Shop Talk

To my daughter who works for "the other guys"...You could have told me about this and I wouldn't have had to wake you up 🙂

You've hit a pretty solid nerve with your question and this is really the very worst place to ask that question because even if we do know the tricks, we aren't particularly inclined to share them. You DID agree to a contract, you said you would stay with the company for however long or pay the fee. You are being rude by asking us to tell you how to shaft the company that pays our bills, what he said about Chargebacks is very true. If you signed a contract the rep who set that up gets a commission, if you break contract then that rep looses the money they would have earned... your actions WILL negatively effect somebody, and you're not likely to get somebody (very few people at any rate) who are willing to share with you ways to jip our f...
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In short, my advice? Don't ask that question here.

Good enough. Thank you.

Fair enough. Thank you for responding. I appreciate your position. However, if I may retort...if I'm just giving my business somewhere else, who's to say it might not be you/your company that is going to benefit from it? Thanks again.

Call it professional courtesy. Not all people have it but alot of the reps that come here seem to. Besides the flip side of your argument is, how does that rep know that he's not shooting himself in the foot by telling you how to get out of your contract?

You make a very valid point. I would like to respond this way...In every mall (or just about) in America there are Kiosks that try to cell you phones. These people are high pressure sales people from National providers that will not take No for an answer. When you tell them you have another cell phone provider they try and get you to switch. Another point, what about early on when cell provider offered to cover your ETF if you switched to them. If I may ask, where is the professional courtesy there? Thank you for responding.

I practice professional courtesy and customer satisfaction. I personally have sent a few people away from my service, to other salesmen(normally I recommend one by name).
If the customer will have an issue with my service and I see that, or if a number of different variables are met and I think Provider X will do them better. So be it.

But, by the same token, if I get someone in my store to buy an accessory for X provider's phone. I will slit X provider's throat to get a sale.

The difference? Once is professional courtesy, the other, is being commission driven, and competitive.

The guys in the Kiosks, they are doing their job, albeit sometimes very annoyingly. The buying off someone's ETF? I'm glad it bit those provider's in the...
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Thanks for responding, I see your point. Needless to say I am amazed in the reaction to my question. You guys should unionized! 😁 I now see that my question was totally inappropriate to audience for which it was posed. For that I apologize. However, I am rather confused in the manner in which some people responded. Name calling and poor language that was just uncalled for.

I work in a mall kiosk most of the time, I take no for an answer more times a day than I can count... actually it's usually I'll be back or I'm just going to check out X carrier first.
When someone tells me they already have another provider I ask them if the are still under contract then I tell them the ETF for that provider. If they still decided to switch (one providers almost always do) then I help them out. If they decided to wait I give them my card and cell number (since I work 3 different locations) and tell them to call anytime with questions.
Yeah, we work on commission but you don't get return customers and word of mouth advertising by screwing them the first time you help them.
I'm sorry your view of kiosk employees is so ske...
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I just heard a great analogy by someone in our company.

If there was a hundred bricks lying on the ground and one of them had a $5 bill on it, what would you do?

Enhanced Customer Service! I know who you work for 😛

And who do you think I work for Mr. Linguist? I think everyone in my company already knows who I am...

Your absolutly right there are a lot of sales dealers (direct and indirect) who would know the word professional let alone professional courtesy. I have never heard of a company offereing to legitimetly pay another company's ETF for you (although i haven't heard of everything), but i have heard of some indirect dealers doing it illegaly. For example i know of one indirect dealer for a national provider was offering to pay your ETF for you if you activated with them. Then they would call up your old provider and claim to be the customer and say they are in the military and are being shipped of across sea's. I was working with AT&T wireless at the time and we had to start asking to have a copy of their orders faxed to us so we could verify...
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No. A "I hope you wreck and die locked in a car fire" would be extreme. What I said was curt.
Now, this as you read upon entering the forum is for those EMPLOYED by the cellular industry. So why don't you go elsewhere? I suggest the "Cheap assholes that try and talk their way out of everything." forum.
Once again. have a nice day.
😁

You mean the lounge?

keep these people out of the lounge. it is our respite from all things consumer related.

You are a gentleman and a scholar. Your argument was indeed precise and accurate, you should be very proud.

When was the last time you went into a retail store and tried to return something a year and a half after you bought it and started using it? I mean...honestly...

Good counter-point.

To add to that...

Every retailer has a specific amount of time that you can return an item. When I was working in electronics, we had a 30 day return policy if it was resellable, and a 90 day exchange. After that, you're SOL. Same thing applies with cell phones. You're past your 15 day (or whatever it was) exchange period, so bite the bullet and wait it out or pay your ETF. If you weren't comfortable with 2 years, you had the option of a one year contract as well. Maybe you should keep that in mind next time. Pay a little more up front so that you can have more flexibility when you want it.

As for getting out of your contract...good luck. I refuse to help out.

Absolutely...well said. Very noble of you and I realize that my question was inappropriate for the forum for which it was presentation. I will stick out the remaining 6 months of my contract. However, I would like to pose the same challenge to you as I did the LOST_RAMONE...please reivew the negatively of future responses of this thread. I believe you will be surprised.

The negatively of future responses...? I don't know if I follow.

I won't be a bit surprised if you make a lot of people angry by wanting out of your contract.

I understand the anger, customer service is a hard occupation in any field. Be that as it may, the personal attacks are inappropriate.

It's a lot better to take out aggression to someone that isn't your customer on the internet than it is to let it get into your work. I'd rather see my coworker yelling at you and getting it out of their system than see him/her getting frustrated and impatient with a customer in my store.

sell your body a few times to make 175 bucks, and pay it off?

"How are we going to raise $50,000?"

"You could have sex with 500 women for $100 each. (pause) Or 50 fat chicks for $1000 apiece."
[everyone looks at him in stunned silence]
"What, fat girls need loving, too!"

no chargebacks. we have an extra termination fee. if they cancel in the first 6 months they pay us $250, which covers whatever i would be charged back. they have a 3 day, 30 minute return policy that they can come back in, but that's not like being 2 months down the road getting a short paycheck.

what company do you work for?

I'm not saying you are a cheapskate for that reason... i understand your phone was broken... but broken or not, you could have bought a phone at the full retail price, spent the extra cash, and been out of your contract on time.

I was not aware of that option, granted ignorance is not an excuse. In highensight I should have looked on ebay for a phone until my contract expired.

now you know what to do for future refference. sorry for the brashness, but trying to escape what you knowingly got in to is not something that is admirable, especially when it's contracted.

Nor did I ever believe it was...I fully admitted that it was morally unjust. The question I posed was inappropriate for this forum and for that I apologize. However, I challenge you to review this thread in the future and see the nature (rudeness and name calling) of the reponses.

we have to put up with alot in the wireless industry, and this hits to close to home for some of us, and it struck a nerve. i would appologize for everyone else, but it's not my place.

That's very understandable. Customer service is a hard occupation in any field, but I for one am very suprised at the volcanic like anger that is spewed at a person.

Yeah, I'm a vitriolic ass 🙂 I don't mind though.. cus, I'm not selling you anything. SO I don't have to paint a warm and genuine looking smile over the sneer I want to give you for your affront to my senses. 🙂

Don't take it personally, I just hate people as a rule. And were you in my store you'd be treated like a long lost friend... but here, the gloves come off.

That's a very valid point, you can transfer responsibility to somebody else, if they're approved for service... and it can actually be a win-win situation... you get out of the contract and they get service without having to pay activation (at least with my company that's the way it works, they don't have to pay to activate since the line is already active) They have to take your old phone though, but if you just upgraded that shouldn't be such a bad thing. Whitehorse, that was very insightful. 🙂

If you're speaking in response to the sprint/nextel cancellation fee, then whitehorse would be correct. If you have Sprint and want to go to Nextel (or nextel to sprint), thanks to the merger; you can do so and the eft will be taken care of. Why? Because essentially, you're still within the same company.

no, you're not really reading the post, he is saying doing a change of responsibility to another person, but keeping the contract with this new person, and then he can sign his own contract with another company without responsibility to the first.

Yep you're right, I didnt get the point of what he was saying. Oh well.

That's what I thought it meant, that he was advising giving the phone to somebody else and letting them take over the responsibility, so they're not canceling the contract, just moving it.

thats what retentions departments usually try to get people to do as well.

Yep, because then they don't loose the account completely.

although that is harsh that has nothing to do with political correctness, but i understand, its a buzz word, you are low on the intellectual totem pole and absorb it.

Much like you are no doubt low on man-pole every weekend 🙂 Hopefully nto so low ya gag 🙂

You have such a sunny disposition, i can see why you dont have a girlfriend and are hitting on chicks on phonescoop.

What makes you think i don't have a girlfriend? Im dating several chicks. Including your Mom! Well, on the nights i beat the other guys into the alley!
😈

You couldn't afford my mom buddy, not since she stopped charging by the minute.

What she charges by the hour now? 😲 What Am I going to do with the other 58 minutes besides get dressed? 😳

hey, its like plan minutes, use em or loose em.