It never ends, does it.
You're never going to believe this. Not only are we perusing a lawsuit against Bill's former employer (The Gym), but we might start another lawsuit with his CURRENT employer (a different gym). This is why I hate the idea of working for other people. The employee always gets screwed. Well, at least that's how it always is for us.

This is the scoop:

Bill is paid hourly versus draw. The way his commissions are calculated is he is paid by the total amount of the agreement over the length of the contract the customer signs.

Example:

Customer signs a 12 month contract at $57 a month $57 X 12 = $684
Based on his sales numbers he is paid anywhere between 6-10% of the total amount of the contract. So anywhere from $41 to $68.

On the contract it states that if you cancel out your membership early (before your contract is up) you must pay a cancellation fee of $150 to $225 depending on the type of membership (single, couple, family).

When he started working there in November of last year he signed a wage agreement stating that he would be making hourly vs. draw, & would be paid commissions according to their tier.

TOTAL CONTRACT VALUE
$25,000+ = 10%
$20,000-$24,999 = 9%
$15,000-$19,999 = 8%
$10,000-$14,999 = 7%
Under $10,000 = 6%

This is all that he signed.

A couple months into his employment he started getting "charge backs" on memberships that he had sold the previous months. These were charge backs for people who wanted to cancel early & were not made to pay a cancellation fee. He also received charge backs for people whose accounts went past due, due to credit cards declining or them closing their bank accounts. The total that he has been charged back equals over $2,000 over the 9 months that he has been employed there.

The dispute is that we do not see how they can legally do this after his commissions have been paid & it is out of his hands whether or not these people pay for their memberships. They have an entire group of people in their business office who handle all of the cancellation calls, EFT rejects etc. He's worked in many different gyms where there is a (legal) three-day cancellation policy in which he doesn't get paid on the membership, but it's never ever been like this before.

Is this not ridiculous? He is their top sales person, making them a crap load of money every month & this is the thanks he gets? Yesterday Bill got his paycheck & found out that they shorted him over $900 due to "charge backs", which is nothing he ever agreed to. We've been talking about this issue ever since he found out what was happening (months ago) & now it's affecting the livelihood of our family (go figure). He had a total freak out at work & talked to the General Manager telling him that he has a family to feed & they better fix this now or it's getting reported to the Labor Board & we're taking them to court to recover the cost of these "charge backs".

They scheduled a meeting with the owner of the gym for tomorrow afternoon.

In the meantime, Bill had an interview with a different company this afternoon. He aced their written sales test (they said it was the highest score they've ever seen) & he'll get the results of the test later tomorrow (where he had to take an IQ test. Not bragging, but I think he's qualified for MENSA). The next step is that they'll offer him a position & he goes in to "shadow", making sure this is something he wants to do.

I'm not holding my breath because he's interviewed with this company before (back in May) & it fell through. Even after they were showing him around saying, "this is where your desk will be. This is where you will, blah, blah, blah". If you're not going to hire someone, then why tell them this is where you WILL work? Anyway, I'm not counting my chickens before they hatch.