Some Verizon stores aren't seeing any traffic at all
A weak economy is keeping consumers and customers out of Verizon stores.
Some Verizon stores aren't seeing any traffic. | Image by PhoneArena
The economy is making things difficult for reps who work inside carrier stores. Take this one Verizon rep who works in a store with two other salespeople. He wrote on social media that the three of them have not made a nickel all week.
No one is coming inside this Verizon store, even to pay a bill
Not only has the store been bereft of customers, they haven't even had one person come inside to pay a bill. The rep who posted this online calls this the worst drought in the four years that he has been doing this job.
Putting this into terms of dollars and cents, his paycheck is $1,000 less than it used to be, and he is making less than minimum wage "sitting on my ass," as he puts it. He is calling hundreds of people a month on the phone trying to drum up business, but he says that "the industry is just dead."
One former Verizon rep left to work at a bank
Others agreed with him including one former rep who left the job of slinging phones, tablets, and smartwatches last month to join the world of high finance. He said that foot traffic had declined by 30% at his store, and that he decided to find a new job after five years.
Why wouldn't you switch to an MVNO?
Sometimes it's not the lack of customers getting reps down, but the kind of customers that visit the stores. A female rep wrote that the customers coming into the store aren't paying customers, and instead they are the kind that complain and bitch when the rep can't honor an online-only promotion.
A store manager says that his sales team is struggling
A Verizon store manager wrote in to say that he feels bad for his sales team as they are really struggling. He says that upper management at Verizon is under a delusional belief that they can make traffic show up in the stores by magic.
100% its so frustrating. I'm currently at $17 an hour and that + commission is just BARELY paying the bills. Looking back to a few years ago we were making SO much more. It doesn't help that my leadership is telling us that Verizon is an AI first company so I'm sure they will be cutting more people to be replaced with AI at the first chance they get.
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Reps are making money only when selling new lines
It's bad enough that business has dried up, but as one Verizon salesman observed, "especially with the new commission structure, nothing really pays besides new lines. Verizon is basically not getting any new lines so we aren't going to get paid as much as before." A rep who works for a Verizon authorized retailer points out that with things as bad as they are, some salespeople are being dishonest by adding things to customers' accounts without their consent.
One Redditor came to this conclusion about why the stores are so empty. He blames it on "A mixture of bad economy, people buying online, and to be honest, bad reputation of in-store reps being shady."
Verizon unit Visible is benefiting from the weak economy
The bad news is that the good old days for Verizon reps might never return even if the economy does. More customers are opting to handle their transactions online instead of visiting a physical store.
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With the economy as bad as it is, what I expect to see from Verizon customers is a move to the carrier's all-digital Visible unit. With no stores, everything is done online, but subscribers will still get to use the Verizon network, albeit at a much lower cost.
Visible has three plans starting at $25 a month for a year; you can save $5 a month for your first year by using the code on the Visible website when subscribing to one of the three plans. You can even purchase new phones directly from the Visible website.
To reiterate, while the economy will eventually recover, traffic in Verizon stores might not. Consumers are becoming more knowledgeable and many no longer need the help they used to seek from reps inside Verizon corporate or authorized retailers. Instead, these customers are turning to prepaid providers even if they use the T-Mobile or AT&T network instead of Verizon.
For most consumers, the differences between the Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T networks are too minimal these days especially of switching results in a huge financial savings.
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