AT&T Store — Local services in Punta Gorda

Be very cautious going to the Punta Gorda AT&T store! This is only an authorized reseller, not an actual AT&T corporate store. My wife and I went there in late July 2022 to upgrade our phones. We were on a plan that was completely unlimited data for our hotspot. Plus we had 40 gig of hotspot data for each of our phones. We had been grandfathered in this plan for many years. That plan is no longer available. The sales associate we talked with said he could save us $100 a month for our services. We were very skeptical and asked him several times if it was exactly the same plan with the same unlimited data and hot spot data for the phones. Every time we asked he said "yes, It's exactly the same plan". He said all we have to do is be willing to change our numbers. After discussing it we decided to move forward. Why would we not want to save $100 per month and have the same services? Well, what happened after that was nothing but trouble. We ended up on a completely different plan with no hotpot data on our phones and 25 gig for our hotspot SIM card. We didn't know that until a week after the transaction happened when we started getting emails from AT&T charging us $10.00 for every 2 gig we went over our plan. What the associate did was completely change our plan and it ended up costing us twice what we were paying for monthly service. When I went back to the store that associate was on vacation. It was too late to reverse the transaction since our old phones had been shipped out.

We contacted the store manager who promised he would fix the problem only to play phone tag for 2 months. He said he would talk to his boss and see what they could do. He will not respond to any messages any longer. Just will not answer calls or return messages.

It has now been almost 4 months since then and I have spent hours on the phone with customer service and a half dozen corporate store managers that are trying to help fix this. The mess they created has cost us $1600.00 in 4 months and it is still not fixed.

DO NOT GO TO THE PUNTA...

Went in yesterday to switch to this carrier from my previous one. Told the sales associate that I just wanted a basic phone plan (unlimited talk, text, data) which is the unlimited starter package and that I specifically did not need 60gb of hot spot. Check my account with AT&T the next day, obviously expecting the first bill to be slightly higher for activation costs, etc. what a surprise to me when my first bill is $283.00 for two phone lines. After some investigation, the sales associate added the highest plan on two lines, as well as adding insurance ( a monthly extra charge on both phones) that I did not authorize and was not even mentioned to me. He also added on to upgrade devices whenever I wanted (for an extra monthly charge) Again, this was not even offered or explained to me. The monthly phone bill I wanted and agreed to was roughly $97 per month. Well with all the extra add ons and a higher plan that the dishonest associate added without consent is over $200 per month. So on top of sitting at the store for 2 hours yesterday doing everything to get a new phone, I had to sit on the phone with AT&T for another hour today to get it all set up how I wanted and what I agreed to. When you call the store, they do not even have a supervisor in the branch. I was told they will contact me. I will not be holding my breath that a manager reaches out. Very sketchy and fraud like way of doing business. If you are going to do business here, I suggest you get a print out of everything you are being charged for or even record your interaction so you have proof that you didn’t agree for things they are...

This is an Airtime Communications store (authorized AT&T dealer), not AT&T. I bought an iPhone 13 on the 16th of December. They gave me a $15 a month "AT&T Protect Advantage" plan, two "AT&T Next Up" plans (one for my phone, one for my wife's phone) that we never even discussed and charged me $5 for the phone's sim card. I went into the store and had David remove the three plans that I never wanted, but he insisted that he could not give me credit for 12 days. He also could not credit my account for the fraudulent charge for the sim card, which he says is free (of course it is). I had to call the 611 number multiple times and spend time on the phone to get money back for something I never should have been charged for. I also only received an $80 credit for my trade-in, not the $350.00 credit promised to me by two of the store employees. So... buying a phone took 4 visits to this store and 3 phone calls to AT&T instead of one visit. To be fair, on my final visit to the store, I worked with the manager who gave me a $60 credit for my time and trouble. I appreciate the gesture very much, but it doesn't...