We replaced out ATT Wireless with TMobile last month, less than 30 days ago. We bought the service through Sam’s Club. It seemed like a decent deal. We got some free stuff, car charger, leather case, hands-free device thingy. Yesterday my daughter (19 months old) decided to dunk it in the kitchen sink. Cell phone no worky no more. This is bad enough, but what we gonna do? Chalk it up to lessons learned.
Well, the Sam’s Club people only sell new service and since we didn’t buy insurance, nothing they can do. The guys says go to Best Buy. We do. Best Buy doesn’t sell TMobile any more. Go to Circuit City, or a TMobile store. But only the store will be able to replace a phone. We go to the TMobile store.
The sales guy says he can give me $100 off the full retail price. That means to replace our phone will only be $180. AAAUUUUGGGGHHHH. But he can give me a deal on a different phone for only $49. No wait, $79. Oh, OK, $49. I say something like I fell like the prices just change at his whim and I never feel like I’m getting a good deal. He says he’s just doing me a favor selling me a phone at any price. He only makes money when he sells new service. He doesn’t care what price he sells me a new phone for. I have absolutely nothing to say to that.
So at least we have a new phone, wife and I were going to Six Flags and we wanted a phone to take with us so the baby sitter could call us and all that. I feel like I got jammed with no lube. What was my recourse? What happened to customer service? I called the first sales clerk who got us the phone in the first place cause she seemed so helpful and left a message. Don’t what I expect her to tell me or if she can do anything. All these other pukes just made me mad.
I don’t know what to think of any of this, other than we have a new phone. Fuckin’ A!
As a dealer for the cell phones whose name sounds like they’re part of the NEXt TELephone company, here’s how it works:
We buy, say a mini Motorola flip phone from our fulfillment center for $249.00. That’s OUR price. Now, when someone comes in to buy service from us, we sell the phone to them for $99.95. The cellular company pays us commission plus a $150 phone purchase bonus, and everyone’s happy.
But say someone comes in with a ruined phone. When we sell them a phone, we’re not going to get any commission. We’re also not going to get the phone purchase bonus because we didn’t sell any service with it. So if we sell you the phone for $99.95, as before, that shows up on the books as a $149.05 loss. Not exactly good for business.
Granted, we do get continuing commissions on customers who keep their service going. If you spend, say, $69.95 per month on service, we’ll see approximately $3.50 per month on our commissions. If you keep the phone plan for two years (the industry average), that means we get an extra income of $84.00 over the two years from your plan. Not enough to make up for a ruined phone loss.
Have I helped assuage your anger a bit? It’s nothing personal, in fact, the guy was being nice, apparently, by offering you the phone at $49.00 - his jump to $79.00 then back to $49.00 sounds as if he was juggling some math in his head, trying to make some numbers come out.
Ok I am not in the cell phone business but here is what I would have done as a consumer:
Not getting the answers or help you want? Tell them you are cancelling your service. You said it has been lest than 30 days since you signed up so there should not be a penalty (read agreement). If they let you go w/o trying to keep you then you don’t want them as your provider anyway.
If you get stuck in an agreement and you have to wait it out (too expensive to cancel), make sure you keep your account in good standing and threaten to cancel when the agreement expires. They should have no reason not to want to keep your business. This worked for me and I have a better plan than anything close being advertised (cheaper, more mins and free added premium options).
I would say it is a buyers market. There are more choices out there so you don’t need them as much as they need you.
I would not go through anyone but the actual cell phone provider store (Sprint Store, TMobile Store etc). Nothing personal but as you found out that is where you wind up anyway. Might as well have someone who may remember you if you have to go back if things go wrong.
As I work for a cell phone company (not american) I can vouch for what rico said.
Phones priced for “$0” or “$49” or whatever aren’t really that cheap. The cell phone company just wants to hook customers since we make no money on hardware (infact lose lots of money on hardware). If we started pricing hardware at cost, no one would buy one.
BTW, when you changed hardware, you should check (or they should have warned you) of a possible “hardware upgrade charge”. We charge one each time someone buys new hardware to compensate for the lost revenue. Since we only sell phones at a loss we penalize customers who break their phones before the first year is up. This also stops abuse.
I was surprised the first time I asked how much an “unsubsidized” nokia 6185 costs. Shelf price -$99 (back then) actual cost $550.
So say I bought a new car and totalled it on the way home from the dealership. Would it be reasonable for me to expect either the dealership or the car company to give me a new car for free?
Of course not. So why is your cell phone any different?
What customer service are you complaining about not getting? You did a dumb thing, and you are mad because the cell people refuse to indemnify you for your dumb mistake. Why should they lose money because you made a mistake? Suck it up and take some responsibility for you and your family’s actions.
Oh and you answered your questions with the last sentence in the first paragraphed I quoted above. Tution for some lessons is more expensive than the tution for other lessons. That is the problem with having experience for a teacher, you get the punishment before you get the lesson.
I suggest that you go back and thank the guy who got you into a phone for less than the $280 first quoted. He did you a favor, whether or not you want to admit it.
My daughter’s phone died - 1.5 years. She has AT&T. Circuit City, where I bought the service, no longer carries AT&T. So we go to independent dealer, find a good phone (we’re limited because we just added my wife to her service) - but it would cost $250!
Clerk tells us to go across the street to AT&T store. There it would cost $150, but it’s out of stock.
Go home, call customer service. That phone don’t exist anymore, but there is another phone for $79, with $20 rebate, and a $20 service credit. Decide to get that, order is Saturday pm, comes Tuesday. Daughter is happy, I’m happy. I think adding service probably helped.
As for me, I get Sprint through work, costs almost nothing, and I never pay extra. (I don’t use it all that much, but some.) When my original phone died, I got an LG flip phone at Radio Shack for $99, no rebate needed.
ebay might be good, I hear, but the one time I tried it, the auction cancelled right as I was about to win. The ebay explanation: item no longer available (mind you, this cancelled just one minute before the auction’s end). I contacted the seller, and his real reason was that he wasn’t going to make a profit at the price I’d almost won it for.
I don’t think I had a point. Just felt like venting.
I want to live in Customerland. I would love it if I could go to the gas station and demand a free car, get my cable provider to give me an HDTV, and have my ISP replace my computer for me every year or so.
Wait, that doesn’t happen, does it? It’s only the phones.
I am designing a new calling plan. It has a minimum ten year commitment, and an early termination fee of $2,500.00. You get 30 minutes per month, and each minute used over those 30 costs $10.00. There are no other features available. The plan costs $99.99 per month.
Does this sound like a good deal? No? Wait… if you sign up now I’ll send you a free phone.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I could sell that plan.
The words “free phone” have a sort of mesmerizing effect on the consumer. I’ve dealt with customers who have paid a $175.00 penalty to break a contract because they refused to pay $35.00 for a new ($220.00 retail price) phone.
I think it was the smug mother fucker’s attitude that irritated me most. If he doesn’t make money selling me what I need, he should stop selling it altogether or go into a different line of business. Is it my fault he doesn’t make money? And the juggling of the numbers. They have a table full of phones with prices listed on cards, and the price I actually paid isn’t on any of them.
“Ok, you’re giving me $100 credit off the retail price. Excellent. That’s this number?”
“Um, no. Actually, it’s not on there. All the prices have changed.”
“OK.”
And the final insult is that they don’t even offer insurance at this time. Not available. Impossible to get. And the asshole saleman said “I would even buy with that phone it’s so cheap.” I wouldn’t call $50 “cheap”. In comparison to the $180 I first saw, yeah, but…
And thank you, Rick, for playing. I don’t like your attitude either. Fuck you. Perhaps my irritation at the whole situation, which was, indeed, no one’s fault but my own. I don’t think it’s the salesman’s job to explain to the customer how little or how much he makes or loses on a deal. I don’t fucking care either way. What a “retail sales representative” should do is take care of the customer, be nice, helpful, close the deal then go to lunch at noon. All this crap about doing me a favor is crap. Fuck you and your favor, sell me a new phone and I’ll leave. As a “representative”, I think he should have put a better face to the company.
We had insurance on our phones. I stupidly tossed it in the wash with the laundry. “No problem”, I thought, “we have insurance.” Well, we had to pay $50.00 off the top for some fee or something (I don’t recall). When we purchased the insurance we were given the impression we would get a new phone. No, instead we recieved a refurbished phone. The phone had a twisted antenae and had scratches on it. Our phone, prior to the wash, was in mint shape.
On our new phones, we don’t have insurance. By the time you pay all the monthly fees and the $50.00, I don;t think it’s worth it to recieve a used phone. I would rather pay the extra money and buy a new one.
Huh? If you totalled your car after owning it for 2 weeks and tried to get insurance, they’d charge you a bucket of money. With a mobile phone, cheaper and more likely to get lost, it’s probably not even economical. I guess if you’re going to destroy your phone every month, they could insure you for $4000 per year or something, but I doubt you’d pay that.
And in what way is $50 for a very complex piece of electronics that would normally cost $280 not cheap? You want rewards for breaking your phone?
Or is it just the salesman? Would you be happier if you had some super-smooth customer service guy charging you $280 for it?
As people have said, most customers are morons, and have no idea what they’re paying for. You should be grateful the salesman shared his inside knowledge.
You began the conversation that led to the salesman telling you about the business model. Would you have preferred that the salesman have fed you a line of bullshit in response to your statement? It sounds to me that the salesman was actually trying to help you get a good deal by telling you how the pricing works.
The point of a business is to make money. Selling the phone at a loss, without the compensation of a service plan, is not conducive to making money. All your whining about “what the customer wants” flies in the face that losing money on a sale is not a good way to run a business. Especially since the circumstances that led up to your needing a new phone were entirely your fault. Again, why should that business take a loss for your mistake? They didn’t even sell you the phone and service in the first place.
To recap:
Businesses are supposed to make money.
Conducting business in a way that continually loses money is not wise.
Selling a phone at a loss hurts the business.
Therefore, buisnesses try to avoid sales in which they lose money.
As has been explained in this thread, the money on a cell plan is made with the service. All the phone prices I have ever seen posted or advertised are based on and contingent on buying a service plan. But you already had a service plan, so the posted prices don’t mean dick. This simple fact seems to have escaped your notice.
Since you seem to think that you should be given a new phone for what you spent on the first one, the salesman kinda had to try and explain the fact of life to you. However it appears that your mind is set like two week old concrete, and it appears the lesson did not take.
As far as my favor comment goes, let’s see $280- $49, 1 carry the five, yep where I went to school he did you about $231 worth of favors. He could have “forgotten” to mention either the rebate or the other model phone. Next time he just might if you exibit the attitude you have shown here.
When writing the OP, I was little fired up, not just because I had to buy a new phone, but we were rushing to go out and wanted the phone so the baby sitter could call in an emergency and a bunch of other crap blah blah blah.
I understand they sell phones at a steep loss to get new business. I understand that I can’t expect the same deal on a replacement phone. And I guess the real detail that irked the guy: I didn’t even buy the contract from him, I bought it at Sam’s Club. I mean why should a salesman care about a customer at all if he’s not going to make a buck off him? The entire time he spent with me was a total and complete write-off and he problaby lost a big sale to a business client because he missed a phone call while waiting on me. And it’s all about making a buck or hundred anyway.
OK, I was a little hot under the collar when writing the OP, I’m a little more calm now. I think that I would have been a little more calm if the guy hadn’t talked about doing me a “favor”. That’s what did it. If he had said it a different way, and I’m not sure how it could have been phrased, but less smugly would have been a start, maybe a little apologetic? Some kind of empathy for stu[id customers who destroy their brand new phones?
I’m still irritated and I might see about changing service too.
