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Albert Lea gets new cellular telephone store
Business Monday
Published Monday, November 17, 2008
With the opening of a new T-Mobile USA Inc. store in Albert Lea Saturday, community members now have three local cell phone providers to go to for services.
Though before this there were already T-Mobile customers in Albert Lea, those customers had to call in or go out of town for troubleshooting prior to this opening. Now they can walk into the store, in the old Blecker Realty building on East Main Street, and meet one-on-one with the company’s representatives if they are experiencing problems with their phone or want to get additional accessories.
Albert Lea T-Mobile store manager Benyi Atohoun said on Saturday several customers who came into the store mentioned how glad they were about the opening. At the T-Mobile store in Austin, he said, and he used to always notice people from Albert Lea coming over to that store.
“We just want to serve our customers,” Atohoun said. “The demand is there based on the experience we’ve had.”
The company can offers the usual services that a cell phone business would provide, such as selling phones and accessories, setting up a cell phone plan, troubleshooting and even helping people of any cell phone company pay their bills, he said. It can provide services to people regardless of their credit.
The company is not worried about competition, he said. It just wants to serve.
It will have an English- and Spanish-speaking person present.
T-Mobile joins existing companies in the Albert Lea community of Alltel, on Bridge Avenue next to Slumberland Furniture and in the strip mall south of Wal-Mart, and Unicel, in Northbridge Mall.
Lucie Pathmann, director of marketing communications for Alltel, said the new T-Mobile store will not change anything Alltel is doing. It will be “business as usual” for the company, she said.
“We’re used to competition, and we’ll continue to offer the products and services we have in the past,” Pathmann said.
Alltel purchased Midwest Wireless in Albert Lea in October 2006.
Unicel, part of Rural Cellular Corp., came to the community with the purchase of Cellular One from Alltel in June of 2007, after Alltel had purchased Midwest Wireless and Cellular One. Because licensing and coverage areas overlapped, Alltel gave up Cellular One, and Unicel picked it up.
Unicel marketing personnel did not respond to the Tribune’s calls.
Albert Lea-Freeborn County Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Randy Kehr said what he thinks T-Mobile mostly will bring an access to services and an enhancement of choices.
“What it does do is give current T-Mobile customers, or those who might entertain switching, more access,” he said. “And more access is always good. It’s always better to have local access than to have to drive to a different community.”
T-Mobile “is a national provider of wireless voice, messaging and data services capable of reaching over 268 million Americans where they live, work, and play,” according to its Web site. The company has 36,000 employees.
The new store will be open from 9:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.
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Comments
Posted by stitch0852 (anonymous) on November 17, 2008 at 5:04 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Had this company when I moved here. Their service was non-existent where I live. Check the service area carefully before signing a contract. It took multiple letters to the company and the State Attny General and four months to get my account cancelled even though I sent written notice and full check to cover early penalty fee. READ CONTRACT CAREFULLY you MUST send correspondence to a particular address which is only contained within their Terms and Conditions. Find the paragraph that states "correspondence is not considered received by our agent unless it is sent to xxx address." I believe it is in Washington State. If you mail it to where your payments go to or where you ask questions to, they will claim it was never received. TRUST ME, took forever to get out of this and costly to do so because of lack of service. Only room my phone would work was the bathroom. Who wants to talk while in there?
Posted by controlledhyperness (anonymous) on November 18, 2008 at 12:23 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Also check other company's bills in the fine print located at the back of your bill. Some companies who take over others will make you THINK you are not under contract with them (ie; when Altell took over Midwest Wireless), only when you pay your bill with that new company you all of a sudden have agreed to their terms and conditions, and are under their contract. Makes for big hassles.
Posted by tamilynne (anonymous) on November 18, 2008 at 9:14 a.m. (Suggest removal)
I've had T-Mobile for about 7 years now, and still love it. It is the only cellular company I will use. Yes, you do have to watch where your service areas cut out, but every where I need to use it it works! I think only time in like two years that I have lost signal completely is on the back roads to Mankato. The unlimited mobile to mobile rocks cause virtually everyone I know has T-Mobile.
The coverage is much better than it was years ago, and now they have local numbers.
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