Two "AT&T employees" door-to-door legit?

Door-to-door sales are NOT AT&T employees but independent contractors.

I work for AT&T and do sales management for their residential programs, such as with third party door knockers. So absolutely, yes, they are 100% legitimate. They have offices all around the country and help AT&T with acquiring customers in new fiber optic areas. As well as they help keep existing customers in your neighborhood happy through various ways. If you are afraid to sign up with them you can always ask for their AT&T UID or dealer code for future reference. Or ask them to call their manager to help explain how they can help the situation. It is unfortunate to hear how the sales rep was trying to hard sell even after you were being nice. That is something the rep can be coached on. All in all though, door knockers are just trying to do their job. It can be a tough job so for anyone reading this please take it easy on them. Even if you don’t want to buy perhaps just listen. Offer them a water. Give them a smile. Ask them how their day is rather than giving them a door slam. We were taught as kids, treat people how you want to be treated but that is tough to come by these days. People often treat people how they feel about themselves, so when you speak to a knocker I hope you’re feeling great! Bc that’s what they are hoping for too.  Have a wonderful day and a Happy New Year. 

Interesting that the same thing happened to us the other day only there was no sales pitch. They said with the new lines they needed to change out our modem and wanted to know what day worked best. I said we didn't want to switch and was told the modems needed to be switched and this was not changing my plan. I said ok. Never did they ask my name or any other info. When I got inside I saw a email from AT&T scheduling my appointment for the wrong day. Following the link I also saw my plan had changed and went up well over $200. I called and had everything cancelled. The person on the phone said I should have been informed of the up charge. (You think?) I cancelled the order.

So, whether this is a third party or not, AT&T gave them access to my account and is responsible... in my humble opinion.  (Please note this isn't a slam against AT&T. I have been with them for 50+ years... all the way back to Bell South.)

One thing the "door knockers" need to consider as does AT&T is that nowadays these salespeople are not just trying to catch someone at home - they are coming to my place of work. More than 50% (some data shows 67%) of the country is working virtually which means when they come knocking on that door, they are knocking on my OFFICE door. Big difference from stopping by my house. Those of us that are business owners and CEOs had to radically change our business practices to adjust to the pandemic. Maybe it is time AT&T does too. And Helping1 needs to consider that. Telling us we need to smile, offer water and just listen is bullsh$t. I don't condone being overly rude or slamming a door but only because it raises my blood pressure and may break my door. 

When I am working and my office door is closed I do NOT want any distractions. Nothing has changed since I took my employees virtual. And to say AT&T has no ability to control what the people door-knocking are doing or saying is all a bunch of crap. It is called a "field education program" and they are highly effective. Give your field contractors big badges with their names & IDs clearly visible, tie their compensation partially to commission and partially to the number of complaints versus commendations that come in from the community, and fire the trouble makers. Quick. You would see an improvement in your ratings and revenue overnight.

The only suggestion I could make to the frustrated homeowners here since it seems AT&T wants to tell us to freaking smile and offer these sales contractors a drink is to put a video with audio security system at your front door. Don't answer your door in person - do it remotely, even if you are home. Tell the person standing there you are not interested and if they start a sales pitch anyway just mute them. The problem is not everyone can afford or get access to this solution so, again, it is not on the consumer to fix and may not have much impact anyway.

Now, I have to get back to work. And if I made Helping1 upset - that's ok - because they will just smile and offer me a latte!

Although I loathe door to door sales how are they to know your working from home from your suedo office 

They are not to know I am working from home from my very real office. But they could make some common sense, logical decisions by looking at the data. Here is some. The percentage of Americans working from home in 2020 nearly doubled because of the pandemic. These are workers with at least a bachelor's degree (ages 25+). In 2020, 65% were working from home which was a 28 point increase from 2019. The percentage of people working from home is much lower for those with only a high school diploma (19%). Considering a full 15-24% of Americans remain unvaccinated, those numbers for workers at home won't be going down any time soon because we are going to be stuck with Covid for a while. Therefore, AT&T has a professional duty to provide care to the customer and a fiduciary duty to ask questions and challenge management. All AT&T executives would have to do is check their QA records to see there is a real problem out there - and fix it. They must not want to. I have been a CEO for 22 years and if I treated my clients like this - I would have them for long. If my employees treated our clients like this - I would not have the employee for long.

So post a "NO SOLICITING" sign by your doorbell.

They are third party sales ask them for their employers number they don’t work for AT&T. 

@MSCMOOR 

Here....feel free to post this on your front door: