Shop Talk

i think so, but then again only allowing an early upgrade through direct fulfillment is too. they let me do it once. once. however, i do get a steady flow of people that were told to bring their phone back to me for service. also, people told to come to me to do impossible things. i had a lady a few days ago that wanted to go back onto her old $59.99 family share plan and she said that after talking to cust. care for a while they told her to go back to where she changed her service (me) and i should be able to do it. WTF? if they can't do, how can i do it? i've only been nice enough to call in for a FRU one time for a customer because they didn't want to go to the corporate store, because he hated the corporate store, and the rep badgered me...
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I know this happens. It happens all the way around. Always been easy for one entity to blame another, much of the time because some screwup from one entity schluffs off the customer. It would also help for wireless companies to train their folks in what the responsibilities of indirects are, & vice-versa.

Boils down that if each person does his/her job right, much fewer problems would surface...

Part of the problem with being an indirect store is that customers when talking to a call center rep often times say "Well I got it at a (insert carrier name here) store!" when in fact they got it from an indirect store and are too f-ing stupid to read the receipt/big neon signs. The call center rep then assumes they mean a corporate store and sends the customer on their way. That happens to us often enough when people come in asking for a firmware upgrade or whatever because so-and-so from a call center told them to come back here. Some of it is due to the rep not knowing enough about each store type, but the rest is probably due to customer ID10T errors.

VZW is a corporation. As an indirect agent you operate merely as a franchise. The corporation clearly can make any customer exceptions, if they wish to lower a deposit for a customer who is bundling, they can do that... They own the service that they would be discountig the deposit for. Bob & Joes Cell Phones and all the other indirect agents do not get that luxury without cutting into their own bottom lines.

I wouldn't think that VZW is restraining anything revolving around your ability to do business, they are just able to make an offer you can not. I am sure there have been plenty of circumstances revolving around sales that corporate was not able to match your indirect location, and if that has never occured, VZW would be the ONLY car...
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I have had the same thing happen, except when they came in they told me that they had gone to a corporate location and wait in line for 2 hours to tell them that since they bought it from an indirect they wouldn't even help them (cause it wasn't bought through them! BOO HOO!)

(And for the record it was past my companys return period and was for a warranty issue, so instead of getting the phone possibly on the spot i had to call in and make them wait 3-5 days to recieve it!)

WE ARE SUPPOSED TO BE ON THE SAME SIDE!!!!

Just because they didn't make money off the sale doesn't give them the right to pass judgement and send them away because they don't feel like helping them or taking time out they could be selling.

Corporate gets paid...
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