Perhaps this has led to management putting unhealthy pressure on salespeople to make sure customers don’t leave without buying more than they planned. As a result, salespeople often make misleading and dishonest statements to pressure customers into buying extra items like accessories or insurance. If they fail to do so, they may receive a warning from their superiors or managers or have their commission reduced.
If customers think they can avoid unwanted purchase solicitations by shopping elsewhere, they may be surprised to learn that the practice extends to third-party retailers as well.
T-Mobile’s preferred retailer Arch Telecom is accused of squeezing every cent out of customers
According to a Reddit post by an Arch Telecom employee, the company is no better than T-Mobile at encouraging shady sales tactics. whitexscvlex warns both customers and employees that Arch Telecom puts money above all else. Whether you’re a customer or an employee, trust me when I say stay away from this company. This company doesn’t care about its customers or employees, it only cares about money.
They require you to be active on GroupMe, the messaging platform through which district stores and markets communicate, and if you don’t stand up to it, management calls you in and basically tries to embarrass you in front of all your coworkers, and if you’re not performing, explaining that your business is an “excuse”, you end up on the bad list.
Their shady practices continue: Last year, Arch management instructed them to obtain approvals and sell home internet service using approved addresses (even if they don’t match customers), which goes against all of T-Mobile’s plans to provide a good experience for customers by monitoring tower capacity to ensure a quality signal.
whitexscvlex, Reddit, June 2024
To back up their claims, employees asked people to look at employee reviews on Indeed and Glassdoor, where the company is rated 3.2 out of 5 stars and CEO Alex Guy has an approval rating of 63 percent.
Apparently, Arch Telecom sets unrealistic sales targets and blackmails employees into helping them achieve them even if it means cheating customers. Management does not hesitate to publicly humiliate employees and pit them against each other in order to make as much sales as possible.
I currently work at Arch and I have never felt more like a sneaky person than I have while working there. All we are taught is to convert by any means necessary, not help the customer.
Vz_infamous, Reddit, July 2024
Employees are taught by their direct managers to convince customers to move off their plans to lesser plans and add voice lines, hotspots, and tablets in bundled deals. Sometimes they even lie and tell customers something is free when it’s not, give false monthly prices, and hide tax information. Either way, the store rep (who was a DM at the time) assured them the two lines were free because of a special promotion.
On top of that, he (and the other person who called us) said we’d also get to choose a free phone case and screen protector.
Now, after a few bills, the cost of all the accessories will show up on your bill and will be charged every month until next year. To make matters worse, one of the phone lines will cost you $25 a month.
JohnJSal, Reddit
Employees may also be asked to sign up patrons to business accounts just to meet category targets.
Another of my favorite “plays” they do.
“We are running out of TFB (small business lines). Please register some of your next customers with a sole proprietor account with SSN.”
Question for all of you Redditors: If you applied for a consumer account and then you get approached about a business account but you don’t have a business, you’re probably wondering, um, what happened? Am I right?
whitexscvlex, Reddit, June 2024
After the bill came in the mail, I discovered that my account had 3 extra lines I didn’t request: a “Pixel phone” I didn’t order, home internet, and insurance for the extra lines I didn’t order. It’s kind of crazy that she was able to add all of this to my account and get away with it. Of course, it was a business account so I couldn’t access the account online, but Tmobile doesn’t seem to know how to fix it. Long story short, I abandoned my account because Tmobile refused to act on what were obviously fraudulent transactions and Arch was no help.
Existing – Sky9665, Reddit, June 2024
Other Arch Telecom employees and customers have also shared their experiences on Reddit, highlighting some of the questionable tactics employed by Arch Telecom, including being accused of recording people on the sales floor and adding lines to customer accounts without being asked.
They also audio recorded the sales floor, which is completely illegal in many states.
TMUStoUnionize, Reddit, June 2024
While T-Mobile cannot be held responsible for how Arch Telecom is run, one wonders if this is an agreed upon strategy, as both companies have been accused of employing essentially the same shady tactics to boost sales.
T-Mobile’s higher-ups were apparently appalled after learning of the store staff’s unethical behavior and encouraged them to report such conduct to their superiors, who are allegedly the ones who encouraged the behavior in the first place.
It’s unclear whether executives actually didn’t know what was going on or simply pretended not to know, but if T-Mobile truly cares, it should not only clean up its own business, but also clean up its third-party retailers.
