A Little Help Needed
 

BOATING RELATED!!!!
Big brother at work has decided to turn me into a "Dot". Nextel gps tracking. I am an outside salesman, I work all hours and have no set schedule except mon-fri ,( I do produce results, not a slacker) but I still don't want them to "see me " out on the lake on a nice afternoon if I so choose. It is a company phone account so I can't change anything with that. Is there a way to disable the gps on the phone so Nextel cant overide it? Or an old phone that I could buy that doesn't have this capabilty?
Thanks for any help,
Bill

yea forward all your calls to a new cell phone but than tape the old one to a stray cat an turn it loose in the city.

Sent you a PM.

Reading your post it said "Set schedule Mon-Fri. If you are paid to be selling during the "set" time and on the Lake instead with out calling off then.............................

BILL, BILL ,BILL Good Luck buddy! Let me know when your on Lake Norman:D

I am expected to be available mon-fri, 7-5 same as the office is open. I work more than the 50 hrs a week the office is open, I just may do it nights and weekends as well as m-f. Commision sales by the way--- no sales-- no pay . Was on the phone last night at 8;30 with a customer then this am at 6;30, the office isn't open then but I am always available. It just seems ****ty, I produce $$, and I don't need some corporate nosy bastard knowing where I am. Part of my compensation is the phone for personal use which means night and weekends Big Brother with no life may be watching and its none of his business. So I really don't see myself as robbing the company of anything if I choose to take a couple hours off, with the phone on by the way.

Hey Dave, You still have the Sonic? hope all is well, anything still going on with that Fla move?

Only took 10 minutes to come up with a solution!:D

Too bad you can't convey this to "big Brother" I now understand and in no way would insinuate wrong doing especially with the no sales no pay deal.

Plenty of stray cats on my property, if you need one I'll stick in a box and ship it to you:D

Disclaimer: I like animals it was nothing more than a joke:p

We looked at doing that with our people especially the Service and Installation Tech's but decided we didn't really need to know where they were just where our vehicles were during the day and at night.

With the Nextel phones you can turn off the "GPS" but it wouldn't take too long before they knew about it and then your in the same spot.

Even if you turn the "GPS" off there are programs that can force it on over the internet if it's been shut off. The forwarding idea would work but Nextel charges a premium to forward to another phone and they would probably see that on the billing cycle.

Now I can't give you any advise on how to cut work on a nice day but with my people, especially the salesmen I don't care what there doing as long as they produce and take care of business at hand.

We ended up getting "GPS" for the trucks and it has already paid for itself in a few short months. Most of the time we our our "dots" to check maintenance items on the vehicles and to monitor excessive speed. Having multiple rolling billboards that are speeding through traffic kind of defeats the advantage of putting your name on them...

I agree with the benefits of gps tracking, we have them in our tractor trailers and in the business I'm in there is a need for them and actually can help to make everyone's life a little easier. I guess I'm just a little offended that someone in a position IMO that shouldn't even be there has made this decision and it feels like the sales force driving the business, and successfully I might add, is under a microscope by someone with no sales ability or understanding. I guess its justa job and if it really bothers me, I can leave. Thanks for the info.
Bill

No I understand your position completely and would probably feel the same way if it was me, thats the main reason we didn't implement them on our phones...

The problem usually stems from one or two individuals abusing the system and most companies take the "blanket approach" rather than just confronting the problem head on... Good luck, if it's like ours they don't get monitored that often unless something isn't right...

When I was in auto parts sales they used to ask me for "Call Reports". Being a good salesman, but hating paper work, I seldom wrote them up. I was always one of the top producers for the company, winning trips all over the world, so they cut me much slack.

One of the owners asked me about it and I told him: "Look, do you want invoices making you and the company money, or do you want me sitting around writing up BS call reports? Look at my invoices, that's where I was on that day." Let your dollar volume do your talking for you. I successfully worked for that company over 9 years until I was stolen by another, bigger company for more money. If you're really good, you can stand your ground.

Wow, I just remembered something that may work for you!

During the summer if I HAD to be out on Lake Michigan during business hours, I invited a customer out for a speedboat ride. Not only did it help my relationship with that company, but if I ever got caught, I was "working".