retail sales associate

authorization representative

sales representative

bilingual sales representative

retail store manager

Prime-Communications

Upper management does not care about personal issues nor staffing issues. Will allow employees to work a store by themselves open to close for weeks on end without breaks. The consistent gaslighting is atrocious. They do their best to convince people that $12/hour plus commission is enough to live off of when it clearly isn’t. Commission is NOT guaranteed. It should not be considered a reward to be able to pay bills on time. That’s not even enough money to have a savings account. Don’t fall for the “you could make $20/hr” nonsense. They will start you off at $12/hr. I’ve even heard someone from Upper management tell a RSC that “if you think about it, $12/hr is a lot of money!” 

I was hired back in March as a rep for only $12/hr. There is monthly training on new phones and promotions. We are expected to call leads and cold call customers in regards to getting new services along with manipulate and pressure consumers to buy new services or add new lines to customers accounts. 

For the holidays I was basically told that AT&T and the stores are more important than employees spending time with their families for the holidays. No accommodations for anyone that works out-of-state away from their families at all. They expect the family to just revolve around their 2 month blackout dates for PTO from November 15 - January 15. 

They do offer assistance in some areas, basically the bare minimum to make things appear as if they really care about their employees. Even with the hiring process, I am working in a store with one RSC and there has been no effort to hire new employees, they would prefer every store to be short staffed. Expect to work a full open to close shift by yourself as they will drag their feet and ensure that they can get all of the store needs and operations done with just one or two employees. Prime also gets a 100% payout of commission from AT&T where the employees have to do more work to get 100% payout of their commission. If the RSC does not meet the requirements, they only get a percentage of that commission. They claim to care about employees but they really don’t. They only care about money. They will preach work/life balance but they dont really believe in it. Also, this company will work you open to close from Sunday to Sunday if they can. They will not hire anyone help, but will blame someone for not getting operations done as if we dont have customers in our face on a daily basis

Some commission metrics affect our pay negatively, but we dont get paid on the particular metric if we do well in the metric. This company does everything in their power to keep people low paid and put out unrealistic expectations on RSCs and RSM’s. They care nothing about retention rate, they do just enough to keep someone on for 3 months and after that they will treat you and talk to you as if you are less than them. 

“Prime Cares” is a facade, they only care about how much money you make them. They will say “we will hold you accountable” but no one holds upper management accountable. This is not accountability this is pointing the finger and blaming people for things they dont control. We are told to lie, manipulate and gaslight customers for new activations 

My first sales related experience started here. The company wants to ensure they make their money and of course, so do you. Management is everything in a lot of careers, if the manager is able to train well, chances are, you’ll be well. If not, the company provides many trainings each month on new products, services, incentives, and methods to keep you up to date. Learning to be the best at what you do no matter where you are will carry you through this company, as well as making sure you are always staying in touch with upper-management. I will admit, some people just came in looking for a face to complain to, when you get good at the job you’ll learn how to turn those situations into an opportunity. But I have seen employees who don’t want to be helpful in those situations at all. They weren’t able to get as far as I did with the company, that’s all I’ll say. The pay is great for what you do because it’s like being spoiled and it’s simple. Hardest part was truly understanding how to calculate prorated bills ahead of time and ensure the customer was fully aware and ready to prevent a future problem. No issue with planning for the future for yourself, why not do it for someone else’s entire wireless account? There are many great incentives and benefits as well as a bunch of company jokes. Personal favorites, #ThankYouPrime where employees post big purchases, typically vehicles on the company’s portal. Once you start getting into higher positions, workload can easily wash your life balance away in the wrong circumstances. Gotta be smart enough to understand that there is money to be made in all areas and that training and ensuring your team is well equipped will help reap the rewards. These positions offer really great relocation incentives too. By far one of the easiest to transfer companies I have ever seen. 

Now for the most common complaints and how to handle them. There are moments, where back office teams have to spend almost an hour undoing a big mistake by another employee. Being the one to help the customer and get it fixed will take you a long way. There are 3-4 slow months within the year, it happens with all sales jobs. Learn how to pitch deals in your own way to keep your numbers on the board. Real simple to learn, i’d tell you in depth but that’s just cheating and they’re going to provide you with the first steps to finding out how anyways. How far you take it is up to you. The final complaint is the “golden handcuffs.” Can’t tell you how many people mastered this job and wanted to leave but ended up coming back. Not because this job is all they thought they could do, but because it is very hard to compete with what this company offers and how quickly they can get it to you.

Final Rating, 5/5. This company allowed me to make the most I ever had in my life early and has allowed me to learn skills that I will carry for a lifetime. 

The Good — What Prime Actually Does Well
- Clear structure and expectations  
  Prime is big on process: phone policy, data privacy, PLEs, CSAT, trainings, compliance. As a manager, you’re never guessing what the company wants from you. The playbook is there.

- Strong performance culture  
  If you’re competitive, organized, and good with people, Prime rewards that. High performers get recognized, and stores with strong leadership tend to thrive.

- Autonomy at the store level  
  You run your store like a small business. Hiring, coaching, scheduling, inventory flow, customer escalations — you’re the one steering the ship. If you’re a natural leader, this is a plus.

- Career growth is real  
  Many RSMs and ARSMs started as reps or managers. If you show results and stay compliant, you can move up.

---

The Challenges — What Store Managers Actually Deal With
- High compliance pressure  
  Prime’s partnership with AT&T means zero tolerance on fraud, phone policy violations, and customer data mishandling. One mistake from any employee can become your problem. You spend a lot of time training, retraining, and policing process.

- Metrics can feel nonstop  
  CSAT, PLEs, accessory %, insurance %, upgrades, gross adds, churn saves — you’re always chasing something. If you’re not organized, it becomes overwhelming.

- Staffing is the hardest part  
  Finding motivated reps who follow policy, sell ethically, and stay consistent is the biggest challenge. A manager’s success is tied directly to the team they build, and turnover can hit hard.

- Communication can be hit or miss  
  Some districts have strong leadership and support. Others feel disconnected or reactive. Your experience depends heavily on your ARSM and RSM.

- Workload vs. pay can feel unbalanced  
  When your store is performing, the job feels worth it. When you’re short‑staffed or dealing with escalations, it can feel like you’re carrying the whole store on your back.

---

The Reality — What It Actually Feels Like to Manage a Prime Store
Prime is a place where strong managers thrive and weak managers burn out.  
If you’re organized, good with people, and willing to coach constantly, you can build a high‑energy, high‑performing store. If you’re passive or avoid conflict, the job becomes stressful fast.

It’s a company where:
- Process matters  
- Compliance matters  
- Culture matters  
- Your team determines your success  
- Your leadership determines your team  

When it’s good, it’s genuinely rewarding. When it’s rough, it’s usually because of staffing, compliance issues, or inconsistent performance expectations.

I worked for Spring Communications before Prime purchased the company. When Prime took over things definitely changed. The culture seemed to get less friendly and fun, then became stricter and harsher. The company as a whole works very efficiently but they are very cheap and it seems at the employees' expense. The higher up in management you go, the harsher and meaner they get. It's hard to believe some market directors have the position they do when their idea of "coaching" us is repeating/yelling the same sentence in 5 different ways (often with incorrect grammar) on almost every sales meeting. It's not motivational at all. Granted, not all in management are terrible, but it's quite common and trickles down to the store managers and reps. Communication is not up to par in general throughout the company.

There are times when you are pressured to make some shady decisions and you have to really split hairs to meet sales goals. This job has definitely had people question their morals. Training is sup par as well. The training has continued to go down hill as time goes on. I would have new hires go through weeks of virtual training and they still wouldn't know anything when they were supposed to go live. There's little support for store managers to help them to train and develop employees. I had gotten excellent training when I started but these poor new hires lately are not getting the same attention and patience to learn the industry.

I definitely learned a lot in my almost 5 years at the company and grew a lot as a person. Although they hire/promote a lot of questionable people into management, they do have some decent benefits. You learn a lot about networking and interpersonal skills. The company gives training on personal financial wellness and skills. They provide free online bachelor's degrees (which I wish I took advantage of). When you achieve your sales goals, you do earn a pretty decent amount of money. But again, it comes at a cost and I'm not sure the cost is worth the benefits. Plus, the health benefits have gotten worse as the years of gone on. Covers almost no prescriptions. 
It's got multiple pros and cons. It's up to the individual if they can handle the heat to reap the rewards.

Prime is very cheap with facilities, health plans, inventory and staffing. No work/life balance, I was severely under-staffed for over a year because they hire min wage non-experienced kids who cant sell or just don't show up to work. Uncaring upper mgmt. who has no knowledge how to sell themselves, their just number pushers without any current hands on real life experience. Bad hiring practices and compensation plans led to turnover company wide and now they have promoted/hired in an undertrained and underqualified upper management team to run the company. This has led to low staffing to the point of closing some locations. Horrible business practices. I would have only 7 phones in my inventory and just one clear case to sell with them, I wrote Primes supply management in Texas on day out of frustration about this, saying in my email whats up are you going out of business? you cant send my store just a dozen cases to sell?  it was a detailed email in which they did not like and I was told be my DM to never send a email like that again!! but understand im getting yelled at everyday about sales when I have nothing to sell and working open to close 6 or seven days a week because of the incompetent's they hire, as a store manager I cant interview or hire anyone, the DM just shows up with someone and says here you go.....

I actually had a good DM for a few months before he jump ship to the competitor, during that time my store was the number 1 store in the district for several months and after he left I got the DM who lives in the past, without any current knowledge of the business, the meetings/conference calls/numbers guy who just hangs on to his job because Prime is so overwhelmed with the falling numbers/stores/staffing.

The day I quit ATT corp offered me double and working 40 hours now with real benefits and friendly supportive management, its nice to be appreciated, you wont get that from Prime

Note:  I file three serious complaints with HR at Prime a few months before I quit, She never called or emailed back, I both called and emailed for a response and HR would never respond to any complaints. HR at prime only looks after Prime!!

It's retail sales, and unless you are in upper management you are expendable.  If you work at a slow traffic location, you will not make any money and management will blame it on your sales ability.  If you get this job, request a high traffic store, that is the only way you get anything more than base pay.  The commission goals are ridiculous as they are not altered to match the customer traffic of each store.  Prime will say they treat everybody equal, but it doesn't take long to see who is kissing up to the right people.  I don't generally bring race into the equation but all you have to do is look at the diversity of the company and you can tell who is favored over who.  I've personally seen one of the higher ups give a customer free accessories multiple times just because they share the same faith or they are a friend of the friend.  And I have personally dealt with unruly customers that unrealistically want things for free or want to "get a deal" just because they know somebody in upper management.  It's bad for business when that is coming from leadership.  I have witnessed a regional director take money out of the cash drawer to cover a customer's fee, and left it up to the employees at the store to deal with it, which left the drawer with a shortage for months as he conveniently was always too far away to make a trip to the store to put the money back.  Management trains employees to bend the rules in order to get numbers.  This leads to a problem where management strictly looks at volume rather than quality.  So even if your metrics are far and away better than the next person, if they have a few more sales than you, they still get paid more, so at the end of the day nothing but numbers matter.  Morale is low because the sales staff gets the short end of the stick in every way.  Commision structures are always getting changed and made to look like employees will make a huge amount more than they were, but then the goals are set so high that it's either a wash or you actually make less.  The only exception is when you're at a high traffic store where you don't have to scavenge for sales.

They make goals to get paid commission the same across the board, therefore they are unattainable for smaller stores in rural areas. I started out with a different company that was absolutely amazing to work for and later was sold out to Prime. Before Prime I absolutely loved my job and couldn’t see myself ever leaving. Now I dread getting up and going to work every single day. In order for everyone to get paid out any commission and avoid write ups we have to hit way over our store goal every month. We have to add a minimum of 25 new lines over the amount we have ever hit at my store just for everyone to get paid out for all the commission they’ve earned. They continue to raise goals and make it hard to keep help. We’re always short handed. If you’re a manager the only way you can take off on a Friday or Saturday is by using your PTO so spending time with family is near impossible. They want you to run a store with 2 people 7 days a week. Therefore it’s near impossible to take more than a couple of days off at a time or impossible to end up sick. You have to work a minimum of 42 hours as a manager so making it to your children’s sporting/school events is impossible. Our accessory inventory is always so low and high priced, but they expect us to sell it anyway. People can literally walk across the road to Walmart and pay half price (or even less) for the exact same things we have in stock. The money is decent for my area, but the stress of the job just isn’t worth the money anymore. My district leader and market leader are amazing (but from what I’ve heard there aren’t many out there like mine - most are shady and want you to lie to hit goals). Above them I wouldn’t trust a single soul. They have brought people into our district to try to turn us in to shady sellers, but thankfully my DM doesn’t push us to do these things. Our entire district is held together by one single person (our DM) and once they leave Prime will have to replace almost every single person at every one of the stores here. 

This review is very specific to the upstate area from what I hear elsewhere things are pretty good. I apologize for my poor use of punctuation but I just need to say what needs to be said. 

 I have been a retail sales consultant for the last 3 years with first a different company then they got bought out by prime communications.  Ever since Prime a has taken over they never pay commission, or special promotions to motivate their sellers such as a gift card for hitting a goal.  The managers want you to take customers credit card information and set up direct tv accounts and then cancel them a month later so that they can hit their goals and look good on paper for corporat.  and that's just the tip of the iceberg as far as shady things that go on in that place.  I would not recommend working here if your experienced and looking to get a commission check don't expect to get one unless your in a location that does a ridiculous amount of opps which most locations in upstate don't.  They make their pay plan very appetizing and basically sell you on that trying to convince you that you will make a boatload of money when in reality they just end pocketing that money themselves.  they are looking for soft obedient minds whom they can tell them to do whatever they like.

I'm not a disgruntled employee, I love my job.  I just very much loathe the company.  I've witnessed them fire employees who haven't done a single thing wrong they just wanted fresh blood in the store sure maybe their numbers weren't as high as expected but it was directly impacted to lower traffic numbers so they forced them to step down or just flat out made something up so they had the ability to fire them.  They have even replaced people before the new year and they have yet to even inform this employee yet that he was being let go, He only found out  because he went onto the companies portal website and saw that they had a new manger starting as of the first replacing his position.

It's unfortunate that the company is so numbers driven, there's alot of fraud that occurs and is encouraged to meet personal and store goals. Management is a revolving door in our market because it doesn't and can't perform like more densely populated areas. Washington state will never do the volume of Texas or California, the company is blind to it. The sudden urge of micromanagement is beyond frustrating and discouraging. We're on our 3rd market director in the past 3 years and our 4th district manager. Unrealistic goals are set and if not met by sales reps or the store manager, there are write ups that are automatic and no goal adjustments. The stores tend to break even or lose money, there are few stores that churn a profit and help keep the struggling stores afloat, but overall, it's a struggle across the market. I've been here over 5 years, mobile sales has been on a decline for years and has progressively gotten worse since 2020. I enjoy helping customers and ethically selling, but hard to enjoy your job, when you get told you're not doing enough because of numbers, that are mainly calculated based on how many times a door opens and closes, rather than based on the customer we work with and what they want and need to improve their lifestyle and functionality. Prime has alot of changes to make to be able to retain employees, but they've yet to make the changes needed. Be mindful when you enter AT&T stores, as they'll gladly get you a price quote that's "lower" or the same of what you're paying, while adding lines/devices to your account that you don't want or need. That is fraud to me, but management says, as long as the customer agrees to the price, to activate the lines. I refuse to do this, just to reach their unrealistic goals, maybe it's just the management they've transplanted in our market, but it's a bad reflection on the company as a whole.

I was a store manager at Prime communications and before that I was a manager at a different authorized retailer that Prime bought out. You never received bonuses or commission for the first 4 months. You’re first 3 months commission is “vested” meaning it is audited by att before being paid out. Then the first month commission and bonus was to paid out the 4th pay period after starting, the 2nd month would be paid out on the 5th month, and 3rd month commission would be paid out on the 6th month and so on and so forth forever. What they don’t tell you is when you leave you have to be employed at time of payout to receive commission or bonus and since they hold it for 3 months you always lose 3 months worth of that pay no matter what because it would be impossible to still be employed if they hold your pay for 3 months!!!!. The transition was awful. The next day we were open to the public and trying to learn to transition to a new computer set up(new location ID, new way to pay epins, and none of our old opus id would work, and none of the opus iPads would work and we spent HOURS on the phone with helpdesk converting them over) upper management texts you literally 10+ times a day while you are trying to run a store, teach yourself plus your reps the new system, triage, take customers, all while getting pressure from up above about sales. Upper management changes the schedule to where you have to close every Friday and that you can’t use your pto unless you are pacing to goal on alerts. You’re told that the main focus is to be on the sales floor but then they pull you off the floor to discuss “goose egg” days and to go over alerts CONSTANTLY. Overall it is not worth the pay to deal with upper leadership. Do not ever work here if you want to keep your sanity.

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