New commission plan for features?

Originally Posted by thompson182

absolute ********. no incentive to help customer if thats the case. u pay $80 for texting for 4 lines unlimited? i could tell u abotu family text but im not gonna waste my time to not get paid.

Originally Posted by cynical66

someone needs to get a hold of the actual commission agreement - i have heard if you remove individual text plans and replace them with unl group plans - you get full commission

Originally Posted by Stea1th

So if a customer comes in and says they want to remove unlimted texting, and I convince them to keep at least the 5 dollar plan...I don't get paid for that???

Cause if that's true, thats going to hurt At&t cause reps won't feel a need to save
features

Originally Posted by spitfiya3000

Thats correct. The only positive thing gained by selling a customer a lower text feature would be a lower chargeback to the original seller.

Originally Posted by The Champ

I think it's about to time to focus on finding cash flow somewhere else...

At this point, they're forcing us to sell wireline and pushing our comp plan towards that... lol so someone upgrading a PDA would mean nothing to us as reps but just an OPP and 10 dollars in features MAX. If we convince them or get them another PDA, and get them on a higher PDA plan (such as PDA UNL for 50) we will only get 20.00.

What if they go down? From a 30 dollar plan to a 15 dollar plan?

I think the only way they can remedy this is increase the at risk and goal. Goal being 1000 and payout should be 700-800.

I'm already looking for a way out of the industry.

Originally Posted by Rodimus Primal

I'm for eliminating chargebacks with features within 6 months but the doors to change a feature after 6 months should be normal. Like if a customer goes to a COR store and upgrades and gets Mediabasic, the COR rep gets paid $10. Then 8 months later if they come into my store and we see they are using like 600 txts a month and I change them to Media Works then I should get paid $15 since its outside of the 6 month window. This also keeps people on the old plans that AT&T seemed to want to get people out of.

Originally Posted by spitfiya3000

so this is the premise of the plan. It is to eliminate chargebacks, in a sense is cool, yet in reality for most of us its more of a bad thing. If you change any feature on a plan into a new feature, if in the same "feature family" (ie text, or data) the original rep doesn't get a chargeback and you only get paid on the difference of the cost. For example, a customer with two phones has a mediabasic ($9.99 text/data package) on each phone and you sell them the unlimited family text for $30, the original seller doesn't get a chrgeback for the mediabasics and the new seller only makes commission on the $10 difference of the packages. For COR stores this is huge because a lot of good "ops" were people trading windows mobile devices for blackberries or vice verse. And that resulted in a new commission based on a new $30 or $40 feature every time. Now as soon as a "data feature" is put on an account, the only way a CSR can make a commission on a new data device will by only making the data feature a larger dollar amount, which can only be done if the customer is planning on leaving the country for the year or getting them to use the phone as their modem for their computer, which both of those are pretty uncommon, at least where I am at (no 3g). This change has been made to increase AT&T revenues by forcing the sales reps to sell customers new features that they are not currently utilizing on their service which is a genious business strategy, but will, for the sales force at least, decrease commission because ultimately customers in general do not want to pay more per month for service, but when getting new phones are willing to part with one service to try a new one, yet sales reps won't even be paid for that.

Just one guys take on things.

Originally Posted by SoCal91302

The idea is to keep lowering commission until the companys' revenue is negatively affected. So far that hasn't happened, in fact it is just the opposite. The company is focused on hiring people that are willing to risk their job for a chance at a higher paycheck (in other words, disposable). The next time you check DSR, look up Simi Valley and check out their feature attainment. It is through the ROOF due to flipping features. I know the feature scam is nothing new, but look at their FPO.. some are in the $40 - $50 range. If it wasn't for the fact that they brag about it on poker night, I would think these guys are selling everyone PDA plans, even all those go phone users right? APO is covered when they have their friend come in and buy 5 or 6 jawbones and return them at a later time. DSR does not deduct for accessory charge backs. Back to the point.. commission will continue to drop (as it should, the company has not seen any reason to pay more)... wireline will be at risk starting April 1st... new hires, well, you get what you pay for. Even an ASM or RSM position would not be tempting anymore since rather the being in charge of leading a team of professionals, you will be the ringleader in a cluster-**** circus. The movie Idiocracy comes to mind.

Originally Posted by ivwshane

So have you reported this to the higher ups? If not why?

Originally Posted by SoCal91302

I have mentioned it a few times. The reactions I got were not what I expected, I guess you could say i was shrugged off, so I stopped pursuing it.

Originally Posted by ivwshane

You need to go higher or report it to the hot line number.

Originally Posted by SoCal91302

I have been working for AT&T since it was at&t and have never been informed of a hotline number.

Originally Posted by rhibbert

So here it is:
In april it affects everyone!
Pro's :
If your the original rep to add the $10 text feature and it is changed to a $15 text plan by someone else within the 6 month charge back period you do not get a charge back.
If the plan is in reverse to that ,so $15 text plan changed to $10 you only get charged back $5.

Con's
Well this is obvious you don't get paid the full amount if you upsell the customer.

Note: The only way this is in affect is if the feature is changed within the same "feature family"

Originally Posted by cingman66

First of all, we need clear definitions of "feature family."

Aside from that, I had a typical example today:
Customer came in in November to add Family Messaging to his account, which I did. 4 months later, he buys an iPhone, and the rep "flips" the family messaging code. I get a charge back because the feature hasn't vested...even though the feature is still on the account--just in a different comp code. As I understand it, this will not continue to happen under the new policy, as the feature I sold was within 6 months, and the change by the other rep was in the same "family" and didn't change the overall monthly amount. All I can say is...IT'S ABOUT TIME they fixed this blasted problem.

Assuming that this change goes into effect, that is.

Originally Posted by thompson182

absolute ********. no incentive to help customer if thats the case. u pay $80 for texting for 4 lines unlimited? i could tell u abotu family text but im not gonna waste my time to not get paid.

Originally Posted by thompson182

lol do u work for a wireless company? people don't appreciate **** first of all... second if I lower your to bill to put you on a better "device" do you know what I get out of it? um.... not a dime? we don't paid off "devices"... and if all of a sudden you trust me or some crap guess what i get? a bunch of questions and phone calls thats should go to customer service that waste my time... o yay I'll see you in 20 months for your upgrade frickin awesome!! rapport? overrated. this company cares about one thing. gross adds. not adding them? see you in 2 years.

Originally Posted by Rodimus Primal

So this does sound promising. This is for UNVESTED features within the first 6 months. For this I can say bout damn TIME! But if we upsell and whatnot AFTER 6 months it free game!

Originally Posted by JP Whoregan

this makes me sooooooooo happy I don't work for COR anymore. With my agent, I get 50% features, NO chargebacks, and it doesn't matter what feature I removed before hand. COR employees: Get the **** out while you can, it's only going to get worse from here. How do I know this? When was the last time ATT "revised" the commission plan and it actually ended up *benefiting* the sales reps? When was the last time that happened? I haven't read the details of this thing, obviously, but I'm willing to bet it doesn't lead to bigger commission checks.

Originally Posted by JP Whoregan

this makes me sooooooooo happy I don't work for COR anymore. With my agent, I get 50% features, NO chargebacks, and it doesn't matter what feature I removed before hand. COR employees: Get the **** out while you can, it's only going to get worse from here. How do I know this? When was the last time ATT "revised" the commission plan and it actually ended up *benefiting* the sales reps? When was the last time that happened? I haven't read the details of this thing, obviously, but I'm willing to bet it doesn't lead to bigger commission checks.

Originally Posted by Moneyline23

AT&T NEVER "revises" a commission plan for the better. It's ALWAYS what can AT&T do to screw the reps out of making more money and make the COMPANY more money. Everytime the reps start making any kind of decent money they seem to come up with a different commission structure to make it worse and harder for you to reach certain goals. Look how hard it is to earn AT&T Reward points compared to before. When was the last time they had a phone contest with the manufacturer to win a free phone for selling a certain amount of those particular phones? They have become sooo CHEAP in how they do things it's disgusting.

Originally Posted by lowkey16

once again, i dont know about you...but when i get paid 75% on features next month i'll be making 41% more than i make now. i dont know how you figure that's gonna make me make less money, i'd pay to see you do that math equation

Originally Posted by MrAlifEkin

I remember when Cingular paid 100% on features. They've lowered it so much that increasing it to 75% seems like they're doing the reps a favor. What a slap in the face.

Originally Posted by lowkey16

once again, i dont know about you...but when i get paid 75% on features next month i'll be making 41% more than i make now. i dont know how you figure that's gonna make me make less money, i'd pay to see you do that math equation

Originally Posted by lowkey16

uhh, are you smoking something? i'm about to go from making 34% on features to making 65 or 75% on features...i always hit at least 125% of my feature goal...that's HUNDREDS of dollars more a month than what i made last year, so how is this a bad thing? not to mention it's going to cut down on my chargebacks, i'm all for it

Originally Posted by smg1976

This is slightly off-topic, but related to feature sales in general-does everyone realize that customer service sells more features per month as a department than all the COR stores combined?!?

Yeah, a lot of it very likely has to do with "rerates", but still, that's an amazing number. And to think, there's lots of customers who claim that they'll never use messaging, Medianet, or any thing else that will cause overages. Right!

The last time a customer told me her son didn't text or use the internet, and got him a phone with PPU, her first month overages were over $1000. I use this story every day to get more features. I always say $15 seems like so little compared to $1000 in overages.

Originally Posted by Compy

Yeah, I really think this guy is missing the INCREMENTAL part of the equation.

Originally Posted by Compy

Uhm. If you understand what incremental means, you understand that you're hitting 125% of your goal when you get dollar for dollar in your feature goal. Now if you're selling a $20 feature, $20 goes towards your attainment. INCREMENTAL means that if they already HAVE a feature and you up or down sell, you're either going to get the difference or nothing at all. You're not going to have the same dollar amount of gross consistently that you do now, because you don't get $20 toward your feature attainment when you take someone to unlimited text from a Messaging 1500 or Media Works, for example. You get $5. Your gross feature numbers are not going to be the same as they are now, plain and simple.

Originally Posted by lowkey16

they more or less should be though, because i won't be getting all the chargebacks from when i sell somebody unlimited text and a month later add another line and go to family text. or when something goes crazy in the system and they can't send a picture message and customer service takes it off, only to put it right back on...guess what? still mine! my feature goal is $1600, if it weren't for those kinds of chargebacks i'd be getting paid for nearly $3,000 in features every month. none the less i'm still getting paid for about $2700 a month, i dont see it being this major change that everybody thinks it's going to be. it's just going to take my 3-400/month in chargebacks and make that shrink, you must remember that once a feature has been vested and you change it...you get full commission, not the incremental pay.

Originally Posted by lowkey16

you must remember that once a feature has been vested and you change it...you get full commission, not the incremental pay.

Originally Posted by snoopdarr

What's the official word on this? Because if the incremental applies to all features, not just those in the vesting period, then no one will make any money. My managment refuses to talk about it or roll it out (until the last second I believe)... which makes me think it'll be the worst possible scenario.

Originally Posted by ivwshane

How many of those features do you think they flipped?

Originally Posted by lowkey16

i've got the information that was given to managers, as i was the one that had to explain it during our saturday morning meeting and this is what it says: "the move from one feature to another in a feature family must occur in a month subsequent to the original feature activation month; if a feature is added and removed within the same month it will wash"

so you tell me, i was actually debating with my manager what this means today and neither of us come figure it out exactly and he's too lazy to email the compensation department so i guess i'll be doing that tomorrow.

Originally Posted by lowkey16

i've got the information that was given to managers, as i was the one that had to explain it during our saturday morning meeting and this is what it says: "the move from one feature to another in a feature family must occur in a month subsequent to the original feature activation month; if a feature is added and removed within the same month it will wash"

so you tell me, i was actually debating with my manager what this means today and neither of us come figure it out exactly and he's too lazy to email the compensation department so i guess i'll be doing that tomorrow.

Originally Posted by ATnt-RSC

It means that if the feature is flipped within the first month, the original rep will get charged back in full, and the new rep the full commission. Just like today.

Oh, and you won't get full commission after the feature has vested, only incremental.

Originally Posted by JP Whoregan

ATT is literally like a street hustler, saying "watch the birdie", waving one hand in the air while picking your pocket with the other....they're playing Three Card Monty with your guys' paychecks and commission structures, and you're letting them convince you that they're doing you a favor. They're not. They might change the color of the dildo every now and then, but in the end, you're still getting screwed.

Originally Posted by cingman66

Perfect World: All AT&T reps (COR, CS, Agents, etc.) respect one another and will not flip any unvested features under any circumstances.

Real World: AT&T places increasing pressure on all channels to be at insane feature per oportunity numbers, forcing otherwise ethical sales reps to resort to flipping any and all features they can get their hands on.

Solution: While features are in the vesting period, there will be NO commission payouts to reps unless there is an increase in monthly revenue, and in ALL circumstances, the original sales rep will NOT be charged back unless the original feature is completely removed.

Originally Posted by ivwshane

Wouldn't that encourage slamming? I mean if you aren't getting charged back then why not remove it yourself after a couple of days?

Originally Posted by k.heiner

This whole fiasco could have been avoided if the PDVU/PDPW/PDPH/PDPT/PDA1 MSG4/FTME SOCs never rotated.

Originally Posted by nick9283

heres what it boils down to with the new comp plan. we only get paid the difference. so it will be small incraments.

what to do : slam. everyone that i greet needs meda works basic or max depending on my bills . if they didnt need it its up to them to remove it via customer care becasue the minute they gave me their number they gave me permission to give them a feature to try (someitmes they know, sometimes they dont)

Originally Posted by smg1976

Ever since the commission plan change, there's a rep in our market that hasn't hit nearly what he did prior to 4.1.08. He used to do over $4000/mo. in features on the DSR, and even won points for having the highest feature per opp. Since 4.1.08, his total got cut in half, probably because he was doing tons of flipping and slamming. One of our reps is transferring to his store (because his numbers in ours are really good), and the interesting thing is, the store averages less adds/opps a month than the store than I'm at. I think the rep averages around 40/90, but the thing is, it's not in an area where alot of business people shop, and it's not in a high-traffic area.

Kinduv suspicious if you ask me.