Accepted a reset assignment at excellent pay per hour.

Long drive, 8 hours, so they also agreed to travel pay @$10 an hour (16 hours), and one night in hotel paid for by them. I figured, drive down Wednesday, work Thursday 8-12, drive home Thursday.

Thursday AM, found over 400 DVDs in the reset -- maybe over 500 (4 huge boxes, each with over 100 DVDs). Immediately called them and told them impossible to complete in the 4 hours. They said work the 4 hours, call and fill them in on progress.

I called after 4 hours, said 2 more would do it. They said they would OK 6 hours. Did complete at 6 hours. I submitted the report and called and said I didn't want to leave the parking lot until they reviewed the report and OK'ed it. Not like I'm driving 8 hours back if it's not OK, right?

Scheduler called me back and said I did part of it wrong (but I followed HIS instructions to the letter!); I told him I did as I was told, and he said, right, he knew that, the instructions were incorrect, would I please go back in and correct? I said yes, if I would be paid the same hourly rate. He said I would. I went back and redid part of the reset, to his specific instructions. He called again when I submitted the report, said it was perfect, he was approving the additional 1.5 hours pay. By then it was 9 PM (yes, 9 hours on a 4 hour job).

It was too late to drive home. I stayed there overnight. Got an urgent phone call, 7 AM, am I still in the area? Yes, why? Because job was done wrong, I need to redo it.

Different scheduler, different office, 100% different directions, totally opposite to what I was told the day before. Okay, I'll return to store and redo IF I'm going to be paid the agreed on hourly rate. Drove 45 minutes back to the store, redid the appropriate shop, submitted report, called the female scheduler who insisted job must be "100% for this client", and got the A-OK on the report, reached 100% as required. She said she would approve the one and a half hours it took to redo.

Both schedulers absolutely agreed the over time on the job was due to me receiving 100% conflicting directions, and that I would be paid.

So far, only pay approved is for 6 hours, my original 6 hours.

Would you fight for the additional pay, or let it go, and just never agree to another DVD reset?

If it matters, the difference is $225.

If you have ANY of this in email confirmation, I would definitely fight for my pay. If not, it's going to be tougher...it'll be a "he said/she said" scenario. The one thing you do have in your favor is that your phone has a record of all the phone calls between you and the people from the merch company, so that should count for something. But yes, I would DEFINITELY fight for my money, be it $25 or $225, especially if NONE of this was your fault to begin with!!

I am PM'ing you. Thanks!

I would never, ever take an assignment that is 2 hours away. 8 hours is insanity. With that said, yeah. Fight for the money. It's yours. You earned it.

I route drive every month the money is better than in town. And I love driving. With or without the email confirmation I would keep calling and messaging until they broke down and paid me. And if they refused I would publically give them a bad google review. I don't care if it's 1 hour or ten either. If the job was local that would be different. An unpaid 15 minutes is one thing an additional 1.5 plus time to sleep and driving time absolutely worth it. Being careful of course not to alienate the company to not use me again. I would ask for the email next time explaining what happened this time. Stating that I need a guarantee of payment.

Nope, don't let it slide. It was their fault. They should be paying you every single cent for your trouble.

UPDATE: LOL. They called me this morning, wanting me to do another one of these (only two hours away). I said I wouldn't agree to do another one until my pay for the last one was approved.

Additional pay was approved within hours.

Thanks, all.

This was my first DVD reset -- and, I believe, my last.

As for the 8 hour drive, doesn't bother me, long as they are paying for every minute of it, and a hotel when I get there!

Cease, so glad all that hard park paid off. Just curious, what is a DVD reset?

Well, in this case, it involved taking "before" photos of each side of a 4'x6' DVD display, removing all the DVDs not on the current Planogram (crummy way to do it), then putting all the new DVDs up on the display, again, following the planogram. Shipping back removed DVDs, as instructed, and then the "dumpbin". Empty dumpbin (over 400 DVDs there, too); replace with new DVDs and old DVDs "on the list". Ship back the ones removed. Take "after" photos, showing all your work.

Easy peasy!

ROTFLMFAO!

If done monthly, should be able to complete in two hours or less.

No one had been to this location since MARCH of this year

I'm curious that they're spending money on DVD resets. I don't see a whole lot of DVDs anywhere anymore.

That occurred to me, too -- streaming is kinda taking over.

Truck stops sell a ton of them. I use to do a couple of truck stops bi-weekly and the rack and dump bin were always three quarters empty.

So glad to hear you were paid, Cease!! So they paid you for everything they had left out before?? You're all clear with them now?

I picked up a store assessment ($175) and two gas stations ($100) on the way, so total pay for 3 days was about $1474; perhaps you would go 8 hour drive for that?

@simonbanks wrote:

I would never, ever take an assignment that is 2 hours away. 8 hours is insanity. With that said, yeah. Fight for the money. It's yours. You earned it.

Came up to about $65 short. I quit fighting for the rest; I actually felt what they paid was fair for the work I did.

However, a few days later, they asked me to do another one, and I laughed at them.

@ceasesmith wrote:

Accepted a reset assignment at excellent pay per hour.

Long drive, 8 hours, so they also agreed to travel pay @$10 an hour (16 hours), and one night in hotel paid for by them. I figured, drive down Wednesday, work Thursday 8-12, drive home Thursday.

Thursday AM, found over 400 DVDs in the reset -- maybe over 500 (4 huge boxes, each with over 100 DVDs). Immediately called them and told them impossible to complete in the 4 hours. They said work the 4 hours, call and fill them in on progress.

I called after 4 hours, said 2 more would do it. They said they would OK 6 hours. Did complete at 6 hours. I submitted the report and called and said I didn't want to leave the parking lot until they reviewed the report and OK'ed it. Not like I'm driving 8 hours back if it's not OK, right?

Scheduler called me back and said I did part of it wrong (but I followed HIS instructions to the letter!); I told him I did as I was told, and he said, right, he knew that, the instructions were incorrect, would I please go back in and correct? I said yes, if I would be paid the same hourly rate. He said I would. I went back and redid part of the reset, to his specific instructions. He called again when I submitted the report, said it was perfect, he was approving the additional 1.5 hours pay. By then it was 9 PM (yes, 9 hours on a 4 hour job).

It was too late to drive home. I stayed there overnight. Got an urgent phone call, 7 AM, am I still in the area? Yes, why? Because job was done wrong, I need to redo it.

Different scheduler, different office, 100% different directions, totally opposite to what I was told the day before. Okay, I'll return to store and redo IF I'm going to be paid the agreed on hourly rate. Drove 45 minutes back to the store, redid the appropriate shop, submitted report, called the female scheduler who insisted job must be "100% for this client", and got the A-OK on the report, reached 100% as required. She said she would approve the one and a half hours it took to redo.

Both schedulers absolutely agreed the over time on the job was due to me receiving 100% conflicting directions, and that I would be paid.

So far, only pay approved is for 6 hours, my original 6 hours.

Would you fight for the additional pay, or let it go, and just never agree to another DVD reset?

If it matters, the difference is $225.

I'd fight for the additional pay, and try to get reimbursement for the hotel as well (unless you slept in the car, which I don't really blame you for). You also really should have gotten something for mileage on top of $10/hr for driving time (I work for a company that pays 45 cents per mile after the first 30 miles round trip). I would negotiate for that next time.

I think I know what company this is, too, and unfortunately if it is that company you may be #$%& out of luck.

Edit: just now read the rest of this. Glad you got paid.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/26/2021 08:49AM by DrSquash.