Pleio

What’s Pleio?

Pleio enlists freelancers for distant customer support positions in its “GoodStart” program. These work-at-home agents call patients with chronic diseases to assist them manage their health.

How it really works

Pleio guarantees freelancers that they’ll make $15 or more per hour, working from home making phone calls on the corporate’s behalf.

Nevertheless, freelancers should not paid by the hour. They’re paid by the finished call. So you might make considerably less — or somewhat more — depending on whether prospective patients answer the phone and discuss with you.

Signing up

In case you want this customer support job, your first step is to register. This involves providing some basic details about yourself and taking a brief quiz. The quiz goals to suss out whether you might have the proper form of computer and a basic understanding of using the web.

During this process, the location might also use your location to find out whether you might be in considered one of the five states — Washington, North Dakota, Ohio, Wyoming and California — where it doesn’t accept Good Start applicants.

Requirements

Along with not living in those five states, GoodStarters must:

• have 2 to three years of customer support experience
• intermediate technical skills, including experience with cloud environments
• a minimum of a highschool degree or GED
• give you the option to pass a background check and a credit check
• have a pc that may run Windows 10 or higher (no Macs), the most recent version of Chrome and has a minimum of 8 GB of Ram.
• A soundcard with speakers or headphones
• Antivirus software and a firewall
• PDF reader
• USB headset with microphone that plugs into your computer
• You have to even have an Employer Identification Number from the IRS. (This is outwardly to envision a box saying that you simply’re a sole proprietor/small business owner, not an worker.)

Pleio review

Let’s say you meet all those requirements and are accepted into the system. Now Pleio would require you to finish between 10 and 15 hours of unpaid training before you officially start working for pay. After completing this training — and after logging 60 hours of paid work — you’ll get a $250 bonus. That bonus is billed as a reward for completing the unpaid training.

The job

The work you’re doing here is asking patients about their medications. Many of the patients are managing chronic diseases, corresponding to diabetes, high cholesterol, depression and asthma.

Pleio says these patients have opted in to its GoodStart program, which is geared toward helping them understand what the medications are for and helping them manage their disease. That ought to mean that it will be easier to get these patients to reply your calls and discuss with you. Nevertheless, freelancers say that isn’t at all times the case.

Meanwhile, the location’s software queues up the calls for you. You’re employed off of a script. The location says it provides bonuses for working during peak hours and weekends, in addition to for other activities.

Flexibility with a catch

You will have flexibility to schedule your individual hours. Nevertheless, you might have little control over how busy you’ll be when working for Pleio — and over whether or not you’ll receives a commission on your efforts.

How so? You’re only paid for “completing” a call. Completion means you’ve delivered all the scripted message to the patient. If the patient hangs up; desires to reschedule; or in the event that they simply don’t answer, you don’t receives a commission.

Unpaid training

The location also has continued training requirements, but doesn’t pay you for this “no-cost” training. So, you’re continually working a minimum of a part of the time with none compensation.

Independent contractors vs. employees

It’s value mentioning that Pleio saves lots of money calling its GoodStart customer support representatives “independent contractors” slightly than employees. Nevertheless, this site makes lots of employer-like demands. These start with requiring specific software and hardware and extend to the mandatory training.

Why does this matter? In case you’re an worker, you receives a commission for each hour you’re employed — no matter whether someone answers your phone call or whether that hour was spent on training or outreach.

Employees also pay less tax, since employers pay the employer’s portion of their Social Security and Medicare tax levies. (Independent contractors pay each the worker and the employer portions of Social Security and Medicare taxes — a complete of 15.2% of wages.) As well as, employees are covered by necessary safety-nets, corresponding to unemployment insurance and employee’s compensation.

The IRS has a test that determines whether employees are employees or independent contractors. We imagine this test indicates that Pleio is misclassifying its GoodStarters. You will discover a quiz that spells out the difference here.

Recommendations

You might earn greater than minimum wage here. But, due to the way in which Pleio pays for work, it’s not possible to know. There are multiple firms that hire work-at-home customer support representatives as employees. These include Apple, Amazon and Azurion. These are all higher places to work.

A site called FlexJobs may also enable you find distant and versatile jobs through its curated job board. (The location charges a small annual fee.)

In case you work for Pleio (or have worked for this site) and haven’t been paid for all the hours you worked, we propose you call your nearest Department of Labor office and ask for whomever handles “misclassified” employees. Chances are you’ll be owed back pay and advantages.

All that said, some individuals who freelance through this site say that they earn considerably greater than minimum wage — even after taking the unpaid time into consideration. If you ought to Pleio a try, you can sign up here.

What their users say (from Indeed)

After a few yr I even have yet to make that $15 an hour they says is the typical. And the dearth of calls keeps you closer to $0 an hour… I’d say my average has been between $10-$12 an hour and a few days I’ll call for 3 hours and make $6 total. If you might have loads of free time and want extra cash, go for it. But you should not going to make a living and even minimum wage for many places!

Indignant, rude patients

Patients who’re unfamiliar with this system can get indignant and upset, which may be difficult. Furthermore, people may be rude and sometimes hang up. Unfortunately, you don’t receives a commission for hang-ups, callbacks, or no responses. The fact is that you simply’re attempting to help people, but it could actually be tedious and time-consuming.

There’s lots of waiting around and hoping to make a successful call. The payment is commission-based and is paid once a month. Sadly, I had to go away this job because it was quite demanding with nothing much to point out for it.

Pay for accomplished calls

Minimum 30 hr weeks as of 2023, yet pay is commission based.
Claims to be warm calls (individuals who have opted in to receiving phone calls). Nevertheless many patients will let you know they’ve never heard of this system. Frequent technical issues that management will blame on you but coworkers will let you know are problems for them as well within the system.
Pay is between $2 – $8 for every accomplished call depending on this system. But you don’t receives a commission for hours with no answers or reschedules. And hourly pay incentives ($14/hour for 20-30 hours of labor, $16/hour for 4 hours worked on Saturdays) are hard to trace.  The corporate calculates this through “time in record” and dials per hour, without employees having any innate way of knowing those numbers

Low pay 

Low pay for nice efforts. Payroll platform is confusing, so its difficulty to trace your pay.
Numerous calling off the cuff where the Patient has no expectation of your call as the corporate states.

Work is straightforward, but you might be paid by accomplished call, so when calls are scarce, pay is nil. Nevertheless, I did like working there. I only moved on because my husband had spinal surgery and I couldn’t give any time to Pleio.

Completely happy here

I even have been working with Pleio for the past 7 months and it has been an awesome experience working for them. I work a full time job in the course of the day and am in a position to make my very own schedule once I am available at Pleio on nights and weekends. The management team is responsive. The pay and incentives keep improving every month. I did thoroughly once I first began and was offered a full time position. Pleio has been great to me and everybody has been super friendly and helpful along the way in which.

From Glassdoor

Pleio has been an awesome place to work. The sum of money you make is basically all about your effort. There have been times where I even have made $15 an hour and others where I even have made $35 for my efforts. You might be paid per accomplished call not per minute like lots of WAH jobs. In case you reach lots of patients you possibly can make lots of money. The corporate currently has guaranteed rates for evenings and weekends. Setting your individual schedule, but agreeing to work a set variety of hours is an ideal method to balance your house/work life and you possibly can still meet the needs of your loved ones and work the hours that give you the results you want.

If patients aren’t answering and agreeing to this system, you don’t receives a commission. It is basically discouraging whenever you’ve made so many calls and aren’t making one dime.

Hours of labor, no money

Calls are paid per completes not by the hour. You possibly can sometimes work hours without making much money. Some hours you possibly can make lots just is dependent upon the decision volume and if patients answer.

Your pay is predicated on one factor beyond your control: If the person doesn’t answer the phone and stay engaged in conversation with you whilst you follow a set script, YOU DO NOT GET PAID on your efforts and time. This is just not discussed in training where the main focus is on you perfecting the script reading. Training time can be NOT paid for.

Many complaints:

• The training is unpaid, and recent training continues after you begin working–UNPAID.
• The pay schedule/system is ridiculously complicated, making it very difficult to anticipate your paycheck or check to see in case your paycheck is correct.
• When you sit down and do the maths, you’ll realize just how little you’re making per hour, especially considering it’s a 1099 position.
• The entire “rah, rah, we’re an enormous joyful family!” narrative is fake.
• I used to be hired together with a big group of other distant employees (“Good Starters”) firstly of June. Six weeks later, I had a 96% Q.A. rating once I was suddenly fired via email at 10pm on a Friday night. Apparently, a big group of Good Starters were fired resulting from “reduced call volume.”

12/17/2023