my last employers used to steal your money without permission

recently I had been an employee of a famous pc store in uk,

I will tell you my secrets about what I learnt happened in this company, please don't ask for the name but you may just think to youself and already know it.

I was a sales advisor who was shouted at and made to sell insurance,
heck I even had to tell you you cannot claim on your house insurance!

heck I was even made to stop one parent claiming insurance for fire damage as the firemen put out your house fire with water.

and many more

even if you hadn't got all your id for the insurance form and left the store the store would look up your details entered on the pc and send the form to the london based company without your signature and you where debited from your debit card that you used in the shop to pay with.

they even sold pc's that had been used before and where faulty with other peoples private data on them.

next time you visit a store like this don't give them your adress and remember insurance is a scam it is cheaper to buy another one.

I am very sorry if I may have done this to you but I was told I would be sacked with a bad reference,

I quit anyway and they also made me in debt with my wages by saying that I had underworked my hours when i did over 20 extra.

they even use your laptop/pc to look at porn on also during their breaks with a usb connection (i caught the pc fixers red handed)









[edit on 26-4-2010 by prettygreeneyes26]

does anyone know what action I can take about this company?

I would really love to do something about this.

You might want to join this thread, and ask the OP:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by prettygreeneyes26


If you called a lawyer/barrister and briefly explained this to them, they could give you advice on what steps you could legally take, and possibly represent you.

reply to post by Chamberf=6


i would be out of pocket to contact a lawyer, they have screwed me enough

Lawyers in your country won't take the case for free? I am sure in the USA you could find some lawyer who would do it for free if you lose the case.

reply to post by GreenBicMan


The local solicitors said it would cost money to chase them and also they would not like to go after such a big name with little evidence.

The only way I could prove it to be true would to report the company in insurance headquarters in london for the paperwork without customer signatures, I am sure if they look they will find......no signatures on the insurance policies

Originally posted by prettygreeneyes26
I was a sales advisor who was shouted at and made to sell insurance,
heck I even had to tell you you cannot claim on your house insurance!

heck I was even made to stop one parent claiming insurance for fire damage as the firemen put out your house fire with water.

No one "made you" do anything...you always had a choice. You freely chose to do what you knew was morally wrong. I doubt you would have ever spoken up if you had not gotten a taste of your own medicine.

Originally posted by prettygreeneyes26
I quit anyway and they also made me in debt with my wages by saying that I had underworked my hours when i did over 20 extra..

Well, now maybe you will realize that any company who will lie and cheat their customers will certainly do the same thing to their employees. You got what you deserve for participating in their evil. Money was more important to you than honesty and integrity.

Set your standards higher and don't settle for another job that robs you of your dignity and requires you to lie and cheat.

All in all, this could be a positive experience for you and a turning point. Because of your position, you have a good insight as to how words can easily be twisted in the fine print of these contracts. And guess what---we have ALL been trapped in many of them.

Did you realize there is a contract in obtaining any license you have? In many cases, you don't even get a copy of the contract much less even realize what you are signing in to. Keep reading more here at ATS and you will come to realize this very well.

Good luck finding a more worthwhile job in the future.

reply to post by prettygreeneyes26


Good luck with all that.

Best bet now would be to quit whining about it and go get another medial job.

Enjoy your night

reply to post by Alethea

No one "made you" do anything...you always had a choice. You freely chose to do what you knew was morally wrong. I doubt you would have ever spoken up if you had not gotten a taste of your own medicine.

that is a bit harsh, if I quit before I found another job I would have had no money for a month and the jsa would not have accepted me I would have been scrounging for food and rent.

Actually I told customers its bull anyway and some of them even saw me get whispered at angrily

reply to post by prettygreeneyes26

Hello,
I'd like to know if wikileaks or your local media outlet exposes this and it becomes a class-action lawsuit, you could add your name to the beneficiary list. That's all going to take lots of time, and whether or not it gets exposed is another factor entirely. You can walk away and be wiser now, and not do anything about it. There's a better opportunity for you to make ends meet short-term. That's where I'd point my immediate aims.

A mud-pit like this is just going to keep you being dragged through the mud. Wash your hands so the next door you open isn't so slippery...

reply to post by loveguy


I see your hidden meaning there thanks

reply to post by prettygreeneyes26


You did what you could do and survived. You moved on to another position when you were able to. No one was seriously injured and only lost the price of the "insurance" if they did not check their credit card bill [as they should] and protest the charge. You do not know how many refused to pay the bill. I expect that the company you worked for got an up-front bounty for each policy they wrote even if the unwilling customer backed out later.
Gather your evidence and report the company to the public prosecutor for fraud and then just move on. If Her Majesty's chief executioner does not get them, you will have at least done what you could to prevent others from being abused by the company. Posting comments at computer websites warning others of the practices may also help prevent abuse. Tell the insurance company that they may be paying bounties on cancelled policies. This may remove the incentive for your company to falsify policies.

It is always easy for others to judge you and claim that they would have done differently. This holier-than-thou attitude is not uncommon amongst those who talk a good fight.

The company this guy is talking about is called..... "PC WORLD"! LOL! Where in the world? PC World!

Yeh, I bought some stuff from there, and I noticed that the staff are seriously uneducated and would do better at stacking shelves in Tesco.

reply to post by the_denv


hope that goes well for you!.

seriously not everybody is the same.

reply to post by prettygreeneyes26


Welcome to the club. I have been battling employers doing illegal stuff for the past 10 years. Many people know this stuff goes on but they shut their mouth for fear of being fired. Then they watch the guy that has a heart and speaks out against the practice be terminated or pushed out of the company. I have seen every underhanded move in American companies, just like you point out.

You are in the UK so I can not lend advise. However, if you were in the USA I would tell you to go report their practices to the Attorney Generals office consumer protection division and file with the labor board for your 20 hours of wages you are owed. You must have some equivalent of the offices I just listed.

To all the morons having a go at the OP for what they were forced to do, just think what life would be like if you thought you would lose the only source of income you have, and without it you could be really...and i mean REALLY in serious bother, you may do things your bosses tell you to do as well...

Not everyone has the luxury of being able to crash on their Mums sofa, raiding their fridge while you watch Jeremy Kyle in your pants....

Back on topic, i think all UK members reading this know the company in question...any of you work for them and know of this going on?...or of any other firms doing this?

There is a nation wide chain here in the US that sells office supplies and computers that has setup new computers so that they will need to go into the shop every three months,

System restore on these computers has been disabled.
and you do not get a OS disk with the computers they sell so its very hard to get your system to run right once they hit the three month shutdown mark.

Check your computer if you have got it from a office supply company.(or any other place)
Make sure system restore is set and saving restore points.
Then if it starts acting up just go back and restore and it will run fore another three month cycle.

This company has a disk that they run and it takes about 5 minutes for them to reset your computer for another three months.
but they bill you for two hours work to fix a problem they put on your computer. There disk is a auto repair disk that someone with little computer skill could just plug and play to restore.

Originally posted by prettygreeneyes26
does anyone know what action I can take about this company?

I would really love to do something about this.

Depends on your length of service and the circumstance in leaving.

With regards the reference, you can use the authority of ‘Kidd v AXA Equity & Law Life Assurance Society’ which states:

‘’The only duty on the employer is to take reasonable care not to give misleading information not to make selective provision of information, or make comments which would give rise to a false or misleading inference in the mind of the recipient’’.

Translation: The Company may refuse to provide a reference as a matter of Company policy, however, if it does provide a reference, it must be a true and accurate reflection of the honesty, integrity and performance of the individual. It must therefore be able to back such information up with internal appraisal records and the like.

With regard your service, you may look at your implied term to provide a ‘duty of faithful service’, and therefore state that your contract was broken by means of unreasonable management instructions to which you were no longer willing to carry out. (I don’t know how long you were there or the nature of your resignation and these two points are critical to any constructive dismissal or fundamental breach of contract case). But if I have been told to break the law or mislead the public / defraud, then I could resign and claim constructive dismissal using the PDA below to back up my claim and protect me.

However, if you are contractually bound by an agreement not to disclose such details of employment, (such as the insurance details), be careful you are not in breach. A confidentially clause can extend for several weeks / months after employment has ended. This will be under a garden leave clause of sorts in your T&C. Although, if the law was broken, or the company was operating illegally, you can use the Public Disclosure Act (1998) commonly referred to as the Whistleblowers Act (ss43A – 43C of ERA).

With regards the wages, you can look at ‘unlawful deduction of earnings’ under section 13 of the ERA, 1996, which provides only two scenarios under which the employer may deduct wages from you:

1. Authorised by statute or provision in worker’s contract, (i.e. NIC, tax etc);
2. The worker has given the employer their prior written consent to make such a deduction.

Again, I don’t know the condition of your main terms and conditions of employment, so you need to look at the conditions of which your employer can deduct and whether you have agreed to this in writing.

You have resigned so you must look for work to offset any losses rather than thinking any future compensatory award will cover this.

If, however, you have less than 1 years service and have voluntarily resigned, you can only make sure you get a ‘reasonable’ reference whilst getting your wages sorted out. With the insurance issue, I am sure some newspaper would like to hear the fine details of such operation! Or raise a formal grievance complaint to HQ – you can raise a grievance after you left the Company, but timescales are tight!

Good luck, and use ACAS for a free and impartial employment law advice.

ACAS

Originally posted by prettygreeneyes26
reply to post by the_denv

 

hope that goes well for you!.

seriously not everybody is the same.

Sorry, but I dont know what you mean. I am not referring to me Thanks for the reply though!

I worked for people that done things that would get their company closed down and them put in jail. Personally, my life is too busy and stressful to start getting major companies closed down. Although if I were this guy (the OP), then I would probably take legal action.