jaymer
03-22-2004, 09:33 AM
(in response to FTBOOMER's msg about his ATT One-Rate plan where he doesn't pay for roaming... but i'd been told, even showed, that ATT customers would pay for roaming, like down in Ellenton/Sarasota.)
well see, thats what i would expect, that a plan would be available where i wouldn't pay for roaming... and i'd be on the same thing. (alltel has this, sprint has this... basically, you pay enough and roaming goes away.)
at this booth in the mall (right in the middle of the food court) the 2 young people there never mentioned the one-rate plan... only the reasons why ATT would screw me - and yet they said "oh, we can sell ATT also".
this one young guy told me that the reason ATT was sold is because they didn't have enough money to keep the business going, and then after they merge with Cingular, the network may be in trouble because Cingular may not have enough money to improve their towers now to handle the increased load... literally, at this point, I said HOLD IT.
I'm real down on people spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) and thats exactly what this kid was trying to do to me, so that i'd sign up with TMobile (of course, the competitor to ATT & Cingular)... and I told him this. I said "you're telling me about the financial state and plans of 2 huge companies... and you really don't know what Cingular's plans are, so why do you need to try and scare me about stuff in the future that you know nothing about?"
then, also in his attack of other networks, he and her absolutely said "there's no way I'd go with Sprint"... and in addition to the normal "sprint is bad coverage" propaganda, started telling me that i'd really not want a CDMA network, but the TMobile GSM... because overloaded CDMA towers were the reasons calls got dropped all the time (uhh, my alltel cdma calls never get dropped) and that GSM towers could handle 50 times the number of phones.
these 2 people at this booth were obnoxious from the 1st words they spoke. my initial question to them was "is this a sprint corporate store" and they couldn't even answer that... they said "what do you need?"
asked them again and it was like "what do you need? ... a phone?" and from then on I knew I was talking to some slicksters. Here's a funny thing I just remembered... I told them I wanted a PDA phone and they didn't know what that was. The guy brought me some Nokia phone that had "PDA functions" and he told me I'd have to download programs to add functionality to the phone. Then the girl there argues with me that the Sony Ericsson P800 (a symbian OS, very hi tech phone) was comparable to the non-pda Nokia they showed me and she was right because she'd been to training on it - the smugness and arrogance was absolutely incredible until later, when she checked the internet, realized she'd never seen a p800 and had it confused with something else.
these sales people want to prey on people with FUD like there's no tomorrow - its certainly not the only industry that does it but its such a main sales tactic that its really sickening.
i'm sure stories abound, just like for car dealers, or uninformed Best Buy tv dept folk.
well see, thats what i would expect, that a plan would be available where i wouldn't pay for roaming... and i'd be on the same thing. (alltel has this, sprint has this... basically, you pay enough and roaming goes away.)
at this booth in the mall (right in the middle of the food court) the 2 young people there never mentioned the one-rate plan... only the reasons why ATT would screw me - and yet they said "oh, we can sell ATT also".
this one young guy told me that the reason ATT was sold is because they didn't have enough money to keep the business going, and then after they merge with Cingular, the network may be in trouble because Cingular may not have enough money to improve their towers now to handle the increased load... literally, at this point, I said HOLD IT.
I'm real down on people spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) and thats exactly what this kid was trying to do to me, so that i'd sign up with TMobile (of course, the competitor to ATT & Cingular)... and I told him this. I said "you're telling me about the financial state and plans of 2 huge companies... and you really don't know what Cingular's plans are, so why do you need to try and scare me about stuff in the future that you know nothing about?"
then, also in his attack of other networks, he and her absolutely said "there's no way I'd go with Sprint"... and in addition to the normal "sprint is bad coverage" propaganda, started telling me that i'd really not want a CDMA network, but the TMobile GSM... because overloaded CDMA towers were the reasons calls got dropped all the time (uhh, my alltel cdma calls never get dropped) and that GSM towers could handle 50 times the number of phones.
these 2 people at this booth were obnoxious from the 1st words they spoke. my initial question to them was "is this a sprint corporate store" and they couldn't even answer that... they said "what do you need?"
asked them again and it was like "what do you need? ... a phone?" and from then on I knew I was talking to some slicksters. Here's a funny thing I just remembered... I told them I wanted a PDA phone and they didn't know what that was. The guy brought me some Nokia phone that had "PDA functions" and he told me I'd have to download programs to add functionality to the phone. Then the girl there argues with me that the Sony Ericsson P800 (a symbian OS, very hi tech phone) was comparable to the non-pda Nokia they showed me and she was right because she'd been to training on it - the smugness and arrogance was absolutely incredible until later, when she checked the internet, realized she'd never seen a p800 and had it confused with something else.
these sales people want to prey on people with FUD like there's no tomorrow - its certainly not the only industry that does it but its such a main sales tactic that its really sickening.
i'm sure stories abound, just like for car dealers, or uninformed Best Buy tv dept folk.