hackthis_archive (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hackthis_archive) wrote2008-04-24 04:07 pm
hackthis_archive) wrote2008-04-24 04:07 pm
Death to T-Mobile
Today I sent the following letter to T-Mobile's Office of the President, which is fancy talk for Customer Service, so I also made sure to send it to their corporate headquarters since it's important to be thorough about these things. I'm pondering filing with the Better Business Bureau too.
Robert Dotson, President
T-Mobile
12920 SE 38th Street
Bellevue, WA 98006-1350
Dear Mr. Dotson:
I am writing to inform you of the appalling service I have received from your company as well as your employees.
I received a Sidekick Slide for a Christmas present on December 25, 2007 from [X person]. Upon some thought, however, I decided I didn't want the phone and asked X to return it. [X person] having bought the phone as present, assumed with the Christmas season that there would be no problem returning the phone, only to find out that since he had bought the phone in advance, the 14 day period had expired and he was now stuck with a $350 dollar phone.
I, for one, thought he must be mistaken, and asked him to send the phone to me in [redacted] from where he lived in [redacted]. Upon receiving the phone along with the receipt of purchase, I called T-Mobile customer service and explained my problem to two people. Both representatives basically said, we're sorry, but since you're not a T-Mobile customer, we can't help you, but you're welcome to write to our customer service department and we suggest you sell the phone on eBay.
I have to say that this is the first time that a company has ever conveyed the message that since I'm not a subscriber I am not valued as a consumer. It was also the first time I'd ever been told, "too bad, sell it on eBay."
I'm sure you can appreciate I was a bit dumbstruck by this suggestion and thought by writing a letter to your Customer Service Department I might receive a bit more satisfaction, but of course this was not to be. I received a letter back with my name misspelled (is it really that hard to check the letter I sent for the correct spelling?) and was told the same story, "you're not a customer; you are not valued even as a potential customer. You deal with it."
Since I clearly wasn't going to be helped by T-Mobile in any way, I put the phone up for sale on eBay. It was bought by a nice man in [redacted], who three days after he received the phone, e-mailed me to say he'd taken the phone to the T-Mobile near his home to have it activated only to be told that a brand new phone, which was still in the box and had all the accessories in plastic, was broken and couldn't be repaired. You can imagine our collective shock.
I apologized and asked him to send me the phone so I could refund him his money. When the phone arrived I took it my local T-Mobile store, where one of your representatives X actually attempted to help me with my problem for a change.
It seemed that there was something blocking the Sim card outlet and thusly the phone couldn't be used, but X recommended an outside vendor to repair the phone and gave me his business card.
As helpful as X was I still waited to speak to the manager, because surely there had to be something that could be done. At the very least the phone could have been exchanged for a model that worked; it didn’t have to be new it just needed to work.
After waiting 30 minutes for the manager to come back from lunch, however, the manager then told me the same thing your customer service reps told me over the phone -- that since I didn't have your phone service, I wasn't under warrantee and thusly he wasn't obligated to help me, or even attempt to do so and I was out of luck.
At this point I decided that my best course of action was to run the offending phone over with my car, take photos of it with my camera phone and post the entire business to YouTube as a reason to stay away from T-Mobile. First, however, I decided to visit this outside vendor to see what he thought about the entire matter. He confirmed what I already knew that the phone was brand new and nothing was wrong with it, the catch however, was that since all the prongs in the Sim slot didn't retract when you slid the Sim card in, the phone was worthless. In short, the Sim slot was simply too small to be fixed, and I was the proud owner of a $350 worthless phone.
And to date, this is what your company has provided me with – nothing. I would say thank you, but I don't tend to thank people for trash.
The continued antipathy of your company towards potential customers is astounding. If I was a customer, I assure you I would have switched to another carrier by this point, and any and all consideration I've had for ever switching to T-Mobile in the future is dead. In fact, I now plan to go out of my way to urge people not to use your company, because I know how your company has treated me and I'd hate for that to happen to someone else.
No love,
[insert me giving the the finger here]
ETA: I'm sure you are all wondering where the video for the phone is now, well, I did what any good capitalist would do with a worthless piece of junk -- I sold it for parts.
Robert Dotson, President
T-Mobile
12920 SE 38th Street
Bellevue, WA 98006-1350
Dear Mr. Dotson:
I am writing to inform you of the appalling service I have received from your company as well as your employees.
I received a Sidekick Slide for a Christmas present on December 25, 2007 from [X person]. Upon some thought, however, I decided I didn't want the phone and asked X to return it. [X person] having bought the phone as present, assumed with the Christmas season that there would be no problem returning the phone, only to find out that since he had bought the phone in advance, the 14 day period had expired and he was now stuck with a $350 dollar phone.
I, for one, thought he must be mistaken, and asked him to send the phone to me in [redacted] from where he lived in [redacted]. Upon receiving the phone along with the receipt of purchase, I called T-Mobile customer service and explained my problem to two people. Both representatives basically said, we're sorry, but since you're not a T-Mobile customer, we can't help you, but you're welcome to write to our customer service department and we suggest you sell the phone on eBay.
I have to say that this is the first time that a company has ever conveyed the message that since I'm not a subscriber I am not valued as a consumer. It was also the first time I'd ever been told, "too bad, sell it on eBay."
I'm sure you can appreciate I was a bit dumbstruck by this suggestion and thought by writing a letter to your Customer Service Department I might receive a bit more satisfaction, but of course this was not to be. I received a letter back with my name misspelled (is it really that hard to check the letter I sent for the correct spelling?) and was told the same story, "you're not a customer; you are not valued even as a potential customer. You deal with it."
Since I clearly wasn't going to be helped by T-Mobile in any way, I put the phone up for sale on eBay. It was bought by a nice man in [redacted], who three days after he received the phone, e-mailed me to say he'd taken the phone to the T-Mobile near his home to have it activated only to be told that a brand new phone, which was still in the box and had all the accessories in plastic, was broken and couldn't be repaired. You can imagine our collective shock.
I apologized and asked him to send me the phone so I could refund him his money. When the phone arrived I took it my local T-Mobile store, where one of your representatives X actually attempted to help me with my problem for a change.
It seemed that there was something blocking the Sim card outlet and thusly the phone couldn't be used, but X recommended an outside vendor to repair the phone and gave me his business card.
As helpful as X was I still waited to speak to the manager, because surely there had to be something that could be done. At the very least the phone could have been exchanged for a model that worked; it didn’t have to be new it just needed to work.
After waiting 30 minutes for the manager to come back from lunch, however, the manager then told me the same thing your customer service reps told me over the phone -- that since I didn't have your phone service, I wasn't under warrantee and thusly he wasn't obligated to help me, or even attempt to do so and I was out of luck.
At this point I decided that my best course of action was to run the offending phone over with my car, take photos of it with my camera phone and post the entire business to YouTube as a reason to stay away from T-Mobile. First, however, I decided to visit this outside vendor to see what he thought about the entire matter. He confirmed what I already knew that the phone was brand new and nothing was wrong with it, the catch however, was that since all the prongs in the Sim slot didn't retract when you slid the Sim card in, the phone was worthless. In short, the Sim slot was simply too small to be fixed, and I was the proud owner of a $350 worthless phone.
And to date, this is what your company has provided me with – nothing. I would say thank you, but I don't tend to thank people for trash.
The continued antipathy of your company towards potential customers is astounding. If I was a customer, I assure you I would have switched to another carrier by this point, and any and all consideration I've had for ever switching to T-Mobile in the future is dead. In fact, I now plan to go out of my way to urge people not to use your company, because I know how your company has treated me and I'd hate for that to happen to someone else.
No love,
[insert me giving the the finger here]
ETA: I'm sure you are all wondering where the video for the phone is now, well, I did what any good capitalist would do with a worthless piece of junk -- I sold it for parts.
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I'm a Verizon customer, and yeah. Never even *thinking* about T-Mobile now.
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T-Mobile is, as far as I know, the by now international mobile part of Germany's Telekom, and they don't manage too well on the pleasing customers-front, either...
Sorry to hear about all the money and nerves you lost because of them.
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WTF.
(also? I'd have been somewhat tempted to check on the laws regarding buyer's remorse in your area, and if possible, buy a motherfucking contract with the full intent of retracting it at the end of the allowable period, just to make them fix the situation. Heh. Where I am, at least for some kinds of services, there's a 72-hour window in which one may effectively "undo" many kinds of contracts/memberships/etc)
*remains unbecellphoned in any regard*
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I love you. And wow, that sucks! I will never ever buy a T-mobile phone.
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Oh, believe me, they are every bit as antipathetic toward their actual customers. Never have I been so glad to be rid of a phone service as I was of T-Mobile. They're worse than cable companies, and that's really saying something.
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I didn't think that was even possible, but I am starting to see it.
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And given your current feelings toward Heroes, I don't know if Nathan-with-a-gun would be better.
So, um....
Here's Chuck! He's sympathetic!
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the worldthe East Coast.*sends virtual cookies*
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I'm still in favour of doing the YouTube thing. You could do it with the box the phone came in.
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I am a firm believer in this idea, and I figured that I could tell 20 people or I could tell you guys and feel a little more vindicated. And I would use the box if I still had it, but I gave it to the guy I sold the phone to; it wasn't as though I'd planned on using any of it and if I had to bring that box home one more time lives would be lost.
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Is there a vent-your-spleen section in your local newspaper? I would try and let as many people know about this crap T mobile are calling customer service as possible.
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I'm an AT&T (formerly Cingular) customer and have had a really good experience with them thus far if you're hunting.
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I may have to burn my husband's favorite jersey now, T-Mobile is Bayern Munich's sponser.
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This is unacceptable, and you know what, it's happening with so many companies lately, it's like they forget that there's competition around.
And also, your YouTube plan? Fool-proof.
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