111–120 of 128 posts
I use a local cell provider, but get to roam unlimited on ATT & TMobile when I'm out of state. Local cell providers are awesome; amazing service, good service & prices, etc. The only hiccup I've found is international calls on roaming are insanely expensive. I had a $100 phone call to South America roaming when it would have cost ~$10 in network. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_wireless...
I don't really get why more people don't use MVNOs like Google Fi or Mint rather than ATT&T and Verizon.
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoContract/comments/oaophe/data_pri...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Best Buy had very good training during the tenure of the previous CEO. It was emphasized as an important part of one's duties as an associate and incentivized with generous accommodations (I'm watching a large OLED I was able to buy for 1/3 retail; I was able to truthfully attest to its quality thereafter and made quite a few sales on that). My understanding is that good and plentiful accommodations are essentially g…
>training focuses less on product knowledge and more on high-margin service and branded payment upsells. This to me is the death knell of brick and mortar retail. It's like this everywhere. There is absolutely no focus on actually helping a customer make a decision based on what they need/want. It's just a free mark to pitch whatever thing management is incentivizing. If I can't actually trust the intentions of a sal…
Occasionally, a customer who was very knowledgable would come in; it was 50/50 whether they were someone we could accommodate by skipping past technical advice and focusing on inventory ("Is it in stock at the sister store?"), services, and deal-making. The other 50% were, frankly, assholes who definitely should just be buying possible counterfeits off Amazon. Sorry that we don't have time to research the differences between two high-end receivers that we'd have to special order anyway; for every one of your exceptionally rare requests, there are dozens of customers who need us to walk them through troubleshooting a basic system set-up (where components can be from one of a dozen different companies), so that's where the energy is going.
Best Buy functioned most effectively as a sort of library-esque community center where residents could receive basic tech assistance across a wide range of microprocessor-driven products (which we would then sell you); something similar goes for much of retail. Workers are conscientious, but there is a limit to the advice the structure can afford to give for free.
You wouldn't walk into a grocery store and expect the butcher to be able to walk you through preparing a sous vide steak with white wine sauce or whatever; they could point out what cut would work best, but beyond that, you'd hire someone to teach you.
I don't really get why more people don't use MVNOs like Google Fi or Mint rather than ATT&T and Verizon.
I prefer cutting out as many middlemen as possible. I figure if the seller is incentivized to provide the best service to the highest profit margin/least volatile customers. https://www.reddit.com/r/NoContract/comments/oaophe/data_pri...
Unless you need to be first priority on a congested tower, not much reason to actually be on Tmo,Verizon,ATT.
AT&T would be in danger of bankruptcy if it were not for the fact that they are surviving off government welfare through the Firstnet contract[1]. It was only buildout requirements mandated by that contract that they even have a modestly functioning network. Their business plan has been to acquire some crappy Mexican carriers[2], DirecTV, as well as the new DISH contract. There's minimal investment otherwise, poor sp…
The last good business move I think ATT made was getting exclusive access to iPhones in 2007 for five years or whatever it was. And that is why I’ve been paying them around ~$40 per line per month since. Actually, it was also due to them being the only big network with SIM cards I could pop out and use another country’s SIM. Verizon took forever to get SIM cards.
It wasn't even AT&T, it was Cingular that took the bet.
Att was destroyed as soon as they sold to cingular. I worked as a billing call center rep for Cingular when they bought them. The spent millions to rebrand everything with AT&T including signs at small ballpark fields etc. They had a bounty system where you could get paid if you found an old AT&T sign that hadn't been converted. About six months in they realized that Cingular's brand was despised by customers and tha…
The story of AT&T and Cingular is much weirder, see [0].
Once there was AT&T Wireless that became Cingular (with the help of SBC). Then SBC bought AT&T (landline) then the combined AT&T bought Cingular that became AT&T Wireless again.
[0] https://www.att.com/Common/merger/files/pdf/Cingular_timelin...
EDIT: typos
In early 2019, I added a new line to my plan in what was supposed to be a "free" phone (I was assured of this by the customer service rep on the phone), and wound up getting charged $499 + setup charges for it immediately on my next bill, in addition to what my bill normally is.
Since my bill was on auto-pay, $750+ came out of my account that month. I called immediately to reverse it and turned off auto-pay. It took 10+ calls over the next 2 months to get the whole situation undone. My next bill was $1,000+ along with late charges and cutoff notices (I was not paying until it got fixed). It was so aggravating that I started a spreadsheet to keep track of all my support calls, who I spoke with, and when.
I finally got the situation resolved and all the charges reversed after getting connected with a high-level tech support person in the US who actually had the power/authority to make the required changes to my account. Even though I stayed with AT&T for the next year or so after that (I was also moving houses and didn't want to change cell service at the time), the experience turned me off of AT&T forever.
I now use Ting Wireless ( https://ting.com ) and am a very happy customer. They are an MVNO that uses AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile so they are not always 100% as reliable as the big providers directly, but the price is WAY cheaper ($25/mo per line with all taxes/fees included!), and the support is top notch. I can basically just call and connect directly with a customer service rep that can fix any issue I have at any time without hassle or transferring through 4 layers of call centers. Ting is worth a look if you are considering a switch.
Somewhat related: this idea of adding a "digital waiting line" on top of a normal one is horrible, the author mentions this in ATT. Disneyland has done this with food, and it's really really irritating. Here is an example of what it is like to get Blue Milk at Star Wars Land in Disneyland: 1) order it in the app and pay for it. 2) it tells you when to go there 3) wait for your phone to turn green, with a group of oth…
"Same," he replied. "Most of my friends and family have iPhones. If you have just one Android person on a group text, it throws everything." I don't understand what he means by this?
Group chats where everybody uses iPhone work through iMessage. If only one person switches to Android they get downgraded to MMS (open standard) which is much worse. Why these people don't use OTT apps like WhatsApp I'll never know.