TMobile breach of contract

[BradQue]

Anyone out there with some opinions about the recent (and still going on) Sidekick outage? I noticed it on October 2 - no email whatsoever getting through and as of today (October 9) it's still not working. This happened last month for about 5 days as well.

TMobile has a recorded message assuring Sidekick users that they will receive a full month's credit. According to their CSR there are 12 million of them so that amounts to some serious money but still not enough to outweigh the fact that by any standard this amounts to a breach of even the most liberal of service levels.

The last representative I spoke with said he thinks service will be restored by the weekend - I am not counting on that.

My question to the group is this: Does anyone think that this is sufficient to cancel my contract and get the money back that I paid a month ago for a new LX?

Frankly, I am astounded that this can happen and am very suspicious as to the real reason that Microsoft is keeping the Danger servers down for such a long time.

Thanks,

Brad

[clock3687]

Originally Posted by BradQue

Anyone out there with some opinions about the recent (and still going on) Sidekick outage? I noticed it on October 2 - no email whatsoever getting through and as of today (October 9) it's still not working. This happened last month for about 5 days as well.

TMobile has a recorded message assuring Sidekick users that they will receive a full month's credit. According to their CSR there are 12 million of them so that amounts to some serious money but still not enough to outweigh the fact that by any standard this amounts to a breach of even the most liberal of service levels.

The last representative I spoke with said he thinks service will be restored by the weekend - I am not counting on that.

My question to the group is this: Does anyone think that this is sufficient to cancel my contract and get the money back that I paid a month ago for a new LX?

Frankly, I am astounded that this can happen and am very suspicious as to the real reason that Microsoft is keeping the Danger servers down for such a long time.

Thanks,

Brad

I feel your pain, a lot of my friends have Sidekicks, and they're pretty pissed that this hasn't been resolved yet. As it stands T-Mobile isn't going to let you out of your contract. There's a clause in there that says they can't guarantee that your data will be active 24/7, that outages will happen, and you'll pretty much have to live with it. They are going to send people that have lost their data completely a $100 T-Mobile gift card. You'll have to call in to get it, and its only for those that couldn't have their data restored.

T-Mobile offers Sidekick users olive branch, $100 (update: not for everyone)

This happened because Microsoft outsourced a big server upgrade. The company didn't back up and customer info, and when something went wrong, they lost everything. They obviously should have backed up everything in the first place, and that's the price you pay when you don't take precautions. At any rate, see if you can talk to retentions, they may be able to give you a break on pricing on a G1, myTouch, or the upcoming Moto Cliq.

Good Luck

[scottae316]

It seems T-Mobile is being very nice. It was not T-Mobiles servers but Microsoft/Danger who had the problem. It should actually fall to Microsoft and the company they outsourced the upgrade to, it was their negligence not T-Mobile's, IMO

[tmobileman]

we are letting people out of their contracts for sidekick users but also the update today is that Microsoft is able to recover most if not all of the data lost and should be restored by the end of this weekend, so I would recommend accepting the compensation that is offered and just continuing being patient, if you cancel your account your information will never be recovered.

[Mobile Mike]

What a nightmare for Sidekick customers, T-Mobile reps/company itself, and Microsoft.

So much for MS's "Cloud" server-based data storage technology. I hope this situation leads to better data backup solutions and fail-safe. I would hate to see this technology become more common and leading to a greater risk of lost information.

At least Microsoft was able to recover Sidekick user's data, but it came with a black-eye to them in the process...

[BradQue]

Thanks for all of the replies and comments to my original post. My position about some of this follows:

1. Agree that TMobile's contract document provides for their being absolved for some outages but there is a difference between an incidental outage as would be considered reasonable and attributable to an act of God or nature and one of a more grievous form, extending to a point in time where it actually constitutes abandonment of the contractual agreement between the two parties (TMobile the provider, and Joe Smidlap, the customer). If one agrees to pay $X to a service provider for a particular service, say cutting the lawn, and rain causes the provider to delay providing that service, it may be considered entirely reasonable. On the other hand, if the provider fails to perform due to letting their equipment fall into disarray, or loss of staff, that isn't reasonable and is therefore breach of contract. The TMobile outage, lasting for about 13 days or more, seems to me to fall into that category. I am not an attorney, but am a contracts professional and am expressing my personal opinion.

2. Saying that the outage isn't TMobile's fault but Microsoft/Danger's is not correct. TMobile is the entity with whom customers have privity of contract and which is being paid to provide a particular service. Their choice of second tier providers (i.e subcontractors) is theirs alone. The customer is paying for, and entitled to the services specified, where they come from is not their concern but TMobile's.

3. I do agree that TMobile is handling this (now) pretty well but at the grass roots level. By this, I mean that their customer service representatives are doing a great job of representing them and going to great lengths to help the customers. From a corporate perspective, I think they blew it completely and should have been very open and transparent from the beginning as to the problem, the possible duration, and their intentions to mitigate it's impact. The offer of "free" data service was a bogus idea from the start given that giving "free" something that wasn't working in the first place is pretty contradictory.

If it makes TMobile feel any better, today I inquired as to when they will resume selling the Sidekick since we want another one for our daughter. Regardless of all of the ongoing issues about the outage, it's my personal opinion that in the future, their system will be stronger and more robust than ever so it's probably a safe bet to continue being a customer.

[tmobileman]

Originally Posted by BradQue

Thanks for all of the replies and comments to my original post. My position about some of this follows:

1. Agree that TMobile's contract document provides for their being absolved for some outages but there is a difference between an incidental outage as would be considered reasonable and attributable to an act of God or nature and one of a more grievous form, extending to a point in time where it actually constitutes abandonment of the contractual agreement between the two parties (TMobile the provider, and Joe Smidlap, the customer). If one agrees to pay $X to a service provider for a particular service, say cutting the lawn, and rain causes the provider to delay providing that service, it may be considered entirely reasonable. On the other hand, if the provider fails to perform due to letting their equipment fall into disarray, or loss of staff, that isn't reasonable and is therefore breach of contract. The TMobile outage, lasting for about 13 days or more, seems to me to fall into that category. I am not an attorney, but am a contracts professional and am expressing my personal opinion.

2. Saying that the outage isn't TMobile's fault but Microsoft/Danger's is not correct. TMobile is the entity with whom customers have privity of contract and which is being paid to provide a particular service. Their choice of second tier providers (i.e subcontractors) is theirs alone. The customer is paying for, and entitled to the services specified, where they come from is not their concern but TMobile's.

3. I do agree that TMobile is handling this (now) pretty well but at the grass roots level. By this, I mean that their customer service representatives are doing a great job of representing them and going to great lengths to help the customers. From a corporate perspective, I think they blew it completely and should have been very open and transparent from the beginning as to the problem, the possible duration, and their intentions to mitigate it's impact. The offer of "free" data service was a bogus idea from the start given that giving "free" something that wasn't working in the first place is pretty contradictory.

If it makes TMobile feel any better, today I inquired as to when they will resume selling the Sidekick since we want another one for our daughter. Regardless of all of the ongoing issues about the outage, it's my personal opinion that in the future, their system will be stronger and more robust than ever so it's probably a safe bet to continue being a customer.

Well hopefully this will be all over soon and I don't have to take calls with customers pretty much saying this same thing to me over and over and over....and over again. It seems like the customer is just waiting in line to tell me how terrible this is like their the first one or the last one that gets to rub it in our faces that we screwed up. I agree it is a terrible situation and frankly I will not ever promote a sidekick again for a user. If a customer threatens to cancel from now on to get a better price on a sidekick I will push them into another device, offer standard pricing on the sidekick and if they don't want that then I will cancel them for their own good.
Here is a funny one from all this though the other day I had a guy who heard we were letting people out of contracts for the sidekick issue so this guy goes down to the local store, and somehow talks the rep into selling him a SK. He then proceeds to activate a data plan and calls after two hours to cancel with no ETF. Kicker is that his previous contract wasn't up until march of 2011, I told him sorry but you have 14 days to return the SK for a refund, if you keep it you will be held to the contract. He escalates to my sup who then tells him the same thing. He gets so mad that he then throws the SK that he just paid 350 (partial upgrade) into the wall. My SUP then informed him, sorry sir but now we will not accept a return of your device. I am sorry but I don't feel bad for this guy.
Those are the kind of calls I have been taking all week. So I understand there are really some upset people due this issue actually really effecting them, but the whole thing is starting to skew the way I look at my fellow human beings. Man I need a vacation after this and a drink.

[BradQue]

Hi tmobilebman. I feel your pain. I tried to get the point across in part #3 of my post that the CSRs were pretty much the salvation as far as TMobile's image is concerned throughout the Sidekick outage. None with whom I spoke was flapped or short with me (and I made it my business to assure them that I knew they were in a pretty tough situation and blameless for the outage).

Hopefully it's all over, including most of the shouting now and, as I indicated, we're ready to give a SK to our daughter as soon as they are once again available (she wants to trade her BB Pearl through Verizon for one).

So, if they start selling, and I get the gift card as promised, we'll probably use it for that. SK will probably be better than ever as lessons from the recent past are put into place.

Brad