Sprint employees don't like to sell Windows phone

[jchapman01]

I had this problem with people in my store all the time. I'm the sole WP7 user and I probably sell 1/3 of all the WP7 phones in my store (we have six employees.) At first no one would even suggest a WP7 to any customer looking for a smartphone because of the Windows name and fear that it was too much like WinMo 6.5. Its taken nearly a year for them to even consider it as an option other than Android or Blackberry. Now that the Focus S and the Focus Flash have been released, WP7 will start to sell even more because of the premium quality devices. As hard as it was to convince them (tho they'd never used it) that WP7 is a good smartphone OS, no one in my store would have had anything negative to say about it to a customer. If you know what you want... that's exactly what you're gonna get!

 

[KingCrimson]

So far WP7 is a horrible failure.

 

[cckgz4]

There is. Buy it from AmazonWireless: Cell Phones and Plans

For the past 3 upgrades, I've gotten my phones through them. They usually undercut carrier pricing. After a month or so, prices usually drop to a penny for a 2 year contract.

Forgot about that (haven't used AmazonWireless but I heard they were good along with Wirefly).

 

[cckgz4]

So far WP7 is a horrible failure.

/sarcasm

 

[based_graham]

WP needs its own stand with a prebuilt feature set e.g. sync to live facebook twitter etc, has zune pass, has an xbox live account, e-mail etc so people can see the full feature set.

Microsoft needs to do this send a stand to a dedicated carrier with a prebuilt phone with settings on it. not sure how this is going to work but it needs to be done!

People that have Xbox, PC's and dont need a crazy super phone should 100% go with WP because of the functionality between all 3.

WP7 with full feature set is a f*cking amazing phone but with nothing setup its just so dull and lifeless.

Breath life into these phones and they will sell to the masses

 

[based_graham]

Also I would include little perks such as 3 months free zune pass, 1 month free xbox live, and a 10 dollar app credit for buying a WP its time for users to start experiencing the Windows ecosystem.

MS is dropping all of this cash might as well give free services to go along with their phones. If somebody has connects at Microsoft please let them know this can sky rocket sales especially for high school students who cant afford iphones yet!

 

[Rico]

Are people still surprised that salespeople aren't up-to-date on Windows Phone, particularly at Sprint? Salespeople aren't geeks and don't follow this stuff in their free time. They do the sales trainings and recommend what they like and what they think they can sell, which is mostly Android. And Sprint has one device, the Arrive, priced at $199. It's ridiculous. I could've sold one last night, but there's no way I'd recommend a phone that'll likely be EOL as soon as newer hardware is released to a customer who'd be stuck with it for two years.

 

[wolf1891]

We know Windows phone is catching on now. We got a spam bot through the registration process. That only happens when a site is getting enough traffic. Woohoo, the revolution has begun.

*snickers...*

 

[silentbob343]

As others have said, the lack of mango seems like samsungs issue. As far as stability this phone has been worlds better than the year old Android phones I played with.

 

[lumic]

Get the women out of the carrier stores!

No, seriously. Do these employees get told to say such things, or do they decide to impose their own bias into real situations?

 

[mattemer]

In South Jersey here, and I've had the same experience. I'm hoping Sprint gets a new WP7 soon, b/c I rather not get the Arrive b/c it is getting old, but the few times I've gone into my local sprint store to play with it, i get the "really? why are you looking at windows phones?" The last time i was in there, i did have a bittersweet experience. This time, someone said "oh yeah, windows phone, 'george' over there loves his" (name has been changed to protect the innocent), so i was mildly happy that a salesman liked the windows phone. i turn around, and it's like a 60 year old guy who i've talked to before who knows NOTHING about any single phone they sell.

I've asked the one chick's opinion of windows phone the first time i played with it, and she just basically acting angry that the phone was even in the store taking up potential android space. But at the same time, i was complaining about the battery life on my epic, and she took that from me and tried to "show me something" - meanwhile i had LP on there, so apparently she was unable to navigate the phone if it wasn't 100% stock.

This just backs up what someone else was saying, they aren't like us, they know nothing about the phones other than what their sales material tells them. SOrry for the ramble, just frustrated with Sprint and their lack of wp7 love.

 

[power5]

Cell phone sales reps are a step above car salesmen in my book. Most know absolutely nothing about what they are selling. They just know some keywords to entice the potential customers. I gave an impromptu quiz to a VW salesman one time on a test drive. Apparently the 1.8t GTI I was driving was a VR6 and had a 6 speed transmission. It was obviously a 4cyl as the 1.8t on the back where he put the magnetic license plate indicated. Also the lack of the number 6 on the gear shift should have been a dead giveaway that there was only 5 gears. But he did know that it had curtain airbags and was a top safety pick or some other BS. I told him how much power it had, how the traction control worked and a few other things he had no idea about. Obviously I did not purchase anything from him. I think I may start scouting my sales rep for my titan purchase in a couple weeks. I do not want to walk in on the day it is released and have to give a sale to someone who tries to push a different phone on me.

 

[Piratelooksat40]

Stop it!

Sorry to hear of the bad news, but it's Samsung to blame, not MS. Like mentioned before, Samsung, did not clear everything with Microsoft before hand and now they are trying to fix the situation(which at this point, they(Samsung) should swith all the trouble 1.4 handsets to the problem free sets)

People ae arguing that it is not a failure, I would disagree. This are not business applications. If we roll out 50 thousand Exchange seats and 2 thousand have problems then we can consider it is a success. Te problem is that is a central decision and they can manage it.

In the consumer wolrd, if something does not work, they make the decison on future purchsed and complain to 10 other peoplel. The bottom line, if you have a Samsung 1.4, you don't get the update so it is a FAIL. It happend 4-5 months agao with the first release, and it was a fail. Peo ple that have a 1.4 then it is a FAIL regardless of what Microsot does. The need to take some of the money they are planning for launches and let people swap out these 1.3's. Even if you allow a customer for a small amount to swap phones and increst their contract. It would make the customer happy, it would help rive units, it would get rid of these lemons(Samsung Focus 1.4), and move new inventory.

If they don't do something we are going to lose these customers for a long time.

 

[power5]

Agree. But I bet Samsung has already crunched the numbers. The cost to replace the probably less than 1% of their total handset production does not bother them. They see the 1.4 owners as acceptable collateral damage. If they thought they were very important customers they would have fixed the issue faster or done an exchange program. Have any of you 1.4 owners contacted samsung directly? I would have emailed a CSR and asked for an RMA by now. Samsung is not going to issue a recall but that does not mean they will not honor individual requests.

 

[Baka]

To be honest, the arrive is kinda meh.

If "meh" stands for Most Exceptional Handset, then yes, yes it is meh.

Rocking my Arrive for 6 months now and couldn't be happier. Awesome, awesome phone.

 

[bilzkh]

This is my limited experience based on a total of 5 different Rogers stores (Canada)...

Last year when I was buying my Focus, my experience with local carriers was OK - I went to 2 stores, one didn't have the Focus and the other I got it without any problems. In fact, the salesperson was reasonable. He didn't own a WP7 device nor did he try it out until I asked to buy it (didn't try to divert me to other phones), and was just downright impressed with the device - and started bashing iPhone. A couple months in I visited a Rogers section at Future Shop with a friend, and when I started promoting WP7 to the sales rep he pretty much shrugged me off.

Almost one year later ... I went to 2 different Rogers stores, and I was fairly happy, but maybe not surprised. Firstly, Nokia has certainly generated a little hype, I asked a salesperson if we'll get 2nd-gen devices and she said she didn't know, but immediately admitted that she was excited about WP7.5 on Nokia. She was quite familiar with the WP7.5 OS' strengths and said its "marriage" with Nokia is a great move. She went on to praise Nokia's hardware quality and innovation, etc. At another store, I went to get a replacement internet stick and while the whole admin process was going I started speaking to I think a lead rep or something, and again, he was praising the Nokia + WP7.5 combo - saying stuff about how Nokia has good hardware and now it has good software, was amazed to see the response and fluidity of WP OS, etc.

To be honest I think people see the Lumia-series as a Nokia phone above anything else, even in terms of OS. Yes they'll learn later that the OS is WP7.5, but it isn't something that sticks heavy on people's heads until they actually tie themselves into the phone. For now, at least when you check out YouTube videos, they see Nokia as the 3rd contender against Apple and Android, not necessarily the WP OS. But at the same time, a lot of people (e.g. my Android/Apply/BB user friends) are seeing Nokia as a solid contender with WP7.5, and a fair number of them are actually planning to buy a Nokia WP handset.

 

[cedarlog]

So far WP7 is a horrible failure.

thats not normal of 180 posts

=====
on topic maybe they get more money by offering android
anyway i had a thought about recording the conversation with one of those sales men and send it to microsoft

 

[jchapman01]

So far WP7 is a horrible failure.

your mom's a horrible failure! (just tryin' to be funny, no insult intended)

 

[jdd77]

Wow! I went into my local Sprint store to look at purchasing the Arive and asked the employee if they had any in stock and the sales rep fround and asked me why do I want a windows phone. I told her that I think that her attitude on windows phone is why they are not selling them against the Android and IOS competition. I asked her had she even used the new os and she said no because they had so many customers bummed from WM6.5. I told her that I have been at ATT playing with WP7 and in my opinion it is way smoother than Android and she couldn't respond in a positive manner. She told me that she thinks I should go with Android. I said no and she still insisted that I go with the E4GT and I told her I already have that phone and didn't like the OS. She basically told me to really think hard about purchasing WP7. What a wierd experience.

There are 7 Verizon stores in my general area and not one of them even carry a windows phone. I got mine via mail order. When I drove around to all of the stores looking for a case for my trophy, of course there were none. I think it's kind of understandable though, because the kin 1 and 2 were such failures for Verizon that they don't even wanna think about Microsoft..

 

[power5]

This is my limited experience based on a total of 5 different Rogers stores (Canada)...

Almost one year later ... I went to 2 different Rogers stores, and I was fairly happy, but maybe not surprised. Firstly, Nokia has certainly generated a little hype, I asked a salesperson if we'll get 2nd-gen devices and she said she didn't know, but immediately admitted that she was excited about WP7.5 on Nokia. She was quite familiar with the WP7.5 OS' strengths and said its "marriage" with Nokia is a great move. She went on to praise Nokia's hardware quality and innovation, etc. At another store, I went to get a replacement internet stick and while the whole admin process was going I started speaking to I think a lead rep or something, and again, he was praising the Nokia + WP7.5 combo - saying stuff about how Nokia has good hardware and now it has good software, was amazed to see the response and fluidity of WP OS, etc.

Just sounds like they were told what to say about nokia phones from some sales press release or something.