Experiences with cell phone sub-carriers

In My Humble Opinion
21

Hmmm, you hit on the few that first topped my mind - never financed (big No most of the time), in service, etc. I went to their website -

And it doesn’t (under eligibility requirements) seem to mention anything that stands out from the the industry. So, first, did you do the request through the web, or through a customer service customer? Did you get any response after the 48 hours? And is it android or apple, because Apple was always more of a POS to unlock, but more dependable ONCE unlocked.

Sorry I didn’t respond yesterday, you posted after I’d headed off for bed.

22

Multiple attempts through customer service and through their dedicated web-based tool (including several times being walked through the tool by one of their techs). They also have an app to do it, but my wife’s and daughter’s phones are too full to add an app, and I couldn’t find the app in the App Store on my iPhone.

The AT&T store employees refused to unlock the phones, saying “We stopped doing that a month ago – call customer service”. IMHO, that was an extremely low thing to tell a customer.

I called AT&T Sunday morning for about 20 minutes, Monday evening for about 2 hours, and yesterday afternoon/evening for about 5 hours. Talked to about 20 or so people overall, including “supervisors” two levels up from the front-line customer-service reps. No satisfaction yet.

I am calling more shortly and anticipate being on the phone still more hours today.

Two Android phones. My iPhone, I was told Sunday morning, was already unlocked :shrug:

I did find out after a few hours on the phone yesterday that someone who had my daughter’s phone number in the past – but a totally different phone (different IMEI) – had their phone blacklisted. Still, my daughter’s IMEI is clean, and that was confirmed to me by AT&T last night. No idea why that recognition didn’t prompt them to insta-unlock the phones.

No worries – I’m grateful for any advice and insight you can lend :smiley:

Still flummoxed they wouldn’t unlock the phone in the AT&T store … what the heck are those stores for if not for customer service (I know, I know – for selling stuff).

23

I forgot to mention:

Sunday morning – Was told my phone was already unlocked and that my wife’s and daughter’s phones would be unlocked Monday morning.

Monday evening – Was told my phone and my wife’s phone was already unlocked and that my daughter’s phones would be unlocked Tuesday morning.

Tuesday evening – Was told my phone was already unlocked and that my wife’s and daughter’s phones were still locked. The locked phones might be unlocked by Thursday, but they wouldn’t guarantee that. Was told that the cases opened to investigate the phones unlocking were with “the back office” and nothing further could be done.

24

I’ve got Spectrum Mobile By the Gig Plan [$13 a month. I only use half of it.]

25

Okay, so, to be honest, sounds like incompetence plus wanting to pass the buck to me.

I will be honest, the procedure on T-Mobile’s side was a real, REAL pain prior to the app based unlock, and if the tiniest thing went wrong, yeah, it had a lot of delays. The reason is two fold 1) retention and 2) abuse.

Each in order. First, the POS. Generally, because of reasons 1 & 2 above, the TSR (tech service rep) couldn’t actually do it themselves. We would verify eligibility, reasons, and then fill out a form that was emailed up the chain. Which is why we gave an ETA of 72 BUSINESS hours to complete the request, at which you’d get a text and/or email with a link to complete the steps (for an iphone) or a confirmation it was done for iPhone. And if one, tiny little thing wasn’t filled in on said form properly, they didn’t contact us or the customer, it just went into the VOID until the customer called back.

So probably the AT&T process is similar in the time taken, but a competent tech would have set proper expectations (because callbacks are a metric that kill you). As for the Store reps… We were always told to bend over backwards not to make work for them, because frankly, their job was sales. That’s what they got paid on. They were also to answer general questions and handle in store payments, but any tech or dispute was our or customer service’s job. We all had different skillsets, but that was a bitch when they decided to ‘blend’ us all, so that they could take advantage of the perceived down time of techs to handle overflowing customer service calls, which left us zero time to follow up with customers. sigh

Okay, back to points 1 and 2. So yeah, it’s a retention thing, so in many cases, a supervisor would follow up with the customer especially if it was an exception to the rules (requesting an unlock while NOT paid off due to Military service and/or international travel as main examples). They’d also probe to make sure that this wasn’t going to lead to loss of the customer or (point 2) the phone going bye-bye. Which was a HUGE abuse. Not quite up there with people selling their (non-paid-off) phones on Ebay and us getting calls as to why their shiny new phone didn’t work, but way up there. It’s a known issue where those phones get unlocked and then ‘get lost/stolen’ and an insurance claim is made [in your case, since paid off, it should have been easier but…].

So, at this point, what can you do. Well, you’ve done it. Seriously, this is a case where the squeaky wheel gets the grease, especially when they’re already on the record as saying one thing and then having to backtrack. This is probably as escalated as it can be by now - with the proviso that the weekend (and pre-holiday short staffing) probably killed the timeframe I mentioned earlier (3 business days is probably about NOW depending on the research into the previously blocked #).

If you want to push (or don’t have an answer soon) I’d follow up every 48 hours, because that’s the sort of metric that gets management involved. But rather than spend all day on the phone, I’d probably recommend using an online chat with an agent. That way you can do something fun and/or productive (like the SDMB!) on your computer rather than staying near a phone that’s giving you steady xfinity/u-verse adds.

T-Mobile also had online service through DM/PM on Facebook and twitter (I was part of that team part time), and I believe AT&T does the same, if that’s part of your skillset and interests.

Again, there is absolutely some screw ups in their telling you incorrect information, but in my experience, it’s mostly business as usual for this PARTICULAR issue.

26

– sidenote –

If your family members phones do not have enough space to download the unlock app, you really, REALLY need to consider deleting stuff or upgrading phones. They work poorly (esp iPhones) when the available storage drops below 10%, and will frequently lock up and freeze when you’re down to a few hundred meg or so. This was a killer issue on earlier generation iPhones where the storage was remarkably underwhelming.

I would get at least 2 calls a day where a phone was locking up / freezing / randomly restarting from that issue when that was my job. :slight_smile:

27

Thanks for the reply, ParallelLines. I will post more on this matter after the holiday.

Long story short – to make sure my son’s Christmas-present phone was activated before Christmas Day, I was forced to remain with AT&T. I did get a rate from them that beat T-Mobile’s rate for four lines, so it’s a small win. But the fact that our phones couldn’t be freely unlocked sticks badly in my craw, and will color all my customer-service relationships I have in the future with any entity. I felt personally abused and mistreated and feel like I am owed many pounds of flesh from many people past, present, and future.

28

Heh. Callbacks? I called easily 30+ times between Sunday and Wednesday. Another 12-15 chats, as well.

29

Yeah, that’s why -I- made sure to make clear expectations and have my ducks in a row. And why I (along with the rest of the TSRs) hated it when to keep customer service call volume down we were fundamentally restricted in the callbacks and follow ups shortly before I left.

And the callbacks are a bad metric for the reps, as well as for you - like, in my experience, you’d have been escalated to a supervisor by about your third - especially if you’d been given contradictory info. Although AT&T was never known for even making the effort T-Mobile did on service metrics. sigh

Sorry that you personally had a bad time, and yeah, it will taint your for years. These days, I advise that unless you’re doing a lease program or a super trade-in, that it’s just better to buy a nice mid-range phone (Pixel ‘A’ or iPhone SE groups for example) straight from the manufacturer and avoid the carrier lock problems.

It’s just less of a pain than the unlock process if you’re ever interested in changing carriers.

Happy holiday anyway, and grats to your son!