
I emailed the CEO of T-Mobile and he killed my contract - amerf1
http://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/blog/2013/03/t-mobile-blog-customer-service.html?page=all
======
gkoberger
The title seemed negative to me (I thought he complained and the CEO said
"we're done with you!").

But really, the T-Mobile CEO was helping -- the author wanted out of his
contract (well, out of the $200 fee).

(EDIT: The original title was "I emailed the CEO of T-Mobile and he killed my
contract, no joke")

~~~
phaus
The title did seem negative, and I was surprised to find that someone actually
had a positive experience with T-Mobile.

I was a T-Mobile customer off and on for about 7 years total. For the last
contract I had signed with them, I made sure that I would be able to get out
of my contract if I A: moved due to a military PCS, or B: Moved due to getting
out of the military. The T-Mobile rep at the store assured me that I would be
able to get out of my contract under those circumstances, and so I signed up
with them when I arrived at my last duty station.

When I left the military, and moved shortly after, I contacted a very helpful
T-Mobile rep that told me everything was in order and that all I had to do was
send him a copy of my discharge paperwork (which are still considered to be
valid active duty military orders) and the early termination fees would be
waived. After he cancelled my account, I received a ~$700 bill and a letter
that said my paperwork had been declined.

I called and talked to a support rep, who in turn forwarded me to a manager
that had no more authority than the representative. T-Mobile purposely creates
powerless management positions in order to delude customers into thinking that
there is nothing supervisors can do to handle customer service issues.
Ultimately, they decided to continue to charge me the ETFs because they were
already having a really bad year for customer retention.

The really ridiculous part of this mess is that I was perfectly happy with
T-Mobile, yet I was forced to move to a state that doesn't have a single
T-Mobile tower because I didn't have any luck finding employment elsewhere. I
would have returned to T-Mobile as soon as possible, but my experience with
their customer service has opened my eyes to what a shitty company it is.

~~~
chimeracoder
> The title did seem negative, and I was surprised to find that someone
> actually had a positive experience with T-Mobile.

When was this?

I was a long-time T-Mobile customer until a few years ago, and I always had
_excellent_ customer service experiences with them.

The only reason I switched was because I moved to NYC, and they had terrible
reception here at the time - I couldn't place calls in my own bedroom.

Even then, though, we were able to break our entire family contract (which I
believe we had only just re-signed a couple of months before) without paying
an ETF[0].

[0] This is despite the fact that (a) I was the only one in the family plan
who was in NYC, and (b) my zip code was in their coverage map (which means
that they had no legal obligation to let me off the contract).

I've been considering going back to T-mobile; if their customer service really
has gone downhill in the last few years, maybe I'll think about AT&T
instead....

~~~
phaus
It was early-mid 2012. It was in the middle of the mass exodus of customers
from T-Mobile, and before they rolled out the new anti-contract strategy.

If you read the contract, even if you move to an area with zero phone or data
coverage, you still have to pay an ETF. My case should have been excluded,
because I clearly fell within the clause about military personnel, and I had
on multiple occasions been told by their employees and management that
everything was good to go.

To be fair, I worked as a telecommunications technician for a decade, and the
entire industry is really shitty. None of the companies seem genuinely
interested in providing value to their customers, and new plans often end up
being more expensive for most people. When I dumped T-Mobile, I ended up using
a pre-paid plan through Straight Talk. I get the same level of service at half
the price, and I don't have to worry about getting fucked by a greedy,
unethical corporation if I feel like cancelling my service.

------
dsr_
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.

~~~
lancewiggs
The CEO is modelling behaviour for everyone else at the company. He should not
have to do this for every customer as by now the word should be spreading
internally that if the CEO can do it, then so can you/

~~~
ruswick
> _if the CEO can do it, then so can you_

That's not how it works. I doubt that the customer service reps have the
ability to arbitrarily dole out perks with no justification other than that
they felt like it.

~~~
edanm
FYI, isn't that exactly the power that Amazon customer service reps have? I'm
pretty sure they can decide to arbitrarily give someone refunds, send them new
merchandise, etc. Or rather, they can do so but probably within limited rules,
not arbitrarily.

I agree that it takes a CEO both showing what to do, and empowering the people
below him to do it.

------
rjzzleep
It's funny how people immediately mock someone's sense of entitlement. You
know what? Sometimes you indeed are entitled to something and the only reason
you don't is because everyone else just accepts the sewer everyone is in.

I once received an apology letter after helping my mom bringing her complaint
to the governing board of deutsche Bank. Because god forbid she was right and
that douchebag bank worker wasn't.

Indeed just wow. I wish people would complain more, when there is a need.

What do I mean with when there is a need? That's the thing. Were not supposed
to be machine(even though a lot of people wish for the opposite). Were
supposed to evaluate the choices given to us and act accordingly.

And for all of you running a small business and thinking of the douchebag
client you don't want. I apologize, because I know exactly who you're talking
about and you're right.

~~~
harshreality
This reporter wasn't entitled to get out of his contract early. Either he was
too lazy or stupid to know when his contract was ending (a dangerous thing for
a journalist writing articles to inform the masses), or he knowingly pressured
T-Mobile into letting him switch to a contract-free plan early. He thought he
was special (he had the power to write a misleading, negative article about
T-Mobile if they didn't cave, or a positive one if they did). If that's not an
improper sense of entitlement, I don't know what is.

~~~
ZoFreX
Did you read the article? He admits that he was mistaken, obligated to pay the
amount, and was willing to do so.

~~~
harshreality
Did you? That was at the very end, after he'd insisted T-Mobile was wrong
about when his contract was ending, and had emailed the _CEO_ about it, only
to be told _again_ that he was wrong.

Why would a _reporter_ call customer service to ask whether he could switch
plans? Wouldn't he _look at his contract_?

~~~
indymike
It's ok to ask the other party to modify a contract. The other party is under
no obligation to do so, but sometimes doing a modification makes sense.

------
wpietri
I've got a theory that this can all be explained by cost of communication.

For a long time, word of mouth was what determined what people thought of
businesses. Plus, high cost of communication kept most businesses small.

Newer communication technologies made very large companies practical, but the
tech was expensive enough that it was most effectively used by those large
companies both internally and externally). This a) meant a large company could
override word of mouth with enough advertising, and b) encouraged the rise of
professional managers, who spent very little time in contact with customers
and mainly knew what their underlings told them.

But now, with the Internet, the pendulum swings back. Things like email,
Facebook, and Twitter have brought low-cost one-to-one and one-to-many
communication to the masses. Advertising doesn't work as well, and one person
with a good or bad experience can tell hundreds, thousands, millions. If a CEO
wants to know what people are saying, a simple Twitter search will tell them,
with no underlings to soften or filter.

So smarter companies are recognizing that they can get a competitive advantage
by acting like a small-town business has all along: the person in charge opens
themselves up for unfiltered feedback, using that to fix their organization
and get great word of mouth in the process.

What I really wonder is where the new equilibrium point is. Advertising has
less manipulative power, but it's not gone. And large companies will try to
control new media just like they tried to control what turns up in the press.

------
001sky
Reporter: For $200, I will write a nice article about you.

CEO: Deal

~~~
enraged_camel
That is really what this whole thing is about. Nothing more, nothing less.

------
kordless
I've had a mobile phone since the Motorola Brick days. Over the years I've
grumbled and complained about various cell phone companies policies, dealt
with contract obligations, bad service, horrible experiences with switching
plans, etc., etc. The worst of the worst was moving to the bay in late 2007
and having to use AT&T on an iPhone.

Last year I bought a Nexus 4 from Google and signed up for a prepaid T-Mobile
plan. A few months later they switched over to offering no-contract plans and
I followed suit by putting both my kids and myself on a single plan. My entire
experience with the company since signing up has been nothing short of
stellar. Great customer service, low wait times while calling in, friendly
faces in the stores, and always a willingness to do whatever it took to make
me happy with my service.

My contract, with my two kids tacked on, is about what I paid Verizon a month
for an iPhone. About the only complaint I have with T-Mobile is that I can't
really surf the net while I'm in the BART tube under the Bay on the way into
the city. Other than that, it's been a great experience!

It just goes to show that one person at a company, with the power to make real
changes, is what it takes to change an entire industry. It feels great to give
my money to a company that actually cares about customer service.

------
jamesmcbennett
Desire Paths 101. See Tom Hulme talk.
[http://mcbennett.wordpress.com/2013/09/17/tom-hulme-john-
mae...](http://mcbennett.wordpress.com/2013/09/17/tom-hulme-john-maeda/)

Taking inspiration from Urban Design where a path runs along the outside of a
park expecting everyone to take the architected route. However people cut
through the middle when they don't like the given route, following their
desire path. Over time, the grass wastes away from the thousands of footsteps
and bicycles that take their preferred route. The park owners have a choice to
put up a sign saying "Do not walk on the grass" or altenatively pave the new
path.

In business, when consumers take a new path, there is an option to pave their
path as a new product line. Watch Tom's talk above to see how Facebook didn't
pave their users desire path giving space for snapchat to grow. An example
where a business put up the "do not walk on the grass" sign is Kickstarter who
blogged, "Kickstarter is not a store," moving away from the desire path.

In this case, the CEO of T-mobile has helped a user cross the middle of the
park, the question remains whether he should pave it.

~~~
mcherm
> the question remains whether he should pave it.

Actually, that question has been answered. T-mobile has started offering no-
contract plans, a complete change from the rest of the US industry. The only
thing done here was to let a customer move to the new system sooner than they
otherwise would.

~~~
jamesmcbennett
great! Thx for update. (I don't live in the US, so don't know much about the
industry there.)

------
Asterick6
It's a good thing that John Legere places customer care/service as a high
priority, but it seems like you didn't take the time to figure out the problem
yourself.

Instead of "getting frustrated" and taking the issue to the CEO, you could
have spent some time and effort to resolve it yourself.

Also, this post doesn't provide enough information about your issue and why
you had a misunderstanding. If it did, then it would be more meaningful.

------
skittles
I want to like T-Mobile, but I'm in the middle of the US with access to 100+
Mbps Internet but no T-Mobile signal in my house. T-Mobile is pushing itself
hard in my area, but they just don't have the coverage.

~~~
JoshTriplett
If you're willing to use a T-Mobile branded phone rather than your own phone,
T-Mobile has wifi calling available.

Alternatively, if you can get any signal at all, anywhere in your house, you
can get a signal booster; you can either buy one yourself from Cel-Fi, or
T-Mobile will give you one with a two-year contract.

------
geophile
A similar technique worked for me. I had an IOmega Jaz drive, which
accomodated 1GB cartridges. (The same company produced the better known Zip
drive.)

The cartridges kept getting stuck, and any attempt to remove the drive seemed
to completely destroy the hardware. After several replacements, I got fed up
and asked for a refund. They weren't going for it. I finally called the CEO,
and received a refund pretty quickly.

I suspect that it's cheaper to just refund a few bucks and make the irritant
go away, rather than deal with it at that level.

------
jfoster
This isn't particularly scalable for T-Mobile and I'd say they haven't done
themselves or their customers any favours. The customer service experience
should be the same regardless of whether you go in from the top or the bottom.
If a customer has a better experience by going in from the top, I think that
just implies that the customer service frontlines are failing.

It's good that the CEO is so accessible, but no reasonable customer should
need to reach out to the CEO in order to get the a good CS experience.

------
derefr
> "But how is that so? I have had a full upgrade since November."

Usually, phone upgrades are offered starting two years into a three-year plan.
They don't want to let the contract expire before they try to reel you back in
with an upgrade; that'd be incredibly dangerous for retention. They want to
offer you the phone while you're still good and legally bound to them, but
when you _feel_ like you're almost out.

------
Keyframe
Article/blog post (whatever it is) reads like a PR article, which it probably
is.

------
ulfw
We live in a world were people feel entitled to bring their little contractual
issues all the way up to the CEO of a company with over 30 MM customers. So
you either believe a) you're above those other 30 MM and can just do your CEO
1:1s if need be or b) you foolishly believe that the CEO of a major corp has
the time and willingness to deal with customer support for 30 Million people.

Just wow

~~~
epochwolf
People would email Steve Jobs all the time. This isn't a new thing.

Before the Internet CEOs would get letters.

~~~
dandrews
Yep. Back in the PCs Limited days I wrote Michael Dell an appreciative letter
for some out-of-warranty customer service I'd received. Got a nice
acknowledgement letter back from a VP. That little exchange indirectly earned
Dell a _lot_ of business from my employer in later years when we dumped HP and
were casting about for a new desktop provider.

------
paul9290
I'm in a similar situation with Sprint where I wanted to get an iPhone 5s as I
have had the 4s since its introduction.

Well I was told I couldn't get it until Dec. or I could pay $150 to get out of
my contract and get a new contract to get the 5s now.

I actually ended paying the fee and after doing so was told to text 1311 for
more info. There in the text it said I could upgrade now or go with their new
and better plan OneUp. No one told me about OneUp which is the more modern and
better option. Sigh I spent $150 because Sprint hasn't trained their reps on
this program, but they put the info in their SMS marketing....errrr :(

Well Sprint did solve that issue but then after solving it and because its
still a new option/plan mis-information abounds. Getting a new iPhone with
Sprint or trying has taken to much time and effort and have tried to work with
them for the past two weeks. But I'm done... See ya Sprint!

------
ruswick
On the one hand, it's nice to see that executives are receptive to their
customers. However, the OP clearly states that they did not quality for a free
transfer, and the fact that they got it seems sort of arbitrary. What if the
CEO hadn't responded, or if the other executive hadn't chosen to cancel the
contract? What if that person were having a bad day, and chose not to make
such a gesture to the OP? One data point isn't conclusive, especially under
such odd circumstances.

Good service is service that is both high in quality and in consistency. I
highly doubt the ability of a single CEO to handle every email in the same way
(if at all), and I'm not sure if I like the idea of unwarranted perks being
handed out at the discretion of executives. It seems too much like a lottery,
especially because the OP did not qualify for the transfer in the first place.

------
tempestn
If he didn't have one already, Legere is certainly going to need an assistant
to triage his personal email now.

~~~
kordless
He's the CEO of TMobile. I guarantee he has an EA working that already.

~~~
tempestn
Indeed. In which case giving out his own email address is just a convenient
way of filtering out a a certain type of customer service request, while also
being good PR.

He'd want a way to get important emails quickly without the EA having to
manually screen them; I wonder if he uses a separate address, a whitelist, a
tag (ie johnlegere+internal@tmobile.com), or a keyword in the subject.
Guessing whitelist.

------
personlurking
There's the old but true "never take a No from someone who doesn't have the
authority to say Yes." So in most situations, the CEO wouldn't be helping,
thus the customer service agents should have some authority. I've worked in a
call center, I know the kind of BS that's pushed. Everyone just says what
needs to be said to get the sale or get the customer off the phone (if it's a
problem).

As an aside, I once had a problem with my Citibank and I found a little known
'elite team' of Citibank people who called me in a foreign country, on my cell
phone, within minutes of me contacting them via email and resolved my problem
in about 2 minutes flat. And they reversed charges I felt I shouldn't have had
in the first place.

------
lucb1e
Well this is nice of T-Mobile and shows they do somewhat care about customer
service. I can chime in and add my experience with the English (American?)
division of T-Mobile: they responded to a mention at a social network while I
was not even really meaning to ask them a question, I merely mentioned them.
The Dutch division is not as great, but oh well.

Still, I'd say it's how it's supposed to be. In the Netherlands it'd be
illegal to upgrade contracts like this. You can't start charging more without
giving the user an option to quit the contract for free (or continue the old
contract for the old price). Also after the contract period (one or two
years), consumers have a right to cancel the contract each month, also for
free.

~~~
harshreality
They didn't start charging more. Telecom companies pull some shady tricks with
plans and billing, but increasing the monthly fee without notice part way
through your contract is not one of them.

He signed a contract for some period of time, and it wasn't up yet. After it
was up, he would have had the option of one of the new plans, or switching
providers, just like everyone else does.

~~~
smartwater
With mobile providers in the US, if you don't use your "upgrade" you can keep
using the service with no contract. If you accept their upgrade, an offer of
getting a new phone at discount, you lock yourself in for another year.

------
hknozcan
I used t-mobile from around 2000 to the end of 2007 in NYC. Never had any
problems but data was not a big issue back then. They even assigned me a 212
mobile number from a batch of 10 numbers that they received.

With the right wording and timing, these things happen. Around 2002, I was
searching what books to buy and e-mailed Amazon support what books Jeff Bezos
has read in the past 6 months. They replied immediately to told me to ask him
directly providing his e-mail address. I forwarded the e-mail and got a reply
back with a list. This was even cooler than having a 212 number.

------
jordanbaucke
I tweeted him a few weeks ago after I wrote a follow-up to a letter I
dispatched to their legal department a few weeks ago over the $299
cancellation fee [http://onemanmilitia.blogspot.com/2013/09/to-get-out-of-
my-c...](http://onemanmilitia.blogspot.com/2013/09/to-get-out-of-my-contract-
with-t-mobile.html)

I agree with the comments I've seen here - their customer service is helpless,
and I explained so in my letter.

------
TheMagicHorsey
Oh, what a huge surprise. A CEO of a major corporation making sure that a
journalist is taken care of.

Talk to any tech journalist. They all get special treatment now and again.

------
Gonzih
Very very misleading title.

------
jennita
Once, my phone actually flushed down the toilet, and I tweeted about it.
T-mobile ended up sending me an upgraded version of my phone the next day, for
free! Pretty sure they did it because they were laughing so hard about my
ridiculousness. But that's cool by me. :)

------
galaktor
I wouldn't conclude that this is good customer service. More bad service as
the support team couldn't (or weren't officially allowed to) kill the
contract. This was just a case of ultimate escalation which was brought to
resolution as quickly as possible.

------
shmerl
T-Mobile is probably the best mobile provider in US.

------
joeblau
Dang it. I got hooked by the link bait! I'll be the CEO of T-Mobile is going
to get a ton of e-mails now.

