Customers Beware : Confession of an att sales rep

[ghengis]

Ok folks, this is what i have and thanks to "bumfights' at HOFO.

I left the company over a month ago and I thought I would inform all the educated posters on HOFO of the unscrupulous practices that go on day to day with AT&T. Here they are, with no further comment.

1.) Watch your features. Sales reps for the company are very heavily compensated by features, which sometimes leads to unethical practices. The company encourages unauthorized updating as much as they try to deny it. The original sales rep loses the commission and the flipper will lose it eventually to another feature change, so win win for the company, as noone ever really gets paid. Corporate store employees are reprimanded very hard for this and often times fired, but rest assured, your local Bestubuy or Mall Kiosk employee is busy randomly populating numbers, hoping to find an outdated feature. A good way to check this is to look at your most recent bill and see if it is higher. Next check usage fees. If there are no usages fees and your bill is higher, then you should see a calculation for a pro rated charge as the company bills in advance. I lost a lot of money to mall employees flipping features without contacting the customer. It even got so bad they had flipped my very own parents account with no authorization. I got that kiosk shut down before I left the company but still, beware.

2.) Don't let anyone sell you on downgrading your minutes and adding the early nights and weekends feature. I used to do this often and I'm ashamed of it. The point here was that the customer would get "3,600 extra minutes a month" for less than what they were paying. Great, but were the calls actually placed before 9 PM? Beware the early nights and weekends sales pitch.

3.) Insurance. It is a ripoff, plain and simple. I know we all like our subsidized equipment but do the math. $5 a month + $50 deductible. On top of that, you receive a refurbished unit that oftentimes has more issues than the original. Suck it up, pay full retail, and let it go.

4.) "Promotional features" Roadside assistance comes readily to mind in this instance. Everytime a customer would ask me to review their account they would be surprised when I mentioned they had roadside assistance on their account. The company encourages every sales rep to educate the customer that their first will be high because of activation fees, pro rated charges, etc. The customer looks at their first bill and sees that it is high, and next month it's back to usual. Meanwhile, the $3-$10 in features goes by virtually undetected because, let's face it, people are careless and their expectations were set at a much higher level.

5.) Answer tones. Check your account to make sure you wanted this service originally. At .99 a month it's easy to miss, but cover your bases.

6.) Your CSS. Basically it's your contract printed up and you should review it monthly to make sure everything is on the up and up. When you activate/renew it shows everything on your account. Be sure to review this with your rep.