Salisbury, NC Wireless Agent Dumps Personal Info In Trash

Thats good to know it wasn't Alltel and that's another reason not to buy from a 3rd party company.

 

It just makes me sick that people don't take better care of others personal information. One time I was workign in activations and an autorized agent just called me and said that she had a list of customers that she wants to rerun credit on. For some reason I thought to ask and she said that they just run credit every 60 days on customers so they can call them and tell them that they qualify. She told me that the customers did not know about this. I refused to do it until they had the customers permission. This was not with Alltel by the way it was with another company.

 

Yes there is many, but people still do it. I just don't understand why.

 

I live in Greenville, ABC's grand headquarters, and here they just built a new store that looks EXACTLY like an Alltel corporate store. Large blue and black/white lettered signs, Alltel logos on the doors, Alltel promo signs out by the roadside. Until I saw that the other ABC store closed, I thought this was going to be a new or second Alltel store. With the way the store looks it can't be hard to fool people.

I dealt with ABC some time ago for pagers and was not very pleased with the experience. A friend had an even worse experience. I know a few people who are friends with the guy who owns the company, and from what they say he's a really nice guy. The problems really seem to be in the way his employees act and represent the company.

 

Yeah, I understand that. I've seen some that can fool you. I wish Alltel and the others would do something about this kind of store looking so much like a company store. Oh well it's all about the money.

 

I can tell you why at least I buy my phones from independent dealers. As a small businessman I like to support other small businesses in my local area. I try not to purchase items from Wal Mart or Costco. I build a personal relationship with these business people and when I need something they are there, and usually come in with a very competetive price. For example, I needed a new cordless drill. One of my customers runs a contractor supply and told me he was having a special sale in a week. I came in and then he told me about a new model that was being released in 2 weeks that he thought I would love. I pre-bought it for about 1/2 of the retail price and I was one of the first people in the country to get this new model (which I love).

I just bought my Tilt earlier this week from another small business. There was a corporate store less than a mile away, but I bought from the independent dealer because they patronize my business, and they gave me a better deal than corporate, and threw in a leather case. When I need to get onto an old discontinued plan hey also help me out. They also made sure that they had a Tilt in stock for me because of short supply.

That's why.

-Jay

 

I really can see both points of view to the debate. But I will say that 3rd party retailers are probably more crucial to alltel now than any other carrier. I'm more of the opinion that alltel should allow them to have an identical appearance, while providing or requiring sufficient training so as to not pull down the alltel name. This article is a perfect example of the downfall of 3rd party retailers, but there's also several reasons why 3rd party retailers are perhaps more important to alltel now than ever before.

I've just been in too many cities where I've seen alltel retail locations outnumbered by other providers and a large part of this is because of the identical looking 3rd party retailers that other providers use. There's 3 malls in Va Beach/Norfolk where there are 2-4 retail locations in each for At&t, Verizon, Ntelos, T-Mobile, and Sprint. I also know that At&t wouldn't keep 4 corporate owned locations in a single mall. In these same locations, Pembroke, Lynnhaven, and Military Circle, there are no exclusive alltel locations and 1-2 kiosks or retail locations that sell alltel and ntelos and one or two that also carry Sprint in addition to the other 2. There are 3 more corporate nTelos locations than alltel in those 2 cities also. I've seen similar things in a few other locations where alltel just doesn't focus on malls or matching other providers in the number of retail locations or best location of retail stores. I know alltel has traditionally tightly controlled costs and keeping expenses low, and a retail location is very expensive between the building, property taxes, and payroll. But retail locations don't have to attract a lot of new customers that would go elsewhere to be profitable in the long-term and alltel's network is generally strong enough to keep customers with very low churn. An ARPU of around $50/month, which was reported in the quarterly statement, adds up with just a couple of customers a day.

My main point isn't to blast alltel's business strategy, I would like to see alltel grow into a much larger provider that one day rivals anybody and presents a true, national alternative to the Att/Verizon duopoly, but if alltel is going to tightly control retail locations and kiosk expenses, it should then do whatever it can to partner exclusively with as many 3rd party retailers as possible and those 3rd party retailers should have the opportunity to look authentic to be competitive. Their current model saves costs but misses out on a lot of passer-by, spur of the moment, wireless shoppers that would be profitable in the long-term and 3rd party retailers could bridge the gap rapidly. If I were in a position to do it, and maybe in a few more years I'd look more into it, but I'd open several exclusive alltel 3rd party locations here because I really believe I could be very profitable being the only exclusive alltel reseller in those high traffic areas. I guess I'm just a big 3rd party fan, but then again I always try to support the local businesses also and wish things like leaks of personal information from these retailers were easier to prevent.

 

I agree, I very much support small businesses wherever possible. I don't go to Walmart & I won't go to Costco, when they finish building the one mega store. I can give numerous examples, but my favorite is that we get our fishing supplies from Bob's Bait, a tiny family run store, across the street from the huge & I do mean huge Cabela's mega store.

However, I do make an exception in the case of cellphones. If I am buying a provider branded phone, then I always get it from the corporate store. I actually do have a good personal relationship at the 2 Cingular stores and the 1 Verizon one, and I get the same favors and attention as I would at a small business. I guess living in a small town helps.