It's terrible customer service.

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.