T-Mobile for business - rant

First of all, most of you know me here. You know I am not especially prone to slavish devotion to T-Mobile, but that I am satisfied with the service (coverage et al.) and the price. I switched from Cingular, and before that I had Sprint (before the Great L.A. Upgrade) and L.A. Cellular/AT&T (bad customer service at the time).

Three months ago, my firm decided to switch from Cingular to T-Mobile on the idea that we might as well pay less money for Cingular service. I contacted a T-Mobile rep, and we initiated the process. We are using the company's tax ID number so that we can have business plans with mobile-to-mobile (one of our chief requirements), and the deal was that bills would be sent to the individual employees (16 of us) but the firm would ultimately end up responsible for the payment of the bill. I spearheaded the switch.

First, we had problems with getting phones - they had to be shipped from VoiceStream warehouses in the eastern U.S. if you wanted anything besides the Samsung R225M, the Motorola V60g, or the Nokia 3390 Gold. People were automatically sent a Nokia 3390 and if they returned it, their first bill reflected charges for two phones; the Nokia was not taken off the bill.

Next, T-Mobile assigned all the wrong area codes. We had been very specific - 4 in 323, 2 in 310, 2 in 661, the rest in 818, and matched to the phone orders in a spreadsheet - While this would not normally be a problem (go ahead and change the number via Customer Care), they didn't just change the numbers, they cancelled the lines and then started new lines. This meant that there were lines with no name associated but with charges associated, and no link between the old line number and the new line number.

Then they sent us one giant bill instead of the individual bills with one summary sent. I asked our rep to please divide the bills up and send them out. She divided the bills up - but some plans got changed in the process, and people got charged for mobile-to-mobile where they shouldn't have. Also, the individuals got summaries with no remittance envelope. The rep created separate account numbers for each line - a good step which would have solved the issue had the balance forward been brought onto the new accounts, as asked. I continued further, and our rep assured me she would take the account out of delinquent status while the accounts were fixed.

By now, the dickering back and forth has taken two and a half months, the account is delinquent because no one really knows what's going on, and my calls are no longer being returned by the rep. I went to New York and spent a blissful week not worrying about it, and come back to find out that two of our employees' phones were turned off and that the rep had quit without telling anyone in advance and without moving her accounts elsewhere.

I took my own advice to others on these fora and wrote a clear, concise, and polite letter to the C.E.O. of T-Mobile USA, but I have not yet heard back from them.

Now, it seems I get to start the whole story over again with the rep's supervisor.

All I want is the following: a bill for each line, showing what is owed on it, sent to the employee's home, as agreed in writing. Any disputes can then be taken care of on an employee-by-employee basis.

There is absolutely no reason why this should have taken so long. The communication lines amoung T-Mobile staff seem to be non-existent, and there was no way for me to get a weekly status out of the rep. I have spent well over 100 hours on this fiasco, 100 hours when I could have been working with a client, billing $150 an hour, and ensuring the continued financial well-being of my firm. It doesn't look like this is going to be taken care of any time soon, so I can look forward to more unproductive time spent explaining the case over and over to people with poor listening skills, both our rep and the Corporate Customer Care people to whom I have spoken.

By contrast, when we were considering our options for leaving Cingular, Verizon sent a representative, Mr. Gottschalk, to talk to me. He was responsive in the extreme, had negotiating power, and (from talking to his other accounts) as diligent post-sale as pre-sale. Unfortunately, Verizon could not satisfy our main requirement, which was multi-party conference calling (or a chain of 3-way calls). I find myself wishing fervently for Verizon to fix that issue so we can switch and be done with it.

(I myself have a family plan with my wife, completely separate from this oysvorf of a cell phone account. We get our bill once a month, we pay it. When I have issues, I call Customer Care and it's taken care of. Were it not for the hassles of my company's experience with T-Mobile, I would have a very high opinion of the firm. Were it not for the fact that my company defray the cost of my cell phone bill based on my choosing the 'company standard' (T-Mobile), I would switch to Verizon and encourage others to do likewise.)

I have seldom seen such a disarray and such an inability of divisions within a company to talk to each other - and I assure you that I have seen some inefficient firms.

If anyone has CONSTRUCTIVE SUGGESTIONS - and let me emphasise the words "constructive" (I don't need to read personal attacks, nor do I need to see things like "switch to at&t their a better company") and "suggestions" (I don't need to see bottom-line defence of T-Mobile without a suggestion on how to improve my experience) - I would love to hear them. If we do decide to switch from T-Mobile, you may be sure I will post it here and you can all have a carrier war then. Of course, if we do decide to switch from T-Mobile, I will not be spearheading it.

I have been soured enough on the whole experience to start recommending against T-Mobile for business.

 

Update - I had my VP call the regional manager. We got a threatening notice in the mail about impending shutoff. The VP pointed out that if they shut us off on a disputed bill, we will return the phones, and if they attempt to collect, we'll sue. (This statement is not made lightly. He does not make idle threats.) Fortunately, we negotiated a non-standard contract and so we could quite easily get them for breach of contract.

Things are moving forward. We were assigned a dedicated billing supervisor to get this worked out. I'm still not sanguine about its proceeding forward, but it's a step in the right direction.

 

Update (and bump)...

I got a call from the billing supervisor saying the conversion had been completed. I called CS independently to verify that the old 'central' account reflected a balance of $0. She sent me a list of the charges forwarded onto the individual accounts, and they included only the equipment charges. The two months of service - for 11 lines, mind you - were credited.

There are still a couple of small issues - have to establish authorised users for each new account number, for once - but that's easily done by fax. Also, they couldn't figure out which line had got a V60, so they split the cost between the two they were unsure about. Rather than have them fix it, I arranged for the person who DOES have the V60 to write a check to cover the cost on the other person's bill. (We're a small and tight-knit group... it's not a problem for us.)

Now, I still managed to spend a total of 126.5 hours on this, when I could easily have been billing out at $150 an hour, so it's still a financial hit for our firm, but it is OVER. I am still unhappy about the service (system busies, etc.) but they seem to be proactive about that (that site did indeed go up that I posted in another thread).

I am... appeased. They certainly did right by us once we got the chain of command working, and I suspect that our original rep was (a) a bit clueless and (b) unsuited for her job, hence why she suddenly is 'not working'. Her supervisor got everything done in a matter of seven business days - and the lady forgot to redact the e-mail she forwarded, so I got to see some internal discussion, which amounted to "He threatened to call the regional director. Do it by TODAY."

Kudos to T-Mobile, rotten vegetables to our first representative.

 

I'm glad they're "infilling".

Anyone might have a bad first CSR... but you would think that for a corporate customer, she would have gone to her boss once she was out of her league. I mean, what if we had been a much larger firm? Granted, they would not have assigned a 'greenie' to us, but even more experienced people can be bad CSRs. Can you imagine if it had been a large customer like Southern California Edison or Universal Studios?