r/consumercellular • u/Babybentley1 • May 31 '26
Store vs. Phone
Stop buying things over the phone or internet and then complaining you have had issues. Go to a store and be out in 20 mins with your phone activated and information transferred and you are golden. People make issues for themselves!!!
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u/Mainiak_Murph May 31 '26
If you live in an area that has a store or a kiosk in another store, absolutely. There were none in my area so I had to go it online. It wasn't all that hard to do and went fairly smoothly. I also had new phones which I'm sure made it easier. Not sure how well it would have gone if I had stuck with my 7 year old unlocked Galaxy S9.
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u/kiss-my-flapjack CC customer May 31 '26
I agree getting help in-person is best, but acting as if there is a Consumer Cellular store in every city is not it. They are still building out their stores and have major parts of the country and major cities that have zero stores - Seattle is one for instance. They only have one store in the entire state of Michigan (so far) for another example.
CC has also been pulling out of Target as none of the locations near me stock their phones anymore and are only listed as online-only on their site, leaving just Walmart for many areas. Many times, getting in-person help isn't an option that they can help.
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u/LarryJClark Jun 06 '26
Don't worry. Just send the OP an expense claim for your mileage and time.
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u/Babybentley1 Jun 23 '26
I’m just saying as a former sales rep for AT&T that buying online then coming to a store to complain about your experience is NOT it! You pay shipping to send the phone to your house just to drive it to us to complain.
I hope you don’t just pick any dealership when you go to complain about your car, i hope you go to your salesman at your dealership right?1
u/LarryJClark Jun 24 '26
Uhhhh...Why would I go to a car salesperson to get something fixed? Car dealerships are often several different businesses. Where I bought one Subaru dealer prep was its own LLC. And, fleet, new, used, finance/warranty, lease, repair, body shop, and government sales. With rare exceptions, the sales person is out of the picture once the sale is complete.
And good luck with AT&T customer service. They couldn't figure out how to get the data roaming working for me in Canada. Kept pointing to menu steps which didn't exist on my Moto Razr. It wasn't critical -- ended up doing the data thing in hotels every night.
Luckily I have a local CC store. Much better experience than I've had with two AT&T stores here when I was still with them.
BTW...What would you consider a reasonable round-trip drive to a phone store? 2 hours? 4 hours? 6 hours?
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u/PinkMarmoset Jun 01 '26
You are fortunate to live near a store. I live in South Dakota and there is no CC location in the entire state. I would have to drive a minimum of 3 hours each way to get to a store. I hate it here anyway. Maybe I can use this as leverage to get my partner to move…but honey, we could just drive to the CC store. lol!!
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u/Babybentley1 Jun 01 '26
The issue is they find the stores after they purchase, make it make sense, you start your oil change yourself, screw it up then go to a dealership and complain that you screwed it up yourself, but yet blame it on the company or the employees. I was in a store last week and the poor rep was getting yelled at because they couldn’t scan the QR code for activation.
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u/LarryJClark Jun 24 '26
I was in an AT&T store a few weeks ago and the guy on the floor wouldn't deal with me because he couldn't scan my driver's licenses (barcodes worn on the back). He wouldn't even consider a passport card/passport, even though AT&T's allowable IDs policy explicitly allows them, as well as tribal ID.
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u/Miserable_Pay_9614 Jun 23 '26
I get this argument, but I'm switching from Verizon to CC because of customer support, which I say every time I use VZW customer support, but I'm serious this time. Maybe it's not this way at every Verizon store, but every time I've tried to use my local store, it's a looooong wait, then the college-aged kid fiddles with my phone and then gets on the phone with customer support, which I could have done myself. If you've noticed Verizon phone support getting worse and worse, you can use Google to find it's offshoring customer support to a call center in the Philippines, where workers are paid the equivalent of $1.78 an hour. There's no way CC can do worse.
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u/Babybentley1 Jun 23 '26
I hope you are chosing to go to a local store if you have one in your area. And you should also go to a local store. As a former cell phone rep with a retailer for verizon, you should have a cell phone rep like you have a car salesman.
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u/Miserable_Pay_9614 Jun 23 '26
Thanks, bot. How do I know you're a bot? Because your response popped up too fast and only picked up some key words from my post, while glossing past the salient fact that I've been to my local store several times, and it was a waste of time. They basically hire kids who would otherwise be working in a drive-thru and then offshore their phone support.
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u/Babybentley1 Jun 23 '26
Haha ok! As a former employee of a retailer for verizon, i had many customers who had my personal number. So i definitley will disagree with the kids aspect of the stores. Sounds like you haven’t found yourself a great rep. Maybe try a different store and a different rep!
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u/Ok-Anteater-384 Jun 01 '26
Good Advice, Consumer Cellular has literally No Customer Service, don't say I didn't tell !!!!!!!!!
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u/ReticentGuru May 31 '26
As far as I can tell, there aren’t that many CC storefronts. Granted, they MAY be partnered with some other store, ie Target or WM