Pros
As a trainee you are basically a glorified taxi / delivery driver, spending 8-10 hours driving gives you a great knowledge of your local area and pretty much anywhere within a 3 hour radius to go collect vehicles.
Cons
A job advertised as 48 hours however you work till the job is done. Due to poor greed from the company over promising for vehicles this means on average every day is a 12-14 hour day. Working weekends you are promised a half day off to compensate for the weekend however your branch will be so overrun this stops. Area managers often alter time sheets to give their area a better working hour average, this was something I raised to HR as I was unhappy with this and nothing was done despite having photo evidence of my time sheet before and after the alters, showing it had been altered. As a manager or assistant manager you are paid a % of branch’s profit. This sounds amazing however they make it impossible for you to make money. The company allows customers / businesses to book vehicles despite these not being physically onsite - this means as long as there is a vehicle available within the country essentially you can book a car. This leads to branch shortages, area shortages and essentially means you spend hours driving to collect vehicles. Essentially a glorified taxi driver. I have done a 6 hour trip before to collect a van that was out for 3 hours and then given to another branch. Overtime is deducted from managements pay, customer complaints are charged to a branch with a £1000 fine per complaint. Add this to the unrealistic booking system and essentially management do not make any money. You may work 60 hours a week every week and in times where branches are busier the hours get longer and longer and longer. Managers do not get paid overtime and deductions mean you may not get any commission so you are on the base of 20,000. Essentially hours worked + lack of pay means you may barely make minimum wage. I had a colleague who was so stressed with trying to work to get everything done he slept at the branch one night due to working so late cleaning cars and then needing to collect vehicles again from 5am. There is no support from senior managers, area managers do not answer their phones and will simply tell you to ‘get the job done’. They blame everything on poor planning from the branch managers with no regard to the branch managers lack of control over lack of vehicles. It is worth noting if you keep a vehicle at your branch you do not need you are charged for this, again another way of ensuring that branch managers and assistant managers do not get paid. This makes it very very difficult when you are trying to budget for your mortgage, house bills ect. The management team are very favourable to members of staff, employing friends and family and these quickly get promoted through the ranks. It’s also worth noting the same rules do not apply to these people, I have seen people fired for taking cars home and these favoured people who have also broken the same rule have been promoted. Rotas and annual leave is also favoured for these members of staff and others are unable to book popular periods of time off consistently but the same members of staff always conveniently get these.