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Don’t buy from Sam’s Clubs
Walked into a Sam’s club and sales rep asked what I paid for cell service, I said just under 200 for 4 phones. He said, what if I can get you 4 new iPhone 11 Pro’s for free and cut your bill to 160 by switching over to Att&t. I said what’s the catch, he says just port over your lines and trade in your current phones and you’ll get the new phones for free credited to your account. He said the first two bills will be high and the third and fourth would be zero once the credits kick in. So I told him I could only switch 3 over and kept 1 line with Verizon. So we got the port pins from Verizon and switched 3 lines. I had to put over 200 bucks down at the store for the phones. He said to ship the trade ins back in the box our new phones come in with the provided label within 2 weeks. We did that, sent all 3 iPhone trades to att. First bill comes over 400 bucks, second almost 300, third still 300, no credits for porting the lines from Verizon and no trade credit. One rep said they don’t kn ow where the phones are , one said damaged, but I never received anything about the phones once they got sent off. 2 weeks after I received my new phones I get an email saying here’s your tracking label information to print to send in trades , we already sent them back with the provided labels in the new phone box like we were told. I think the trades went to the place our new phones came from, regardless att has them and they had return address’s on them to send back if that was a problem so we can send to the right place. We called and told att about this and they said don’t worry they have the phones and would send them to the right place. Att&t Rep on the phone tells us Sam’s club reps don’t work at att and lie, there was never a promotion to switch to Att&t from Verizon and our 3 iPhones are worth 55 bucks and that there is no port credits for switching. Makes sense for me to switch from 4 lines at 198 Verizon to 3 for 288 at att and give you my perfectly working phones for nothing. Also the gift card I was supposed to get I didn’t , and the discount for my place of employment 20 percent I’m still waiting on. What a headache, never trust the people in the Sam’s clubs.
pcaterisano
New Member
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14 Messages
2 years ago
Straight from my billing history,
[EDITED per Community Guidelines]
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pcaterisano
New Member
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14 Messages
2 years ago
@CellPhoneGuy Three payments makes three bills as far as I am concerned. I'll have paid AT&T $1,151.29, 6 times what I was paying my previous carrier before credits might appear? Nobody would take that deal if they had been informed.
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pcaterisano
New Member
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14 Messages
2 years ago
@CellPhoneGuy "If there was an issue, this is sooooo easily fixed which makes me to believe you might have some weird angle up your sleeve." Please tell me how this can be soooo easily fixed and I'll try that. The only thing I have up my sleeve is an eye poke [EDITED per Community Guidelines]
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OttoPylot
ACE - Expert
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22.5K Messages
2 years ago
@pcaterisano Whatever the salesperson at Sam's Club told you apparently was misleading or outright wrong information. This is between you and Sam's Club. We've, the posters who have tried to explain this to (one is an AT&T employee and the rest of us are not) multiple times. Your only option at this point in time is to file a complaint with the BBB and/or the FCC on Sam's Club or AT&T if you want and wait to see how it resolves out. AT&T, and other providers, have arbitration agreements in place now with all sales so that will be the option available to you after you get a response from AT&T.
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dinajt48
New Member
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2 Messages
2 years ago
So what I take from the response to this is that the AT&T people at Sam’s are Sam’s employees not AT&T’s?
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formerlyknownas
ACE - Sage
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113.1K Messages
2 years ago
@dinajt48 correct. Just like the people that work at Best Buy are Best Buy employees and the people that work at Target or target employees and the people that work at Walmart are Walmart employees and if the store says authorized retail on the front they work for whoever owns that particular store, not AT&T.
Most carriers sell franchise permission to 3rd parties. It doesn't mean they have the right to do it wrong. But it does mean a T & T has the right to insist that it's advertised prices and promotions be followed by Third parties and by customers who sign up through them. It does not mean the AT&T will not honor the valid prices or the AT&T will not honor the promotions that are followed, because they will. Sam's club offers its own promotions which are in house and unrelated to AT&T and anyway.
If you go to the AT&T website and look at the prices that are advertised, read the promotions that are offered, those are the prices that you should be getting. If Sam's club offered the added $25 a month for 10 months for switching, they should have filled out paperwork for that.
Credits should not be expected till 3 months after purchase, or 3 months after trade in.
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QDad
ACE - New Member
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283 Messages
2 years ago
I believe that if they wear an AT&T badge, shirt, or display other items that could make a reasonable person believe that they work for AT&T; they need to be held to the standard of an AT&T employee because that is the image they are trying to convey to the customer as they sell AT&T products.
If these individuals are misrepresenting the services and products of AT&T, have the ability to commit someone to a contract with AT&T, and the customers they are speaking to can reasonably believe that they are speaking with an AT&T employee: they need to be held to the same standards as an AT&T employee.
If the agents of AT&T cannot sell the products without misrepresenting the products, services, or promotions - AT&T should not allow them to be representatives.
This is another instance of AT&T valuing volume of sales rather than a quality experience for the customer.
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formerlyknownas
ACE - Sage
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113.1K Messages
2 years ago
@QDad
So they should not quote Sam's club only perks and promotions? But only those offered by AT&T?
Same for Walmart and best buy?
Might be a good idea to know what At&t offers then?
If you go into a store and you ask an employee what the cost of an item is and they say it's $5. But the Shelf says its $20, the printed ad says the price of the item is $20, and the register Rings the item up at $20. The store is under no obligation to honor the $5 price just because somebody was wearing the store's smock and logo, because it was wrong. Doesn't make the customer feel better, but they could have read price offered in multiple ways ahead of time.
For the most part this is a lack of understanding of how the promotions work. Credits do not start on the first bill.
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QDad
ACE - New Member
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283 Messages
2 years ago
The problem is that the customer is relying on what the person says. If that individual walks like and AT&T employee, looks like an AT&T employee, acts like an AT&T employee, and answers questions like an AT&T employee and what they are saying contradicts what is in writing - it creates confusion for the customer.
The reason there are people selling these phones/plans rather than just sticking them on the shelf with a price tag is that customers want to interface with a person and ask questions. People that purchase AT&T products and services at these locations like to ask questions and get answers from other people. That’s why AT&T allows salespeople to represent them in these locations.
If the person answering questions contradicts the printed material, many people will believe the person. This a concept known as “Detrimental Reliance”.
The customer believed the salesperson was an expert, and the salesperson presented themselves as an expert and even as an AT&T employee.
If the salespeople cannot accurately represent the product and service to potential and existing customers, AT&T should prevent them from marketing and selling the products and services.
AT&T knows what is happening, just as they know about Hyla devaluing trade-ins.
We can argue about the details of employees vs. third party; but ultimately it is just another example of poor business practices on the part of AT&T.
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OttoPylot
ACE - Expert
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22.5K Messages
2 years ago
To me, the whole concept of an "Authorized Reseller" is borderline deceptive, and the company that the reseller is representing in the way of logos, store appearance, shirts, badges, etc is meant to give the customer a false sense of comfort. The company that the reseller represents should take a more active role in ensuring the the reseller is not using sales tactics that makes the company look bad. If AT&T want to make more use of Resellers by turning their corporate stores into reseller stores to save money (which is happening at an alarming rate in our area), the stores need to make it very clear with outside signage as well as inside that the store is not an official AT&T Corporate Store so some promos and prices may differ from AT&T. How the reseller can get away with this kind of sales tactic is beyond me.
We had an experience lately with what we thought was a corporate store only to find out it was a reseller. The issue was quickly resolved with a little work on our part. When we finally talked to someone in Loyalty, she was quite honest in telling us that this is practically all she deals with now (reseller issues) and it's a shame that her company (AT&T) is putting up with this.
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