In Pittsburgh, unaccountable third-party retailers operate half of AT&T’s wireless stores

AT&T owns and manages only about half of its retail stores in the Pittsburgh area, a local report found. The other half are “authorized retailers,” or third-party dealers unrelated to the telecom giant with little customer accountability and poor worker standards.

“AT&T and Verizon, along with rivals Sprint and T-Mobile, have increased their sales in recent years by appointing third-party dealers to open new retail locations selling their cell phones and other products,” Daniel Moore wrote in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

But this corporate strategy is bad for customers. “There’s no standardized training method, there’s no accountability from the AT&T side,” said James Stiffey, a retail sales consultant for AT&T. In fact, a recent survey of 1,300 AT&T employees who work at corporate retails stores and call centers, 76 percent of respondents said customers came to them multiple times per week with problems caused by authorized dealers and 40 percent said customers reported that authorized dealers offered services that are not actually available.

Are you an AT&T customer who’s had a bad experience with third-party dealers? Share your experience here.

Links:

Telecoms using 'authorized retailers' raise debate over control of customers, staffing (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Aug. 4, 2017)

Who owns your local AT&T store? (Speed Matters, June 23, 2017)

AT&T’s Retail Sales Problem: How Outsourcing Compromises Customer Service and Job Quality (CWA, June 21, 2017)

AT&T Consumer Alert website (CWA, June 21, 2017)