Cell phone rage and the sales dept from hell

[thansal]

After reading all of this - how can those of us who are phone shopping protect ourselves and ensure that we're really going to get what's being ofered? Would demanding that it be in writing help at all?

-I will GLADLY give you anything you want in writing, print out the specs/pricing for your plan or phone, and even highlight the pertinent points of said paperwork. If a sales rep isn't willing to do this for you, they're probably trying to hide something.

-My company, as many others, offers a 30-day satisfaction guarantee. You have 30 days to decide whether you like the phone and/or service, and if not we can't penalize you (aside from a restocking fee for phones returned in less-than-new condition, which I make sure to explain to every customer, every time). My advice? USE THIS TO YOUR ADVANTAGE. If you're getting the runaround, just tell them that you're going to return the phone/cancel service. You'd be surprised at what this can get you.

Those are the 2 big ones.

When I was selling cell phones (Radio Shack) I ALWAYS made sure to give the customer all the pertinent info in official formats (Receipts, brochures, and printouts from the provider's activation site) with everything underlined/circled. Why? Because I'm not easily brainwashed, nor am I a scumbag. These reps learn all their dirty tricks from other people, often their managers.

My manager quit before they could fire/arrest him for theft (not theft of product, but essentially cooking the books). The manager before him also was apparently scum and was writing IOUs to customers (aka, also cooking the books). The GM was latter fired for much the same reasons apparently (though that is hearsay). These are the people that trained me and co-workers, and you wonder why they do shady as hell stuff?

Which leaves me with my final note to prospective shoppers of service providers (cell/internet/tv/whatever):
Do your own research. Pick up brochures, read their contracts, see what you can do with the website, etc etc. Now, this will not get you the best deal, but it will give you a good idea of what the best deal will likely be. If it seems to good to be true, it probably is ($250 credit on a NEW phone? yah, right).