Over the past week, it’s been quite a learning experience here at The Consumerist. Former and current reps from all of the major wireless companies have written in, sharing their tips and tricks and confessing their sins. It’s been a fascinating look inside the daily life of a sales rep, but what have we learned?
cellphone
8 Confessions of An Alltel Sales Rep
By 3.12.07
Here in New York, we don’t really know much about Alltel. They seem like happy, fun people who live on that “farm” where all the city dogs go when they die. “Sorry, Becky. Spot went to live with a nice family at Alltel Wireless. He’ll be happy there.”
UPDATE: Surfing On Our Free Sprint Cellphone
By 8.9.06
We just called Sprint to check on our coverage for this weekend’s trip into the Poconos and experienced something bizarre.
UPDATE: T-Mobile Hotspot: Wham, Bam, But No Thanks
By 7.22.06
On Wednesday, ZDnet blogger David Berlind posted a call of his attempts to extract a refund from T-Mobile hotspot but it’s not until today that he found complete satisfaction.
T-Mobile Hotspot: Wham, Bam, But No Thanks
By 7.19.06
Much like beer and hotdogs at the ballpark, airports take advantage of your momentary entrapment to bend you over for the privilege of wi-fi surfing. Against his better judgment, ZDnet’s David Berlind tried to use the airport’s T-Mobile hotspot and access some important and time-sensitive documents from his office. T-Mobile was more than happy to give him a high signal as he completed the transaction, only for the wifi to completely cut out after they charged his credit card. David recorded his call trying to wrest his dollars back from T-Mobile, listen below.
Sprint Ambassador Program Accepts Us, Anoints With Halo
By 2.23.06
and 6 months of all access to The Sprint Power Vision Network. We are told Sprint enjoy our ‘Power Vision experience.’ Sounds heady.
Who Has More Authority: Stores or Customer Service?
By 1.25.06
A complaint about a bad customer service experience with Sprint from Adam H. (which we will reproduced after the jump) got us to thinking: Do customer service employees who work in the ‘billing’ offices of phone companies like Sprint have more authority to fix payment issues than the person at your local carrier-owned phone retail store? We have a inclination that one needs to call into the service centers to get any sort of billing resolution, but wouldn’t it make sense for at least the managers at the retail operations to have the authority to fix errors, as well? Perhaps it is a trust issue—makes it too easy to tweak bills for friends when you can work with them face-to-face.
Georgia Bill To Make Cell Carrier Contracts Less Restrictive
By 1.13.06
A Republican state senator in Georgia has filed a bill that aims to prohibit cell phone service providers from forcing customers to restart their contracts just to move to a new rate plan. The pandering doublespeak from the cellular service providers in this article is sickening.
Kristin Wallace, spokeswoman for Sprint Nextel. “In principle, Sprint Nextel believes the competitive wireless marketplace is serving its consumers well and that regulation of wireless service would be harmful to innovation and costly for consumers.”
Caran Smith, a spokeswoman for Verizon Wireless, said … “By limiting a carrier’s contract options, the state in effect is limiting a consumer’s flexibility to move to rate plans and take advantage of services that meet their wireless needs.”
We understand that to subsidize the cost of phones your carrier wants to lock you into a contract—really, we get it. But there’s no way to justify the inability to switch plans to suit your needs within your contract period. (Not to mention the inability to purchase your own phone independent of the carrier subsidy and use their service on a month-to-month basis without using pre-paid.) (Thanks, Erendira!)
T-Mobile and Cingular Call Records Available for Purchase Online
By 1.12.06
Lest you think your cell phone records were private—even if you are a high-profile candidate for the U.S. presidency—AMERICAblog has proved you incorrect by purchasing General Wesley Clark’s cell phone records for $89.95.
Former Cingular CSR Speaks: “Having worked there I would never do business with them.”
By 1.12.06
Steve W. is a reformed call center representative for Cingular who wrote in just to share his experiences during the storied Cingular/AT&T merger. If you ever had any reason to wonder why your account might have been screwed up during the transfer, his account sheds quite a bit of light.
I just wanted to drop you guys a line about Cingular. I was until recently an employee, I was a Call Center Rep. for the Northeast Region, thats pretty much everything north of Virginia not including NYC and New Jersey. Also I’m not particularly disgruntled, I left of my own accord for a better position but I thought I would shed some light on the practices that lead to the problems that some of your readers experience.
More AT&T Wireless Customers Boned by Cingular
By 1.11.06
Since first we spoke of troubles with Cingular, many of you have taken the time to write us with your own stories—especially stories about the troubles since the Cingular and AT&T Wireless merger.
Thomas Hawk Chased Away from Cingular’s 3G Service
By 1.9.06
Thomas Hawk, he of a PriceRitePhoto scandal fame and G.I. Joe name (lucky bastard), details his attempt to sign up with Cingular Wireless’s 3G Laptop Connect service. He’s already an AT&T Wireless customer—now part of Cingular—but the Cingular rep insisted that he ‘switch’ to Cingular so he could use the 3G service. Thomas seems a little baffled by this, but having put in our times in the phone trenches, we can almost certainly say that the rep would have gotten a ‘sale’ on her account had she convinced Mr. Hawk to switch his service.
Fake Electronics (Yes, We’ll Take Some)
By 1.9.06
PC World has an interesting, if disturbing article about counterfeit electronics hardware and what you can do to prevent having a knock-off cell phone battery explode through your chest. (The answer? Not a whole lot, actually.)
Consumers Speak: Sprint Nextel’s Shoddy Refurb Treos
By 12.28.05
Oz writes:
I have a business account with Sprint and every now and again, damage my equiptment – which results in a call to Lockline, there handset insurance contractor.
Free 411 for a Short Ad
By 12.19.05
Here’s a quick tip that’s worth the trouble, we think: 1-800-FREE-411 (373-3411) is a totally free directly service. How do they make money?
The way it works in practice is that a caller who requests a business number is first presented with a short (about 12 seconds) audio advertisement for a sponsor who operates a competing business in that area; the caller is then given the option of being connected to either that competitor or the business he originally requested. If no sponsor operates a local competing business, then the caller hears no advertisement at all.
So you’ll wait a hair longer than you would with your phone company’s directory service, but we think 10-to-15 seconds of easily-ignored ads are worth the $2 or more charge you’ll often receive.
