Sam & Tammy

Aren’t cell phone sales people some of the most immoral customer reps in the retail business? (Disclaimer: Of course they can never compete with used car sales persons for the all time top position.)

From first and second hand experience I’ve seen them straight out lie to make a sale–”Oh you don’t want to buy that phone, it doesn’t work with the plan you’d like to sign up for.” Many fall for their half truths and tricks, cuz hey, they’re supposed to know what they’re talking about–and only they are really supposed to understand those five pages of legalese fine print you sign your name to when you’re signing up for new service. Right? I mean how am I supposed to know that the third clause on the 5th page of the service agreement promises my first born son in betrothal to the phone sales guy’s estranged mother in law. Heh.

My colleagues and I have had to deal with them a bit more lately because we’re changing over our cell service from Sprint to Nextel and adding a few more lines. When dealing with a rep in person there are more gimmicks than you can count a lot of times–the most immediately noticeable of which is high pressure sales. I did my phone order online trying to avoid some of this and got a better deal than I could find in the stores, but still encountered lousy “outsourced to India” customer support which shipped my order a full 4 business days after the order was made instead of the expected within 24 hour time frame, and offered to refund my shipping cost to compensate for the delay and then charged me anyway. Oh well! I still feel I got a killer deal!

Hearing about Darren and Cassie’s experiences going to an actual Sprint store and the inconsistencies between what they were told by the sales people reminded me of my encounter with a very motivated AT&T Wireless/Cingular rep in a SoCal mall years ago when I lived in Ensenada.

I was interested in getting a phone that worked on both sides of the border for voice calls. At the time I was completely clueless as to the possibilities available with Nextel, which I’ll get to in a sec, but first let’s finish this story. I casually inquired whether they had a dual country plan so I could roam in Mexico at low roaming rates. He responded with “We’ve got this plan called the North America Plan, you can call to and from Mexico as if you were in the states, it just uses your plan minutes.” I was stoked, and I’m sure it showed, because so was he. Only problem was he had sold me on, and subsequently signed me up for, a plan that didn’t exist and never has.

When I got to Mexico my phone didn’t even roam on the Mexico GSM network run by MoviStar, it just kept searching for service. Needless to say all three phones went back to the store and the incredulous store manager who had never heard of the plan I had been sold. AT&T dealt extremely well with me after they sent me a $117 bill for activations and first month of service, refunding the entire amount apologizing that the rep had misrepresented a plan they’ve never sold.

Of course the wireless company proper customer service/billing departments can make enough mistakes to go around as well. I’ve heard from plenty of people I’ve known that they’ve had to call every month for six months because of the same mistake being made on their bill month after month. The wireless companies seem to get tired of hearing from disgruntled customers; Sprint just “fired” 1000 customers by sending them a sweet little letter stating in so many words “It’s not you, it’s us.”

Nextel is now part of the “evil empire of Sprint”, but everybody here in Baja is sold on their walkie-talkie service, and I’m getting quickly won over. I was very happy today when I needed to get in touch with somebody in the US as well as somebody in Mexico about borrowing a vehicle. With a nearly instant connect I talked to one than the other on the same phone and had it all worked out in less than two minutes, all without using up any plan minutes or paying roaming charges.

Do you have any horror stories of cell phone sales people promising you the world and delivering a nightmare instead? Anybody have experience being on the other side of the counter? I’ve always wondered what it’s like to be one of those high pressure caffeine addicted sales people leaning over those wireless carrier kiosks hawking their wireless wares in malls across the country.