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My AT&T/iPhone 5 story.

L

LiveFreeDie

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 19, 2010
108
0
I went to the at&t store to help me activate my iPhone 5 and this women is greeting people at the door and asks me why i'm here today. So I tell her I upgraded another line on my family plan to get the iPhone5 and that I need to transfer my unlimited data plan, text plan and phone number to the new iPhone. She tells me I need to call customer service. I just looked at her and explained that this is what I did last year. She tells me that I need to call customer service and they are not doing activations today in the store.

I asked her if that they are really that busy that they can not help me out with this. She says hang on, let me check. So she goes in the store and LOCKS the door behind her. I couldn't ****ing believe it. She comes out and says they can't help me and that I need to call customer service. I looked at her for a good 5 seconds after then walked away. So I called customer service explained what I needed to do and 45 min on the phone I was finally all set up. At this point i'm still pretty pissed that i'm a paying at&t customer and I got turned away at the door and could not enter the store.

So I went back. Same women tries to greet me at the door I just walk right past her and i'm assuming it was the manager that was standing inside the store. He asks me what can he help me with. So I told him i'm here to by a case and a screen protector for my phone... if thats alright or is he going to tell me to leave and lock the door. He just looked at me and said oh no, buying accessories is fine were just not doing activations. I told him that I thought it was pretty rude that before I couldn't enter the store and that the women locked the door behind her when she went in. He said hes sorry that I felt that way.

They wanted $38 for a ****ing iPhone case. So I walked out and went to best buy and bought a case and 3 screen protectors for $35.

/story

I mean am I in the wrong about being upset that they wouldn't help me out... let alone enter the store?
 
LiveFreeDie said:
I went to the at&t store to help me activate my iPhone 5 and this women is greeting people at the door and asks me why i'm here today. So I tell her I upgraded another line on my family plan to get the iPhone5 and that I need to transfer my unlimited data plan, text plan and phone number to the new iPhone. She tells me I need to call customer service. I just looked at her and explained that this is what I did last year. She tells me that I need to call customer service and they are not doing activations today in the store.

I asked her if that they are really that busy that they can not help me out with this. She says hang on, let me check. So she goes in the store and LOCKS the door behind her. I couldn't ****ing believe it. She comes out and says they can't help me and that I need to call customer service. I looked at her for a good 5 seconds after then walked away. So I called customer service explained what I needed to do and 45 min on the phone I was finally all set up. At this point i'm still pretty pissed that i'm a paying at&t customer and I got turned away at the door and could not enter the store.

So I went back. Same women tries to greet me at the door I just walk right past her and i'm assuming it was the manager that was standing inside the store. He asks me what can he help me with. So I told him i'm here to by a case and a screen protector for my phone... if thats alright or is he going to tell me to leave and lock the door. He just looked at me and said oh no, buying accessories is fine were just not doing activations. I told him that I thought it was pretty rude that before I couldn't enter the store and that the women locked the door behind her when she went in. He said hes sorry that I felt that way.

They wanted $38 for a ****ing iPhone case. So I walked out and went to best buy and bought a case and 3 screen protectors for $35.

/story

I mean am I in the wrong about being upset that they wouldn't help me out... let alone enter the store?
Click to expand...

They should have been more considerate to you since you are a customer. I think they were in the wrong for treating you like that.
 
You kinda went to the store on a very stressfula nd busy day and really only a phone call will do it.
 
I'm a little confused... Was this during normal business hours when she locked the door behind her? Were you being rude? No offense, just seems like there's more to this story. If not, I agree it sounds from your side that you were treated rudely.

Edit: Also, I apologize for suggesting this but one fact of life is that people are often misjudged based on appearance. Don't know how else to ask this - do you have an appearance that could have intimidated the lady somehow? Just playing devil's advocate to try and determine why you were treated this way...
 
Same thing happened to me last time I upgraded. I took a pass on the store this time around, called customer service and did the upgrade swap over the phone. Five minutes later I had my # on my new ip5.:D
 
Customer service in some AT&T stores is really bad. On same note I have seen AT&T stores with excellent service. Don't what makes the difference. May be they are franchised.

BTW was the case Speck Candyshell. I have to find two today.
 
iphoneclassic said:
Customer service in some AT&T stores is really bad. On same note I have seen AT&T stores with excellent service. Don't what makes the difference. May be they are franchised.

BTW was the case Speck Candyshell. I have to find two today.
Click to expand...

I completely agree with you. ATT doesn't seem to control their in store customer service quality as much as companies like Apple. Experiences may vary. I actually had 2 very different experiences at the same ATT store from visiting it twice.

The first time was to get my plan changed and upgrade my wife's phone. There were like 10 ATT employees there and only 3 were helping customers. The rest were hanging out, a few were talking to each other. I asked the welcome person why no one was helping me and he told me that only 3 of the employees were allowed to sell phones, the rest were either managers or weren't sales people. I told him that it looked really bad that a store would have so many employees but wouldn't be helping customers.

Then I came back this morning and bought the iphone 5 and had a great experience. The staff were friendly, everyone was helping customers and they were getting people in and out in a matter of minutes.
 
HowardSmith said:
You kinda went to the store on a very stressfula nd busy day and really only a phone call will do it.
Click to expand...

I was informed on here that since I had ordered my iPhone 5 from the apple website and not the at&t website that I could not do the upgrade swap/activation over the phone. So thats why I went to the store. That being said, there were only 4-5 cars in the parking lot.


jrlepage said:
I'm a little confused... Was this during normal business hours when she locked the door behind her? Were you being rude? No offense, just seems like there's more to this story. If not, I agree it sounds from your side that you were treated rudely.

Edit: Also, I apologize for suggesting this but one fact of life is that people are often misjudged based on appearance. Don't know how else to ask this - do you have an appearance that could have intimidated the lady somehow? Just playing devil's advocate to try and determine why you were treated this way...
Click to expand...

Normal business hours... it was around 10:30am. I was being very polite up until she locked the door and came back out and told me that they couldn't help. Even then I didn't swear or anything I just looked at her in disbelief.

As far as the appearance thing goes I am a bigger dude. But I was wearing a boston bruins hoodie with some blue jeans. So I hardly think that was the issue. Unless she hates the Bruins with a passion haha.
 
Went to the local AT&T store here at about 12:30. There were maybe three customers in the store. Swapped lines, activated my old phone, dumped the data plan.. easy peasy. 15 minutes maybe. Dude was pretty cool.

Sounds like the manager at that store needs an attitude adjustment.
 
LiveFreeDie said:
I went to the at&t store to help me activate my iPhone 5 and this women is greeting people at the door and asks me why i'm here today. So I tell her I upgraded another line on my family plan to get the iPhone5 and that I need to transfer my unlimited data plan, text plan and phone number to the new iPhone. She tells me I need to call customer service. I just looked at her and explained that this is what I did last year. She tells me that I need to call customer service and they are not doing activations today in the store.

I asked her if that they are really that busy that they can not help me out with this. She says hang on, let me check. So she goes in the store and LOCKS the door behind her. I couldn't ****ing believe it. She comes out and says they can't help me and that I need to call customer service. I looked at her for a good 5 seconds after then walked away. So I called customer service explained what I needed to do and 45 min on the phone I was finally all set up. At this point i'm still pretty pissed that i'm a paying at&t customer and I got turned away at the door and could not enter the store.

So I went back. Same women tries to greet me at the door I just walk right past her and i'm assuming it was the manager that was standing inside the store. He asks me what can he help me with. So I told him i'm here to by a case and a screen protector for my phone... if thats alright or is he going to tell me to leave and lock the door. He just looked at me and said oh no, buying accessories is fine were just not doing activations. I told him that I thought it was pretty rude that before I couldn't enter the store and that the women locked the door behind her when she went in. He said hes sorry that I felt that way.

They wanted $38 for a ****ing iPhone case. So I walked out and went to best buy and bought a case and 3 screen protectors for $35.

/story

I mean am I in the wrong about being upset that they wouldn't help me out... let alone enter the store?
Click to expand...

Um...how in the hell did you get a case and 3 screen protectors for $35 at best buy? I havent seen a case cheaper than $23 and their screen protectors (cheapest) are $19 for a 1-pack.
 
Sounds to me like you wanted special treatment.

They weren't doing activationsin the store, that policy extends to everyone. Should they change the store policy because you're a special person and your activation is more important?

They were busy, you can say they weren't THAT busy but that's because they're turning people away who want to do activations.

I have worked in retail and couldn't stand when people had that kind of attitude. If you don't like the price don't shop there are they supposed to kiss your ass and give you cheap cases because you're upset about their policy?
 
iRooney said:
Um...how in the hell did you get a case and 3 screen protectors for $35 at best buy? I havent seen a case cheaper than $23 and their screen protectors (cheapest) are $19 for a 1-pack.
Click to expand...

Best buy had a bundle deal on accessories. I don't have my receipt in front of me but it was like spend $X amount on accessories and save 5-10 bucks.

Captainobvvious said:
Sounds to me like you wanted special treatment.

They weren't doing activationsin the store, that policy extends to everyone. Should they change the store policy because you're a special person and your activation is more important?

They were busy, you can say they weren't THAT busy but that's because they're turning people away who want to do activations.

I have worked in retail and couldn't stand when people had that kind of attitude. If you don't like the price don't shop there are they supposed to kiss your ass and give you cheap cases because you're upset about their policy?
Click to expand...

Slow your role dude. I'm a paying at&t customer. For them to not even let me in the store at first because I wanted to activate my phone is a little ridiculous. Even the people I spoke with when I called customer service said it shouldn't have happened like that.

As far as the case price goes... I didn't ask them to lower the price because i'm just that damn awesome. I just walked out and purchased from best buy.
 
Captainobvvious said:
Sounds to me like you wanted special treatment.

They weren't doing activationsin the store, that policy extends to everyone. Should they change the store policy because you're a special person and your activation is more important?

They were busy, you can say they weren't THAT busy but that's because they're turning people away who want to do activations.

I have worked in retail and couldn't stand when people had that kind of attitude. If you don't like the price don't shop there are they supposed to kiss your ass and give you cheap cases because you're upset about their policy?
Click to expand...

Just to make sure i'm not getting something wrong here.

1. you went to a store to get activated
2. their policy is to not activate in store, but she told you to call in.
3. you called in, et voila! you're activated.

I don't see what's wrong with the store here. It's their policy, and as an employee she followed directions. She gave you the relevant information and it was the right information. You were too cheap to pay in store prices for accessories...

why am i wasting my time reading/replying to this thread? There was absolutely nothing wrong- other than locking the door on you (but that makes no sense unless they were closed or about to close)

----------
LiveFreeDie said:
Slow your role dude. I'm a paying at&t customer. For them to not even let me in the store at first because I wanted to activate my phone is a little ridiculous. Even the people I spoke with when I called customer service said it shouldn't have happened like that.

As far as the case price goes... I didn't ask them to lower the price because i'm just that damn awesome. I just walked out and purchased from best buy.
Click to expand...

And who are you? Biff from back to the future? it's "slow your roLL"...
 
Even as a rule stores don't activate, there may be instances if SIM is bad, only a store can activate or customer has to wait for few more day for AT&T to ship. I agree they can deny if there are 100 customers in line but with 4-5 customers at least they should try to help. OP may have walked in because of lack of information on web site about swap and activate. By not helping they lost $40(not much) business today but customer will hesitate to make any purchase there. That is not good for that location.
 
I think they were just being rude. I waited in line at the AT&T store this morning for my iPhone 5 and I added a 3rd line, and they did the upgrade swap in store for me. Now they did lock the door after each customer, but they told me that was so someone didn't just walk in the store while people were waiting in line because they had people freak out before when they saw a non iPhone customer walk in.
 
iRooney said:
Um...how in the hell did you get a case and 3 screen protectors for $35 at best buy? I havent seen a case cheaper than $23 and their screen protectors (cheapest) are $19 for a 1-pack.
Click to expand...

So my mistake on the 3 pack it was actually just 1 in there. I thought it was at least a 3 pack with how big the package was. But I bought a rocketfish case priced at $22.99 and the invisibleshield hd screen protector for iphone 5 priced at $25.99

Got them both for $35. Still think it was a pretty decent deal.
 
LiveFreeDie said:
... I was wearing a boston bruins hoodie with some blue jeans. So I hardly think that was the issue. Unless she hates the Bruins with a passion haha.
Click to expand...



You were wearing a hoodie?! No wonder she locked the door. Dang man, that'll get you killed in Florida.


:D
 
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