Harrington & Byrne Employee Reviews

Some really great colleagues who made my time here good fun and the training is also great. However some management can be quite cut throat, sacking people with no warning within first few weeks of starting if they aren’t “up to par”. It is a tad monotonous call after call and 99% of your database of customers will be people who ordered things years ago and have no idea who you are, you really have to slowly build up a good database. Good for tenacious sales people, but only good once you start earning the company big bucks as the commission structure only rewards you at that point.

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Official response from Harrington & Byrne

10 July 2023

Thank you for your review; it’s great to hear you thought the training was good – we’ve put a lot of time into creating our training programme so glad you felt it was useful.Of course, it is a sales role so we have expectations of people, and at some point, they have to make sales. But we work very hard to make sure that every new starter has lots of opportunity and providing they show progress and display the right behaviours (such as timekeeping, attendance, etc.) and complete the training in a suitable timescale (which is clearly communicated), then we wouldn’t consider asking someone to leave in the first few months. In terms of the database, we can agree that when you start your database does include a number of inactive customers. This is something that is made very clear in interviews to allow you to build up your confidence and implement the training. As time goes on, we provide better and much newer leads to help you become as successful as possible; so tenacity and resilience are absolutely key at the beginning! These skills will absolutely help you become successful as you suggest. Thank you again for your review, we wish you every success with your career.

Preying on the vunerable

Outbound Sales Advisor (Former Employee) - Bournemouth - 25 June 2023

Great if you have no moral compass.Selling really expensive coin sets to the same vunerable customers. Slowly build customers up from stamps to gold coins. Having to hint that they will go up in value when they probably won't. High cancellation rate as sons/daughters phone in to complain.

Pros

Nice office

Cons

Selling to the vunerable

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Official response from Harrington & Byrne

10 July 2023

Thank you for taking the time to write a review about us on Indeed.We were extremely disappointed to hear your negative comments, and even more disappointed to hear you feel that we prey on vulnerable customers. We work extremely hard to ensure we identify vulnerable customers using industry-leading protocols such as ‘REAL’ and have a whole training module on this as well as a process to ensure we are proactively flagging potentially vulnerable individuals. The type of vulnerability then dictates how we manage that customer moving forward, for example, whether we remove them from all future contact, or for a limited time, etc., with special rules for what happens if they respond to a newspaper advert. Furthermore, we are very clear in the first week that we do not sell for investment purposes so do not talk about products increasing in value as a sales tactic, so we are very surprised that a comment of this nature has been made. People are not allowed on the phone until they have signed a document to say they have understood that we never suggest investments when selling. Finally, given our knowledge of the industry, our cancellation rate is low – we do absolutely adhere to our 30-day money back guarantee to ensure our customers are looked after so we do experience some cancellations (as does any sales environment), but as we ensure to do things correctly, we can make sure to keep them as low as possible.Thank you again for your review.

Insights into Harrington & Byrne

Based on 5 survey responses

What people like

Ability to meet personal goals
Clear sense of purpose
Ability to learn new things

Areas for improvement

Time and location flexibility

Great opportunity

Sales Advisor (Current Employee) - Bournemouth, Dorset - 17 October 2022

My role at Harrington & Byrne is incredibly rewarding. My manager gives me regular support and one to one feedback and my work colleagues are great too - there’s a real sense of camaraderie. It can be challenging at times but there are a lot of incentives if you’re hard-working and motivated. I’d thoroughly recommend this company.

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Excellent company to work for

Sales Advisor (Current Employee) - Bournemouth, Dorset - 16 October 2022

I have worked at H&B for a number of years, they offer a very competitive basic salary, commission and excellent perks and benefits. In addition, the training is very comprehensive and the office environment is modern with their own cafe on the ground floor. The management team are always on hand to support you and the new product launches (of which there are many) are exciting and make the day fly by (in a good way).Overall I would recommend working at H&B , the negative reviews on here are simply not true.

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Bad leads

Telesales Account Manager (Former Employee) - Bournemouth - 2 September 2022

Bad leads mean no sales, means no commission and lack of job security Basic salary good, but won't last long as target unattainable without being a true salesmen and taking old people for advantage

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Hard Work But Worth It

Account Manager (Current Employee) - Bournemouth - 26 April 2022

Decent training. The job is hard but you can earn a lot of money. Would be tough if you are a wallflower. Really close to the station and Asda is over the road.

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Official response from Harrington & Byrne

5 July 2022

Thank you for taking the time to review Harrington & Byrne. We've invested a lot into our training over the past year, to include our Training Academy, so it's great to hear your positive feedback.You are right in what you are saying, sales can be challenging, but as you mentioned we do ensure we reward all of our employees for their hard work and give our Account Managers the opportunity to earn excellent commission. Our location is very beneficial as we do have great public transport links and are located close to shops (and just a short walk from the beach too!)Thank you again for your feedback.

Toxic working environment with poor management. No value placed on wellbeing of employees. The pay incredibly well if you perform.

Account Manager (Former Employee) - Bournemouth, Dorset - 4 April 2022

There is little to no work-life balance due to the long working hours. Management are never satisfied with performance, even following record-breaking days/weeks. Outdated and immoral sales methods. Absolutely zero money seems to be put back into the business by way of technology or training. Micromanagement, zero trust in employees. Employees are treated like children, not adults. No sick-pay, whatsoever. Extremely poor management of Covid-19, putting employees at risk on a regular basis.

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Official response from Harrington & Byrne

21 June 2022

Thank you for taking the time to leave feedback regarding your employment with Harrington & Byrne. We are sorry to hear you feel this way.As a business, we are concerned about a couple of the issues you have raised so would like to take this opportunity to address them:Our consistent growth has allowed us to continue to invest in making our business better, for example by improving the benefits we offer all our team members, by the creation of a new Training Academy and by continuously refining our internal systems and processes. We are keen to ensure that we are as up to date and efficient as possible, and that our methods of working move in line with this ambition. We have an uncapped commission structure which enables our account managers, on average, to earn around £55,000 (one of the best telesales earning potentials in the area), with tax freevoucher incentives on top of that. We work a 40 hour week, but it is structured in such a way that we have a 3.30pm finish on Fridays to allow our account managers to have longer weekends. We prefer to invest heavily in success, and so while we offer substantial rewards for the on average roughly 97% of the time that people are in work, we just pay Statutory Sick Pay for the very small number of hours that members of our team are not in due to illness.Covid has been a testing time for many companies across the world, however as you would expect, we followed all Government precautions put in place and made many additional allowances to help our team feel safe coming into the office.Thank you again for your feedback, we -

Engaging and Exciting

Account Manager (Current Employee) - Bournemouth, Dorset - 15 March 2022

Recently joined via hearing from a friend never had experience in sales before, they introduced me into the sales psychology not just giving me a script to read from. Great for anyone who is fresh into sales or someone who is experienced as they have varying roles based on your ability. However, no matter your experience there is always room for progression with the added incentives along the way. Great Company, Great Colleagues and Great career prospects.

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Official response from Harrington & Byrne

5 July 2022

Thank you for taking the time to leave a review for Harrington & Byrne.We have invested a lot into our training so we are pleased to hear you benefited from this. We believe if someone has the right attitude and drive, and is resilient, then we can provide the training and support to help them be a successful salesperson, rather than just focusing on experience. Thank you again for your comments.

Great place to work; Great recruitment process.

Sales Account Manager (Current Employee) - Bournemouth, Dorset - 9 March 2022

I came from another sales job in Bournemouth which was just not for me; cold calling and constant rejection was just too much. Harrington & Byrne is the other end of the scale, in a good way of course! They’ve been very welcoming - With a great basic salary, great commission and a great all-round team; I feel I’ve really fit in during my first 2 months here.The recruitment process was thorough, but relaxed; the way I believe works best. This job requires ‘people people’ and a face-to-face conversation to explore the candidates skills is the best way to find the right person for the vacancy.If you work hard, listen, like to chat to genuine people, are target/money driven and like collectible coins, this is the place for you.

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Official response from Harrington & Byrne

5 July 2022

Thank you for taking the time to write a review for Harrington & Byrne.We are very pleased to hear your positive feedback. We are keen to ensure that everyone has a positive recruitment and onboarding journey and are very pleased that this is what you have experienced. Thank you again for your review.

Great earning opportunity

Senior Account Manager (Former Employee) - Bournemouth - 22 April 2021

I worked here for nearly 4 years as an Account Manager. Overall the job is great, you get to sell coins to your Customers and you make some really excellent commission, however, the salary was terrible at only £17k a year, so if you were unwell, took holiday or had a bad sales month, you would struggle with your earnings. There is no HR department so any grievances with management couldn't easily be reported or resolved. The business is very much stuck in the past. They left it very late to organize working from home, and even then continued to try and force people back into the office, even when advised to work from home due to Covid-19. They did very little in the way of providing home working, low quality mobile phones and a hap-hazard laptop system that remotely connected you to your desktop (this worked very poorly in most cases). They forced us to work extended hours into evening and bank holiday weekends at short notice to pick up sales (during a global pandemic).