Third-party T-Mobile rep allegedly lies to customer's face to help reach performance goal
Rep wasn't truthful when customer asked what the salesman was doing with his phone.
T-Mobile rep lies to customer's face | Image by PhoneArena
If you walk into a T-Mobile store, either an authorized reseller or a corporate-owned store, don't be surprised to be asked to take certain actions once you are sitting down with the rep. For example, someone visiting a third-party T-Mobile location asked about upgrading his phone and the rep asked him to sign in to the T-Life app and then turn his phone over to the rep.
Third-party T-Mobile rep lies right to the customer's face
Sounds shady, but the customer figured that the rep was simply going through his possible upgrade options. The true reason for the rep's request was revealed when the customer received an email from Capital One saying that his application for pre-approval for the T-Mobile Visa card was declined.
The customer knew that he didn't request the card and the time stamp for the application indicated that it was submitted when he was in the store. Getting a customer to apply for the new T-Mobile Visa card is a metric and reps are asked to have a certain number of customers send in an application for the card regardless if they are approved or not. If a rep doesn't meet his performance goals, he could lose his job.
What do you think about the rep's actions?
The rep gets points for having a customer submit an application even if it was declined
In fact, this rep would not have known some of the personal data needed to successfully apply for the card. That's because the rep apparently requested the card without telling the customer what he was doing when he took the latter's phone from him. Sure enough, the rejection email from Capital One said that the customer was rejected for the card because his personal data did not match what the rep typed in on the application.
That is not allowed and that’s insane for him to do that. That’s a fireable offense cause he had to basically fake all of your information. Cause the app asked for personal information. Like yearly income how much is your mortgage and even your social. So he would have had put fake information or you would have had to supply him with it. So yeah that’s insane for him to play like that. Basically identity theft. So definitely fire and possibly arrested
Reddit subscriber Sea_Sun_1397
So why would the rep ask for the walk-in customer's phone, secretly apply for a T-Mobile Card for the customer knowing that he didn't have the correct social security number (last four numbers) or the date of birth? As it turns out, reps do get credit when a customer submits an application whether that application is approved or not. So even if the rep typed in made-up numbers on the application knowing that it would be declined, he still got points for trying.
The walk-in customer had the right amount of skepticism, he just didn't follow through. The customer asked if the rep was signing him up for something, and he outright lied by answering in the negative and saying that he was just looking for upgrade pricing.
Ex-rep with a T-Mobile TPR says that District Managers encouraged reps to pull this credit card scam
One Redditor with the username "Friendly_Hunter" said that shady things like this were why he left his job as a rep at a third-party T-Mobile store at the start of this month. According to this ex-rep's post, the authorized reseller he worked for encouraged its sales team to secretly apply for a T-Mobile card in the name of a customer who walked into the store without telling him.
Srini Gopalan, CEO of T-Mobile. | Image by T-Mobile
The former rep said that the encouragement to pull off this illegal scam came from the District Manager and up. They were told to make up the requested information on the credit card application. "Mostly the authorized retailer I worked for asking us to commit fraud," he wrote.
Mobile phone reps are seen as this generation's used car salesmen
Several T-Mobile employees chimed in by stating that this whole scheme is illegal and against company policy. But with the allegations that District Managers were involved and that they were supposedly the ones who encouraged reps to take this action, we once again have a situation where executives of the third-party firm involved and T-Mobile are just turning their heads, burying their heads in the sand, and are pretending that this doesn't exist.
But things like this are taking place every day and not just at T-Mobile. The reps working for wireless providers are this generation's used car salesmen and now have the same reputation among consumers.
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