provident agents [TEXT DELETED BY FORUM TEAM]

smatt2

I’m a bit late joining this but, have only just heard of the thread.

The honest truth is Provident treat their customers & agents with pure contempt.
Upon having to attend a meeting, to be greeted with their latest enterprise, to screw us agents a little bit more. As usual they provide a chart showing all the supposed benefits & only 1 point against. At that point I knew I was off. I asked if they would now pay 9.5% commission on all collections. The answer a resounding no.
Having been on my round for 8 months, I knew who would catch up & who would continue to falter, the latter being the more likely. Someone at arrears stage 6 is only going way. You may gain one week, but will undoubtedly loose twice.
The next week, there was our print-out waiting showing where we would loose & gain. I had a possible £40 gain & £80 loss. A quick glance & I knew I may gain £10 but would loose £75. One of these was £25 on a single customer. £15 on Greenwoods & £10 on Provident. Oh yes they will let you do both if they cannot get agents. This person has moved & refused to give a forwarding address. I presented this info to the AM who just said, the DM can sort it out. The DM was off sick.
I got my £2000 float cheque & off I went. Took my wages & paid in the balance.
At 3pm on the Friday, in true Provident style, I went into the office to announce I was off.
The AM even had the cheek to ask me to do that week, after telling me the day before that I was the only one moaning. I think I could see the future.
The last thing I did was to get the numbers of the ROM & DOM. When I was asked by customers where I was, I politely explained the situation & gave them the DOM’s number.

It may not have cost Provi much, but at least they had to pay Barclays the interest on the float.
They borrow from barclays at 6-7.0% & then mark it up by 1000% to lend on.
Provident are in a total mess, they cannot get full time staff for love nor money. They are now scrapping the barrel on agents. In my old office, they have dismissed 3 agents since xmas for reasons they cannot discuss. This usually means theft, I am lead to believe. The funniest thing is that 1 lasted 4 weeks, another 7 weeks & the longest was 14 weeks.
It won’t be long before Provi get into arrears with Barclays. I assume then that the counter staff in Barclays will start loosing wages, due to bad payers!! NOT.

I have kept in touch with other agents & have heard their figures. 1 started good & made £40 first week, but is now £110 down overall.

I was lucky that I only did the round where I live as an extra earner, so could afford to stick it back where the sun don’t shine, but I really feel for those of you who have to keep plodding on.

If you actually sit down & work out how much it costs in the way of time & money, do you really make much. There is wear & tear on your car, as well as fuel. Have you notified your insurance that you are doing business mileage, if not, then you are not insured. Parking fees. & texting the scroats your sales etc.

You would probably earn more working in a Tesco or Sainsbury a couple of evenings, rather than walking round for 6 & 7%.

Joshua_W

Provident are exploiting their Agents. They must have lots of customers struggling to survive financially and those customers just can't afford to pay every week. There will be genuine cases of hardship with customers struggling to make ends meet.

Providents answer is to recoup their losses by deducting £5/£10/£15 per customer that defaults from the Agents commission.

Yes, Agents can gain also.... but do you think many are ? This forum thread answers that question, it would never have been posted if Agents gained.

Provident have turned on their own Agents...the very people who work hard each week earning a pittance to make them millions.

OldGreyFox

Does the Provident pay the agents Public Liabilty Insurance out of interest? Or is it down to an agent to get it ?

Joshua_W

OldGreyFox wrote: »

Does the Provident pay the agents Public Liabilty Insurance out of interest? Or is it down to an agent to get it ?

Agents don't pay for it so I assume Provident do.

Southendagent

I have worked as a self employed agent for nearly 7 years for Provident. I am disgusted that agents are being penalised because some of our customers cannot make full payments and are therefore in arrears. We don't lend customers our own money, it belongs to the company, so why should we lose our own commission, which is quite hard to earn in the first place? I have had eighty five pounds deducted in the past two weeks and am considering leaving because I cannot afford to lose money. I have a trade so will be looking to return to that line of work. That will mean working more days and hours for less money, but at least the only deduction will be income tax!

evilmedusa

the first week i was £25 up ... 2nd week £60 down ... this week £15 down ... chatted with the DM (i know its not his fault) we added it up for next week and i am again going to be down by £55 ... i like the rest of you cant afford to lose money like this .... i have phoned head office all they say is put it in writing ...

peedoffagent

sjk24 wrote: »

yes thats my point a focus print is printed from the same system that produces our clips so why do they differ??

This was my point today to my dm there are more plus and minus figures on ur clip than on the report that they are giving us

bret

Joshua_W wrote: »

27.000 + views, Daily Mirror, the adverse publicity to Provident, Agents now hate the company they work for...

Whoever thought this system up.. well done.

Pay your Agents what they are worth, don't rob them. Without us Agents you have nothing.

lets hit provident where it hurts, agents unite and do no sales or new doors until this is resolved.

bret

Joshua_W wrote: »

27.000 + views, Daily Mirror, the adverse publicity to Provident, Agents now hate the company they work for...

Whoever thought this system up.. well done.

Pay your Agents what they are worth, don't rob them. Without us Agents you have nothing.

lets hit provident where it hurts, agents unite and do no sales, new doors or paid ups untill this is resolved. we agents are provident without us the top bosses who think they're in control would be on the dole.

bret

garsen wrote: »

Still trawling net for advice! Not much help only to be pointed in the direction of citizens advice, where their drop in centre is convieniently open when im out collecting! £85 deductions this week, lets hope the am's have plenty of cover as after deductions of £190 in two weeks im out of there! it will be interesting to see how many DMs walk after collecting a lot of books all by themselves! As sjk24 states the clips are not showing the correct amount, mine tells me if i collect off certain customers i get fined anyway! So there you go Mr Crook i'll do my job, collect from your customers and pay YOU for the privilage............i dont think so.........:-/

i dont go to customers that im going to loose on, why should we collect payments for provident and use our petrol plus have money took off us. if all agents did the same they'd have to stop what they're doing to us.