Ditto here. Can not get involvement from employees. Of course many are interested in hitting the bar 23 seconds after the bell rings and don't really have an interest in bettering themselves anyway. None the less, the few that have shown an interest express the same complaints as the ones John mentioned.
I guess I have had the rare situations? I haven't had any problems over the last ~16 years in contacting AWS, or in getting information I needed on occasion. I know some people who have had problems such as have been described here so I have been forewarned. Because of that I take a few precautions but nothing I wouldn't consider reasonable business practices.
When I send in my information for CWI renewal, I send it via FedEx. That way I get an indication that it has been received, and people seem to give Fedex envelopes more attention than they do for regular mail. I always keep copies just in case, and I follow up by calling a few days later to make sure the Certification Dept. got the package. Not "When will you do your job and get my papers to me?", rather "Did you get my package? Are there any problems that you noticed?".
When I can't reach someone by phone, I have found that a polite email to someone higher up on the "food chain" has worked very well. There is an email listing on this web site. By emailing, I have sometimes learned that the AWS person I was trying to contact would not have been the right person for my question anyway, and the person I was directed to was able to quickly solve my problem.
I know many people feel the expense and aggravation of maintaining their CWI cert is not worth the effort. And for them, those are valid points; to each his own. I can tell everyone that when I first got my cert it meant the difference between depending on an unemployment check and being gainfully employed (didn't gain quickly but it was still forward progress). The job market was pretty tough at that time in my area. And I can say my CWI cert has opened some doors for me that might not have been otherwise. I believe I will be maintaining my cert until retirement years from now.
As far as meetings go, most of them are at least a 2 hour drive or more for me. Kinda hard to work 10+ hours a day and drive 4 hours more. Especially when I would drive past my house and still have another 110 miles to go.
Enough rambling from me,
Chet Guilford
jon,
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