AT&T employees were completely oblivious to an error code in their system that prevented a customer from upgrading their phone. They were so frustrated with the carrier’s inability to work its own software that they switched to Verizon.
That’s what Best Buy employee Dallas (@dallas_ponzo) said happened in a clip that accrued 3.3 million views. In it, he details the frustrating experience he had in trying to troubleshoot workers’ issues.
A mystifying error code
The Best Buy employee begins his story time from the driver’s seat of a parked car. He shares that he was assisting two customers. They’re a couple with two paid-off iPhone 15 Pro Maxes and they had some upgrades available on their plan.
So the worker begins to work on those upgrades, and the husband’s phone goes through without a hitch. However, Dallas says when he tries to upgrade the wife’s unit, he gets an error message: SDG offering code restriction. He admits that this is a code he’s never seen before, which prompts him to give a ring to AT&T’s customer support line.
After explaining the situation to the AT&T employee, Dallas soon realized that this issue was going to be more problematic than he originally anticipated. He says the AT&T employee wasn’t familiar with the error code either. Their recommendation was to try logging into a different computer, but that doesn’t work either.
Since this was taking more time than anticipated, the wife asked if she could “go to Michael’s down the street.” Her husband agreed and stayed behind the assist with the phone situation while she shopped at the arts & crafts store.
Phone tag
After Dallas called AT&T again, he was placed on a 10-minute hold. When he finally did get someone on the line, they suggested he call Best Buy’s “Bridge” line. This is a special phone number given directly to employees so they can troubleshoot in-store issues. However, after he phoned the Bridge line, he was told that AT&T reps were simply trying to pass the buck. According to the Bridge phone representative, the SDG offering code restriction was an AT&T issue that needed to be handled by AT&T.
All the while, the customer was left waiting for his wife’s phone upgrade. After Dallas phones AT&T again to try and resolve the issue, he’s told again that they can’t help him.
Their advice to the Best Buy employee is to simply try at another time. Perhaps in the hopes that they’ll be able to get someone else on the line who is familiar with the issue. Dallas apologized to the customer, who appeared understanding. They told the Best Buy worker that he appreciated the work he did in trying to find a solution.
A last attempt
The TikToker offers the customer to book a different appointment time three days later for when he’s working again, which he accepts. However, some 30 minutes later, Dallas hears the wife angrily asking for him in the store. She storms into the Best Buy and then “marches” over to him and asks, “Why can’t you do it?”
After he explained to her what happened, she seemed to understand and ended up leaving the store.
Rinse, repeat
The couple returns to the store that following Thursday in an attempt to get the phone upgraded and unfortunately Dallas receives the same error. At this point, the couple says that they’ll just transfer their phones over to Verizon. Presumably, this seemed like a better alternative than having to deal with AT&T’s employees’ inability to recognize error codes.
Dallas says he was able to get a transfer pin for Verizon and the process was a painless one. He ended up getting the husband a new iPhone since his old one was “locked to AT&T.” The wife’s phone number transfer was a “smooth” process as well that “took like 15 minutes.”
He capped off his video by stating that he couldn’t “believe…three different people didn’t know what this issue was.”
@dallas_ponzo VZW for the W
♬ original sound – Dallas
So what is this code?
A Reddit discussion posted to the site’s r/ATT sub addresses this code. One commenter said, “Best Buy employees aren’t well trained on plans,” speculating retail workers for the chain wouldn’t be familiar with this code. The same commenter wrote that SDG means “shared data group,” which means that the customer is on a joint plan. They added, “There was probably a plan mismatch or an upgrade restriction on that line if I had to guess.”
Another user gave their workaround for the problem, and it involved several steps. First, they said that checking upgrade eligibility is paramount. This means determining if the line user doesn’t have a “fraud block, roaming block, or anything else restricting the upgrade.”
They added that deleting “ALL the features on that line” is next. This includes “international long distance, roaming, tracking, visual voicemail, etc. all of them.”
Refreshing “the summary screen” is the next step after that (from the employee’s login). If the upgrade still doesn’t go through, then they’ll have to transfer the line to a 4GB plan to try and get the upgrade to work. After it goes through, they’ll then have to change it back.
TikTokers don’t think AT&T is worth the hassle
One commenter replied that they thought Dallas’ story is a good example why folks should stay away from AT&T. “That’s why AT&T service is sh*t and doesn’t work. Switch to Verizon instead. Much better 4g/5g coverage,” they wrote.
Another said that a mix-up with their cell phone provider got them stuck paying for a phone upgrade that was supposed to be on the house. “Did an upgrade for 2 phones and got charged for 2nd phone full price,” they wrote. “Called CS and they agreed but couldn’t fix it. Still paying on it. Don’t know what to do. Costing me +$800.”
“Biggest mistake I ever made was leaving my phone company for AT&T,” someone else wrote.
However, there was someone else who didn’t know why Dallas didn’t Google the error code. “Why couldn’t you just input the error code on the internet then you could find out what is wrong?” they said.
The Daily Dot has reached out to AT&T via email and Dallas via TikTok comment.
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