T-Mobile Once Again
Let me make this perfectly clear...
T-Mobile, you by far have the stupidest, most condesending sales representatives I have ever had the displeasure of working with. I will make it my goal in life to drive ANYONE who wants wireless service to stay as far away from your company as possible.
The reason:
(Scene: Driving home from working on a co-workers computer, figure I have 30 minutes to spare before picking up baby. Decide to call T-Mobile store to see if they have a demo Sidekick I could try out on a few of my company's websites.)
Me: Hi, do you happen to have a demo Sidekick in stock.
Clueless Sales Rep: Yup, we have one in the store.
Me: Are you sure, because last time I came down there you guys disappointed me and I really don't want a repeat.
CSR: Nope, we've got one.
Me: And it has a data-enabled SIM card so I can try the data functions on it.
CSR: Yes, we have one in the store, it's the store manager's and we can let you try it out.
Me: And he's not leaving to get his hair done, his doggie washed, or has a pregnant wife who's about to give birth, right?
CSR: Huh?
Me: He's going to be there when I drive up to your store in five minutes.
CSR: Oh yeah, he's here until 5:00.
Me: OK, thank you, I'm about five minutes away.
(Scene: Five minutes later in the T-Mobile store)
Me: Hi, I'm the guy who called about the Sidekick about five minutes ago.
Scantily Clad CSR: Oh yeah, hang on. (and yes, wearing a halter top with a white, unbuttoned shirt just SCREAMS professionalism...if you are in a certain trade...)
(Wait five minutes while she answers a question about Mobile to Mobile calls from someone who walked in just after me)
SC-CSR: Come over here, I've got it hooked up for you. Enjoy.
(Scene: Now I'm looking at the phone with the big warning stating "GSM/GPRS services not enabled on this phone. You still may make voice calls from this phone").
Me: Umm, this SIM card isn't data enabled.
SC-CSR: Yes it is.
Me: Then it's a bit confused because it's saying GPRS services unavailable.
SC-CSR: Let me see that... (insert 30 seconds of staring at the same warning I listed earlier). Let me check with the manager.
Me: Good idea.
(Insert five minutes of rep walking around store, and 30 seconds talking to manager while I'm trying to memorize where their cell towers are located on the map in the back of the store)
SC-CSR: OK, well apparently that isn't a Data-Enabled SIM card.
Me: Really? Glad you figured that out....
SC-CSR: So where can I call you back.
Me: Excuse me?
SC-CSR: Call you back... So when we do have a data-enabled SIM card you can try it out.
Me: I live 30 miles away from your store. And you've screwed me over more than two times on trying a live Sidekick. Mind you, we're getting closer each time. This time they actually had a SIM card.
SC-CSR: So where can I call you.
Me: So you are telling me you aren't even going to try to get one of your SIM cards and try to rig it up for data?
SC-CSR: We can't do that.
Me: Wait, you have all these lovely data enabled phones and once again, T-Mobile won't let me try out the data capabilities unless I get a data enabled SIM card myself.
SC-CSR: Well yeah, that would be the only way we could do this.
Me: And your manager can't do anything else?
SC-CSR: No.
Me: Hmm...you can try me at anyone of the Verizon Wireless stores. More than likely they will let me try out their data-enabled phones and will be getting a substantial amount of cash from me very shortly. Unlike your company.
Comments
You know the sad part of all of this? T-Mobile doesn't care. They could care less if you took your business elsewhere.
I'm EXACTLY like you and would certainly tell everyone that would listen to stay away from T-Mobile, but this brings up problems in our society:
A: No company cares about customer service anymore. None that I have found at least. They don't care if you are spending $5 or $50,000, you are just an annoyance to them. (for examples of this, go read the comments on my compusa entry: http://www.burfield.com/blog/archives/000200.html. Really enlightening stuff from 'staff' at a CompUSA.
B: People who use these companies don't seem to care that the customer service is so poor, so they continue to use them.
It's a frustrating viscious circle of ignorance.
Posted by: Jason | June 16, 2004 12:01 PM
I almost asked her if she was happy with her job because if she wasn't, it showed.
I know that people feel an entitlement to get a good job, but dammit I worked in a call center for seven years and worked my ass off to get to the point that I'm at right now.
Posted by: Brian | June 16, 2004 2:08 PM
Just wanted to say I just got T-Mobile service...thus far i like it pretty well, although no wireless phone service is going to be totally to my liking. However, i will tell you that if you think T-Mobile sucks, you should try Cellular One from Dobson Cellular Systems--THAT'S a company that SUCKS SO HARDCORE IT ISN'T EVEN FUNNY! Man, I got overchared EVERY month and they INSISTED on signing me to a 2-year contract...wouldn't let me sign for less than that, yet a friend of mine got a 6 month deal...then, when i would travel ten minutes out of the town i live in, i got to pay like a dollar a minute in roaming charges...my phone was like 4 years old when i got it 2 and a half years ago, and they're still giving out the same phones. MAN THEY SUCK!!! and speaking of customer service, my contract was officially up, and then they insisted that i had to pay for another month after that and refused to cancel my service--they said, "oh we don't DO that anymore, you'll have to call our 800 number" and they gave me the wrong menu number on the 800 number, so i could have ended up subscribing for longer--what assholes!!! Anyway, i'll leave you alone--just got here when i tried to go to www.metallicasucks.com--man i hope y'all reinstate that soon--WONDERFUL site!!! METALLICA BLOWS DONKEY BALLS!!! WORST BAND CURRENTLY ALIVE!!! keep up the good work!
Posted by: William Prickett | June 18, 2004 4:29 PM
My favorite tactic when running into this particular species of retail wildebeest is to say, loud enough for the entire store to hear: "Your realize I want to buy twenty of these things, right? And you still won't answer my question?"
Problem ends up solved, lickety-split
Posted by: TC-LeatherPenguin | June 19, 2004 1:57 AM
T-Mobile knows it should care. There's a big internal promotion "Makin' it happen" complete with posters with bullet points about improving customer satisfaction and there are Makin' it Happen ball caps for the sales people. There are bonuses for store managers who reduce churn. They just don't know beans about how to actually do it.
The company was just starting to have a positive cash flow when they went and bought most of Cingular's California network, which they had been using in a sharing agreement, for $2.4 billion. They would have been foolish not too, but now the existing policy of starving all but the 16 top markets has been expanded. Not only are they paying rent on sites in known critical holes but not spending the money to build the tower, but some the people who handle the business side of getting additional sites are being let go. If none of the competition gets any better, and they can find marketing people who know how to do more than grin, T-Mobile will be improving once the California purchase starts generating revenue.
As for the problem with the sim cards, that may have been a miscommunication due to poor training, rather than raw quill stupidity. Still inexcusable. There are "data enabled sims" which are not Geepers enabled, but only do data transfer via the protocol used for SMS. There is also a small matter of a moment's work to enable Geepers service the first time you log onto the network with a sim which is valid.
Posted by: triticale | June 19, 2004 9:28 AM
Maybe the Sidekick's aren't paying that much in margin, but I still couldn't believe they wouldn't get a SIM GPRS enabled so I could try the damn phone.
Posted by: Brian | June 19, 2004 11:02 AM
T-Mobile is owned by the German goverment. And if there's one kind of organization known for awful customer service...
Posted by: Ian S. | June 19, 2004 4:56 PM
When we moved to Arizona from Texas, I had an Aerial phone (which became VoiceStream shortly before we moved, and is now reincarnated as T-Mobile). It took something on the tune of half a dozen calls to their 800 number and three or four visits to their store to get my phone switched over from Texas to Arizona. And did I mention they tried to charge me $250 for supposedly terminating my Texas contract early? Or that they almost disconnected my service after they were sending my bills to the wrong fricking address?
About a year later, on that blessed day when I was able to pull the plug, the customer service rep said, "Oh...why do you want to terminate your service?" (Translation: let me kiss your butt so we can keep milking you...)
"Do you have access to notes from prior times I've called?" I asked. "Yes," he answered. "Go read the notes," I said, "and then ask me that question again with a straight face. If you can."
A minute or so passed, during which his breathing probably became quite shallow and most of the blood drained from his face.
"Well...we gave you a month of free credit, right?"
What?!
Trust me--that sales rep did you a favor.
I now have AT&T, which I've been mostly pleased with. If I had to switch, though, I'd probably go with Verizon. I checked out thecomplaintstation.com for all the various cell phone providers, and AT&T and Verizon seemed to have the fewest gripes for cell phone service. I'm told Verizon's technology is about five to ten years ahead of everybody else, which is one reason I'm thinking of changing.
Posted by: Ryan | June 19, 2004 6:22 PM