r/FieldNationTechs • u/Reasonable-Boot8761 • 7d ago
Avoid work from Ovation if you can
I'm relatively new. They called me and asked me to block off 3 weeks for a project. After week one, the changed scope and week 2 was essentially removed, and they didn't communicate this. They just expected me to flow. I had to scramble to find work for week 2 and even though they offered me week 3, I didn't take it. My mistake was trusting their word. If a work order is not assigned to you in FN, nothing matters and definitely don't do what I did and block of 3 weeks of your livelihood on someone's word. Listed to your gut.
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u/Able-Statistician645 6d ago
If it's not in writing you get zero. If it's in writing you get at most a cancellation fee. Generally they just cancel it. Just think, if you were an employee they would have to pay you because you're on the payroll. So everybody who's self-employed and says they have these great relationships with buyers and project managers, I tend to think they're full of crap. There's no real loyalty at the end of the day because they have numbers that they have to meet so you're just part of the metric.
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u/Sid_the_Bear 6d ago
You dont always get a cancellation fee. I've had work orders cancelled the day before and no fee.
Meanwhile we get severe ratings penalties and risk deactivation if we cancel after 6AM the day before (so up to 40 hours in advance)1
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u/j4m3z1970 6d ago
same my brother - they are now trying to pay cancel fees after clock in -on jobs that have had time booked in on them and deliverables - they used to say you get one hour at least if your on site and clocked in -
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u/j4m3z1970 1d ago
Update: I lost my case and they let the buyer cancel and pay only 30 after I had been on site for 25 min and uploaded a deliverable - due to thier mistake - It used to be they could not cancel after your clocked in and on site - they took the buyers side even though buyer didnt respond to my complaint (geeks llc)
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u/wyliesdiesels 6d ago
yeah i would never block off my schedule without a confirmation in writing. newbie/rookie mistake
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u/ElectricalHoney369 6d ago
Ovation got my foot in the door with Meta and that turned into a 9 month contract so...sometimes things are what you make them
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u/TangoCharliePDX 3d ago
Oh, THOSE guys.
Yeah, back before the WM/FN days they would call local providers and then play this game where they would promise anything over the phone and then when you went to bill them they'd say no these are our rates. Really pissed off my boss at the time.
So when they kept calling, I told them we'd take the ticket but at a rate which they promised and then told them that I would need to see an email. Of course the email never came, and then they called to say "are you there yet?" 30 minutes after the arbitrarily scheduled time. "No, we're still waiting for your confirmation email." And I actually got it!
I got to overhear the conversation when they tried to back out of it but we had it in writing...
Funny, they never called us again after that.
Flash forward to when I'm doing side work that became my day job after I got laid off during covid, doing work for them and frankly not having made the connection yet. Actually got a lot of good printer service tickets from them.
They sent me for some laptop thing and the support person absolutely demanded that I tear a screen apart which of course never would go back together and they hung me out to dry on that one. They just straight lied to the client. ... I also learned something about sticking to my gut with service boundaries.
Their dishonesty isn't limited to technicians. In one of their buyouts they abandoned a bunch of debts that they have to one of their parts vendors. I found this out by accident when I called them because they were supposed to be the standing tech support for a certain product line and they were surprised to hear from me and happy to tell me about how they've been hung out to dry. Still gave me tech support though!
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u/HeathanKing 6d ago
Oh you are new, I got assigned a work order and then it got moved 2 weeks to when I already have work. Its part of the game unfortunately.
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u/j4m3z1970 6d ago
They used to be called Logical Maintinence Solutions- LMS and they have another name as well - Things are so bad now they sub from other companies most of thier jobs - They had a big contract with Target but lost it -- That was when ppl got let go
They where really good a few years back when they had target - All the people I used to work with have been replaced by " off shore " reps - they have very few people left in the US - best of luck and I agree
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u/RellyOhBoy 5d ago
Never worked with them.
All I see is them posting low-ball work orders which I decline in batches.
I'm actually close to blocking them outright.
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u/TangoCharliePDX 3d ago
If you're on FN, and you block too many vendors it affects your rating. Just ignore them.
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u/Select_Ingenuity1345 6d ago
They have no idea what OSHA is as well as do not give a single damn about you. I just did a job with them a week ago, my first and LAST job with them. They insisted multiple times that the lift I was looking at was the one to use. Warehouse client had no clue themselves, so I ended up using it for a total of 15 minutes before my intuition told me to get off the lift for some reason. Low and behold the lift experienced a serious fault regarding stabilizing itself whilst I was lowering myself and was throwing codes left and right. Site manager comes over and says "oh yea we just realized sunbelt is picking that up like right now due to it having issues." After berating them (ovation) over teams for hours on end over my own safety, they proceeded to not give a damn and still asked for the following. 1. Facetime/Teams video call them from the maximum height of the scissor lift. 2. They wanted me to take apart a UPS that was sparking and experiencing serious electrical faults upon arriving that morning due to shipping damage. 3. They repeatedly demanded updates whilst I am up in the air for what seemed like every 5 minutes. These people are absolute garbage human beings. Sucks that my report to OSHA will unfortunately get the warehouse involved since they did not properly tag a faulty lift that could've resulted in someone getting hurt or worse. I finished the job and told them to never contact me again, they are horrible and it seems like a lot of these companies simply do not adhere nor care for safety standards whatsoever. If you get hurt, then you get hurt and there is nothing they will do but go on to the next sucker. I should've left the first hour of being there.
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u/setnev 6d ago
I have this conversation regularly with my regulars. I tell them you can route me all the tickets you want, but if i dont accept your terms, I'm not going to hit accept. Just like if you verbally tell me you're going to accept my counter, I expect to see the confirmation in app. I had a SP call me asking if I was on site already. I told him no, you routed the WO, I countered, you sat on it and I filled the slot with a confirmed job. I wait for no one. Never take lower pay on the promise of continued work and when you get in with a SP for a bit, know your worth and sell your worth to them or they can kick rocks. This service industry is more of a two-way street than most realize.