The concept is a good idea. A third party vendor servicing Walmart and trying to solve the issue of their lack of postpaid sales.
They service several carriers, so you have plenty of opportunities to be creative in the sales department and find solutions to your customers needs. Prices are great because you’re in Walmart.
Before I get into OSL specifically; please understand you will be working in Walmart, and dealing with Walmart’s clientele. Not only is the customer base difficult in some stores, but they have very outdated software and hardware for working with cellular devices. Simple processes can require you to jump through hoops, and there can be tension with Walmart leadership(also a lot of Walmart leadership is not trained in OSL services, which creates a whole other issue if you’re not on with a Team Leader; or someone with adequate experience). So you will be primarily working with economically challenged clientele, incompetent Walmart management, and terrible tech to try and sell phones with.
I will leave this disclaimer as well: if you have prior sales experience, You are going to be vastly underpaid, unless you Exceed your sales goals by a very high margin and are in a very busy area. The starting rate is abysmal, especially considering there’s no paid time off for mobile experts, and their sick time policy is disgustingly strict considering we are going through covid. Unless this is a first job, or you don’t care about lack of benefits, this is probably no
ProsHours, training, corporate faces are really nice, hiring reps were sweet
Mobile Expert: =you must know everything
I was a "mobile expert" for OSL, the big issue with that title is it gave customers the impression that you knew everything about every cellphone imaginable and anything relating to the cellular companies. This includes the prepaid phones which was the bane of my existence. It literally states in the OSL job description/contract that it is not covered by us but that didn't stop customers from getting mad at you for not adding time to their self-service phone. I did a TON of independent study in addition to the training's provided for the latest phones on the market and managed fine. Knowledge is your best tool at this job, learn everything you can!
OSL: My Experience
At my location there was a ridiculous amount of lack of training and communication between Walmart and OSL. You are expected/pressured to do a ridiculous amount of work outside your job description. I used my own money on a regular basis (something supposed to be reserved for management to do with company credit cards). I did have an AMAZING manager for the first 6 months or so however she was fired suddenly. I found out later that an associate at a different location made (I believe to be false statements) and they did not do any follow up investigation that I know of. In the mean time I worked completely solo and did management work for none of the pay. It was an interesting situation to say the least. I later recognized weird issues with my district manager such
READ THE ENTIRE THING. DO NOT WORK HERE. Where do I even begin. I was recruited by OSL back in November. I only ever did phone interviews before actually arriving in Washington. Once I got to Washington I was offered the job over text message. I was sent all of the paperwork via email to fill out. I had sent back ever piece of information but without a doubt they would lose a document or claim I never sent it to them. It would take days for them to respond. After the hiring process they pushed my start date back on 3 separate occasions. I finally was able to start in the middle of December. I was not given any training on the WARP system we use to set up the phones/ accounts. On day 1 we are expected to go talk to customers and know everything about selling phones. I was NEVER informed to check my email after around 60 days to receive my benefits and when I had seen it, it had already been too late to apply. When i brought this up to my boss she said "I don't know where your email became our responsibility".. I'm not sure what other territories are like but ours HAD to be in a group chat called "Group Me". Every morning we were to post a selfie checking in and what our sales goals are for the day, film ourselves making store announcements, take pictures of us handing out flyers to customers, "like" everything a leader says and when they ask questions we were to respond and if we didn't they texted us and told us to be more active on a group chat rather than focusing on our JO
I enjoyed my time with the company at first. They presented the culture to make it seem as though they're meant to support you, the Mobile Expert, in a sort of top-down way (read: Everyone from the top and down was meant to support the bottom of the food chain- aka you). I was under that impression for my first few months there, but started to notice that my team lead was the only reason a lot of the junk from upper management wasn't stinking up the work environment.
I requested a transfer to a new district, and it only got worse. The Team Lead I had was petty and callous. He would give you a friendly face, but also went behind the backs of current and former employees and said all kinds of unprofessional things about them to the rest of the team. Three people quit because of him, and he basically spit in my face when I asked for a consistent schedule, so I could attend religious events with my group an hour away. I was switched to a schedule that would not allow me to be anywhere but work or home, and he had little regard for my requests for early, consistent shifts due to health issues. Let me make this clear; THEY DO NOT OFFER FLEXIBLE SCHEDULING. It's YOU that has to be flexible to fit THEIR schedule, or hope and pray that the team lead you have is willing to fix your schedule when you're reassigned shifts without notice, and stick to their guns on what you want for your schedule when it comes to upper management messing with it without telling either of you.
Speaking o
ProsDecent commissions if you performed well, DailyPay, decent coworkers
This company had been inside the store I was at for just over a year when I hired in. Unfortunately OSL nor Walmart did anything to really let customers know that they could upgrade their phone or even activate a new line thru Verizon, Sprint, or AT&T there, in fact Walmart is more concerned about pushing their garbage prepaid services (which doesn't make a lot of money for them) rather than push the postpaid services. Most of my days was spent dealing with prepay customers who could not understand the concept of "Grab and Go", they expected us to give them the same level of service as our postpaid customers (Upgrade the phone, transfer contacts, make test call/text and make sure their data was working). The commission was an absolute joke, when I started we got .50 for selling a prepaid phone, $7.50 for selling a postpaid phone and 2% on whatever accessories OSL felt like paying us for (which never included smartwatches/apple watch/fit-bits). They upped the commission from .50 to $1.50 on prepaid phones for maybe 8 weeks then dropped it back down to .50 and told us that if we wanted to get $1.50 then we would have to activate the phone VIA Walmart's horrid system (and if using that system wasn't bad enough, you could only activate 3 of the 9 prepay services using WARP, the rest you had to either phone in or go online and activate).
The hours of operation was ok, provided you had no life and nothing important to do during the day, if you worked Sundays you were autom
An environment of deceit and no appreciation for success
A typical day consists of, upon arriving to work taking a picture of yourself and posting it in a third party chat application, then taking a photo of the time you got there. Within your first two hours you will be taking another photograph of when you leave for your break and when you return. Within the next two hours you will then clock out for your lunch, take another photo of when you clocked out, followed by clocking in and taking another photo. Within the next two hours you will then be required to take another photo of the time you left for your break and then one when you come back. For a total of 8 micromanaging photos. Not to mention the other mandatory posting in your chat. If you love standing around all day on your phone and never enriching your teammates or actually doing anything worthy of being called a Manager, then this is your gig.
The title of manager is not you really being a manager. You are a "Lead Mobile Expert" you get no added benefits for the added responsibility. You receive zero paid time off, the difference in pay is not an added benefit considering most tier 2 Mobile Experts will be within one dollar per hour of your salary. Your maximum commission is $10 per box once you hit 40 boxes individually, considering most locations have one part time employee and one full time employee, this means a total of 120 phone sales per month to maximize your commission.
There is zero flexibility for your family, unless you're a district manager. You wil
Unattainable Goals, Understaffed, and Working in Walmart Sucks
I applied for a Multi-Unit Wireless Manager position, but I was hired as a, "Team Lead" between two Walmart electronic departments, managing a staff of unmotivated salesman who I was responsible for improving - even though I never hired them and they clearly were fine with the status quo of being below mediocrity. Managing a team around Walmart staff and management was extremely challenging and led to constant strife. My District Manager never once sold a phone, yet was always pushing us to sell and hit our outrageous quotas - that simply were not attainable with the constant understaffing and overall lack of support and real structure. Posting GroupMe messages doesn't lead to actual numbers. It's honestly sad because OSL has a unique opportunity but they are NOT taking advantage of it with current practices. Workplace culture is lazy, with Mobile Experts all over being paid for not trying, and occasionally not even being at work when clocked in. I led my district in sales and even my numbers were abysmal.
The hardest part of the job is definitely converting Walmart's prepaid customer base to the postpaid carriers OSL has partnered with. People in Walmart are cheap, and are mainly always budget customers over value customers. The carriers need better plans for our customers.
The hours suck and again aren't realistic for optimizing sales.
Your success is also dependent on your Walmart's electronics departments staffing - and your relationship with them. If it's a Friday, wh
Out in the cellphone business, its really hit and miss. Youre working for a bunch of crooks any way you look at it- but this falls into a whole other plateau.
I was lucky enough to have hands on training from one of the more knowledgeable salespeople in our district, in a style they cultivated on their own. I will be using this knowledge to further my sales experience. I don't consider it to be under the company's training style, which is very basic.
For the first few months, I really enjoyed the company, but of course, i started to catch on and get frustrated with the lack of responsible and intelligent decisions.
They cut the comission structure entirely in half - a shame because it supplemented some of the trash this company puts you through.
Lazy management leads to badly schedualed employees, unnecessary part time positions, and a ridiculously high level of stress. Favouritism is a problem as well.
There is CONSTANT STRESS involved in this job. From the beginning of the day to the end expect to constantly pushed to harass customers (called prospecting) and do anything, and i mean ANYTHING, to get a sale, (even if you have surpassed target). There have been stores who allegedly would sell phones to have them returned the next day just to hit targets.
If you don't get target, you will be put through an elaborate shaming process which requires you to call your DM and explain the reasoning behind your failure to hit the daily goal. DM's are unresponsive, u
Long time listener, first time caller.. and I wish this review could be more positive than it is.
I'm a current manager who has been with the company for 5+ years. I started out with a LOVE for OSL. OSL gave me an opportunity to grow and find myself through sales and leadership. Unfortunately in the last 2 years I've noticed a steady increase in responsibility and sales budget requirements without help in the way of additional hours for staff. Managers and associates at store level are burnt out and frustrated. Year after year our targets increase 3-8% easily without a change in our budgeted hours. Without the increase in an hour's budget and without the ability to hire more people (staff per location is on average 3 people total) staff are feeling a higher pressure than appropriate to hit incredibly difficult targets.
I'm very fortunate to have who I would consider the best DM in the company, but as much as we want to create change, there's only so much even he can do.
All staff feel a sense of duty toward their team, but then feel overworked and under appreciated when someone wants to take a vacation or gets sick; the small teams and lack of budgets force staff to pick up the pieces with then even less support then they had before. Far too many times, if an associate leaves, management is forced to work 7+ days straight in some instances because they don't have the coverage and would rather risk their own burnout over that of their staff.
Management might receiving an annual merit increase of 2% however I don't feel this has been enough, especially for managers th
I worked in a relatively small Walmart store in a market where the vast majority of people use prepaid MVNOs like StraightTalk. Meeting postpaid sales goals was impossible, even though I invested a great deal of time prospecting around the store and raising awareness. Even when I had postpaid customers, I often had to send them to another store to get the phones that they wanted. I made accessory and prepaid sales goals easily, but often lost out on commission due to customers wanted to check out up front.
The company itself did not treat employees well. Pay was a bit low even for an entry level position, and my days off were split without a valid business need. PTO was not offered, which was uncompetitive for a full time position. The benefits package offered was abysmal. My team lead and district manager were helpful and supportive, both in group chat and on site, but that couldn't make up for the poor compensation in an inherently high stress role.
The WARP activation tool made my working life miserable, and WARP support was outsourced to a call center that was terrible even by outsourced call center standards. Problems with the system were common, and only WARP support had the access to resolve them. Some representatives refused to fix issues, forcing me to hang up and call back. Even talking to StraightTalk/TracFone was preferable.
Prepaid customers often felt entitled to a level of service that would not have even been available in a carrier store to postpaid c
I was promised a management position when it came available. Applied for 4 different positions, interviewed once. Did not get the position. Whenever I apply for a management position, my manager find a reason to write me up to prevent me from leaving the store, and makes me look like a horrible employee. Was trained in management, twice. Still no prospect of becoming a manager. I've been with the company for 4 years, and at this point, I'm simply looking for a better sales job.
Always more expectations, and not enough pay. During the first shutdown of 2020, OSL used a loophole to take advantage of the carrier stores closing and made us "essential." They kept on focusing on the fact that "we are the only place that customer can purchase wireless products," claiming that we would make "tons of commission." That was not the case. Instead, we got hounded about not being able to achieve our performance targets. They did give us $1 raise for about 8 weeks, called, "hero pay." However, we are not receiving our performance based wage increase this year because "covid 19 put it on hold." I did the math, and because of the loss in commission, and the lack of wage increase that I expected, I lost approximately $3000 this year.
When I asked about getting a raise, they told me to sell more phones.
Funny, how Walmart employees got their raises, but we don't....
It also took the company about 16 weeks to even begin trying to implement safety precautions. The size of the plexiglass that w
Pros50% off phone bills, prizes, and relationships.
ConsEverything else.
Questions And Answers about OSL Retail Services Inc
If you were in charge, what would you do to make OSL Retail Services Inc a better place to work?
Asked Jan 25, 2018
Health insurance
Answered Oct 16, 2020
I would have better hiring practices and communication with new hires. District managers and leads don’t know how to handle real life situations.
Answered Sep 15, 2020
How flexible are your working hours at OSL Retail Services Inc?
Asked Mar 21, 2020
There was an early or late shift but it wasn't too different either way. You'll work from late morning to evening either way.
Answered Nov 22, 2020
Very flexible usually you work 4 to 5 days a week and have if 3 to 2 days depending on what’s store you are located at.
Answered Oct 16, 2020
What is the best part of working at OSL Retail Services Inc?
Asked Oct 17, 2019
Lack of oversight. If you want to be left alone to do your job of selling you can easily do so. Of course if problems come up don't expect to have backup in that case.
Answered Nov 22, 2020
Base pay was good. I enjoyed most of the Walmart associates and developed great lifelong friendships with them.
Answered Sep 1, 2020
What is a typical day like for you at OSL Retail Services Inc?
Asked Mar 21, 2020
You work normally an 8.5 hour shift with 30minz break you can take at anytime in your shift . Usually my shift consist of me helping out customers with mobile phones and accessories in the electronic department. Sometimes if I have good deals and flyers I’ll walk around the whole Walmart talking to customers about the deals we have and answer question they may have on new phones releasing and problems they may be having with there current phone.
Answered Oct 16, 2020
Chasing Walmart customers down and convincing them to get a phone from one of your carriers. Dealing with disputes. Activating phones, ringing up customers, chasing down associates trying to get them to stay by the counter so you can focus on your job.
Answered Sep 1, 2020
Can you cash out customers if they don't have a phone or phone accessory?
Asked Jan 2, 2018
Nope, sometimes I’ll bring an item to the register and let a Walmart associate cash it out but I can’t run register for all your other random stuff. If you have a phone case AND milk then I can only cash out the phone case.
What I don’t understand is phone cards. I don’t see why we should be required to cash our prepaid cards since that’s our direct competition. I think my coworker made it up, he’s been there awhile so thinks he knows everything but I’d really like to know if there’s a way to get out of cashing minutes.
Tho if you want a post paid I’ll cash out all your other nonsense too if you want :)
Answered Dec 30, 2019
Yes you can, and most of the time there is not a Walmart Associate to actually do it themselves. But with my team if we help a customer i drive to them that is now our right to ask them about what we really get paid for. so in the long run it works hand in hand.
