Report: T-Mobile Pressures Employees to Add Services Not Ordered While T-Mobile has received plenty of kudos for its consumer-friendly "uncarrier" marketing, a new report suggests that T-Mobile is very much like other carriers when it comes to forcing employees to upsell customers on services and goods they may not want. According to the Washington Post, a labor group by the name "Change to Win" has filed a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau claiming that T-Mobile's "unrealistic" and "'punishing' sales targets" result in employees fraudelently adding services to customer lines without their knowledge or approval.

The group's full report (pdf) was based on complaints with the FTC, and interviews with roughly 500 T-Mobile employees that said T-Mobile's "crazy" and "unrealistic" high-pressure sales goals came with threats of retaliation if employees missed targets. "An analysis of thousands of consumer complaints aggregated by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) found that T-Mobile had both the largest number of total complaints per subscriber and the largest number of complaints about fraudulent enrollment per subscriber of the four major wireless carriers ," the study notes. "Change to Win's conversations with T-Mobile workers in many states, and online surveys of customers in five states indicate these complaints to regulators may be the tip of the iceberg." The report found that the problems started back in 2013 when T-Mobile launched its "uncarrier" marketing and branding effort. It also notes that 83% of T-Mobile sales personnel said they felt pressure to add products and services that customers did not explicitly request, something that's common among the wireless carriers T-Mobile claims it's nothing like. Employees in the report state that T-Mobile requires sales staff to sign up 80% of new accounts with the JUMP! insurance and upgrade program ($9-$12 extra per month), or a handset protection service that costs $10 more per month. Some employees add these services without the user's consent to meet their goals. The report cites at least one manager that encouraged such behavior. "The fact that there is such extraordinary pressure makes it so you can't do what's ethically required," one employee says in the report. "I will do the best possible job that I can do, but the fact that [T-Mobile's managers] put me in a compromising position and do unethical things is stressful." The report goes on to note that because "you have to be a cheerleader for the company" under the current culture results in people being seen as a "cry baby" if they complain about the pressure to engage in fraudulent behavior to executives or human relations. Users also claim that their pay is so low (as low as $10.21 an hour), they're incentivized to add services customers didn't order and don't want to make ends meet. This isn't the first time that T-Mobile's customer-friendly branding has clashed with reality at the company. T-Mobile has also consistently opposed real net neutrality rules, and at one point last year tripped over its own feet by insulting the EFF, one of the most-respected consumer and digital rights organizations on the internet, when it pointed out the anti-competitive implications and issues with the company's "Binge On" zero rating program. T-Mobile did not respond to a request for comment on this latest report. T-Mobile did not respond to a request for comment on this latest report.







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Most recommended from 51 comments



kdwycha

join:2003-01-30

Ruskin, FL 21 recommendations kdwycha Member I Beleive It Almost every industry these days has unrealistic sales metrics for customer service representatives in any capacity or LOB within the business. These jobs are high turnover due to unattainable sales metrics.



I can definitely see when given the choice to feed your children or slam something on someone's account that agents would roll the dice and take a gamble.



There was an article a while back about an ex Comcast VP of Customer Care indicating most industries changed from Customer Care Centers to Sales Centers.



Basically the agent doesn't give a shit about the root cause of your call, their job solely relies on up selling you something.



More industries need to be grabbed by the p**** like Wells Fargo to stop this despicable practice and treatment of their customers and employees. Fubar

join:2015-01-27

Phoenix, AZ 13 recommendations Fubar Member It's the third party stores Never had a problem with Online, Telephone or Social Media sales (T-FOrce).



However every time I step in a third party store something is always added on to my account that I did not ask for.

Unfortunately there are zero Corporate stores near me.



Latest instance is broke a Mobile Hotspot. Went in and bought a new one for full price cash. How did the store do it? Added it as a completely seperate and new Mobile Broadband line. Ridiculous. Kearnstd

Space Elf

Premium Member

join:2002-01-22

Mullica Hill, NJ 7 recommendations Kearnstd Premium Member Metrics are bad When will corporate America learn that stupid high quotas on below the line services lead to bad actions.



Metrics only ever lead to poor employee work quality because they clock in every day only caring about meeting their metrics.

Economist

The economy, stupid

Premium Member

join:2015-07-10

united state ·AT&T FTTP

1 edit 7 recommendations Economist Premium Member Need ruinous fines for fraud and schemes like this (if true) Just like Ford with the Pinto, these are calculated risks. They figure what the penalties will cost and ensure they steal more and make good use of the loot. In Ford's case, they figured the cost of the dead and injured would be around $50M vs the $137M it would have cost to fix the cars.



Verizon with their junk fee "mistake" raked in zillions but then they only have to pay a small fraction back in fines and only in those states where the AG went to war with them.



When setting unreasonable sales targets, management KNOWS fraud will occur but bets that the fines and refunds will be smaller than the money stolen + the ROI on the money stolen will be. Remember, if they steal $1M and then get fined $100K for it, they could still make a profit if the ROI on the $1M was more than 10%. Regulators must make the fines so high that no company would dare risk it, and better, make the fines bill credits, like 2 months of bill credits to every customer they had at the time the fraud occurred. The risk of surrendering 1/6 of yearly revenue would have BODs thinking twice about such schemes and they would have strong auditing measures to make sure middle management doesn't do something crazy.



Speeding is a $100-$400 ticket or so on the States right? So people will risk it, especially since they can go to traffic school and have the citation hidden from insurance companies. What if there was no traffic school and the fine for speeding was $50,000 or $100,000 or they seize your car (leaving you to still make payments like with a drug confiscation). You would drive 60...not even 65 because if busted, it would be absolutely ruinous. This assumes that CEOs and BOD are somewhat rational and not serial killers. sullim4

join:2003-05-18

Redmond, WA 5 recommendations sullim4 Member I've seen this This totally happened to me. I was buying a new phone from one of their retail stores a few years back, and they added "Premium Handset Protection" without asking me if I wanted it or not. I recall the employee asking the manager if she should add "PHP" and the manager responded in the affirmative. She didn't bother asking me if I wanted it.



I had it removed the same day once I saw it show up on my account. From that day on, I haven't purchased a thing from their retail stores and instead buy my phones directly from Apple.

Anon92b0d

@antiqueexport.net 4 recommendations Anon92b0d Anon Horrible job working in sales for ANY cellphone company It is a Horrible job working in sales for ANY cellphone company. The psychopaths who hold these VP of Sales jobs treat their low paid phone workers like slaves and use electronically collected metrics to bully them and fire anyone who won't break ethics to get sales addons.



Probably because the product is so low income for Google, their Google Fi sales staff are relative angels in comparison to the main cellphone companies. tmc8080

join:2004-04-24

Brooklyn, NY 4 recommendations tmc8080 Member say it isn't so Tmobile! Don't become another Wells Fargo!

Anonba349

@rr.com 2 recommendations Anonba349 Anon No reason not to There is no reason not to slam customers since one way forced arbitration agreements are now the norm. Business operates with impunity.