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")
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.
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....
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 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.
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.
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.
Verizon and Sprint use CDMA. AT&T and T-Mobile use GSM. The frequencies that T-Mobile uses are non-standard, IIRC.
AT&T => 107.3M
Verizon => 116.8M
T-Mobile => 44M
Sprint => 64.3M
Anyhow my point is I have no problems adding a personal device to my plan anytime - many times.
And that's a pretty good reason not to go for Verizon. It's not that you don't have a choice.
I am with t-mobile ever since I remember, just because I refuse to give my money to AT&T or Verizon (and also to Sprint as they are CDMA).
It's your money, and it's your decision.
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.
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.
Straight talk monthly plans (bought 3 months ahead, service has been great so far) + nexus 4 with an ATT sim.
$45/month for the unlimited plan, $200 for the phone.
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.
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.
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.
Actually, with T-Mobile (the company in this story) you DO have this option. http://www.t-mobile.com/bring-your-own-phone.html
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.
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.
Then we saw what it really was.
So, well done, clickbait. =)
http://revk.www.me.uk/2009/11/being-rude-to-customer.html
Quote: "so I've decided to give her 30 days notice, as we can"