photographer

account representative

data collector

inspector

field representative

Dealer Specialties

Hello, i have been an account Rep for just a little over a year now and I highly encourage anyone interested in applying to Dealer Specialties to read this review before applying. The company itself is not a bad company to work for, but there is a lot left to be desired. You are lured in with a high pay promise; most listings online state to offer close to 50-60k a year, that is completely false. You are started off at a mild training wage until you feel confident to switch to commission  and take your training wheels off. I have worked during the COVID-19 crisis, so I guess my take on the job might be a little skewed from a normal viewpoint. Our commission percentage got bumped to a flat 30% which has been nice, but it is still insultingly low for the amount of work you out into the job. I often bust tail to get every last car I can get, and not even taking home a 1/3 of the money I take in for the company is pretty garbage. Your pay is directly influenced by the amount of inventory at each dealership, not solely by your effort. Slow business = low pay. Many reps routes will cover massive ground which leads to hefty driving times, and the reimbursement leaves much to be desired. In the last year I’ve put close to 25k miles on my car and maybe received 3-4K from it. Weather also is a big factor in your pay; bad weather means no work, and you are left to take vacation time to make up for lost work. You work a lot more Saturdays than they tell you that you might. During slow times, you are still expected to put in 8 hour days, and management is not understanding of the market itself. There are many days that there is simply not enough work to keep me out for 8 hours, and I am constantly harped about my hours, and my revenue figures, yet I have done all I can. My direct manager honestly has been very nice, and I think he is a great person, but he does not understand how to motivate.  Long story short; management is out of touch with field reps. Pay is not great, you will sweat/freeze for low pay. This is an ideal job for those tight on money, but I stress, this is NOT a career. This is a job, and it shows. Retention is horrible, many of my dealers have talked to me about how they have had multiple different reps cover them over a period of time. Dealerships know that DS has a hard time keeping people on board. 

Upper management is completely out of touch with what is going on within the company. The pay structure for the field reps and market managers worked 20 years ago when there was no competition and Dealer Specialties was the only game in town. When I had to take a leave of absence due to a family medical issue, my boss called me everyday and pressured me to come back to work. I never took a vacation in which I did not work or field calls approximately 2-3 days out of my 5 vacation days. This was mainly due to the fact that upper management had absolutely no idea how to do my job. I was FORCED to fire reps for issues with accounts that were by no means the rep's fault. I was not allowed to give raises to field reps that unequivocally deserved it. If we had enough vehicles, they were clearly unsafe and on average had 150,000 miles on them and constantly broke down. Upper management is unwilling to apply any forward thinking towards increasing the morale of its employees and/or to do what is necessary to at least match what the competition is doing in regards to service. Dealer Specialties will continue to hemorrhage accounts because of this which in turn ultimately hurts the people out in the field who are supposedly the "foundation of the company". If you decide to work for Dominion Dealer Specialties after reading this, do not bother going to Dominion HR with any grievances or any concerns of illegal practices that occur to you during your tenure. You will always be treated and regarded as a peon no matter how hard you work, no matter how many hours you put in, no matter how infrequently you see your family due to long hours, no matter how much pride you take in the job, and no matter how much you dedicate yourself to the company.

When I started it was $10/hr and you got a 10% cut of what you did in sales that week, a typical week was a commission was $100-250, then they changed it to commission only and we started making less. 

Constantly the manager and higher ups nag you about your sales, your expected to sell dealerships bigger and better packages to make them more money, but give you little to no training in what the packages are, what they include and how to sell them or research on your on unpaid time. 

I had a very picky luxury car dealership that did NOT want photos taken in the rain or gloomy days since it does not reflect the "fun in the sun" sports cars they are selling, and my boss was upset I would not do their cars on those days and suggested I sneak in and do them anyway. Which is wrong anyway you look at it.

The company vehicles they give your are rust buckets, and the employees with the most seniority gets the new vehicles while the rust buckets are handed down to lower level employees. Instead of the rep with the worst car getting a new one, they just get a new handed down rust bucket which is a total embarrassment to pull into a nice new or used car lot with a car with rust all over it making mechanical noises.

When asking for a raise your told to "Do more cars" since its total commission. And typically the District manage is to busy going to a baseball game or something like that during the week to return a phone call or answer questions.

I am glad I quite and went to work for one of the dealerships on my route when they asked me to come work in-house for them for $15 an hour. The dealership also disliked the company and wanted to quite their poor services.

I started with this company as an Account Rep and was promoted in less than 12 months. I liked the account rep role because I got paid for the work I put in. If I worked harder, I got paid more. The commission structure took some getting used to, but I found the compensation to be fair for the amount of work I did. Achieving the pace you have to maintain to make decent money takes a little time to build up to, but if you are at least a little tech savvy and understand (or can learn) a little about photography, it's not difficult at all.  

I would say that there is a decent opportunity for advancement as most of the managers I know started with the company as an account rep as well. You may need to be open to relocation, but the opportunities are definitely there. 

I've had absolutely awful experiences with management at previous jobs, but never have I felt that way at Dealer Specialties. Not once have I felt disrespected or that my thoughts and ideas didn't matter. 

The most difficult thing about working for the company is dealing with things that are out of my control, such as the weather and the fact that not everyone you meet in the auto industry is easy to get along with. You have to be prepared to deal with some unreasonable expectations (from dealers), but that can be said of any sales or customer service role. 

I love that I can work independently and be trusted to get the job done without being micromanaged.

Whether you are looking for a job or a career, it's a good company to work for.

This company is terribly mismanaged.  What should be a very simple, gratifying, and stress-free job became an anxiety-inducing nightmare, fueled mostly by the incompetence of management.  Your pay, your duties, your co-workers, will all change at the whim of management.  This company has a wretched business model: photograph as many cars as possible in as little time as possible.  This leads to poorly taken photos that DO NOT help the dealership move cars and gives the photographer a sense of being a grifter.  Oh, and the Human Resource department was proven to be a joke--they sweep issues under the rug to protect managers and then issue warnings to try to stifle dissent.  AN ACTUAL EXAMPLE:  Policy states that vacation requests are to be made 30 days in advance of the dates requested.  I put in for four days of vacation, forty days in advance, not near any holidays, and a week before the requested dates, my vacation was denied.  I asked managers why, they refused to answer.  I asked HR why, they refused to answer.  I pressed HR for an answer and was written up for insubordination.   Management bends rules and are allowed to, but when low-level employees ask for what they deserve, they are oppressed.  In my years with the company I watched good managers get pushed out and suck-up yes-men thrive.   

Being an account rep with dealer specialties was an interesting job, it was fun and I had a good route during my training and they start you out hourly(12.50/hr. then when they think your ready they put you on commission based pay). I had good relationships with my dealers and things were running smooth and was told this was my set route until a other rep quit unexpectedly which totally screwed me because I was just switched to commission that week and they(management) took my route and gave me a new one soooo I had to learn the ropes again while on commission so I wasn't making any money which put a lot of stress on me and I tried talking to management but they needed me to stick to the route, I worked another couple weeks but was making nothing while other reps were raking it in and that did it in for me. Its not a bad place the job itself is fun but stressful at times especially if there's bad weather there's no work= no money to be made. I feel like if they set you up with a good route and dealerships you could make good money that just wasn't the case with me seeings how about 3 hours of my day was just driving to the dealerships which didn't leave much time to make money. I just had a bad experience with the place.

I found dealer specialties on accident. I didn't know this job even existed until I read a job add for it. I had zero experience and no knowledge of the car industry outside of what I learned buying personal cars for myself over the years but  had a "go get em" attitude and a love for photography and cars. I started in 2014 and never looked back. You need some specific skills to make it work but nothing over the top. Organization, time management and being self motivated are the main things. If you don't have those, this will be a struggle. It's not for everyone. You can be extremely successful at this job if you want to or you can skate by on the coat tails and be frustrated. It really is up to you. Commission and hourly options are available. Once you try commission you may never want to go back to the old way of things! Its a fun environment that changes daily and allows you to make some pretty cool friends along the way. Not to mention seeing all the different cars first hand! There is support when you need it, but you are basically working for yourself. Schedules are very accommodating. The only requirement is to get the job done and keep the customers happy.  Dealer specialties has difficulties like any other company but they strive to make sure they stay ahead of the curve and keep things moving in a positive direction. 

 Do not work for this company!! I don't care what they tell you it's all one big lie!!! They always come out with the latest and greatest software but never tested something always goes wrong. Upper management does not care about you All they care about is one word and it's called "revenue". The only thing good about that job was health insurance. The people on my team are cool,people at my car dealerships were cool And they care more about me than my managers. Upper management say they have your back but they never do and everything is your fault no matter what. Anyways you've been warned!! The most enjoyable part of the job is managing yourself and you do have freedom and gain to know the ins and outs of different car dealerships. And making friends or acquaintances in different dealerships so that if they go to another dealership you might be able to get that dealership because they know your work. Hardest part of the job is the weather because if it rains or snows you don't get paid at all if you have a family or a lot of bills it can be tough sometimes. And management just does not care at all.

This place was ok to work for and also scary. Job security was something really lacking. Whenever someone left the company the higher-ups felt the need to mess around with the job structure which eventually ended in a lot of people doing more work for the same amount of pay but were "promised" more money down the road that never came. Overall I did not feel like I was a valued member of the company. Higher-ups in the company have no clue how their business works and would be willing to pull the trigger on something without doing the proper research to find out what it takes in terms of time and money to complete the request. there was no communication between support and the developers allowed which oftentimes led to frustration. Not a good place to work for if your looking for long term placement. I loved working with the people in the building but the overall culture lacked structure and management did very little to try and fix it. I went into this job learning everything I could about the system so that I knew some work arounds for issues.

This job is photographing vehicles for dealerships and uploading them on a back end website to be pushed out to the dealer websites.

Once you go through training you are provided a laptop and printer as well as materials needed. You work from your vehicle and should consider yourself a franchise with in a franchise. Kind of your own boss, but you do have managers that are there to help and provide extra material when needed.

You will work out side all of the time in all weather. If it rains all day you miss out and may have to work weekends to make up revenue and your pay unless your client has an inside photo booth

You work at your own pace with minimal management but do have to meet a weekly revenue goal. It is a straight commission job after training. So you have to hustle to make make money.

Even though you are straight commission you are a W-2 employee and receive full benefits if you choose.

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