Question relating to employment from QubeGB

extension

There has been a lot of said about employment at QubeGB. As someone have been working for them for some time now, I thought I could contribute and say how things at QubeGB are - from perspective anyway :-)
Aim of this post is not to bash QubeGB, but to show how things are. There are people out there in the same position I was years back, thinking of starting at Qube, and I hope following information will help you make better informed decision.

I will try to provide comment on some key things written in this thread.

+ No problems with money being paid by QubeGB in last 2 years. Full amount paid on time and in full. Fuel Claim never questioned and paid in full.

+ You will be working on different projects. Service faults, installations... Good to gain new skills.

+ You will never be bored. You have your freedom and you can do things your way.

+ Training is comprehensive, but most knowledge comes from actually doing the job itself.

+ You have your van at your disposal. No problem with using it for personal purposes. You are obviously paying for diesel. You are charged £120 a week van rental. Company also issue you mobile phone and tablet, these cannot be used for private purposes.

- They WILL hold your money for a month after leaving. I think you will eventually see your money, but have no evidence of that.

- You are responsible for You Van - Unless You repair the damage at your expense they WILL charge you for every dent, scratch, windscreen chip or crack, no matter whose fault it is.

- You have to pay all fines, parking tickets etc. If not paid by you, they will pay it and add some "Administrative Charge" on the top of the fine. In the case of speeding tickets there is no way of getting around this, as the ticket is not sent to your home address, but to the lease company's address.

- You WILL be working long days. It's not uncommon to start 7am 90 miles away from your home and finish 6 pm 100 miles away. With all the getting to and from work you can easy be on the road for 14 hours. They also require you to pre-call your customers day before, so even after you get home, you will probably spend another 30 minutes calling customers and getting next day organized. Plus there are other things you are required to do after completing your jobs - submitting fuel claims, do van inventory, check for firmware updates etc.

- You WILL be working short days as well. There were days when I only worked for 5-6 hours + Pre-calls etc.

- Because of the routing system currently in place, and volume of driving, average time spent at work will probably be more than 9hpd + paperwork, pre-calls ... This depends on your location.

- If you have less than 7 jobs in one day, dispatch will call and give you more jobs. The fact that you’ve done 9 jobs the day before doesn’t matter. It has to be at least 7 jobs a day – after first few months training.

- Depending on where you live, because you are responsible for parking charges, you can easily make less than minimum wage. Once I spent £41 for parking IN ONE DAY. Guys in London, Oxford, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh... areas aware. You will pay quite a lot for parking.

- Routing system is inefficient to say the least. Lot of driving around. You will routinely have to drive 150+ miles a day. People responsible for routing are hard to approach, issues raised are often automatically dismissed before looking into them, be prepared for "There is nothing I can do about it", "It's the only way..." type of excuses. Nobody is too bothered you being on the road for 14hrs in 5 consecutive days.

- As with most medium size companies, any issues raised are often "forgotten", it's difficult to get any feedback, and company is often slow to implement changes.

- Company doesn't guarantee work 6 days a week. If there aren’t enough jobs in your area, they will make you sit home that day, pay you £0, but still charge you for van. This doesn't happen that often anymore, but if a big project falls through like before, I am sure they would have no problem do it again. Some 2 years ago, company gave some people only 3 days work per week, which after van charges, parking, diesel and other expenses worked out exactly £0 in engineers pocket.

I think these are the most important points someone interested in working for QubeGB would be interested in. What I tried to do, is provide is accurate picture of working for Qube.
What I believe is the main thing one has to consider before starting to work for Qube is that You are self-employed. That means you are responsible for taxes, public liability insurance, van etc. You will not get any holiday or sick pay. Do not count on any support from Qube in the case you get sick, have an accident, someone breaks into your van, or whole van gets stolen, customer accuse of something you haven't done etc. Work for Qube can be great opportunity, but one must also realize that there is no safety net and if something happens, things can go south very quickly. It’s a gamble and everyone has to decide whether the reward is worth the risk.
If you have any more questions, send me a PM.

exqubedude

I just want to say to anyone thinking about joining qube, please read extension's post as it is the exact experience. I spent two years working for them and it was a strange experience- very cloak and dagger, no team meetings so no engineers ever meet each other (probably to stop them from realising they are being exploited); despite the fact that supervisors and management have 2 conference calls every day. The training is poor, I got tired of going to redo engineers work (some easy mistakes, some truly shocking- like an engineer shorting a customer's electrics and drilling unnecessary big holes in walls and wardrobes).. [TEXT DELETED BY FORUM TEAM]

roplabda2

hy roplabda, if you still with the company, send me some information.. about your name i think we are coming from same country, so be honest.

siler_rocco

having worked for them for 2 months i am on the verge of jacking.
start with 5 jobs now ramped up to 7, some of the tv installs take over an hour with my 1st job usually now 25 miles away, then routed next call another 20 miles away, if i try and re jiggle the calls i get disgruntled rude talk talk customers abuse!
they have messed up and sent me masses of overstock kit, which i intend to hold ono until i get paid in full.
and i never sent any contract back which they seem to have forgotten about.
you end up earning £5 per hour....I could sweep the streets for more and take less abuse

Jebyalfie

I have worked with QubeGb for roughly a year now and not once have I had any problems with them, they have always paid me on time and have never had any issues with receiving my fuel claims. I have never done a 14hr shift either. As for people moaning about the cost of the van why, Don't you try and go and hire a van yourself for £120 a week or in simpler term £20 per day. Qube has fantastic career opportunities for its employees, Qube was very straight with me from the start and I haven't had any bad/unexpected dealings.

HonestMan_2

Just keep an eye on this thread and watch it grow over time. I've permanently signed up to this website so if you have any questions about my experience with this company I'm happy to tell it how it is/was. There are so many things I could change about this company that would make it a much better one.

This company is VERY unorganised despite the fancy brightly coloured HTML5, javascript website and the well acted out YouTube videos. I'm not going to state what they're doing wrong because they're not paying me for that, in fact, they're not paying me at all. If the owners of the company don't know how the people they've put incharge are running their company then the company will eventually fade out and become obsolete.

At one of my jobs a customers dog I had no idea was in the premises, tried to attack me and while I backed myself to a wall behind me to get away from this dog, I stepped in an awkward angle and twisted my knee. If I didn't back away that dog would have had me for dinner. Luckily the owner managed to grab it by it's collar before it got to me. Anyway thinking about this incident wound me very much and I ended up sending an email to all QAO's (supervisors) with info about the incident and some suggestions to stop this from happening to other engineers in the future. That suggestion was for free.

My suggestion was to make sure agents who booked engineers for customers added information about customers pets if they hand any, to their notes or maybe get the programmers of the software the company uses to add a mandatory field to the system that asks if the customer has any pets and other related info. This would help engineers be better prepared before entering a customers premises. Most of the time on the evening of our pre-calls for the following days jobs we'd be tired and forget to ask about things like pets. We're not to blame as our jobs would normally come through around 7pm - 9pm.

The previous dog incident caused some pain in my knee that I thought would go away so I ignored it until I was unable to walk. It ended up being a meniscus tear and my doctor and specialist signed me off work and I was put on crutches, given a knee brace and instructed to keep pressure off the affected leg until it healed.

I was struck out of QubeGB at the start of this year. Actually not struck. I was disposed of, like a used nappy. The way I was dealt with on the day my van, tools, mobile, tablet and ID badge was collected was terrible. Why? for not being able to attend work despite calling up and also emailing for time off and being given the ok to do so. I was instructed by my QAO (supervisor) to bring my doctors note in when I got back to work. During my second week off he's calling me to fire me and denying the fact that I asked for time off.

Anyway, I left behind a trail of happy customers and I done my job well. I'm waiting for a while to see if I receive what QubeGB owe but I imagine they'll find a way to deduct as much as they can from my final wages. Photos were taken of my immaculate non dented, non scratched van by a relative, I've returned all my stock and tools. I have logs of EVERYTHING job related at my time at QubeGB recorded in excel incase someone tries to make up any false stories. I have my doctors note along with every email I sent or received from QubeGB QAO's.

I hope this thread isn't censored in any way and people can post about their experiences in order to save other people un-needed stress and hassle. I promise you you're better off being employed doing a 9-5pm type job of a similar nature. No sitting around in your van waiting for your next time slot to come up or waiting around for issues you've bought to QAO's attention to be sorted out or being sent to a job 40 minutes away from your house on a Friday in a 6pm to 8pm slot after being at your first job at 7am that day. Maybe some one else will post a detailed description of how it really is at QubeGB because if I begin I'll be here for a long time. If you have any questions feel free to pm me.

*If you're a supervisor at QubeGB and reading this then you definitely know who I am and that was intentional*

Good luck

siler_rocco

most responsible owners say are you ok with dogs,,,hazard of going to scrotes houses lol..just as anyone who visits the public.
they have a health and safety screen which i have had to leave one house due to the overpowering stentch of dogs !!!!.
one way of getting your money store some stock etc and go off sick for 3 weeks , make sure you get the money owed then just jack it in with one day notice.
i refuse to go out to houses after 6pm....and re arrange calls to suit me lol.

HonestMan_2

siler_rocco wrote: »

most responsible owners say are you ok with dogs,,,hazard of going to scrotes houses lol..just as anyone who visits the public.
they have a health and safety screen which i have had to leave one house due to the overpowering stentch of dogs !!!!.
one way of getting your money store some stock etc and go off sick for 3 weeks , make sure you get the money owed then just jack it in with one day notice.
i refuse to go out to houses after 6pm....and re arrange calls to suit me lol.

This house was "stenchless" and there was no sign of any dog. I've been to many clean houses with dogs and cats that smell pleasant. About 10 minutes into the job I heard dog footsteps coming down the customers wooden steps and I thought "oh s***". As soon as it saw me it barked and came straight for me. I know a friendly bark from an aggressive bark. The owner did apologise and state that he thought the dog was locked away and that someone must have let him out.

As for jobs you can rearrange job times to suit you as long as the customers are happy with it but at times it's inconvenient for certain customers who work full time and only free in the evenings. In those situations you might as well go and do the job because if the customer has an ongoing issue they want solved they call up and express their frustration to customer service then you end up getting a call from your QAO telling you you have to go back. I just put myself in their position and that's enough to make me go sort out their issue, even if it's a BT fault that needs to be escalated. As long as something is being done about their issue they're normally ok.

I'm not going to lie, one day I had a nasty migrane came home after my early jobs were done and straight to bed. Slept past my last slot and was awoken by a proud sounding QAO giving me orders to do the job. Some of the QAO's are cool but others let the title get to their heads and forget to do their jobs correctly.

siler_rocco

i only try to re plan the day to fit all 7-8 jobs in.
they route me 1st job 30 miles away, 2nd job 30 miles away then next job
round the corner from 1st job, common sense is do the 2 30 miles away then work back, some engineers locally are out past 8pm when they start pre 7am...I have the call office asking me why i am not at a job they seem to think same county on the map is 5 mins away...lol

onthinice

Well fellas, Qube QA,s and Managers reading this post i worked for QubeGB last year and yes after 30 years in the telecoms industry ive got to admit it is the worst company i have ever worked for.The job could be fine if it was run by competent people,no communication and for a comms company thats well pretty bad, training waste of time it costs them money so as little as possible all they want is to get the money in for every job you do no matter what the outcome as long as its cleared they dont give a toss.
And yes im still owed money and have been in touch with them and all ive had is promises to get things sorted,but nothing.