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| 11-08-2012, 10:37 AM #282
 Originally Posted by mcphersc What's the point of preordering something if its not going to arrive when it's supposed to. Also, other than the discount, there seems to be such little advantage to being a Premier user. The Premier status comes with your employer signing a contract for service with AT&T. Most companies have a contract with the big three carriers in the market, usually neighboring in the hundreds of users across the country when all users are combined. To earn and retain the business carriers pass along a discount, usually higher than what is offered to the general employee, to the members of management and their fleet of users who will be using the phones for business. That same discount is aso extended to personal lines of service under the terms of the contract but the AT&T rep that is serving the company has to be the one to record the sale, beyond that they are just any other Premier AT&T customer.
Receiving a corporate discount works two ways - one, because your company either utilizes enough lines of service to qualify for discounted pricing or their monthly spending is high enough you receive special pricing on service which may also include free activation and a discount on accessories. Two, the level of this discount is maintained by the number of subscribers from your company that register with the carrier. The more people in your company use AT&T, the better your offer will be. If by comparison year-to-date employees leave the company, drop AT&T or switch to another carrier the discount may be reviewed, modified and possibly restricted / eliminated.
Speaking from the carrier side of things on the B2B market, owners of a company pretty much get their phones and service for free. (Think Fortune 500) They may end up paying off-contract pricing for phones because they don't want a contract or cannot upgrade technically but that car charger, case, screen protector - free. I remember setting up a lawn care business with 50 phones for their fleet of mowers. They previously had Nextel, but instead of using Direct Connect they would rack up minutes calling family back in Mexico. Not being racist - that was what really happened. To get the business the company was sold a plan of $10 per user, which gave 1,000 minutes but no features. The phones were restricted to company lines. Oh, did I mention the rep goofed and forgot the $10 plan (a retention plan at that) didn't include Caller ID which at the time was extra? Yeah, we had to add that at no-charge plus "phone to phone" which let them call the other lines for free. $500 a month before taxes with room for further revenue from them. They wouldn't use features, of course, since they went with the most basic models.
Being a business that does "xxx,xxx.xx" amount of business a month has its perks. Back in my day being corporate or "Premier" meant more than a 10%, 20% or more discount. You had Enterprise customer service and reps dedicated to handling corporate clientle. If you needed a replacement phone, you received it that day. Yes, I saw it happen. I remember pushing a dolly of 100 phones across a busy street in evening rush hour traffic between a retail store and our regional sales office to take care of a customer that had to have phones first thing the following morning.
I admit the allure of being Premier now is just a discount, but it is still beneficial to have and can help your company down the line so long as others around you continue to stay with AT&T.
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