As a rule of thumb, when I have to spend a given amount of time straightening out a company’s poor service or unscrupulous practices, I’ll spend an equivalent amount of time giving that company some payback. Today’s victim: T-Mobile. Fear the blog post.
A letter from Asurion Warranty Services arrived in my mail today thanking me for signing up for their “Premium Handset Protection Bundle” for T-Mobile phones.
Oh no I didn’t. It costs $5.99 a month for repair and replacement of my newly upgraded phone. That’s pretty much the price of a phone per year for such protections. Bad deal. I haven’t lost or damaged a phone in a decade, and I didn’t agree to get have this charge added to my phone bill.
I am on hold right now, trying to learn just how this got onto my bill. Friendly, helpful T-Mobile customer service people have told me that I should go down to the T-Mobile store where I upgraded in order to straighten this out. No I shouldn’t. T-Mobile should be straightening this out right now over the phone, with an apology and a thank you.
I am done with my 40-minute phone call, in which friendly customer service supervisor Kassidy K. (#1204178) tried to assign me the task Monday of calling the store where I upgraded my phone to get this straightened out. I explained to Kassidy K. that I’ve made the only call I need to—that’s the call we were on. Her next work-day is Wednesday, and I told her I expected to hear from her about this being cleared up.
If I have to make another call, it’s just as likely to be about returning my phone and canceling my service as getting this charge removed from my bill.
You people can argue all you want about top-down—whether the government should allow the AT&T-T-Mobile merger. I’ll do bottom-up—whether T-Mobile should get my business.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.