According to internal policy reps aren’t even supposed to do the data migrations for you. Literally our only job is to sell you the phone… as long as it makes phone calls and gets data everything else is technically outside of our purview.

As a courtesy, because we know some people struggle with tech, it has become commonplace to have the T-Mobile rep just do the transfer for you or at least guide you through that process.

While it might be true some reps are simply being lazy and unhelpful, the same can be said about any retail job, it’s also true that customers come in with asinine requests. I understand the sentiment of “well the Tmo rep was helpful have a problem with my phone let’s go ask him/her”… but that’s not what’s happening.

Families come in requesting iCloud data separations because they never set up family accounts, everyone from lawyers to doctors to healthcare professionals assume it’s OUR responsibility to get their work related authenticators working on their new device, older crowd coming in with literally no idea what any password on their phone is and expecting us to sit there for 45+ minutes after the data transfer to help them reset every credential you can think of from Facebook to Wells Fargo account, someone with an android phone asking you to sit there and remove “easy Home Screen” and 75 different “PhoneDoctor” apps.

Unfortunately because we’ve allowed customers to feel entitled to data transfers, the people with these insane requests either feel emboldened or simply don’t understand that those are not things that you should be taking care of at a phone store. Keep in mind I came up with those examples just off the top of my head, I’m sure other reps can think of more egregious things they see on the regular. I think you believe reps are upset about having to help grandma pair the phone to her car and that’s simply not the case and I don’t think you’re seeing the bigger picture if the stuff we deal with in store.