AT&T Slapped with $2M Fine Over Dobson Debacle

Good for you. Glad to hear it. Do you get the same customer loyalty perks at Walmart as well? "I've shopped with you for twelve years exclusively. I should be rewarded with a free ham or I am taking my business to Meijer." Why is it that people feel like cell phone companies OWE them for their patronage. I mean we do provide a service. It is not as though customers walk around with a phone and do not actually get to use it.

One can get a sales rep or customer service reps from ANY company and trade war stories and they will all sound the same. So you are in a store and a customer who didn't opt for insurance walks in hands, you a phone and says: "It doesn't work." You remove the battery and liquid gushes on your counter. You hold your breath for a minute counting to a thousand because you REALLY need this job. "Mr. Customer it appears to have gotten some moisture in it." "Yeah, I dropped it in a urinal. Just give me another one. I've been with you guys since 1990." Now. ALL companies have a little tab that shows you when a customer signed up: It really does matter.

When I read kjonesjr's story I was
thinking: "Surely a manager or a supervisor could have made an exception." But honestly, for him to brag about numerous upgrades in a two year period,maybe it's not as big of a loss as one might have initially thought. The thing is the phones actually cost money.

There is a flea market quality to the way some customers want to deal with cell phone companies that they would not with anyone else except maybe car dealerships. I've had doctors want to haggle with me over a car charger. "I would think you would just throw that in if you really wanted my business." The tongue bitten response of course would be "I wouldn't call that thinking at all. A $29.99 car charger is not worth me losing my job over." But one can't say what one thinks in sales, you know. One just has to stand there and grin as though the statement is just the most reasonable thing in the world...when it isn't. One has to apologetically explain that the SOB management doesn't allow us to throw in free accessories. (Alltel was the worse about that. May as well hand in your resignation as try to discount an accessory.)

But ask ATTWS how that six month upgrade policy they rolled out just before they were acquired worked out. (Yeah, I was there.) I knew it didn't make sense. When companies start giving it away, one already knows they are just trying to add subs for the short term with no thought of profitability for the long term because they don't plan to be around long term. When I was with Suncom before ATTWS bought them out. ATTWS came in and a third of the towers in my market had not been reporting customer usage. Talk about a fixer upper. Boy were those customers mad when ATTWS actually started billing them for the minutes they used. Guess who was on the front lines having to explain it?