Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Why you shouldn't use T-Mobile (a complaint to Consumer Affairs)


(Not school related, this is just how upset I am)

WHAT HAPPENED:

I was a customer with T-Mobile for seven years. For most of this, I had no issues.  About two or three years ago I switched to a smart phone - the Motorola Cliq.  Initially, for what it was, the phone worked fine.  Eventually, it picked up the habit of freezing on me, or going a little haywire.  After trouble-shooting, they decided to replace the device. The problem was recurring.  I replaced the phone three times for the same reason.  


Finally, when it happened again, I asked about exchanging my phone. They told me they were running a special where I could replace my cliq with the Gravity Smart, and this should solve the issue.  Well, I've had it for a month, and it hasn't been freezing, but everything else has been horrible.


I've spent a dozen hours trying to solve my phone's issues, at least seven to eight hours with one-on-one tech support, over the phone or at outlets.  The phone was a mess.  It couldn't merge my contacts with ease as the cliq did.  Instead, there were contacts stored in triplicate, or that I could not merge. After six hours of various one-on-one...it's still not to even where the cliq was.  


Then I ran into the issue with memory.  It doesn't have one.  In the three to four weeks that I had the phone, I downloaded six apps onto the phone, and the memory was completely full, to the point where it was rejecting text messages.  I assumed there was an easy explanation.  There was.  The phone has the memory of a beta fish.  My old phone, problems though it had, could handle a dozen or so apps that I put on, as well as over half a year's worth of texts, and have no problems.  The Gravity Smart, not so much.  


On the plus side, it comes with loads of useful crap like Bejewled 2, and AIM, which I have absolutely no use for, and which there is NO way to uninstall.  So I have to keep their crap on my phone and erase my own.


T-Mobile's solution?  Delete the things I actually want, to stare in fascinated revulsion at all the crap I won't ever use.


Well, assuming you ever get a hold of customer service.  Their new, "Improved Support System to Better Serve You", is somewhat akin to a piece of horse crap at their front door.  All it does is to keep decent smelling people out.  


You have to sit through several minutes of a computer irritating you, and when you try to explain what seems to be the problem, it won't understand you (trust me, it won't understand you), and then it will simply hang up on you.  Great customer service, there.  


The computer system at T-Mobile was always a bit of a retarded, deaf toddler, but it used to be that if you screamed and grunted at it often enough, it would send you over to a real human.  Now you have the infuriating experience of having a computer hang up on you.  I've tried to offer complaints to Will Smith and Arnold Schwarzenegger.  I'm still waiting to hear back from them. 


I finally asked to speak to a Manager about getting my old defective phone back, as opposed to the lemon I replaced it with.  I called on Saturday and was told I'd have a return call in an hour.  By Tuesday afternoon, I assumed these people probably didn't actually own any of their own phones, and so I called again.  


After explaining the mess I've been through, and how I've called T-Mobile more often than my family over the holidays, the manager kindly told me that there was nothing she could do.  Never mind that I've been a customer for seven years, never mind that I was given a complete piece of lemon-shit to "fix my problems," there was NOTHING T-Mobile could do except to replace it with the exact same crappy phone.  They couldn't even give me back the model I had traded in.  


I love corporations who don't have the "power" to "do anything".  Does this mean I have the "power" to not pay for shoddy service?  Oh, that was the other "option".  I could pay for an upgrade.  Even though I had JUST paid off my last phone last month.  AND extended my contract with them for two years to get this "great deal".  I wish to hell I had not renewed my contract.  Now my only real option is to pay t-Mobile 200 dollars for the privilege of never dealing with them, again. 

CONSEQUENCES:

Karl was sad.
Then Karl was mad and sad.
Then Karl was mad, sad, and infuriated.
Then Karl was two-hundred dollars poorer, and in need of a new phone and provider (assuming that's my only option, which is looking to be pretty much the case)

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