AT&T Store Bentonville South Walton Boulevard

Had almost an identical experience in November 2021 with Bentonville store as the Feedback from DV on December 14th. If we could rate this store a negative number we would. The assistant manager screwed our upgrade of 3 phones up so bad our bill went from 150/month to almost 500 which was him adding in insurances on all phones and all lines as well as adding a 4th line on our account that went to no equipment. The manager cared less what his assistant did when my husband went into the store. We have combined spent several phone calls to AT&T loyalty line who finally fixed it yesterday! Come to find out this is owned by a franchise not AT&T. Will never go to this store for anything again. We have been with AT&T well past 20 years and would have also left immediately if we were not stuck in a contract due to trading in old phones. The owner of this store seriously needs to re-evaluate its management staff and skills working with loyal customers. Also owning up to mistakes they make and helping to correct.

Great customer service

First of all I’d like to say I’ve been an AT&T customer for a long time, at least 15 years, and have been very happy with the service I’ve received both with our cell phones and with any interactions I’ve had as a customer.

Recently, in order to make sure I understood all the details of changing our service plan and upgrading our phones, I had a couple of chat sessions and phone calls with AT&T. Then I made an appointment to go into this store and do it all in person thinking it would be better to make all the changes face to face.
(I usually go to a different store, but I just happened to notice this one recently and it was closer to home.)

In the store I let them know I’d like to change our data plan to an unlimited plan which was simple enough, and the price is what I saw online and was the same as what I had been told.

Then I told them we had 5 phones we would like to upgrade and gave them a list of the existing phones and the new phones. As they were entering those in, I happened to ask how the billing for the new unlimited plan would work. They checked and said that my new billing cycle had already started a couple of days ago so on my next bill I would be charged for my existing data plan plus the unlimited plan I was changing to. Essentially double the normal amount. I asked if the plans would be pro-rated and was basically told “no, that’s just the way it works since I wasn’t changing plans on the day my billing cycle started”. From a common sense point of view this doesn’t make any sense and I told them this also, and asked if they could double check. They told me they’d been “doing this for 6 years and they’d never seen it work any other way”. I offered to show them a chat transcript I had in an email from earlier the same day where I was told that I would be credited for the differences of the plans on my upcoming bills. They didn’t act interested but I showed them anyway, and still said there’s nothing they could do. I was given the vague answer of “maybe they can do that when you call but we can’t do that here”.

After looking at the person in disbelief for a second or two, I told them I thought I had better make another call to AT&T to find out who was correct. They handed back my list of phones, as if to say “good luck with that”. And so I left.

I’d like to think that the AT&T billing system is intelligent enough to not charge customers for services they weren’t using all by itself, whether or not the store associates knew about it, but I wasn’t willing to take that chance.

During my short walk to my car I seriously contemplated whether or not I should continue to be an AT&T customer.

I immediately called AT&T again and after a short wait was connected to a wonderful rep who was very helpful and proactively said they would “back date” my service change to the day of my billing cycle, to avoid any confusing charges/credits on my next bill. And then also helped me with each of the phone upgrades providing lots of useful info along the way and always asking if I had any questions at every step.

In the end I don’t know if associates in AT&T stores aren’t able to make billing changes like this or just don’t know how. I do know that there is one associate in this particular store that can’t and doesn’t and does not care.

Seriously, unless you just need to go in and look at the phones, you’re better off just calling AT&T or making changes yourself online.

Spent 10 minutes trying to reach an actual person. Gave up.

Took over 2 hours to buy a new phone and we've been with at&t for 20 years. And now our bill is messed up!! Terrible customer service. Don't go there!!