Store issue - deceptively sold me incorrect watch

I’ve worked in Customer Service & Quality Assurance for years. In fact, I’ve listened to the Quality Assurance calls for AT&T mobile a few years back. The recording does not stop when someone is being transferred or placed on hold. Time after time agents would be fuming and cursing if a caller hung up because they do get kudos of sorts for a successful Asurion transfer. I would like to give people the benefit of the doubt...But the majority of the time the verbiage for insurance was skimmed through and as vaguely touched on as possible. If a customer hung up during the transfer...Moods escalated. This is the same for any insentive based add-on at most companies I’ve done quality for. Trends come out once audits are completed. But, by that time, if you have someone signing up people without their knowledge, they’ve already been paying for quiet some time. If I hadn’t swept through my emails, I would never have caught it myself and I’m certain if each store took ownership of verifying signups, your opinion of what could be a mistake might be different. 

Anyhow, because I know so many things are insentive based, I specifically told the rep I did not want any insurance multiple times and was assured it wasn’t added.

You did make me reflect on something else however....During my interaction I mentioned to my husband that I wondered how the walkie-talkie function worked. The rep stated “I had no idea it could do that.” We both commented later on how unprofessional this was. I more proper response woukd have been to google it and say - here I will show you or maybe asked someone else. Perhaps it was a lack of knowledge on the reps part that caused me to walk out with the wrong product. 😞

Your solution seems good in fact, I put an add up for the watch shortly after I was not called back a second time by ATT. However, it’s what led me to being on hold with AT&T CS for most of this weekend.

On Friday, I called to find out the payout on my watch. I was told $400. This is after a couple payments as it sells for about $100 more than any other retail store due to the convenience of the NEXT program. That same convenience though backfired. I found a buyer to take it for $325. After driving an hour to deliver the watch, I was back on the line to pay it off only to find that the rep I had spoken to earlier had quoted me incorrectly and that the payoff was actually $478. That puts me at double what I expected to pay off the watch for. All because of either an employee that was simply un knowledgeable of the product or simply wanted to make a sale and were out of the 44m watch as I now see is the case in this area.

This ordeal had me back on the line with ATT to verify where the last rep got the $400 quote from. I was told something wasn’t reflecting right on my bill and was transferred for an adjustment. Unfortunately, I not only ended up with a person I had to repeat my name and number to 3 times...But, they somehow created a secondary bill which doubled my payment total overlapping a portion of the previous month with a different due date. I have a pdf of the bill which I pulled the night before which totaled just below $300 and with a due date of the 11th. This morning I saw a notification for an updated bill....Today it was just below $600 with a due date of March 19th. This caused another 2 hours with a rep today going down line by line refusing to look at the bill I had already set up for e payment. I’m not even sure he fully understood the issue and now I’m at a new payment date I didn’t request. The rep explained it as a “system glitch.” I don’t feel this issue was resolved either as I don’t feel the rep understood the issue.

I suppose the take aways are to go to an Apple store for purchase when possible as ATT retail obviously doesn’t educate their reps well enough on product knowledge.  I won’t purchase a product without seeing it on display. I’ve always had a 38m watch, while the Series 4 comes in 40m & 44m. Before I saw my husbands watch the 40m was always bigger than my old 38m. I wish I would have noticed this sooner.

I suppose if ATT doesn’t care a customer has been wronged whether it be an error or not. I would have felt much better and less cheated if someone would have simply told me they were looking into it and clarified the misunderstanding vs wasting my time and making me feel I was lied to.

If you are an employee reading this and can send complaints to quality assurance. Could you please have them pull the falling calls and provide them with the above information? If anything else is needed, please advise.

3/1 between 1:20-1:30 CST Agent Markesha advised of $400 pay off

3/1 at 6pm CST spoke with Trinity then transferred to Mike followed by Fernando - it was Mike or Fernando it seems that made an incorrect change to my bill 

3/2 between 3/4pm - spoke with Earnest // he went line by line on the incorrect bill. Spoke over myself and my husband multiple times and although advised of a “system glitch” didn’t offer a good explanation or resolution.

I will also be providing this feedback to Apple. Either they or ATT need to take a better stance in regard to the people permitted to sell their items and improving they knowledge of the products.

Few notes: 

1.  Apple price fixes.  The few watches AT&T does sell are the same price as you can find on the Apple website.  The same price you’ll find everywhere else.  The 40mm Nike from AT&T is 20 payments at $25, or retail price $500.  It’s $499 on Apple.  Next installments are not $100 more.   (This is true for all products)

https://www.att.com/devices/apple.html     https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-watch/apple-watch/nike-cellular

2.  This is a customer populated forum.  It’s unlikely support will see the post.  The tapes are not pulled to bolster customer claims.  As they say, “for training purposes”.  

3.   If you want sales that knows the products and features, buy from Apple. Unlike AT&T, which has 3 current watch models, they have the full range up to $1350 in stainless.  

4.  Neither Apple, AT&T, or any other manufacturer or retailer is involved in “gray market” sales.  It’s not even recognized by them.  

5.  Pretty easy to screw up the pay off on devices.  See the photo on the forum.  

Example:  Pay off would be ‘balance after current payment” $115.29 plus the $28.85 monthly installment for a total $144.14.  

Btw, you can see this online yourself, and pay off with a credit card and it takes less time than calling AT&T. 

1. Perhaps you are right on the pricing if you are sold the correct item and keep it to term without upgrading. However, you need to verify the pay out amount for an upgrade. To do so, click the 3 white lines in the AT&T store, then go to trade in which will calculate it for you. After a couple payments in, i

now owe what the watch retails for. It’s the amount financed which also shows up on the ATT app.

2. You haven’t worked in quality. 😂 Calls are pulled to verify claims for special circumstances. Also,  “training purposes” can also refer to calls that went wrong. In quality, I also worked along with development teaching agents how to service customers. Many many times development requests calls that provide a bad example which are of course scrubbed for PII and played for onboarding agents. A seasoned quality specialists will keep files like this on hand for when they are requested or simply pull and send internally. Also, I’ve seen some employees on here as well. Maybe one will see this post, maybe one won’t but nothing lost either way.

3. What I intend to do moving forward since an effort has not been made to train employees properly on the products they are selling.

4. The term gray market doesn’t apply here all too well as I didn’t go through an unauthorized dealer....Or purchase a knock-off. A little confused to the relevancy but if you could clarify, I’d be glad to answer to that. If you are referring to incentivised sales.....That’s something else and certainly does occur.  I received 3 free Apple iPads, countless pieces of swag, and even a small vacation through a center when I took calls for my performance which was based on customer service experience surveys, quality performance scores, and multiple numbers pulled which included upgrades, total sales, average sale per call, etc...It is a great motivator to reach out and try for a sale when otherwise one might not want to as the customer in some cases already knows what they want. When this issue initially occurred, I searched these forums first and didn’t focus on that issue since it seems it’s pretty common.

5. Unfortunately, since I’ve never been put in a predicament such as this, where a company will not so much as research or provide feedback to an employee to prevent future errors , I didn’t have a need to look for this information before. In over 10 years I’ve been with ATT, I’ve not upgraded early so the pay-off amount was inconsequential. I had a buyer on the line, I dialed 611 and received my response in a short amount of time without digging through my bills. Too bad it was the wrong information. But, I’ve now done the digging myself and see I didn’t have to call.

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@KariOchi wrote:

1. Perhaps you are right on the pricing if you are sold the correct item and keep it to term without upgrading. However, you need to verify the pay out amount for an upgrade. To do so, click the 3 white lines in the AT&T store, then go to trade in which will calculate it for you. After a couple payments in, i

now owe what the watch retails for. It’s the amount financed which also shows up on the ATT app.

The price difference in sizes (40mm vs 44mm) is the same on the AT+T or Apple website and is $30.   It doesn’t matter when you pay off the device, it’s price is the same.  Full price up front, 2 payments, 12 payments, or all 20 payments.  🍎 Apple price fixes.   🍎

 

2. You haven’t worked in quality. 😂 Calls are pulled to verify claims for special circumstances. Also,  “training purposes” can also refer to calls that went wrong. In quality, I also worked along with development teaching agents how to service customers. Many many times development requests calls that provide a bad example which are of course scrubbed for PII and played for onboarding agents. A seasoned quality specialists will keep files like this on hand for when they are requested or simply pull and send internally. Also, I’ve seen some employees on here as well. Maybe one will see this post, maybe one won’t but nothing lost either way.

 

3. What I intend to do moving forward since an effort has not been made to train employees properly on the products they are selling.

   I see no reason to buy devices from carriers.  I have yet to deal with anyone who knows the devices as I do.    Since Apple won’t allow carrier warranty replacement and offers more secure shipping, easy ordering, the reason to deal with carriers for phones is non existent.  

 

4. The term gray market doesn’t apply here all too well as I didn’t go through an unauthorized dealer....Or purchase a knock-off. A little confused to the relevancy but if you could clarify, I’d be glad to answer to that. If you are referring to incentivised sales.....That’s something else and certainly does occur.  I received 3 free Apple iPads, countless pieces of swag, and even a small vacation through a center when I took calls for my performance which was based on customer service experience surveys, quality performance scores, and multiple numbers pulled which included upgrades, total sales, average sale per call, etc...It is a great motivator to reach out and try for a sale when otherwise one might not want to as the customer in some cases already knows what they want. When this issue initially occurred, I searched these forums first and didn’t focus on that issue since it seems it’s pretty common.

More a reference to your resale, not purchase.  

 

5. Unfortunately, since I’ve never been put in a predicament such as this, where a company will not so much as research or provide feedback to an employee to prevent future errors , I didn’t have a need to look for this information before. In over 10 years I’ve been with ATT, I’ve not upgraded early so the pay-off amount was inconsequential. I had a buyer on the line, I dialed 611 and received my response in a short amount of time without digging through my bills. Too bad it was the wrong information. But, I’ve now done the digging myself and see I didn’t have to call.

The list of problems with upgrade and trade in programs are too numerous to count.  AT&T lets it all hang out.  Shockingly these posts are redacted on Verizon forums.  Big red sanitizes it’s forum so as to not look incompetent.  Another reason not to deal with carriers.  I buy and resell on my own.

 

 

 

 

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You chided the rep for not knowing about walkie-talkie - and yet you yourself apparently couldn't be bothered to Google what sizes the AppleWatch comes in. The box itself would have been labeled 40 mm, so you never should have left the store with it.