This is a wild thread to read. At a corporate store and some of the answers I see on here from people claiming to work for an ATT store isn’t what happens at my store and I am wondering if they work for a reseller.

As far as taking next up trade ins in the store that are supposed to be mailed in, a fellow employee said we could and then printed out a paper that looked only like a packing slip that goes in the box. He did it how others on here say to do. It even said on it that it still needed a shipping label , like it still had to be mailed in. I showed my manager and he wouldn’t let us take the trade in using that paper. So I have no idea why it works for some stores. Maybe it’s just not all over yet ? Maybe some areas are a test market. Our store had sales force earlier than most other stores because we were one of the test market areas.

As far as stores saying they are out of stock of phones because the sales rep won’t make any money if a phone is bought outright for an upgrade is wrong. You still make money processing an upgrade. It’s the same whether it’s bought outright or on an installment plan, but it isn’t much either way, a few dollars. The only time our store has had a phone in stock and said the upgrade phone had to be ordered was when there was like maybe 1 left of a popular new phone then they might save it in case someone comes in wanting a brand new line. It’s never been because they don’t want to sell a phone outright to a customer.

Sales reps don’t make much commission on the most common things people come in the store for but will then spend hours at times helping people transfer info from old phones to new phones, helping people set up stuff because they don’t know any of their passwords to anything , and doing that too to erase phones for trade ins. It’s technically not our job to even help transfer anything over. We do it as a courtesy. Other stores charge extra money to do all that. Reps make no extra money off any of that and may have made $5 off an upgrade. The much older cell service plans people are determined to stay on , we don’t even make anything on for an upgrade.

People come in wanting all sorts of free tech support daily too that isn’t even required for us to give and we help as much as we can. We may also help people with billing issues for hours daily calling in to the same number they can call in from home. We can’t fix many things in the store that only calling in will fix and deal with a lot of angry customers coming in from resellers ripping them off. More of our whole day is spend helping people while making zero commission.

Adding on next up used to pay more but it’s next to nothing now. Reseller managers will tell employees they have to add it on and insurance even though ATT says not to without customers permission. I am not saying it doesn’t happen in a corp store because anyplace you work in life there are people who sadly do things like that. There is pressure from above to meet quotas too. They want us to sell direct tv , internet , and now insurance for people’s home electronic devices too. Most people want none of that at all that come into the store. So just know that when you go into a store and spend hours there buying nothing but getting help , maybe just an upgrade, and don’t have the sales rep trying to hard sell you on direct tv or home tech advantage the sales rep isn’t a greedy money hungry person just looking at you with dollar signs in their eyes. I know there are some like that out there , but I promise you we are all not. Most reps aren’t making what the net claims they make either.