TLDR; iFit sucks and fired more people.
Well, iFit just laid off another 300 employees yesterday. My husband was one of them. His entire department, Non-Warranty Sales and Service, got laid off. Including the supervisor. The entire Warranty department was let go as well. They're also losing 4 supervisors and 2 team leads in customer service because all of the calls from the departments I mentioned were suddenly routed to CS, who have no training whatsoever in handling those issues. Supposedly they will be offering severance packages, but no one is holding their breath on that. There is also supposedly a complete hiring freeze within iFit, but Everise is still hiring reps for “increased call volume” in the iFit department. Everise is the 3rd party call center located in Guatemala that iFit uses.
In light of this, here are some grievances from my husband and his coworkers:
Nepotism is rampant. Most of the higher ups are related to the Wattersons, by blood or marriage.
Everise messes up pretty much everything. Employees have been complaining since iFit first started outsourcing to them, and every case Everise touches has to be fixed.
Complaints are never taken seriously. There is even a phrase: The squeaky wheel doesn't get the grease, the squeaky wheel gets fired. In one case, the weather was warming up and the office was getting really hot, close to 100 degrees, and they wouldn't turn on the a.c. because it would be a waste of money. One agent went to the supervisors and told them if they didn't turn on the heat he'd call OSHA and the labor board and report the company. They turned on the a.c., but he was fired less than a week later for “performance issues”. He was one of the best agents on the floor.
iFit makes employees use PTO to get paid for days when the company is closed for non holiday reasons. They company closes once in a while for events or cleaning the office. If employees want to get paid, they have to use their own PTO or be unpaid, despite the company being the one that closed that day. Not illegal, but shady. When one employee complained to the higher ups, he cc'd HR and straight up said he included them because he knows that iFit fires people for complaining, so he's CYA. iFit replied that they were hurt that he didn't trust them to take his complaint seriously, but that unless they close for more than a week, they don't have to pay employees for a day the office is closed.
Policies are constantly changing. Most of the time the first time employees find out about the changes is when they get written up for not following the new policy.
The company is actively changing policy to avoid honoring warranties. Four weeks ago they stated that if the machine was purchased pre 2020, the customer has to provide a proof of purchase, even if they've already provided it. They claimed this was to prevent parts fraud, but it was well known among the supervisors that it was to prevent people from using extended warranties and warranties to get replacement parts and to force customers into buying new machines.
The markup on the machines and parts is ridiculous. A screw iFit paid 10 cents for they sell for 5 dollars. I'm not kidding. The most expensive machine they sell is the Elite 32 incline trainer for 5,000 dollars. They pay about 1,000 to have it made.
They make employees pay for companies parties like a day at Lagoon. There is a discount, but employees still have to pay.
Tony, the head of sales and customer service, regularly screamed at the supervisors and agents. He also hated several agents and actively tried to get them fired. His assistants were overworked and got screamed at all the time. He was hired because he was married to a Watterson. She divorced him. He got laid off in this round too, the only good thing to come out of it.
They got rid of positive incentives to do well and relied on threats and write ups to increase productivity, then had meetings on why turnover was so high. One employee was so afraid of getting a write up she called in a bomb threat. Look up Brittney Valentine bomb scare.
There is more, but my hands are getting tired.