[AT&T Samsung Galaxy S 4 General] hamzer11:
I read a few of your responses in this thread and I believe while your heart is in the right place it's actually you who is responding with blinders on (in favor of your company). Clearly you feel bad for this folks that you constantly refer to as "slaves." I am sure some of them would take great offense to that.

First, I think it should be clarified that OP seems to have gone into a store and did a face-to-face return. The folks you refer to as dealing with billing issues and such are usually the ones on the other side of the 800 number. Additionally, when I read OP I read it as I was advised such and such and while it sounds absurd, what do you guys think? I imagine if a mechanic told you that to fix the lag in your transmission you should drive backwards for an hour, you would reject the advise but would probably be curious enough to get feedback from others.

Aside from this I believe your entire notion of what the responsibilities of these representatives of your company are is incorrect. When you argue that they can not tell you they don't know, else they get fired, you are saying that it's okay for someone you are going to and spending your hard-earned money with to blatantly lie instead of saying they are not sure. No company advocates this. It is far more likely for an employee to lie and get fired for misdirecting a customer than to be fired for saying that they are unsure but will find out for you. I worked in retail many years and it was never okay to lie to make (and/or save) a sale. How can you say the person calling about the issue and expecting the tech support to magically know is in the wrong? That's what tech support is for. And if they don't know they should log and escalate the issue. At no point is it okay to give whatever answer comes to mind and think it's okay. At no point is it okay to formulate an opinion as a fact and sell it. It's okay to not know what a bootloader is or what causes lag. But it is NOT okay to pretend to know or offer a half-witted response.

I agree with you that they can't know everything technically. That's not the issue here. The issue is that the rep answered in a matter of fact tone that "properly" activating a device would cure lag issues in a $200 phone. They did not say that it's possible it might, or explain that when you properly activate AT&T pushes some sort of optimization to the device. It was just a matter of fact statement seemingly pulled from thin air. You talk about the majority of purchasers not being technically savy. Those are the ones I fear for most. Because they would take the advise from the rep that you feel can be a lie because their jobs are on the line and end up outside of their return period with a phone giving all sorts of issues. They then will blame it on the android experience as a whole.

You work for AT&T. Perhaps you should email the heads of the departments that handle these folks. Advise them that you are a member of several blogs and online forums where it seems that customers are being misdirected by the store reps. Perhaps you can suggest better training for them. But to suggest that the consumers should be more sympathetic and advocate that it's okay for the reps to say whatever they must is not in line with any company's policy that I know of.