Here’s why I will soon be switching from T Mobile to another cell phone service provider, any provider, after being with them since 1999.
I just listened to my wife cry, unable to continue speaking to the T Mobile sales rep, after spending an hour trying to get her phone replaced. We have both been loyal customers for seven years. For most of that time we were not under a contract but chose to stay with T Mobile anyway. At one point I set up a company plan that had 15 active lines. I have pumped thousands of dollars into T Mobile. Today, my wife’s phone, which has been having problems for a few months, finally quit. All I ask for our years of patronage and thousands of dollars is that they give my wife a replacement phone. It doesn’t matter which one, it could be the cheapest one they’ve got, the ones they give away when you sign up for service.
I’ve called up myself in times past and have been able to get a new phone for free. Sure, it wasn’t a great phone, but it worked. And I didn’t have to sign a new contract. They gave me the runaround, but when it got to the point of me saying “Look, if you don’t give me a free phone without signing a new contract I might as well go check out other providers to see what they’ll offer me,” well, then they gave me a free phone.
No such luck this time around. They’ve cracked down and even when my wife became stressed out and started crying it didn’t do any good. There I am telling them that I’ve been a loyal customer for seven years, we’ve been getting the runaround for the past hour, my wife’s crying, we got our call escalated to a supervisor, and they still wouldn’t give her a free phone without her having to sign a new contract for 12-24 months.
This is entirely different than the experience I had before. All I had to tell them was that I was going to look around and they gave me a free phone right away.
So why the change in policy? Maybe they were giving too many phone away? Maybe the amount of customers they lose vs. those who stay and sign up for a new contract is so small that it’s in their interests to never give out free phones without getting someone on contract. If that’s the case then I understand and appreciate that. However, that doesn’t mean I don’t want it to change and won’t encourage change, and how can I do that? First, I’ll switch to a different provider. Second, I’ll encourage others to switch when they don’t get their way. The more cell phone companies realize their customers are willing to switch providers at the drop of a hat, the more likely they are to improve services and give out freebies. But if customers stick around despite having very negative experiences, then whose fault is it if the negative experiences continue?
Lest anyone misunderstand, I am not necessarily encouraging you to not use T Mobile. I don’t really expect any other provider to be better. I am encouraging you to think about switching providers next time you have a bad experience, because it is only by switching around that we encourage the providers to get better. If any one truly starts to stand out in order to prevent customers from switching or to nab those customers who are having negative experiences elsewhere, all the other providers will improve their services to follow suit. However, if you’ve now decided you’ll never use T Mobile as a result of my experience I won’t discourage you in your choice.
This is what I love about capitalism. I’m not saying it’s absolutely the best system available, but it’s probably the best system we’re going to get, barring God himself coming down and rearranging things. If we were living in a 100% communist society right now we’d have one mobile provider (if we had one at all), complaining would be useless, and posting on a blog about it would probably be illegal. I’ll take capitalism with all its shortcomings over that system any day.
I’m a happy t-mobile customer although I haven’t had to attempt to get a new phone. I’m currently in-between contracts. I’m still waiting for the perfect phone (that I can afford) and the service it could be tied to before I sign any contracts. Your comments on t-mobile are timely for me.
I’ve heard good things about Verizon and the Motorola Q, if you’re looking for a PDA phone. I think that might be the route I go.
Thats horrible.
I personally use Cincular and have had no such issues with them, though I did back when they were AT&T.
I have also had major issues with Sprint and do not recommend them.
Verizon and Cincular seem to be the best choices for Cell Phones these days (unless you like the latest and greatest gadgets, in which case T-Mobile tends to be better). Despite the claims of both companies they seem to be about on par with one another these days so its mostly a matter of preference as to which would be better.
100% agree about Capitolism.
I like to substitute Capitolism into this quote:
Democracy is the worst form of government, except for every other we have tried.
Capitolism is the worst form of Economics, except for every other form we have tried.
why would you get upset when someone (a for-profit business) will not GIVE you something for FREE? that’s silly in itself. that being said, move to another subscriber and you will get your free phone. that also has been a silly policy anyway and causes situations just as this.
Why get upset? I don’t know if it’s a matter of being upset so much as I think it’s bad business in the long run.
Mobile phone service is a commodity. The products are the same. The service is more or less the same. The prices are more or less the same. Everyone offers more or less the same discounts. If T Mobile wants to keep me as a customer when my phone breaks, they will need to give me a new phone for free. Why? Because if they require me to sign a new contract in order to get a free phone, then there is little barrier to me switching providers. I can get the same deal anywhere else.
I think it would be a better business policy for T Mobile to look at my records and say “Hey, you’ve been with us for seven years, often without a contract, so sure, in order to keep your business and make another few thousand dollars off of you we’ll give you a free phone, the cost of which will be recouped within a few months, at most, and since you’ve stuck around this long we expect you’ll continue to stick around if we keep you happy.”
I’m not saying I deserve a free phone. T Mobile doesn’t owe me anything. But the consequence of their action is that I am planning on switching providers, and they could have easily prevented this from happening with me as well as probably scores of other customers by looking at the long-term rather than being worried about a phone that costs a fraction of what I spend in a year’s time with them.
My husband and I were on T-Mobile. They had an upgrade program and we asked repeatedly if it would change our contract date to update our cell phone-they had the one year update your cell phone deal. We were told repeatedly that it wouldn’t be affected. When it came time to update our cell phones though, we found out that it had. Well, my husband’s family also did the upgrade but they WERE able to update their phones. They were able to do this because they had been T-mobile customers longer. Actually, he and I had been customers just as long, but seperate accounts. The t-mobile customer service was only seeing the recent account when we both got married -which was only two years.
So, they only treat the customers who are with them long with respect, and they don’t count previous accounts, just current accounts. We even had the regional manager call customer service for us, and she got the run around! She said that they recently fired a bunch of people in their customer service department and started hiring temp highschool students and the service hasn’t been the same, even for her as a regional manager.
Well, we had been tired of standing on our furniture trying to talk to clients at our office because of the bad reception, so we decided to switch anyway-paid the termination fee and went with verizon. We have been happy and haven’t had any problems.
T-Moblie’s customer service was great a few years ago. Then they put the automated teller to work and it went downhill. I had a pretty good experience with them the other day.
But, as for the phone issue, I had T-Mobile phone, and three different phones quit on me. THREE. When i called in they kept trying to upsell me and all I wanted was a phone that worked. Their brilliant solution was to offer me the same phone I had problems with three other times, and then they blamed it on Motorola and went back to upselling.
I told them that T-Mobile is the provider of the phone even if it says motorola on it, and then asked them why on earth I would want to up my contract after the experience I was currently having.
The magic phrase in these situations (and i learned it from Politis) is to say, here’s the problem I am having, and I am not happy about it. I’ve seen amazing things happen when you leave at that because no customer service rep is going to say “what do you want me to do?” That statement leaves it open to them to come up with the solution. But, you need to remember to be flexible with what they offer.
Most of the time customer service ends up acting just like a salesman who is trying to resolve the concerns of the customer who acts mad, angry and upset but never actually says, here’s my challenge, and I’m not happy about it.
I couldn’t agree with you more, Josh. You’d like they’d give up a little (a phone) to get back a lot. What part of ROI did T Mobile not understand.
One little experience I had recently with my service provider, Cingular. We’ve been a customer with them for five-plus years. The day after Christmas my daughter grabbed my wife’s phone, sucked on it and broke the phone.
We went into Cingular to buy a replacement phone. My wife, who was rolled over some 3,000 minutes because she rarely uses her phone, decided to get the cheapest phone. To make a long story short, the phone would have cost us $69, but the salesperson gave us the phone for free without us asking him for a deal.
Needless to say I continue with Cingular.
I to have had every cell phone provider under the sun………………………………….
AND THEY ALL SUCK,………………………But……………………………………………………
VERIZON
I have never gone into the store and walked out pulling my hair!!!!!!!!!!
You are doing the right thing, by looking and asking around.
I will tell you this ……… my husband dropped his phone in the toliet…and Verizon still gave him a new phone!!!!!!!!