The title did seem negative, and I was surprised to find that someone actually had a positive experience with T-Mobile.
I was a T-Mobile customer off and on for about 7 years total. For the last contract I had signed with them, I made sure that I would be able to get out of my contract if I A: moved due to a military PCS, or B: Moved due to getting out of the military. The T-Mobile rep at the store assured me that I would be able to get out of my contract under those circumstances, and so I signed up with them when I arrived at my last duty station.
When I left the military, and moved shortly after, I contacted a very helpful T-Mobile rep that told me everything was in order and that all I had to do was send him a copy of my discharge paperwork (which are still considered to be valid active duty military orders) and the early termination fees would be waived. After he cancelled my account, I received a ~$700 bill and a letter that said my paperwork had been declined.
I called and talked to a support rep, who in turn forwarded me to a manager that had no more authority than the representative. T-Mobile purposely creates powerless management positions in order to delude customers into thinking that there is nothing supervisors can do to handle customer service issues. Ultimately, they decided to continue to charge me the ETFs because they were already having a really bad year for customer retention.
The really ridiculous part of this mess is that I was perfectly happy with T-Mobile, yet I was forced to move to a state that doesn't have a single T-Mobile tower because I didn't have any luck finding employment elsewhere. I would have returned to T-Mobile as soon as possible, but my experience with their customer service has opened my eyes to what a shitty company it is.
> The title did seem negative, and I was surprised to find that someone actually had a positive experience with T-Mobile.
When was this?
I was a long-time T-Mobile customer until a few years ago, and I always had excellent customer service experiences with them.
The only reason I switched was because I moved to NYC, and they had terrible reception here at the time - I couldn't place calls in my own bedroom.
Even then, though, we were able to break our entire family contract (which I believe we had only just re-signed a couple of months before) without paying an ETF[0].
[0] This is despite the fact that (a) I was the only one in the family plan who was in NYC, and (b) my zip code was in their coverage map (which means that they had no legal obligation to let me off the contract).
I've been considering going back to T-mobile; if their customer service really has gone downhill in the last few years, maybe I'll think about AT&T instead....
It was early-mid 2012. It was in the middle of the mass exodus of customers from T-Mobile, and before they rolled out the new anti-contract strategy.
If you read the contract, even if you move to an area with zero phone or data coverage, you still have to pay an ETF. My case should have been excluded, because I clearly fell within the clause about military personnel, and I had on multiple occasions been told by their employees and management that everything was good to go.
To be fair, I worked as a telecommunications technician for a decade, and the entire industry is really shitty. None of the companies seem genuinely interested in providing value to their customers, and new plans often end up being more expensive for most people. When I dumped T-Mobile, I ended up using a pre-paid plan through Straight Talk. I get the same level of service at half the price, and I don't have to worry about getting fucked by a greedy, unethical corporation if I feel like cancelling my service.
I have been with T-Mobile for 2 years and I love their customer support. Always friendly and knowledgeable. I am impressed that they have repeatedly offered to lower my bill without my asking (twice they have informed me of new plan offerings that lowered my bill with no contract extension). I must have good luck.
> if their customer service really has gone downhill in the last few years
I have no complaints for their customer service. It's been top notch every since day one. Recently, I got a 20$ off for my data plan (2.5G) without even asking, just because I was a "loyal customer".
Read the last line of the bizjournal story "Michael handles our Web coverage, social media accounts and videos."
If after getting out of .mil you got a job handling web coverage, social media, and video, then having better PR reach than their own people, the CEO might care. Otherwise, let you rot.
Did you read the contract? Few do, but the contract you sign is the only evidence that you have of the deal. A person in a store or at the end of the phone can't change the contract, so buyer beware.
Right. They had a clause covering active duty military personnel that was left intentionally vague. They cooperated and accepted my cancellation and then months later (after I had already moved) they decided that I owed them $700 after all.
I'm sure for 100% of mortgages people would love to just make a down payment and get the deed and not have to make any other payments for 15+ years but there's nothing ironic about the need to fulfill contractual obligations that aren't awesome for you.
I think the meaning was that most Americans resent that they are basically forced into a contract in order to get the plan and device they want. I would rather bring my own device, but the only carrier available to me (until recently) was Verizon, and they won't let me do that. So I (at one time) signed a contract, but I would have been happier to simply pay for the device of my choice and paid for service month-to-month.
To extend this to your analogy, I was forced to take out a mortgage despite having the cash to buy the whole house outright because the person selling the house wouldn't take cash.
Why can't you buy your own devices? I live in the UK and have always bought my own devices, it often works out at about half the price over the term of the contract.
UK (like most of the world) uses GSM. With GSM your identity is linked to your SIM card. Put your SIM card in another phone, and "you" are still "you" as far as the phone company can tell.
Verizon (and most of US) uses a competing "standard" called CDMA, where your identity is coupled to your phone. Which means you have to involve your phone company in order to switch phone.
It's technically possible to "unlock" a CDMA phone, but in the USA, CDMA carriers refuse to unlock a phone on their network. And even if you did get an unlocked CDMA phone, the providers will refuse to activate any phones that were not originally activated on their network.
I use Verizon and they are always more than happy to activate my CDMA capable phone for use on the Verizon network - which I have been using for a very long time and live contract free this way. I also use a very old completely Unlimited plan, so buying a phone from Verizon would cancel this plan and force me on a new contract.
Anyhow my point is I have no problems adding a personal device to my plan anytime - many times.
This is true, but mobile contracts are much murkier than mortgages, and this is by design of the phone companies.
Consider how much different things would be if people had month-to-month service contracts and they financed their phone upgrades separately (though the payments were rolled together). Imagine if people could just pay off their device debt, cancel their contract, and move to a new carrier. Or imagine if people could pay off their device debt in advance to avoid the interest payments. Or imagine if people could roll their old device debt into a new loan for a new device, and then carry that forward. It's funny how a phone company will give you $500 in financing for a new phone no problem but they outright refuse to give you $550 or $600.
I imagine most consumers would probably prefer a more transparent system like this, but the problem is that then they would see how much they are getting shafted. People are locking themselves in to $2k commitments when in reality they should only be committed to $500. Sure there's also service attached but a lot of people don't use a lot of cell data or make many phone calls. Most people could probably get buy on the cheapest virgin mobile plan, for example, which is just $35/mo.
So let's do the math. People who are locked into phone contracts due to their device upgrades are locked into about $1150 of extra payments. That works out to an effective APR right around 99.8%!
It's no wonder that phone companies like things the way they are, confusing and complicated. It allows them to charge usurious interest rates on device purchases without their customers fully realizing.
You know there are enough options in the market for what you are looking for. Why are you not exercising your options?
This is at the of the US market conundrum. There are enough options for people not to go for the big two. They cost more money, they give less freedom and still people flock to them. I just don't get it.
Yeah, but if you buy a house with cash upfront, you don't have to keep paying interest to a bank.
In contrast, if you do the analogous thing with a cell phone plan -- buy the phone upfront -- you still have to pay the implicit "interest" in the higher monthly fee. There's no option to take a lower monthly fee in return for paying upfront.
Some marketers noticed they can make people buy more if they stretch out the phone payment over 18 months and add it to the phone bill -- good!
They denied everyone else the option to save money over the long term -- not good.
> if you do the analogous thing with a cell phone plan -- buy the phone upfront -- you still have to pay the implicit "interest" in the higher monthly fee.
You can always choose an MVNO if you want to. They run on same network as the big 4, although they might lack some roaming options. (and access to LTE, if that is important to you)
You absolutely can in the UK. I pay £15/mo for the same service my friend pays £34/mo with a phone. He's in a 24month contract instead of my 12 and will end up some £150 down over the course of the contract.
The difference is that if you show up with cash you can still buy the house. You can pick your own bank, too.
If two people owned all of the houses in your city and colluded on pricing, types of houses available and only did business with their bank — then your comparison would be true.
One of the aspects of contract law, at least in my country, is that a contract is - in principle - supposed to result from a more or less equal bargaining procedure. Having an extremely strong bargaining position, and jamming it up to the hilt in someone's chest, is grounds for the contract to be held invalid here. It's called undue influence.
I believe there was a case a few years back where it was even specifically held that this invalidated a mobile phone contract because the woman couldn't predict the future as well as the phone company.
Sadly, I don't think it's restricted to the U.S. I live somewhere in Europe and mobile phone contracts are always less advantageous (fewer benefits, higher cost) as compared to regular prepaid cards. The only reason I've held up a contract is out of fear of simply not running out of minutes in a personal emergency-type situation.
I had to think about it for a second. You're meant to read it like "killing something is bad, but contracts are bad, so killing a contract is good."
Although it'd be perfectly valid to use "contract" as a metonym for "service" or "account", people don't tend to; the contract is just the evil thing binding you to pay for your account, and doesn't get mentally associated (by most consumers) with the service itself. So killing a contract is wholly good.
But forcing people to go through a thought-process like this to figure out what is meant is bad "communications-design UX", and the editor could probably have come up with something clearer.
People are not forced to go through any thought process. Most people will take it at face value (as I did) and assume that service was cancelled for having the gall to email the CEO. I clicked through only because I have had good experience with T-mobile customer service and was surprised to see something like this. So the misleading/ambiguous headline actually got me to read the article where an accurate headline wouldn't have.
I had the same thought with the title. I've actually had a pretty bad experience T-Mobile's customer service and I felt like an asshole about it. I ordered two prepaid t-mobile sim cards for $2.16, but I was unable to receive it so it got sent back to the sender. I left it alone for several months thinking once it got returned they would promptly send me a refund like Amazon. Nope, that didn't happen. After a month, I emailed them about it, no response. Another month passed by, I called them up and after three transfers I was directed to a guy who said he would process my refund and I should see it on my credit card in the next few days. This guy was a bit irritated that I was calling in regards for $2.16, then again I don't blame him, I felt like an asshole calling about it.
In all honestly, I wasn't trying to be cheap, I was just trying to get to the bottom of why it should take me several months to finally get a refund... this was two bucks, but what if had been two hundred and sixteen instead? Well, long story short. I never saw the refund, so I ended up filing a complaint with my credit card and sure enough, less than a day later, I received several automated emails saying a refund of $0.00 was processed, primarily cause I had already received the money from my credit card company.
I've been sacked from a small telco too. They told me I was no longer profitable for them. It was worded in such a way that it went to my junk email folder and I lost that phone number completely (too late to port it to a new carrier)
The CEO should not have to get involved. Status as a journalist should not be required. The first doesn't scale, and the second, if true, is hopelessly corrupt.
Every customer support supervisor ought to be able to make an exception based on reasonable circumstances.
The article should have ended with "and anyone else in my situation, or a similar one, should contact T-Mobile customer support. If the first line worker can't help you, they should be able to put you through to a supervisor who can, based on the policy changes that T-Mobile has implemented."
Anything less at best means a flood of emails in the CEO inbox, and at worst continued customer dissatisfaction.
The CEO is modelling behaviour for everyone else at the company. He should not have to do this for every customer as by now the word should be spreading internally that if the CEO can do it, then so can you/
That's not how it works. I doubt that the customer service reps have the ability to arbitrarily dole out perks with no justification other than that they felt like it.
FYI, isn't that exactly the power that Amazon customer service reps have? I'm pretty sure they can decide to arbitrarily give someone refunds, send them new merchandise, etc. Or rather, they can do so but probably within limited rules, not arbitrarily.
I agree that it takes a CEO both showing what to do, and empowering the people below him to do it.
It's funny how people immediately mock someone's sense of entitlement. You know what? Sometimes you indeed are entitled to something and the only reason you don't is because everyone else just accepts the sewer everyone is in.
I once received an apology letter after helping my mom bringing her complaint to the governing board of deutsche Bank. Because god forbid she was right and that douchebag bank worker wasn't.
Indeed just wow. I wish people would complain more, when there is a need.
What do I mean with when there is a need? That's the thing. Were not supposed to be machine(even though a lot of people wish for the opposite). Were supposed to evaluate the choices given to us and act accordingly.
And for all of you running a small business and thinking of the douchebag client you don't want. I apologize, because I know exactly who you're talking about and you're right.
This reporter wasn't entitled to get out of his contract early. Either he was too lazy or stupid to know when his contract was ending (a dangerous thing for a journalist writing articles to inform the masses), or he knowingly pressured T-Mobile into letting him switch to a contract-free plan early. He thought he was special (he had the power to write a misleading, negative article about T-Mobile if they didn't cave, or a positive one if they did). If that's not an improper sense of entitlement, I don't know what is.
Did you? That was at the very end, after he'd insisted T-Mobile was wrong about when his contract was ending, and had emailed the CEO about it, only to be told again that he was wrong.
Why would a reporter call customer service to ask whether he could switch plans? Wouldn't he look at his contract?
Everyone's entitled to get out of their contract if the other party agrees to terminate it. Regardless of whether they knew he was a reporter or not, I wonder if they figured they'd already made a buck from this customer (he only had six months left or $200 to pay out) and perhaps they just have more to gain by keeping him happy by releasing him from his contract. Therefore increasing the chances that the customer will stay with them in the long run and perhaps even tell his friends about it.
I've got a theory that this can all be explained by cost of communication.
For a long time, word of mouth was what determined what people thought of businesses. Plus, high cost of communication kept most businesses small.
Newer communication technologies made very large companies practical, but the tech was expensive enough that it was most effectively used by those large companies both internally and externally). This a) meant a large company could override word of mouth with enough advertising, and b) encouraged the rise of professional managers, who spent very little time in contact with customers and mainly knew what their underlings told them.
But now, with the Internet, the pendulum swings back. Things like email, Facebook, and Twitter have brought low-cost one-to-one and one-to-many communication to the masses. Advertising doesn't work as well, and one person with a good or bad experience can tell hundreds, thousands, millions. If a CEO wants to know what people are saying, a simple Twitter search will tell them, with no underlings to soften or filter.
So smarter companies are recognizing that they can get a competitive advantage by acting like a small-town business has all along: the person in charge opens themselves up for unfiltered feedback, using that to fix their organization and get great word of mouth in the process.
What I really wonder is where the new equilibrium point is. Advertising has less manipulative power, but it's not gone. And large companies will try to control new media just like they tried to control what turns up in the press.
I'm not sure if this is true. The picture accompanying the article shows the reporter using what looks like his personal email address [1]. I guess he could have signed it with his company and job title information. Either way, I don't think one anecdote is enough to change my view that all wireless companies are horrible.
I've had a mobile phone since the Motorola Brick days. Over the years I've grumbled and complained about various cell phone companies policies, dealt with contract obligations, bad service, horrible experiences with switching plans, etc., etc. The worst of the worst was moving to the bay in late 2007 and having to use AT&T on an iPhone.
Last year I bought a Nexus 4 from Google and signed up for a prepaid T-Mobile plan. A few months later they switched over to offering no-contract plans and I followed suit by putting both my kids and myself on a single plan. My entire experience with the company since signing up has been nothing short of stellar. Great customer service, low wait times while calling in, friendly faces in the stores, and always a willingness to do whatever it took to make me happy with my service.
My contract, with my two kids tacked on, is about what I paid Verizon a month for an iPhone. About the only complaint I have with T-Mobile is that I can't really surf the net while I'm in the BART tube under the Bay on the way into the city. Other than that, it's been a great experience!
It just goes to show that one person at a company, with the power to make real changes, is what it takes to change an entire industry. It feels great to give my money to a company that actually cares about customer service.
Taking inspiration from Urban Design where a path runs along the outside of a park expecting everyone to take the architected route. However people cut through the middle when they don't like the given route, following their desire path. Over time, the grass wastes away from the thousands of footsteps and bicycles that take their preferred route. The park owners have a choice to put up a sign saying "Do not walk on the grass" or altenatively pave the new path.
In business, when consumers take a new path, there is an option to pave their path as a new product line. Watch Tom's talk above to see how Facebook didn't pave their users desire path giving space for snapchat to grow. An example where a business put up the "do not walk on the grass" sign is Kickstarter who blogged, "Kickstarter is not a store," moving away from the desire path.
In this case, the CEO of T-mobile has helped a user cross the middle of the park, the question remains whether he should pave it.
Actually, that question has been answered. T-mobile has started offering no-contract plans, a complete change from the rest of the US industry. The only thing done here was to let a customer move to the new system sooner than they otherwise would.
It's a good thing that John Legere places customer care/service as a high priority, but it seems like you didn't take the time to figure out the problem yourself.
Instead of "getting frustrated" and taking the issue to the CEO, you could have spent some time and effort to resolve it yourself.
Also, this post doesn't provide enough information about your issue and why you had a misunderstanding. If it did, then it would be more meaningful.
I want to like T-Mobile, but I'm in the middle of the US with access to 100+ Mbps Internet but no T-Mobile signal in my house. T-Mobile is pushing itself hard in my area, but they just don't have the coverage.
If you're willing to use a T-Mobile branded phone rather than your own phone, T-Mobile has wifi calling available.
Alternatively, if you can get any signal at all, anywhere in your house, you can get a signal booster; you can either buy one yourself from Cel-Fi, or T-Mobile will give you one with a two-year contract.
A similar technique worked for me. I had an IOmega Jaz drive, which accomodated 1GB cartridges. (The same company produced the better known Zip drive.)
The cartridges kept getting stuck, and any attempt to remove the drive seemed to completely destroy the hardware. After several replacements, I got fed up and asked for a refund. They weren't going for it. I finally called the CEO, and received a refund pretty quickly.
I suspect that it's cheaper to just refund a few bucks and make the irritant go away, rather than deal with it at that level.
This isn't particularly scalable for T-Mobile and I'd say they haven't done themselves or their customers any favours. The customer service experience should be the same regardless of whether you go in from the top or the bottom. If a customer has a better experience by going in from the top, I think that just implies that the customer service frontlines are failing.
It's good that the CEO is so accessible, but no reasonable customer should need to reach out to the CEO in order to get the a good CS experience.
> "But how is that so? I have had a full upgrade since November."
Usually, phone upgrades are offered starting two years into a three-year plan. They don't want to let the contract expire before they try to reel you back in with an upgrade; that'd be incredibly dangerous for retention. They want to offer you the phone while you're still good and legally bound to them, but when you feel like you're almost out.
We live in a world were people feel entitled to bring their little contractual issues all the way up to the CEO of a company with over 30 MM customers. So you either believe
a) you're above those other 30 MM and can just do your CEO 1:1s if need be
or
b) you foolishly believe that the CEO of a major corp has the time and willingness to deal with customer support for 30 Million people.
When you realize the world consists of people, and you realize the customer is just a person, just like the CEO is a person, then this doesn't seem so strange. I don't like the world where a CEO is somehow better than the average person, completely insulated from customers, from real people.
Yep. Back in the PCs Limited days I wrote Michael Dell an appreciative letter for some out-of-warranty customer service I'd received. Got a nice acknowledgement letter back from a VP. That little exchange indirectly earned Dell a lot of business from my employer in later years when we dumped HP and were casting about for a new desktop provider.
You missed the part where the CEO announced that he wanted to focus on customer service and put his e-mail address for anyone with problems to personally contact him?
Sometimes you just need to deal with someone who is not only outside of the original situation but has the power to do something about it. The complete corporate directory isn't available for people to sift through to find someone to help us. We just know about customer service...and the CEO (more or less). For example, back when the white plastic MacBooks came out, my wife got one -- it was riddled with problems, including case cracking and loads of other problems (don't remember them anymore). Long story short, months of getting no where with regular Apple support (going through repairs, weeks w/o her laptop), she emailed Steve Jobs. She got a brand new laptop as a replacement. It's unfortunate to have to contact a CEO to deal with a seemingly low-level problem but as customers paying thousands of dollars (on a MacBook, or over the course of a cell phone contract), when we have a problem that we can't get rectified through low-level employees and their supervisors, what are we supposed to do?
one should definitely do what they are told to at all times! Stepping outside the boundaries even a little bit is very very bad and will result in the destruction of civilization!
I'm in a similar situation with Sprint where I wanted to get an iPhone 5s as I have had the 4s since its introduction.
Well I was told I couldn't get it until Dec. or I could pay $150 to get out of my contract and get a new contract to get the 5s now.
I actually ended paying the fee and after doing so was told to text 1311 for more info. There in the text it said I could upgrade now or go with their new and better plan OneUp. No one told me about OneUp which is the more modern and better option. Sigh I spent $150 because Sprint hasn't trained their reps on this program, but they put the info in their SMS marketing....errrr :(
Well Sprint did solve that issue but then after solving it and because its still a new option/plan mis-information abounds. Getting a new iPhone with Sprint or trying has taken to much time and effort and have tried to work with them for the past two weeks. But I'm done... See ya Sprint!
On the one hand, it's nice to see that executives are receptive to their customers. However, the OP clearly states that they did not quality for a free transfer, and the fact that they got it seems sort of arbitrary. What if the CEO hadn't responded, or if the other executive hadn't chosen to cancel the contract? What if that person were having a bad day, and chose not to make such a gesture to the OP? One data point isn't conclusive, especially under such odd circumstances.
Good service is service that is both high in quality and in consistency. I highly doubt the ability of a single CEO to handle every email in the same way (if at all), and I'm not sure if I like the idea of unwarranted perks being handed out at the discretion of executives. It seems too much like a lottery, especially because the OP did not qualify for the transfer in the first place.
Indeed. In which case giving out his own email address is just a convenient way of filtering out a a certain type of customer service request, while also being good PR.
He'd want a way to get important emails quickly without the EA having to manually screen them; I wonder if he uses a separate address, a whitelist, a tag (ie johnlegere+internal@tmobile.com), or a keyword in the subject. Guessing whitelist.
There's the old but true "never take a No from someone who doesn't have the authority to say Yes." So in most situations, the CEO wouldn't be helping, thus the customer service agents should have some authority. I've worked in a call center, I know the kind of BS that's pushed. Everyone just says what needs to be said to get the sale or get the customer off the phone (if it's a problem).
As an aside, I once had a problem with my Citibank and I found a little known 'elite team' of Citibank people who called me in a foreign country, on my cell phone, within minutes of me contacting them via email and resolved my problem in about 2 minutes flat. And they reversed charges I felt I shouldn't have had in the first place.
Well this is nice of T-Mobile and shows they do somewhat care about customer service. I can chime in and add my experience with the English (American?) division of T-Mobile: they responded to a mention at a social network while I was not even really meaning to ask them a question, I merely mentioned them. The Dutch division is not as great, but oh well.
Still, I'd say it's how it's supposed to be. In the Netherlands it'd be illegal to upgrade contracts like this. You can't start charging more without giving the user an option to quit the contract for free (or continue the old contract for the old price). Also after the contract period (one or two years), consumers have a right to cancel the contract each month, also for free.
They didn't start charging more. Telecom companies pull some shady tricks with plans and billing, but increasing the monthly fee without notice part way through your contract is not one of them.
He signed a contract for some period of time, and it wasn't up yet. After it was up, he would have had the option of one of the new plans, or switching providers, just like everyone else does.
With mobile providers in the US, if you don't use your "upgrade" you can keep using the service with no contract. If you accept their upgrade, an offer of getting a new phone at discount, you lock yourself in for another year.
I used t-mobile from around 2000 to the end of 2007 in NYC. Never had any problems but data was not a big issue back then. They even assigned me a 212 mobile number from a batch of 10 numbers that they received.
With the right wording and timing, these things happen. Around 2002, I was searching what books to buy and e-mailed Amazon support what books Jeff Bezos has read in the past 6 months. They replied immediately to told me to ask him directly providing his e-mail address. I forwarded the e-mail and got a reply back with a list. This was even cooler than having a 212 number.
Once, my phone actually flushed down the toilet, and I tweeted about it. T-mobile ended up sending me an upgraded version of my phone the next day, for free! Pretty sure they did it because they were laughing so hard about my ridiculousness. But that's cool by me. :)
I wouldn't conclude that this is good customer service. More bad service as the support team couldn't (or weren't officially allowed to) kill the contract. This was just a case of ultimate escalation which was brought to resolution as quickly as possible.
But really, the T-Mobile CEO was helping -- the author wanted out of his contract (well, out of the $200 fee).
(EDIT: The original title was "I emailed the CEO of T-Mobile and he killed my contract, no joke")