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All I can say is that from a management standpoint, the company is run like a well-oiled machine. Everything that they do makes money. As a former employee, I can only say that this place is a cash cow. All of the sales reps get what's called a spiff from certain manufac. in which 'the company' automatically deducts about 15% for what they call a processing fee. These spiffs can be thousands of dollars. That 15% adds up. Where does it all go? Bagels? The answer was that they have to pay someone to process the spiffs. Well from my best guess that person can't be making more than $50k a year and they pulled a hell of a lot more than that into the slush fund. They then (when I was there) usually charge the customer a shipping charge. That charge was estimated by the computers and was usually adjusted in CDW's favor. Hey a little here and a little there is a lot somewhere. Maybe a 100 stock price? You got it right a profit on shipping charges that were miscalculated. It wasn't hundreds of $$ per order, but if it was only $.25 for half the orders made in a year, where did that $$ go? I was never able to get anything but they corporate brush off from mgmt. If for any reason a salesperson overrides the shipping or modifies the shipping charge, 'the company' takes the money out of the salespersons gross profit $$ meaning that they keep even more money- even if it what you override was more than what it cost them to ship. God forbid you ship an order to a fraudul. customer and didn't do the check properly. They would make you pay for the order out of pocket. Some really did pay too. They just can't lose. The end cost that the sales people tell you is the actual cost. Guess again. The real cost is about 1-2% less. Which again gets placed somewhere by the management team. The sales people never get paid on that 1-2%, but rest assured if you are a hair below what you're suppose to be for a few months your next stop is the front door. Don't forget any kickbacks that manufacturers give to the mgmt of these types of resellers. One year HP gave Comark a new black Corvette for selling so much of their products. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a disgruntled ex employee, I quit. The place is a joke. They came out with that top 100 companies to work for crap, myself and many of us nearly died laughing. The turnover there is horrible. They now have over 400 salesreps who would cut your throat to get a deal. Keep in mind this was back around 1995-96. I doubt it's changed, but don't quote me on that part. I'd have gladly given up my free lunch once a month and the damn bagels and cream cheese every tues/thurs. for better treatment. The place is a sweatshop. So don't go believe everything you read about this place. Did you know that Computer Shopper Mag votes for best places to buy? Guess what, the company used to make as many employees vote for CDW that they could intimidate to do so. 5-700 employees are a lot of votes. They made the employees buy all their own office supplies and $50 headsets for the phones that you never got to take when you left. So let's recap. They keep the headset, your $50, part of your earned money because they never pay close to what you really made them (the 2% thing), make money on the inflated shipping charges, take some of your spiff money, make you pay out of pocket for shipping out fraud orders and on and on and on. In return for all this you get bagels, lunch once a month, screamed at by mgmt if you take a lunch break off site, get chewed out if your more than a few minutes late, get accounts taken away that you've worked and too many other things to list. The whole thing is a scam. A scam this is making some people tons of money. Hopefully you are one of those lucky people. One day, not today and maybe not in the near term, but eventually, this is going to get pretty ugly. The reseller channel is already dog eat dog. How do you think CDW continues to be so profitable in such a harsh environment with margins always shrinking? Most other resellers are having a tough time. I doubt all their profits are from just sales alone. If you find this hard to believe, find any older employee or ex-employee, I'm sure they will have just as interesting of a description of events there as the one you've just read. Like I said it's a well-run machine. That huge warehouse profit he posts comes from somewhere. I wish you all the best of luck. The profits you now enjoy didn't come from me and several (possibly) thousand others like me that got the hell out or were thrown out. Eric |
