Update: Arch Telecom sends email to employees in response to reporting.
It has been a rough week for T-Mobile.
The company recently found itself doing damage control over negative social media posts on reddit about shady business practices, with coverage on sites like Phone Arena. T-Mobile has responded to these complaints with internal communications about sales integrity and ‘doing it the right way’. The original complaint was from a reddit post where a disgruntled customer vented about the store imposing extra costs to purchasing a phone. The Redditor claims the store said “we can’t sell you (a phone) without a phone case, screen protector, charger, and 360 protection”.
Phone Arena covered concerning employee statements, which included employees having to call a district manager every time a phone leaves without accessories to explain why.
Well, now we have yet another complaint via Reddit, this time from a former employee of “Arch Telecom”, a third party retailer that runs T-Mobile branded stores.
Disgruntled Employee Takes To Reddit To Vent
An employee from the T-Mobile third-party authorized retailer (TPR) Arch Telecom has come forward with more concerns. In a reddit post from about three weeks ago, simply titled “BEWARE OF TMOBILE PREMIUM RETAILER ARCH TELECOM”, an upset employee let loose.
The worker discussed Arch Telecom leadership prioritizing sales performance to a point of employee job security, and at the expense of integrity (quote “customer basically getting scammed”).
The employee explained how Arch Telecom’s frontline employee culture works, too. GroupMe, a chat app, is required to keep on your personal device and leaders use it to call you out and even embarrass you for poor performace. What leadership tries to instigate as ‘competition’ becomes an outright toxic sales culture.
The employee also encouraged research into Glassdoor ratings for the company, which are currently at a 3.2 out of 5 stars. Arch Telecom’s CEO, Alex Ghai, has a 63% approval rating. Amusingly enough, while T-Mobile has a 3.6 star rating, CEO Mike Sievert has a lower approval rating of 58%.
The post ends with an explanation of the extent of unethical sales practices at Arch Telecom. The user u/whitexscvlex tells a story:
I worked with a rep who literally would lie when quoting after running the “money call” with the DM. She would tell customers things were free that were not, misquote monthly pricing, put on a plan that excludes taxes and not quoting it in, you name it, the employee was caught after being reported by a customer to the customer care line and STILL continues to work for Arch still 2 months later continuing the same behaviors, why? Because numbers and $$$.
Source: Reddit
Arch Telecom Goes On To Make Things Worse
Apparently, Arch Telecom took notice of the post, and a leader in the company met with the Redditor one-on-one. This spurred a follow-up post about that conversation from the same user.
A ‘very high up leader’ at Arch Telecom allegedly asked the employee to remove the post, which was obviously declined. In the follow-up post, u/whitexscvlex writes, “This company loves the “Yes Men” and fraudsters. I’ve never seen someone have 16-20k in chargebacks monthly on average and keep their job.”
They continue with “STRAIGHT SCUM tactics, takes NO skill to ram boxes down people throats under false pretenses.”
This led other apparent employees of Arch Telecom to speak up in the comments section, igniting another thread of putting T-Mobile retail practices on blast. Employees even comment on considering a union. Here are some examples.
T-Mobile: The (no longer Un-)Carrier?
In a not-so-distant past, former T-Mobile CEO John Legere made bold statements. Take a moment to consider how relevant this quote is becoming for modern day T-Mobile.
Since Legere’s exit and T-Mobile’s major buyout of Sprint, the company has been headed in a concerning direction. First, it was waves of layoffs and multiple data breaches. Now employees taking to social media to speak out about shady sales and management methods.
It would be remiss to ignore the fact that Arch Telecom is not, at least at a corporate level, “T-Mobile”. They are essentially paid externally to make sales for T-Mobile, so T-Mobile corporate has very little influence on day-to-day operations.
That being said, while a third party retailer is not indicative of T-Mobile’s direct management, it is still a reflection of their brand. An average customer cannot tell the difference between a corporate store and a TPR without some intense scrutiny.
Third party stores are built to be visually identical, and short of knowing to read specific signage on a front window, you would likely have to ask an employee working if they’re corporate or not. The parity helps T-Mobile ‘feel’ like one retail brand coast to coast, but sales practices and expectations can vary greatly. Not just between T-Mobile and TPR, but between TPR to TPR as well.
As a company with certain values, T-Mobile should step in and enforce their way of doing things even at a third-party level. There are some that say this is all going to plan, though. T-Mobile corporate might say they would never support these methods, but by turning a blind eye to third party stores’ behaviors, they get the benefits without the blame.
Does the amount of sales pressure in retail stores impact your plans for how you will get your next phone? Let us know how you upgrade in the comments, and if you still trust a T-Mobile store to do it for you (or will you just buy online).
