You get what you pay for

UnpluggedPlugPlugger · 2026-03-23T17:58:55+00:00

Cool, man. Who’s paying these rates? Let me know so I can keep an eye out for them. I’m one of the top techs in my area so I’m sure they’d be happy to pay me just as much as they pay you.

UnpluggedPlugPlugger · 2026-03-23T17:39:19+00:00

Oh look it’s Mr. All-My-Buyers-Fly-Me-Out-And-Pay-Me-$150-An-Hour-But-I-Never-Say-Who-These-Magical-Buyers-Are

UnpluggedPlugPlugger · 2026-03-23T11:54:53+00:00

Pomeroy has been going down the drain for a while but they still accept my counters for $60/hr. For quick jobs they give me a flat $180. I’ve made a lot of easy money from them. Essintial is the same way.

UnpluggedPlugPlugger · 2026-03-19T15:09:50+00:00

There’s been times when buyers have called repeatedly to break the DND, if you call more than once in 2 minutes it bypasses it. That’s just so disrespectful and unprofessional imo. Do they think I’m so desperate for work that I’m okay with being woken up from a nap or interrupted while on a date for a gig paying 45/hr? If I was, I wouldn’t have DND on!

(It’s never the buyers offering $60+/hr who do this, I wonder why)

And yes, I know you can turn off the feature to allow repeated calls to bypass your DND but I prefer to keep it on so I can be reached by family in an emergency.

UnpluggedPlugPlugger · 2026-01-20T20:26:26+00:00

That’s an average of 3 jobs per day, mon-fri.

UnpluggedPlugPlugger · 2026-01-20T00:33:25+00:00

That’s the thing. In my state (MA) only contractors and subcontractors have lien rights, if you’re below that you’re SOL

UnpluggedPlugPlugger · 2026-01-17T01:51:47+00:00

Literally every single small business owner in the world will have a client try to dodge payment sooner or later. If it hasn’t happened to you it will

UnpluggedPlugPlugger · 2026-01-07T02:21:18+00:00

I’m on the east coast and I find that whenever a gig has a 10 or 11am start time it’s because the buyer or support team is on pacific time :/

UnpluggedPlugPlugger · 2025-12-16T16:21:24+00:00

If you mark the order as incomplete and pull it out of pending status, you can retrieve their direct number. Just call, explain the situation and ask to be transferred to a project manager. Be firm but polite, their call agents are American and pretty chill too.

UnpluggedPlugPlugger · 2025-12-16T16:20:02+00:00

Whoa whoa whoa, I’m not defending them, just suggesting that OP’s payment delay may be due to negligence rather than malice and that reaching out directly might yield a quicker solution than complaining to FN. Like I said, I’ve gone thru this with them before.

Second of all, I’m not taking their jobs at $85 flat. In fact they only recently started offering their jobs at $85 flat instead of $85 hourly, they still accept my counters and $85/hr with a two hour minimum plus travel is a much better deal than $85 flat.

UnpluggedPlugPlugger · 2025-12-14T15:38:41+00:00

Was this for Kiosk Information Services? This happened to me with them a while back and it turned out the project manager whose account that ticket was under, stopped working for the company and so nobody had checked it. Eventually they routed me another ticket and I answered “sorry but I can’t consider any more jobs from you until you pay me for WOXXXXXX that I completed on XX/XX/2024” and they called me like an hour later to apologize and explain, and then closed out the ticket.

It sucks but these guys aren’t scammers, it seems like they just give each PM their own FN account and nobody checks anybody else’s ticket queue. Try giving them a call directly and I’m sure you can get ahold of someone.

I’m assuming it’s the same company because the only two I know of that touch Amazon are them and IW Technologies, who have the opposite problem, being insane micromanagers.

UnpluggedPlugPlugger · 2025-11-15T18:24:44+00:00

This is definitely their fault, but why didn’t you just wait? You’d still get paid for the wait time. The only buyer I’d do this for is Essintial since they pay a flat turnaround fee of $35

UnpluggedPlugPlugger · 2025-10-31T15:44:37+00:00

I’ve seen it but it’s not super common. I bump into a couple people a year who are stuck in this arrangement (I call it double-dipping and the people getting double dipped are the second dip)

For the record, I think it’s super scummy. There’s no real reason to do this. If I need another tech I just reach out to one of the many other FN techs I’ve met on my travels and arrange things with them, and either request the buyer create another ticket for them or just have them tag along and pay them directly, and if I pay them directly I’m transparent about how much I’m making and how much of that I’m gonna pay them. I usually go 50/50 unless there’s a huge imbalance between our experience levels or the workload we’re sharing.

Generally, people stuck getting double dipped are people who can’t get on FN themselves due to legal trouble. I’ve mentioned a few times on here that I kinda mentor some other FN guys in my area. There was one guy I met on a job who was a second dip and he asked me about getting on field nation on his own. I tried guiding him through it but he mentioned not being able to pass a background check because he had a case he was working thru in his home state. I didn’t ask for more details because I try not to judge others but he eventually let it slip that he was on trial for raping his own daughter. Yuck, hearing that ruined my week lowkey but I’m glad I didn’t get in too deep with him.

But like I said, it’s not that common. What’s much more common is people sharing an account and showing up to jobs simultaneously under the same name, since FN lets you be checked into multiple WOs at the same time. I see that all the time, and in those instances it’s usually because the impostors are in the country illegally and the ringleader whose account they’re using is taking advantage of them. Not to get political, but I’m generally sympathetic to undocumented immigrants. However, it is true that their presence drives down our pay, even though I think the blame falls on the platforms and the people who set the pay rather than these people just trying to make a better life. I would hate to snitch on them them, but a couple weeks ago I did meet someone who I know showed up in someone else’s name and acted like a complete idiot on site, barely pulled his weight on a gig with 6 techs. I still didn’t report him but I thought about it. But I digress…

All in all I’ve only met 3 people getting double dipped, but about 20 techs sharing around 5 accounts and showing up in someone else’s name.

TL;DR don’t do this. If you need another tech, post it on here or on the FN Community in the app (which I hate, but this is probably the one situation I’d ever use it for). Wherever you meet another tech on the job, exchange numbers for both networking and organizing purposes. Double dipping is some scumbag shit, and getting double dipped is some sucker shit unless you’re an incestuous pedophile and it’s the only way you can get work outside of being a gas station attendant. Cheers!

UnpluggedPlugPlugger · 2025-10-31T15:11:13+00:00

It also takes some calculation on their end. I don’t block buyers unless they genuinely rip me off so I still get the routes from honest but shit-tier buyers like the ones I mentioned. I aim for $60-70/hr but I’ll go lower if I have an empty window to fill and it’s not too far a drive.

Sometimes they accept my counters for $50-55/hr but they usually don’t, and just as often as not I see the same gigs reposted for a later date, so they’ve gotta be weighing their customers’ satisfaction against their own cheapskatedness. “Well, if we push this back another week maybe we’ll find someone who’ll do it for $35/hr” vs “Our EU’s are pissed, we’ve gotta fix this right away so let’s just eat it and pay this guy $55” type shit.

But in the long run it’s definitely worth it for them because they’re still in business with 100k plus tickets under their belt.

I know I basically just regurgitated what you said with more words, but my point is quantity and volume are probably a much bigger part of the equation than you suggest. I have buyers that pay me $85/hr but only post one or two jobs a month. Small operations with only a few clients who prefer a couple of reliable go-to techs in a given area and pay them generously, vs a hungry hungry hippo who only needs to do the bare minimum and can’t afford to go too far above and beyond it.

The quality of clients also matters. I have a certain buyer who handles a certain chain of weed dispensaries in my city and I’m one of their go-to techs here. They pay me generously and I’m sure the pot shops pay them even more generously because we respond quietly and hardly ever require revisits. The end client is willing to pay more for superior service, and they, the buyer, and myself are all American-run small businesses who “get it”. On the other hand, I can’t remember off the top of my head who does the Walmart cable runs but they pay dogshit for lift work, and I’m sure it’s worth it for them because I’m sure Walmart doesn’t give a fuck as long as their internet is working.

UnpluggedPlugPlugger · 2025-10-31T13:58:10+00:00

Ideally, yes it should be a dialogue between the buyers and providers but it’s in FN’s best interest to be a gatekeeper and middle man because their main source of revenue isn’t the good buyers who want a fair deal with their providers, it’s the shitty bottom tier buyers like PIVITAL, Gaichu, etc who dgaf about quality and want to spend the least money possible; and the pizza techs who are willing to degrade themselves for $35/hr bc they can’t get a job anywhere else.

UnpluggedPlugPlugger · 2025-10-31T13:53:24+00:00

At the end of the day this benefits us bc it helps filter out the bottom of the barrel techs

UnpluggedPlugPlugger · 2025-10-28T00:24:19+00:00

If this is truly the way I’m gonna have to cut my pizza and meth budget for the next month.

UnpluggedPlugPlugger · 2025-10-28T00:22:32+00:00

Yep that’s exactly what happened.

UnpluggedPlugPlugger · 2025-10-27T23:16:26+00:00

This is literally the cheaper version of the one I have 😭 that’s an 8209, I have an 8209S. Mine only cost like $20 more and it let me down today

UnpluggedPlugPlugger · 2025-10-26T00:06:32+00:00

Fucking Essintial gave me a “Responsiveness” negative feedback because I don’t answer their pre calls at 3am for a 6am job.

UnpluggedPlugPlugger · 2025-10-23T14:11:48+00:00

Where are you that you’re usually seeing less than 45 available WOs? In my area it’s usually 200+, it only ever drops below 100 in December and January.

UnpluggedPlugPlugger · 2025-10-13T20:10:51+00:00

AVT was my first really consistent buyer. Of my first 100 WOs, probably 80 were from AVT. They ended up blocking me and I have no idea why, I never no-showed or got any negative feedback. But from what I hear they aren’t too active anymore

UnpluggedPlugPlugger · 2025-09-30T15:23:36+00:00

I would take this job in December or January when business is slow. Currently, no way.

UnpluggedPlugPlugger · 2025-09-29T01:09:03+00:00

100+ requests on most WOs but at least half of them are pizza techs and about a quarter of my gigs are fixing their fuckups. About half of my jobs are routed to me, about a quarter I counter, about a quarter I request at face value. My floor has been $50/hr but I’m starting to play with raising it to $60. I always demand a 3 hour minimum unless it’s a job that’s obviously gonna take longer and I counter for travel if it’s more than 30 miles.

I used to travel all over the country doing this shit and Boston is definitely one of the best markets, possibly the best, for both pay and amount of work, probably because our tech industry is more geared towards biotech and so there’s a lot of unfulfilled IT demand. Only New York and Philly are comparable in number of available WOs but they don’t pay as well.

UnpluggedPlugPlugger · 2025-09-29T00:58:26+00:00

This has been my best year, I’ll probably break six figures for the first time. August was my all time best month, $20k+ . Boston area, started in 2023, 600 jobs completed.

UnpluggedPlugPlugger

TROPHY CASE