Can I ask why you're so unhappy with T-Mobile? I had them for years and loved them. Their customer service is second to none in my opinion. I switched to VZW simply because of the new place I live. I will probably go right back to T-Mobile when I can. I've heard horror stories about the Behold II, but I don't think it's fair to place all the blame on T-Mo for that.
Give you a little background on my t-mobile experiences. Long rant, but you wanted to know. I am not placing all the blame on t-mo for the behold 2, but its the straw that broke the camels back in my opinion.
Started off 2 years ago with Sidekick Slide. About 30 days into it, the phone would reboot constantly, even more so when attempting to send pictures. When I went into the T-Mobile store to complain and to possibly see if it was defective, I was promptly told that its a known issue and nothing can be done about it.
Numerous calls to t-mobile throughout the year about other issues, like the data just quits working to find out about outages and other ongoing issues with the sidekick network, Phone freezing up, camera having a white spot showing up in pictures taken, no one would assist with issuing a replacement.
Sometimes, when I requested a supervisor, the agents would just hang up on me, in one instance I was transferred back into the general queue. Sometimes being placed on hold with no warning for over 5+ minutes. Phone reset by the rep even after advising I am on the phone I am calling about. Then the data loss issue happened in October of 09
Sidekick Data Loss: T-Mobile's Unending Nightmare - PCWorld
I was one of the many people affected by this and lost some of my contacts. Some were recovered, but anything entered into my phone within the last 6 months prior to the outage were wiped. The problem with that is, I moved to Pittsburgh from Columbus several months prior and the large portion of those contacts that were lost were friends and family from Columbus.
After several more calls back to t-mobile and several other mis-handled issues. Like reps not checking for a previous opened ticket on this issue trying to open a new ticket, reps telling me there was open ticket, but was closed 3 days prior to the call, but were telling me it was open and active. After the ticket was closed there was no notes, when I spoke with a rep that seemed to know what she was doing, I found out the ticket was opened as a voice issue and not a data issue, so it was closed for that reason. So I escalated a new ticket, to callback in a couple of days later to find out it was closed with no notes. I then escalated to a floor supervisor, who then advised me that the notes did indicate I lost those contacts permanantly and was getting a $100 gift card for compensation... He was going to toss in a extra $50 card for having to deal with all the BS on this issue..
I still have yet to receive this and this was back in late October. In Feb of this year, I had a larger than normal check from a bunch of overtime, so I decided to get me a new phone. I was told by the CSR in the store that I did not have to worry about getting a phone with issues and obsolete with the behold 2..... That now is not correct at all.
So I have contacted the executive customer service department, because of these issues. They are trying to downplay the credit on the account as well, since no one at t-mobile apparently handles these and its done by a 3rd party company.. They were also trying to say the $20 in credit on my data plan that everyone with a sidekick received should have sufficed.
I am sorry, but this is by far the worst customer service ever. Within my time at working for call center technical support, supervisor escalation teams and quality assurance analyst roles for 5 years running now, I should know a thing or two about call handling requirements. Not to mention t-mobile used the same 3rd party contract center I used to work for in Columbus and when was a QA, I was able to access our internal form for t-mobile quality assurance to see how the agents were graded. Hanging up on customers, transferring back into queues and holds without permission are considered "Red Flag" incidences. They are placed on the employees records along with written warnings. 3 offenses during their time of employment is termination from the company.
The contracted department I worked for was different and would look at issues like that on a case-by-case basis and fire accordingly. The fact that their reps are able to get caught abusing customers 3 times to get fired is ludicrous. Not to mention that not all calls are recorded and not all of the Customers they abuse are recorded.
Even break it down deeper for you. The company uses a KPI (Key performance indicator) measurement for their reps. One of the major factors is handle time. At the end of the month, if their handle time is higher than what is outlined; they are on a written warning. If they do not correct this by the second month, its a verbal warning. On the third month its immediate termination. So if a rep is border lined on any sort of warning and you call them and the issue may take longer than normal to resolve, they will do what they can do get you off that phone. Some supervisors will also assist agents by attempting to tap their line to confirm whether they are being recorded or not, to green light the customer abuse. Because if a supervisors team has good numbers, it means more pay, better annual reviews or even a special parking spot in the front of the building for them for that month. Supervisors can get terminated or demoted if their team fails to meet the numbers as a whole.
So the rep who wants to go all out to help the customer are the reps who are usually terminated first for caring too much about getting the issues resolved, since they kill their handle time by staying on the phone longer than outlined. So think about that the next time you spend 15+ minutes on a phone with a really helpful rep, that because he is helping you may mean that in the end he can wind up terminated and unable to provide for himself and family, because he put your first over the "Silly" call stats he is required to meet.
