Windows Phone Purchasing Horror Stories

[zorb58]

So I was recently in the local AT&T store in Pittsburgh, PA and was looking at a Lumia 920 with my friend, trying to get him to buy it. We were the only two in the store at the time and a sales person met with us immediately. I pretended to be completely impartial, and my friend legitimately is impartial, and we asked about his thoughts and let him give his pitch. Not surprisingly, he started the bashing immediately, saying that Windows Phone was missing a lot of apps. He went on about this for some time and when he finally piped down, I asked him about the camera quality. He told me that Nokia's camera on the 920 was not even in the top 5. (This was before the 1020 was announced) I asked which ones were in the top 5, and he listed 3. He could not go beyond the iPhone, GS4, and HTC One, yet he wouldn't admit that Nokia's camera was top 5 quality. I wouldn't mind so much if he actually had a list of 5. He went on about apps some more and then we left. He really didn't want to have a high level conversation about the phone and tried to steer us away.

Anyways, I want to hear other horror stories. I've read them in comments and a few other threads, but I want this to be a repository for everyone's concerning experience. Let's face it, most of us on this site want Windows Phone to succeed, but it can't be done when partial sales people are in charge of the conversation. Windows Phone, as we know, is lagging in the United States at the expense of iOS because of Apple's "trendiness" among the "tech" people that operate and work in mobile carriers' stores here in the states.

When this list of horror stories gets sizable I will be repeatedly forward it to the appropriate individuals at Nokia and Microsoft in a respectful manner. So... Let's hear 'em!

 

[stmav]

Shouldn't you be forwarding them to the carriers? How are Microsoft and Nokia supposed to control their salesmen?

 

[zorb58]

The carriers don't care. It is Nokia and Microsoft's responsibility to ensure that their products are getting the level of exposure that the carriers said they would be getting. If you go into a grocery store early in the morning you will see representatives from various companies ensuring that displays are properly set up and placed according to contract. I know that Nokia has similar representatives and it would be good to simply email and tweet to wherever is appropriate and maybe get some action on hiring more or better representatives to improve WP's perception.

 

[stmav]

Good luck. Let's just hope this thread doesn't take a wrong turn.

 

[LMZR]

I went to a store looking at the Samsung ATIV S and the Lumia 920 (The 520 was just released down here 1.5 month ago.)

A guy came up to be and asked me which Windows phone i liked and i said the 920, he began to rant on how bad Nokia was going with WP's sales (Bull****) and he said that the Samsung ATIV S would be a better long term investment.

I completely ignored him, about 1 month later i got a Lumia 520, and considering getting the Lumia 920 which is currently on sale.

 

[tgp]

Last night I was in a corporate AT&T store in my local mall. I had to wait about an hour, and in that time I observed lots of sales pitches. It seemed to be all about Android! I saw a few customers retiring their iPhones and leaving with new Androids. I overheard one salesman recommend a Nokia if going with Go Phone, but I didn't see them go to where they were. Of course I saw lots of phones (I mean customers' phones actually in use, not display devices) and besides mine I didn't see a single Windows Phone.

One interesting thing they had beside the 1020 was a box to show how well the camera works with low light. I tried it, but it was a fail. I didn't mess with the camera settings, so I don't know why it didn't work well. My Nexus 4 did way better, so I know something wasn't right!