Employee Discount Scams

Most companies have alliances with other companies to offer their employees discounts. I’ll take my recent experience with AT&T to show an example of how you can get scammed by these.

By the way, the scam comes from either shady sales people trying to make a commission or inexperienced employees that don't know what they are doing not the company itself.

I went down to the AT&T store to purchase a new wireless service. I informed the rep of my discount. They gave me the pricing, which I liked. They informed me it would take one to two billing cycles to receive my credit. I asked if they would back date the credit. The rep informed me that they would. If you read my previous post on dealing with customer service, you’ll understand why I called in shortly after to check my employee discount status.

I was told they did not see the “employee discount application” yet. However, it takes up to one or two billing cycles to show up. At the end of the second month, I called back. They informed me no application was ever submitted.

I went back to the store and addressed the issue with the store rep. She refused to accept any responsibility in the matter. She advised me I would have to wait another one to two billing cycles.

I called back into customer care. They did provide me with some credits on the account. This was most likely due to me calling in from the beginning and not just after the fact.

During this entire time I kept requesting what my future bill would be. It was always different and it was always higher than what they told me last time.

I went into a different store and spoke with them and customer care on the phone until I reached the bottom of everything. Here’s what was not disclosed to me from the beginning.

Employee credits apply to the voice and data portion of my bill but not the texting portion, which is mandatory with the plan.

What I did expect from the beginning, but the reps did not know, was the discounts did not go to the taxes and the pricing was taxed at the retail price and not the actually price I was charged.

In addition, they would not give me a discount on the second line I wanted to add. So, this forced me to go to Sprint and use my discount over there for my wife’s phone.

I’ve become painfully aware that, if you don’t have something in writing and in detail, large corporations will rape you financially. This has not always been the case. However with so many customers trying to call in and scam companies for credits, they no longer trust what customer say anymore and are less likely to fix it as they would have in the past.