Beware AT&T/Bellsouth Reps Bearing Good Deals
Back on Feb 12, my wife and I were at the Cingular store upgrading our cell phones (having just signed a new two year contract). We were approached by an AT&T/Bellsouth rep who asked for our home phone number to see if he could offer us a better deal because of the AT&T/Bellsouth merger. We went on with the business that brought us into the store and he scurried off to check our account.
When he came back, he quoted the amount of our monthly bill to us and said because we had AT&T long distance, there was a new bundle available that would give us lots more services for no more money each month. Did we want to sign up?
“Hang on,” we said. “Are you saying that this new bundle will give us everything we currently have plus new services and it won’t cost us any more each month?”
“Exactly!” he replied.
We asked a few more questions, and it seemed reasonable that because of the merger they were able to bundle up the local and long distance service and give us more services as a result of the merge. He said there was no contract and no long term commitment, so we signed on the proverbial dotted line.
A good life lesson: Don’t believe everything anything a salesman tells you.
We got the next phone bill today. For the PARTIAL MONTH, with almost exactly the same long distance usage ($1.10 vs. $1.20), our bill went up over $25!
The particularly annoying thing was that it took my wife over an hour on the phone with customer no-service to get them to back out the changes and commit to reducing the bill back to what it used to be.
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Yep, I used to be one of them… I had to go to work every day from 8AM to 7PM for minimum wage and try to sell this “new bundling” to people that didn't want or need it. All the little crap methods to get people to not ask questions and just sign on the dotted line just made me sick. I guess the primary method was exactly what you describe here, telling the customer that they will be getting all these new features for the same price, when actually it will definitely increase thir bill. They forced me to resign after having consistently low sales numbers and looking out for the customers more than trying to close sales (i.e. telling them the truth about their bill and letting them decide if they want to pay more on their phone bill for extra services, which they usually didn't) It was the worst job I ever had.
I also worked for a company like this I worked for GLOBAL EXPECTATIONS IN ATLATNA GA, they told me it was not a sales job that it was a manager job and that I only had to do the stores for like the first 2 to 4 weeks, what a crock of crap, then they told me that i was on a base salary plus commision which was bull as well, I worked 70-80 hours a week 3-4 of which i did not get paid for and on top of every thing we had to rip people off. I fianlly had enough after being PROMOTED TO LEADER and being told that if i did not make bell every day i would be demoted back to futrue leader so that day I had to lie to the costomers to make bell and that was all i could take i took my two year old with me the next day and quit. i wish there was something to do about it but there is nothing I can find I tried to call bellsouth and no one wanted to listen. I agree it was the worst job I have ever had and to make it worse I got to looking around me and all of the emplolyees where under 25 except the boss and the assistant manager the boss was 30 and the assistant manager I am not sure. anyway watch out if you go into a cingular store they will get you to so don't sign anything they will not save you money they will get you for even more.