Third-party retailer Arch Telecom continues to exhibit shady behavior
Leaked chat from a source inside Arch Telecom. | Image credit-TMR
TMR obtained a recording of an Arch Telecom manager discussing bundling a voice line, a tablet, and the T-Mobile Home Internet service. What is happening here is that reps were told to tell their customers that the bundle was just for home internet service. The result is that the customer is getting home internet service and other products and services (such as a tablet and a voice line) that he didn’t ask for.
This action went against an internal memo that Arch had written to employees during the summer stating that “When bundling multiple products for a customer, we must break down the charges with transparency and clarity. Not doing so denies the customer the experience they deserve and expect from us.”
T-Mobile Home Internet is typically $70 per month. Customers with a voice line pay only $50 per month and the lowest price for talk and text service is $20 per month. So what happens is any customer buying T-Mobile Home Internet from this store is also getting a voice line from the salesperson whether he/she wants one or not. This improves the rep’s commissions and his metrics and the customer is paying $70 a month as he expected. What the customer doesn’t know is that the deal crafted by the rep gives him a voice line that he didn’t ask for.
Arch turned a promotion designed to save customers money into a way to generate revenue for it
Internal documents shared with TMR also expose some funny business centering around a $5 Tablet deal offered by T-Mobile. T-Mobile‘s deal offering a plan for connected devices (like a tablet) for only $5 per month on the Go5G Next plan was exploited by Arch reps. Tablets that are being promoted on other plans usually have to be connected to a 5GB plan that costs $20 per month with autopay.
According to a leaked text conversation, a source inside Arch reveals that instead of getting charged $5 a month for a connected tablet plan, customers are being charged $20 per month for Go5G Next service for four devices that they could buy from the store. These stores are pushing tablets by bundling together four lines. In situations where the customer doesn’t want to add any additional tablets, he is being overcharged for one line and has three additional lines that he might not know about. T-Mobile‘s usual system that catches fraudulent sales of additional lines with no network usage does not track the $5/month Go5G Next promotion.
Avoiding third-party retail locations is probably a good idea for T-Mobile customers. When you’re at a store, if you see signs that say “Authorized Retailer” or “This store is operated by [a company name],” then it’s a TPR. If signs say that you’re at an “Experience Store,” or at a “T-Mobile Store,” than you are at a corporate-owned store. However, shopping at a corporate -owned store doesn’t guarantee that there will be no shenanigans.
