist has not shown improvement. Finding, hiring and training a Vehicle Protection Plan Specialist is extremely expensive. It would make no business sense for CARCHEX to incur that expense and then purposely provide bad leads to that Vehicle Protection Plan Specialist so that their employment can be terminated. Again, we are sorry that you did not feel you had a mechanism to convey your concerns to the proper person(s) while you were employed at CARCHEX. We wish we could have addressed your concerns and you would have found success as a Vehicle Protection Plan Specialist at CARCHEX. We are still very interested in learning from you and as a result, getting better. Our door is always open to discuss the issues you mentioned in your review. Please feel free to reach out. Kevin Kiddy Talent Acquisition Manager kkiddy@carchex.com 410-527-9280 ext. 1490