Which lesson, you ask? That the staff in cellular retail stores are reasonably good at new activations and terrible at just about anything else, except appearing helpful. I've written before about my misadventures with Cingular retail; consider this an addendum.
JT's CDMA phone is on its last legs and his plan is expensive. So I told him I'd give him my old S-E Z600 and add him to my Cingular (formerly AT&T) plan. I checked with the local Cingular store last week, and they explained it'd be no problem. So I went in Wednesday and did the deed. I explained that I just wanted to add a third line to my account (Alex is already on my plan) and use a handset that I already owned rather than buy a new one. And also that I wanted to add minutes to the pool that we share. Simple, yes?
My first clue that something was wrong was when the clerk kept asking people for help. "Well, the old AT&T system is not quick as fast as the Cingular one," he explained. But after a while he appeared to get it done. We put the SIM into the Z600 and everything worked. I shipped the phone to JT and it's working as advertized.
But wait. There's more. Remember that bit about adding JT to my plan and adding minutes? Oops. Turns out the dolt behind the counter signed him up as a new customer with his own billing plan. How do I know this? When I finally got somebody intelligent on the phone to look into the technical problem I was having yesterday (see First Blame The Victim) he told me how screwed up the billing was, and then he straightened it out.
So my question is this: did the guy in the retail store make an honest mistake, or was he stupid or lazy, or did he sign up JT as a new customer on his own billing plan so he could get commission for a net add? I'll never know. But maybe I'll finally learn to stop going to the cellular retail stores.
Posted by Jack at April 23, 2005 10:56 AM | TrackBack