Let me begin by saying that I have not personally worked for Arise, but I am hearing so many reports these days, including a few from trusted friends, that I finally had to write this Blog.  I must also state that this is 100% my opinion (in case it wasn’t clear that my personal Blog is my opinion), because their SOP is to threaten to sue people when they speak out against the company.

Arise Virtual Solutions in Mirmar Florida bills themselves a “work at home opportunity” and has workers take calls for large companies like Disney, AT&T,  Carnival and Intuit while pretending that they are in a call center.   Recently large clients have bailed because Arise was doing a poor job and it was hurting their reputation.

Arise has been around for awhile and was originally called Willow, and at that time it was a legitimate work at home opportunity.  Willow paid a fair wage and treated agents well.  A few years ago they became Arise, and the bad changes have been non-ending, with each one worse for the poor desperate suckers who need a job.

Arise says that they are a “work at home opportunity” and by doing this they get away with a lot of shit.  First, they are able to scam victims out of hundreds of dollars for “training, background checks, monthly fees, etc.” without giving them any work.  A large amount of the company’s revenue is made scamming people who think that if they pay Arise all this money they’ll have a job.  Arise encourages these out-of-work people to buy equipment, incorporate, get phone lines installed, etc.  But after all of the money paid out and a few weeks (or months) of unpaid training, Arise tells many of them to go away.

The person looking for work is out over a thousand dollars in expenses, plus approximately 6 weeks of unpaid time that they donated to Arise for training, and they’re nowhere.  Some might say that these are the lucky ones because at least they’re done with Arise!

The others are allowed to contract “business to business” with Arise.  This allows Arise to get away with paying below minimum wage, giving no benefits and paying no taxes on these employees.  These people weren’t a “business” before, but they are now!  They’re a “business” with only one client:  Arise!  And then Arise dictates every aspect of their working time as if they were a paid employee.

Now Arise says, “but you have a flexible schedule, so you’re not an employee.”  But this is a lie.  For most clients there are never enough hours, because Arise is constantly bringing in more people so they can charge them training and application fees, even when there aren’t enough hours for the people already working.  Even if the “client” is about to be gone from  Arise they’ll still take people’s money and “train” them and then tell them there’s no work 6 weeks later.

For those people who do have some work, there are never enough hours and they’re broken up all day and night.  The people stuck in this hopeless trap take whatever they can get; 15 minutes at 6am, 30 minutes at 11am, 15 minutes at 2pm, 45 minutes at 5pm, 15 minutes at 6:15pm, an hour at 2am.  Flexible schedule, my ASS.  Arise makes all the agents scramble for time, trying to pick up work 24 hours a day.

On many “opportunities” they’ll advertise one pay rate and then after a chump has spent $1k and 6 weeks training announce that it’s really 25% less money than they said it would be.  Then another hit is when they tell you that you don’t get paid unless you’re talking on the phone, which means if you work for 8 hours but there’s time in-between calls Arise will only pay for 5 hours.  But of course you’re required to sit there.

It gets worse.  If Arise’s systems don’t work (and they frequently don’t, because they’re crap), there is virtually zero support, the agents don’t get paid, and they get threatened because they’re not meeting their required work times.  Anytime anything is wrong with their systems Arise blames the agents and then penalizes them, even when all of the agents are reporting the same problems.

They’ve got the existing agents so scared of being terminated, that they spend their time trying to get their “metrics” fixed instead of realizing that they’re being cheated out of real money that they’re owed by Arise.

And even though Arise is based on exploiting a loophole that claims everyone who works for them is not an employee, they are constantly looking for ways to dictate, monitor and control people as if they were employees.

Most recently Arise announced that they will start dropping by at any time to check if an agent’s house complies with Arise’s standards.”  Seriously, WTF?  Agents better be sure they wash all of their dirty dishes!  Unless they are police with a warrant, they shouldn’t be busting down people’s doors.

And another important warning:  There are some crooked companies that associate with Arise and say they “hire” people.   As if getting $5 an hour isn’t low enough, these companies will skim another 20% off the top and “help” folks.  These little scavenger companies are always fighting with each other and it adds even more complication into the mess of dealing with Arise.  Believe me, that kind of help you don’t need.

For those of you who don’t know this yet, I’ll have to do a separate Blog about the BBB.  If a company is crooked, but bribes the BBB they give them an A rating.  And even though Arise has thousands of complaints, they’ve bribed the BBB.  Don’t be impressed by their boast (or any company’s claim) that they have a great rating with the BBB, because that doesn’t mean shit!  And unfortunately ripoffreport.com is another one that’s gone corrupt like the BBB and allows companies to pay them to remove bad reports too.

There are some legitimate work at home companies but you must do your research first.  NEVER pay to get a job and stay away from Arise!