I want to express my great gratitude for the manager of the AT&T store in Colonial Heights Virginia. My son died May 15th, I took his death certificate to an AT &T store in Virginia Beach where he lived to close out his account and get his phone released. There was only 1 month left on the payoff. I was informed that they would zero the account and unlock the phone in 2-3 days. The phone was not unlocked and I returned the following week. I was informed that it was out of his hands and that when the next billing cycle passed, the phone would be able to be unlocked. I waited 6 weeks and continued to attempt to unlock the phone to no avail. On July 27th, exactly two months after I had given them the death certificate, I called customer service. They said they would bump my request to the back office and that I would get a return phone call within 72 hours; they did not call. I tried using the Facebook social media help chat. They asked me for my son's pass code (we don't have it and he was not alive to give it to us), and referred us back to an AT & T store. On August 6th, we entered the store at Colonial Heights, we were greeted by the manager and we told him the difficulties and extreme frustrations we were having getting this last bit of business done.
He looked at our documentation that showed that we inherited the phone, and he called customer service. It seems it took someone from Advance Tech Support to unlock the phone. This is where the manager shines. On the first time transferring, they hung up on him. On the second transfer, what was supposed to be a 5 to 10-minute wait ended up 30 minutes, and they sent him to the wrong section. They transferred him yet again, telling him a 5 to 10-minute wait; it was another 30 minutes. While waiting he swapped sim chips with our personal phones to see if that would work, when he finally got through to Advance Tech Support, they unlocked the phone, but the manager would not let Advance Tech off the line until he tried it himself.
The first word that comes to mind is compassion - he was not going to let us out of the store until we had the problem solved, because he cared. Tenacious - long waits and bad transfers were not going to stop him. An Observant Multi-tasker - even while taking care of us, he was directing his staff to take care of others and making sure the store was continuing to be sanitized between customers.
I highly recommend this store and their manager Paul M. for its customer service! read more