AT&T Store — Local services in Woodinville

Tl;dr upgrading my phones at AT&T Woodinville location was a frustrating experience marked by repeated errors and unprofessional service.

I had to travel to this location 4 times to upgrade my phones (4 of them). The first rep gave us wrong data about the after trade-in cost when I specifically asked for Samsung S23 256GB and iPhone 15 256GB. But the monthly after trade-in cost that she gave me was for the 128GB each. She essentially told us that both would be free after trade-in, which was not true.

After a week, I received an expected billing letter that showed additional fee for the At&t Next, which she didn't mention nor I authorize. I called the customer support immediately, but they told me that I had to return the phones back to the store for reprocessing. When I went back, the rep told me that I was better to call the customer service or waited half an hour until they finished with another customer. Fortunately, the store manager showed up in 5 min and very politely and apologetically re-processed the upgrades without the extra AT&T Next feature.

After another week I went back to hand over my old phones for trade-in. This time was a young boy and, just like the other ones, was not welcoming either! He processed the trade-in phones and gave me the receipts, which I only checked after going back home, upon which I noticed that he listed one of them as iPhone 12 Pro Max instead of iPhone 13 Pro Max. He also entered wrong storage sizes for the iPhones (128 GB instead of 256 GB). So, I had to go back one more time to correct it. But he told me that didn't matter because the trade-in values were the same. Again, no welcome and no apology! After I insisted that the receipt document does not clarify the promised values and the language is very vague, he called his colleague (which was the same rep who made the At&t Next mistake) to convince me. She told me the same and expected me to trust their words. I asked for some document that clarifies the promised trade-in, but all they could give me was a document with the actual trade-in value (which was much lower than the promised value), and a language that said "Up to $1000 off iPhone 15 Pro".

So, after all their mistakes and misinformations, they expected me to interpret the "Up to" language as definitive! At this point, I can only hope that they had not lied to me again until a couple billing cycle to see the actual discount values in my bill.

Overall, the experience at this location fell far short of expectations. The persistent errors, misleading information, and unprofessional service were disappointing and...

My wife and I went in a few days ago to purchase 2 new phones to replace our current phones with AT&T. As we were going through the finalization process, we were asked what phone number we would want for the new line. That caught us off guard and we stated we didn't want a new line. The manager made clear that with our unlimited plan, 4 lines would cost less than 3 because of a lower per unit cost. I asked for a new bid that only had 3 lines. That bid was, indeed, higher but, upon inspection the higher cost was because of other add-ins. Not just once, but over and over again he insisted that 4 lines cost less than 3. As I was reading through the contract, I noted that he had put a $17 per phone monthly insurance charge on each phone. When I asked about that, he said that the store was required to add this charge. If we didn't want the insurance, we could call customer service and cancel it. Reading on through the contract, he had replaced the Galaxy S22 which I wanted with a Galaxy S22 Ultra which cost $400 more. Both my phone and my wife's phone had to be ordered because they weren't in stock so if I signed the contract without reading it, I would have ended up with a phone I didn't want. That got fixed and we were back to 3 lines. Next I was going through the contract and the total with tax was going to be over $400 per month vs. my current $155; both new phones were essentially free with trade-in promotions. When I asked about that, I was told that wouldn't be our actual bill. At that point I stated that we were leaving and that we would order online. The last gasp effort on their part was to tell me we had to complete the contract because they couldn't cancel it in their computer. We could then ask for a refund. My wife and I walked out and bought phones elsewhere. If all AT&T stores were like this one, I would choose another carrier. The manager of this store is seriously unethical. I note that I am not the first reviewer to report on fraud...

Usually I go into the Issaquah AT&T store as it's closest to me. They always help resolve whatever I may need help with. Today Woodinville was closest. I went in asking for help with my account. No one was able to fully help me with what should have been a simple issue. The rep started searching the internet while I was still standing there trying to resolve the issue myself. In short, he passively told me what to try which I had and didn't help at all. He let me know there wasn't anything else he could do as he was scrolling on his phone looking at the internet. So I walked out. On my way out I realized I was locked out of my account so I went back in to ask for help from someone else. The manager was out. He came back in and basically said they don't deal with that and to call 611. As someone who's self employed I can't ever treat my clients with that level of disregard. I would drive out of my way to never go into that...