I would like to give a shout out to Zach, the new store manager, and thank him for making my most…read morerecent AT&T experience not only successful, but also (I can't believe I am saying this about anything AT&T) pleasant, and enjoyable! Wow.
My history with the company up until now, has been exactly the opposite of this most current experience. So, when AT&T turned their 3G network off a few weeks back, and I could no longer get or receive calls with my perfectly good Note 8 (which a phone rep said would be fine making the transition to 5G), I was terrified and despondent just thinking about the hell I anticipated I would have to go through to get this problem resolved.
My despondency was based in an insane string of frustrating, traumatic, and bizarre interactions with both phone based and in store AT&T customer reps (dozens), over the course of days, weeks, and even months (!), to get several AT&T generated issues resolved. I won't go into details, but suffice to say, I was not looking forward at all to dealing with anything AT&T again.
I decided to pick a store out of my immediate area because of previous bad experiences at my local stores, and randomly chose the branch in Johnston. I am so glad I did - because as luck would have it, Zach had just been made the store manager. Walking in, he immediately helped me to feel at ease, with his openness, and fact-based transparency, even though I told him from the get go that I did not trust anything AT&T.
He quickly presented all of my available options, while not pressuring me in any way. He also guaranteed that whatever I chose, he would be there, and would help me through whatever happened, and would make everything okay.
So, we ordered a new phone, and when it showed up at my house, I drove it to the store and let him take care of transferring all my data from the old phone to the new one. It took a while (I have a lot of important stuff on my phone because I use it for everything) and he sent me home with both phones so I could go through them and make sure that everything I needed was there. I did find a directory of documents that didn't transfer, so I had the opportunity to catch that and transfer it over separately.
When I returned to the store the next day, he took care of wiping all the data off of the old phone, and showed me a bunch of tricks to use on my new phone, and made sure I had a receipt that clearly stated what was going to happen with the trade in deal and when. He also promised to help me if AT&T didn't do what they promised.
The whole time I was there, over the course of three visits, Zach was cheerful, helpful, and professional with every customer who came in, all the while multi-tasking up a storm. I saw a lot of customers come in ready for a fight, and leaving as friends - Zach has a way of making people feel better about having to deal with AT&T - he loves his store, his customers, and he somehow loves AT&T... Which is kinda hard to believe, but I'll believe it if he does.
Thanks Zach!