[ad_1]
AT & T is riding high after its big victory against the US Justice Department in its efforts to acquire Time Warner. Although the transaction may have proceeded without the combined companies being stipulated, some of the earlier AT & T bad acts are coming to the surface with some investigation reports.
AT & T employees – under the direction of their superiors – are accused of using unethical sales practices in order to increase the number of subscriptions for the DirecTV Now streaming service. DirecTV Now is a paid service that is competitive with Sling TV, YouTube TV and Hulu Live TV. As more and more rope operators cut their traditional cable and satellite TV packages, streaming "skinny packs" has become the new battleground.
The first tactic seems pretty "innocent". AT & T employees would offer their customers to sign up for a free trial of DirecTV Now (which would increase their sales figure), and then cancel the test. before renewing it automatically. The cancellation of a lawsuit for a subscriber goes against the company's policy, but employees would still have asked their employees to practice it. And as you can imagine, there were a lot of sellers who simply "forgot" to cancel the tests, which led customers to see unexpected $ 35 fees on their bills after the # 39, expiry of the trial.
"Managers told us to cancel it to avoid future headaches but many are falling through the cracks," said Abraham Buonya, one of AT & T's best salespeople. in Hawaii before being fired by the company after an internal audit.
However, that does not stop there. A more sinister plot involved registering customers for several DirecTV trials now. If a customer agrees to sign up for a DirecTV Now trial, a business associate can use a customer's credit card to activate up to three trials at a time. Here's how it worked: AT & T states that a single credit card can only be charged more than $ 35 during the test period. However, during special promotions where AT & T offered $ 10 testing, three sales could be stacked at the same time with the help of a fake email address.
"My manager took my iPad, which was signed under me, made a fake e-mail and then activated a Direct TV Now subscription on this e-mail and said that if I can do it, you can do it. next, "said an anonymous employee of AT & T who was also fired.
As if that was not enough, there was one last trick that sellers had in their sleeves. If a customer came to an AT & T store to buy a new smartphone, he was told that additional fees would be required to complete the transaction. That was of course a lie, but the sales associates would then say that they could waive the fees if customers signed up for a $ 10 DirecTV Now trial – which of course has been rated over- below the compound fees. Needless to say, many customers have registered for the DirecTV Now trial because they thought they were getting a better "deal".
"Managers basically encouraged us and told us how to manipulate sales," added Buonya. Even though it was a managers ploy to inflate sales figures, it was still against company policy. Managers and sales associates should have known about it, but they claim that they have applied these practices to achieve their sales goals and compete with other regional stores.
For its part, AT & T issued the following statement: "Last fall, we detected simultaneous orders and cancellations of a free trial of the product." We determined that some employees had violated our policies and we have taken the appropriate measures.
Source link
