UPDATE: T-Mobile Hotspot: Wham, Bam, But No Thanks

On Wednesday, ZDnet blogger David Berlind posted a call of his attempts to extract a refund from T-Mobile hotspot but it’s not until today that he found complete satisfaction.

Due to time issues and against his better judgment, Berlind tried to use T-mobile’s wifi at the airport. The wifi was happy to stay connected long enough to process his credit card, but immediately afterwards he couldn’t connect worth snuff. In retrieving his funds, he battled T-Mobile rep “Rudy” who was aggressive and rude in asserting the company’s lack of responsibility for what he insinuated was Berlind’s fault. Namely that Berlind obviously hadn’t read the several pages of terms and conditions. Eventually, Berlind was able to scrape out a free day of T-mobile hotspot service, but not an actual refund on his credit card.

Cornel Cunningham, T-Mobile’s senior manger of technical care, called Berlind in response to his post and offered a profuse apology in addition to a full refund. Cornel also issued a statement for Berlind to post on his blog. Score a victory for the consumer.

But not all is peaches…

Several commenters, and David himself, wonder if he would have been so successful without such a visible platform. One of them, “buffslayer,” even goes so far as to suggest the only ethical thing for David to do now is go back to T-mobile and ask for refunds for all the discussion thread participants who voiced T-mobile billing difficulties.

The sheer technical difficulty of this aside, to you, “buffslayer,” we say this: take inspiration in Martin Luther.

Forget the priests. You can reach customer service salvation yourselves.

The customer is in charge: T-Mobile issues an apology (and my money back)” [ZDnet] (Thanks to David C!)

Previously: T-Mobile Hotspot: Wham, Bam, But No Thanks

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