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.

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.

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.

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.

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.