Ric L. is having problems with T-Mobile’s CSRs—specifically, they don’t seem capable of actually making any changes to his account or recording anything about his calls, and when that leads to $75 in extra fees, they say they can’t fix it and offer him “free” text messages. Ric says he suspects the CSR he talked to “takes the responsibilities of his job about as seriously as a cat with a ball of yarn,” but we all know that’s incredibly disrespectful to cats everywhere, who take their various activities quite seriously. Read Ric’s email to T-Mobile after the jump.
Mr. Dotson,
Although I’m sure you get many e-mails on a daily basis from customers that are less than pleased with the service that your company provides I’d like to give you some idea of my recent dealings with t-mobile customer care.
I am a SmartAccess customer with a 1000 minutes family plan for two lines. On January 22nd I paid my balance in full of $220.00 online. This balance included several dollars in overages related to txt messages in excess of my plan. After paying my balance I attempted to change my text messaging bundle on the t-mobile website. It stated that “due to the status of my account” I couldn’t make any changes. Not wanting to incur more charges in the future I contacted customer support by dialing 611 on my blackberry and asking customer care to make the changes to my account.
Two days ago I received a text from t-mobile stating that I was nearing my spending limit. A bit taken aback that I’d be anywhere near the limit I logged in and checked my balance. There were in excess of $75 in text messaging fees on my account. I e-mailed customer support online to get the issue cleared up.
Tonight at 11pm EST a telephone call that I was on got disconnected and my service suspended. Not having received any reply from t-mobile support by e-mail I attempted to call customer care to get the issue resolved.
Apparently (and this isn’t the first time I’ve encountered this) the call center agent that I spoke with on the 22nd not only didn’t make the changes to my account, didn’t place any notes on my account but also failed to even pull my account up to look at it. I can only assume that he takes the responsibilities of his job about as seriously as a cat with a ball of yarn.
Due to your customer call agent’s pure incompetence my account is suspended. Had your employee done his job I wouldn’t have incurred the over $75 in text messaging charges that put my account over it’s limit. I find that unacceptable.
I’ll be the first to admit that I got a bit short with your call agents tonight. That might have something to do with their absolutely infuriating habit of cutting a customer off in midsentence and interrupting at every possible opportunity. You customer call agents are not only incompetent, they’re immensely rude. I don’t like being told that nothing can be done to remedy an error on the part of your company. According to your agents my only option is paying off these charges. The sheer idea of offering me “bonus text messages” as a remedy for my “inconvenience” is nothing more than an insult.
Although I may be a SmartAccess customer I’m also a governmental customer and a customer with a long standing clean record with your company. As such I expect, no I demand, that something be done about your company’s complete lack of customer service. The whole point in having customer care and billing agents is to provide your customers with resolution to service problems. The fact that your call agents have no way to bring remedy to a situation is absolutely assinine, what is it exactly you pay them for?
Cordially,
Ric
The thing that troubles us the most about this is it demonstrates how you can be screwed over by a rogue CSR, who can just pretend like your call never happened and leave your account unaltered. This is why we’d suggest never trusting a CSR’s word for anything—always check your account the next day online and call back when you inevitably see that the change hasn’t been made.
(Photo: gumuz)
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T-Mobile is like all the other carriers. You need to let them talk and then VERIFY. Never believe a word. I had so many problems just signing up with them, I finally told them to forget it. If their customer service reps are that bad trying to get a new customer, I can just imagine what they are like to an existing customer.
Something else I always do is after I am done with the rep, I always get her manager on the line. I confirm the changes with her manager. The managers will give you their name, phone number etc. So then you do have a contact number.
Whatever you do, hang in there until it is resolved to your satisfaction. Even if you have to go to local TV station. We cannot allow companies to continue to take their customers for granted. There are too many choices out there.
@whatdoyoucare: And they still are. I have friends who work in the Wichita, KS T-mobile call center.
@jtheletter: I’ve asked them how they sign in to their computer or their phone. I’ve worked at a crappy call center before and we had to sign in to a phone and the computer we used. No, really.
I’m not surprised that people are having problems, but I’ve never a problem with T-Mobile. I was one of those teenagers who texted constantly, and when I met my girlfriend, I ran up 40,000 text (in and out) in one month, which ran up quite the overage. In exchange for adding unlimited text messaging, they completely wiped out the charge, which was a wise investment. As for those who are insulting texting, some people just don’t want to be that idiot who’s constantly yapping on a cellphone in public places annoying other people.
It’s possible though that an earlier rep flagged the account as belonging to a rude person and then they won’t be as nice. I’ve found that being nice to a CSR always gets me better service than just starting out and tearing into them.
T-Mobile CS is hit-and-miss. If you get a rep you don’t like, try just calling back. Inefficient, I know, but at least there’s a 50-50 chance there – there are so many companies out there that getting a good rep is like 1 in a million.
If that doesn’t work, try going down to your local T-Mobile store. Try going when it’s least busy – early morning if you can. If possible, identify a store rep you like and find out when they work, and go in and see them specifically. A lot of time, I’ve found, talking to someone in person helps get issues resolved. Reps over the phone can just be too far removed.
To give everyone an update, it seems that every billing rep that I had spoken with at t-mobile was incorrect as to why my bill had reached such a high amount and why my service was suspended. The culprit wasn’t just text message fees as we had originally thought. There was also a $107 charge that was applied to my account from a under warranty phone swap that I did in January. Apparently, when the warehouse received my old phone it showed signs of water damage. I know there was no water damage when the phone was sent in, the rep that arranged the warranty swap had me take pictures of the water damage indicator in the battery compartment and MMS them to her.
Why the billing representatives were unable to figure out the charges and provide me with a truthful explanation of the amount of my bill I’ll never understand. It seems to me that if a provider is going to suspend your service and forward every call you attempt to a billing representative then that representative should at least have access to a detailed accounting of the charges on your account.
Regardless, the charges have been removed from my account. The text message charges have also been removed. I didn’t receive any sort of an apology from t-mobile for suspending my service for four days. They still insist that I never called in on January 22nd to change my text plan, but they’ve made the changes anyway. I’m now on the $19.99 / month “Unlimited Messages for Families” add-on which covers both lines on my family plan.
I’m not overly happy with the outcome, but at least my service has been restored. My total bill went from $324.79 to $125.77. I think that now that my year is up I’ll either switch from SmartAccess to a regular post-paid account or switch providers entirely. I’m shopping around right now for a provider that has comparable plans which support blackberry use.
As far as this issue in particular is concerned. Score another for consumerist.com, it probably wouldn’t have been resolved without my posting here.
Ric L.
You know, I really to apologize that you were given poor information. But as a T-Mobile CSR, I just felt the need to tell you that we are not really free to roam on our own. All of our calls are recorded, and on top of that, there are screen shots to follow the recorndings of our call. I love my job, I love my company, and I love the people I work with. Don’t let one bad experience reflect back poorly on the rest of us. We are a performance based company, our raises, our bonuses, and anything else special is based on our performance, and the service we give to you the consumer.
This is one of the reasons I’ve started calling out through my GrandCentral account, which can record the conversation. It’s a bit more of a hassle, but outweighing that hassle is the ability to say “well I just so happen to have a recording of the conversation in question, should we listen to it right this very moment?”
Granted I’ve only had to say that once, during a dispute with LA Fitness, but the look on the manager’s face was so deliciously satisfying that I was giggling for the rest of the day.