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Comment by 01Michael10 | Hacker News Reader

Everyone has a bad customer service story about every company but that does not mean T-Moblie has a customer service infrastructure problem.

Recently, I switched from Verizon to T-Moblie when bought a Nexus 5 on day one. The SIM card I had ordered would not automatically activate which was not a surprise as the Nexus 5 was not in their system (they were not offering it yet). I also wanted their unadvertised $30 plan technically only available to Walmart and their online phone buyers. One call, everything was setup with no problems and no hassles. Verizon is the definition of hassles from my experience.

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I had the same experience. They had me up and running with the $30 plan immediately.

For people wondering, the $30/mo plan is a prepaid plan that includes:

- Unlimited Texting - 5GB of 4G data, unlimited 2G data after - 100 minutes, $0.10/minute after

I switched from $90/mo at Verizon. Even my heaviest overages (~200 minutes over == $20) only get me up to $50.

Only downside: as a prepaid plan, it doesn't get the free overseas data and texting offered in their $50/60/70 postpaid plans.

Another potential downside is that the $30/month plan does not support roaming data. If you are in an area not covered by T-Mobile's towers you will not have data service. Voice and text will still work fine. I speak from experience here.

I'm certainly glad you've had a good experience. I don't want anyone to have bad experiences. I think the way things should work is that people with bad experiences speak out and people with good experiences do the same. Due to my experience I won't recommend T-Mobile, but everyone should take the balance of published experiences into account when choosing where to shop.

My litmus test of customer service organizations is how they handle unusual situations. If they sound helpless it's a very bad sign. If they come up with creative and/or generous solutions, its a very good sign. In your case they had a button to press that they were allowed to press and they pressed it. In mine, they had no button, and quite probably were told internally "Don't help too much." In experiences I've had with stunning customer support (Dropbox/Zappos) the button didn't exist, they had to invent it, then they pressed it as hard and as fast as they could.

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