I'm not angry...

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@wtpsyche wrote:

...I am very frustrated.

 

Before upgrading two of four of my phones in March, I placed a call to AT&T sales support, in essense to make absolutely certain that upgrading two of my phones wouldn't change my bill.  I was assured that the change in data plans I had a question about was a change in name only because of the newer phones.  Needless to say, my bill jumped because I subsequently lost the $25/line discount because I didn't select the AT&T Next payment program; I opted for being locked in for another 2 year contract instead.

 

An escalated ticket in May was eventually denied.  I had simply asked for my previous data plan discount for each of the two lines.  Coincidentally, it was a special I could have taken advantage of that ended in February (that I did not know about, admittedly).  Let me be perfectly clear... if I were not told unequivocally by AT&T that my bill would not change, I would not have upgraded and/or had made a different choice.  Had I not asked the right questions, I would take full responsibility for making an uninformed decision. But I did ask.

 

AT&T, I regret that I felt the need to post this here.  I regret that through several phone calls and escalations that there is simply nothing you will do to equitably resolve this.  I regret that this is simply a drop in the ocean, and I had hoped for a reasonable thoughtful resolution.

 

As one of your very long-time customers, I'm exasperated.  And very disappointed.

 

--Steve

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This is a tough situation.

To the AT&T representatives, it is quite clear that signign a contract will cause you to lose the "out of contract discount" (if you are getting it).  To them "getting a new phone" and "not losing my discount" means you will be buying a phone outright, or using a NEXT agreement, in which case their answer would be correct.

The problem is that to the customer, unless you have taken a good bit of effort to read quite a bit of information, and fully understand everything about your bill and the plans you are on, "getting a new phone" means "signing a new contract and getting a 'cheap' (subsidized/reduced price) phone".  In this case, you are correct in that getting a new phone wiould change your bill.

This is a very tough area to say one way or the other, because you can look at it either way and be correct.  I guess the bigger issue is that the person on the phone you asked either gave you a quick answer assuming that you knew signing a 2 year service contract for a discounted phone would impact your bill, or they tried to explain it to you, and somehow it wasn't fully unerstood by you.  The person you spoke with on the phone could have taken more time and asked you more questions, but then for some customers that would only confuse them or upset them for being "treated like they were stupid" so it's really a no-win situation.

When you upgraded your phones, if you spoke with a person in the store, they should have fully explained this to you, but they may have been rushed, you you may have been to busy with getting a new phone to fully understand what was said.  It's also possible that they just didn't bother assuming you knew what you wanted and knew what you were doing, especially if you came in and spoke like you knew exactly what you wanted.

The new billing methods of no longer just wrapping the phone subsidy into the service charges and making everyone pay a phone subsidy whether they are getting one or not is different from the old ways.  This new way also makes it fairly clear that you are paying the full price for that new phone one way or another, which is something that most of us customers aren't used to.  Regretfully, once you switched to that "Mobile Share" plan there was no going back because the older family plans were discontinued last year.  This means that for the next few years customers will be getting used to this new way of getting phones.

On the bright side, if you are a technophile who likes to get a new phone every year, the new NEXT programs will allow you to do that a little more cheaply than it would cost in the past.  In fact, using NEXT with a Mobile Share plan would let you trade in your old phone as frequently as every 12 months and cost you about $25-35/month more than what you are paying now, which is about the same cost as getting a new phone with a 2 year service contract for some people.

Jerry, I appreciate the time you took to reply.  And as an objective person, I acknowledge that you make some very good assessments on the two possible views.  I'm not out to change the world here, but I will provide some additional information.

The phone upgrade process back in March was done online.