AT&T Store — Local services in Poulsbo

My wife and I went into the store a week ago and dealt with the manager of the store Marshea. We had a terrible experience. I will add that Marshea was friendly and personable, but her lack of knowledge has cost me a lot of time and money. The system was down temporarily and she made a series of decisions to remedy the situation that progressively made the situation worse and worse. The system came back online after about 20 minutes. Long story short we spent just under 5 HOURS in the store. But it doesn’t end there. When she finally sent us out of the store my wife’s phone number had still not been ported over correctly and she had added 3 lines to our new account. I had to call customer service and get the number ported over myself after I left the store. She also sold me an AT&T TV package that she told me was normally $50/month but would be $40/month since we also had phones through AT&T. This was completely wrong. The price was actually $60/month plus taxes and fees. I spent over 2 hours on the phone getting the service cancelled which and they still charged me for the first month anyways. (Still trying to sort that out) fast forward to today. My wireless bill for 2 lines which is supposed to be $120/plus tax was $290 because they charged me for the extra line she added to my account plus insurance plus they are billing me installments for the phones that are supposed to be free and I got charged incremental charges for all the changes she made to the account when setting it up. Absolute worst experience with customer service in my life. Between the time I’ve spent in the store and on the phone with customer service it’s been almost 9 hours of my time and I still have to call back to sort out this...

A mixed experience with little good.

I have had rather mediocre help at every AT&T store in Kitsap County that I've been to over many years. They marvel at the discount of my corporate account, question me about my choice in Android HW, typical fan-boy stuff. Seldom able to do what I need.

This store is the closest to where I live, so I have been there two times in the last week. First time, I was told that I could not look at any of the screens showing my account details- it would get them fired. Also told that they could do nothing to correct the damage AT&T did to mess up my account plan. Second time I went in (different dude), I needed to activate a new phone I had just received from AT&T. Was told that since I did not buy the phone at this specific store, he could not help me. Company policy. Total waste of time.

So I went back home and activated the two phones on my own. One was easy, (10 min) the other took 2 1/2 hours on the phone with AT&Ts tech support, finally escalating to 4 tier. But it works now, and I don't think that the local store folks could have done this at all.

The lesson in all this? Look at how little AT&T has invested in Kitsap- do you think you will ever see Gen5 coverage? I barely have LTE, yet I must pay for Gen5 anyhow. If they spend only the bare minimum for tower coverage, they will also provide the bare minimum for customer support with the local stores. I can see myself moving to Consumer Cellular...

Ever think you’d find a partner in your parenting at an AT&T store? Tyler Dean at the poulsbo location might as well have adopted all of my children. In my 10 minute visit at the AT&T store in between cleaning up dog diarrhea and shuttling kids to football games, we invented a penalty phone aka “phoneshment”.

I walked in smelling of left over pho soup and the peanut butter smeared on my lapel stating up front, “I may not be a big sale for you today but I am hoping you can help me be a better parent”. Which also happens to be the same thing I say to the little 17 year old human helping me in the drive thru at TacoTime when placing my order for dinner. I’m sure Tyler, who is the same age as some of my older kids, hasn’t had many moms asking for parenting advice, but he was ready. He assured me he wouldn’t try to sell me anything unnecessary and listened to my story of teenage angst and parenting flubs.

He stayed true to his word and gave me several options. The option I chose did not involve adding a line. In 10 minutes he sold me a $70 flip phone and gained a loyal customer for life. Thank you Tyler for being my coparent. And congrats on all of your bonus kids. They are cuties who are much better behaved now that we have implemented the penalty phone. I’ll contact you when grades come out for more...