Verizon Wireless has been fraudulently inflating sales of prepaid phones this year, certain Verizon retailers charge in an explosive lawsuit filed this week.
-------------------------------------
Interesting.
I guess the guy was using his system to his own advantage. I am sure he is not alone and many retailers do this if there is profit in it. Maybe Verizon shouldn't pay $55 per prepaid activation! Seems kind of high actually.
Prepaid customers should count with a grain of salt because they can come and go as they please and some may be fake, or just temporary.
Home ISP, RR-Turbo WiFi, $80/mo | Verizon 4G, $30/mo Unlimited
School, $5,000/semester | Work
Keep all PHONE discussion within the Verizon Phone Discussion sub forum. We will close/move threads without notice if you do not follow the the VZW forum rules. Report inappropriate posts by clicking on the red triangle in the upper right hand corner of any post, or the orange triangle in the bottom left for Premium members.
Odd that VZW execs would encourage this, and a demonstration of the failure of companies blindly looking at performance metrics. VZW lost something on each activation that just put a $30 card on then kicked back $55 to the retailer -- but hey, the prepaid numbers are bigger! Success!
I also heard that these same execs where not allowing any other indirect agents to enter the new york market, after they got fired Moorehead and many others started opening doors in NY.
The article was really not clearly written. I think it said that ZCom had set a quota demanding more prepaid activations, under pressure from Verizon. ZCom told their franchised stores to cheat by activating old phones with their own money, and to either give the phones away or merely keep them in a drawer until Verizon paid the commission on the activations. The stores sued ZCom.
Why would anyone do this. Prepaid acts don't count towards our quota or Volume Bonuses anyway so who cares. Plus my area doesn't pay $55 on prepaid acts either.
Why would anyone do this. Prepaid acts don't count towards our quota or Volume Bonuses anyway so who cares. Plus my area doesn't pay $55 on prepaid acts either.
In NYM prepaid activations go towards your gross adds.
It's funny, because 2 years ago one of our ex-AMs was bragging about how one of his locations had 120 new activations one month. In NYM you're lucky to have 50 new activations in a month - meanwhile this store was in a crap location doing 120 fake activations. That AM was soon "transferred" out of our region.
I would guess Zcom had a contract where pre-pay acts counted differently than for most other agents. Why in the world would Zcom even bother to take the time to pressure agents unless it had something to gain.
Even so, the chance of these staying active for 6 month had to be near zero.....essentially this was a ridiculous form of check-kiting.
This is the sort of thing, as mentioned above, the kind of thing you can expect when metrics trump everything else. Not sure if they do, but if certainly feels like it.
The bigger picture here is if they did this in that area what's to say it hasn't been done elsewhere with different businesses. It'll be interesting to see if they get class action status.
Nothing confusing about it, the ASM's only make commissions on new lines not upgrades, so it makes sense that executives where pushing them to do prepaid activations since they act as new lines in their markets, a mistake I'm sure Verizon will not make again LOL
What stood out to me is the relationship the Verizon executives had with the owner of Zcom, which now also reveals how Zcom got so many doors in the NY market.
There is no doubt in my mind that many of the guys who have 100+ plus doors also got blood on their hands, much of this growing over night to 100 doors is not magic and probably has more to do with favoritism than solid management and operational genius. Think about it, if Verizon gave you MDF to pretty much cover the entire cost of buildout, a credit line to purchase as many phones as needed, AND getting you locations approved left and right how long do you think it will be before you have 50 stores? 100? 500?
I believe we will hear more about Verizon execs getting in bed with indirects, we've been seeing this happen in front of our eyes for years. How many of us have seen Verizon ASM's quit Verizon to work for one of the national indirects?
Originally Posted by AT&T Snatcher
I would guess Zcom had a contract where pre-pay acts counted differently than for most other agents. Why in the world would Zcom even bother to take the time to pressure agents unless it had something to gain.
Even so, the chance of these staying active for 6 month had to be near zero.....essentially this was a ridiculous form of check-kiting.
This is the sort of thing, as mentioned above, the kind of thing you can expect when metrics trump everything else. Not sure if they do, but if certainly feels like it.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by vzwinagent
Bookmarks