Sometimes Ben uses the royal ‘we’ in confusing ways, like when he talks about ‘our’ appearance on 20/20 (his!), ‘our’ meeting with Edelmann (his!) and ‘our’ girlfriend (which, god willing, Ben doesn’t know about).

So let me be totally clear: my Mommy, not Ben’s, wrote us, praising T-Mobile, for god’s sakes. You might know my mother as the unofficial Consumerist mascot, so when she says T-Mobile treated her right, you should listen. On the other hand, T-Mobile ever treating any customer right is so improbable that we should all probably remember my mother once had a stroke. But we should also remember my mother is charming, even to faceless corporations.

But it sounds on the up and up. After my mother ended up getting locked out of her phone and somehow ended up calling the State Police by accident, she called T-Mobile and got “a very nice young man” named Jeff. Jeff helped her out and even told her that “T-Mobile doesn’t have any stupid customers.”

That’s a bit of a stretch, Jeff, but kudos! Old Ma Brownlee’s email, after the jump.

Amazingly I have had very little trouble with my T-Mobile cellphone since buying it last March. I don’t use it much, but I didn’t intend it for anything but a backup, and emergency phone. Tonight I broke it, not break – broke, but I managed to mess up a PIN and then a PUK, forgot what SOS stands for, and ended up talking to the State Police 911. I really should have read the manual, and written things down last March.

I was mortified about accidently calling the State E911, but the operator wasn’t annoyed (I apologized profusely, and the SOS that T uses causes many such calls), even told me something that might have fixed the problem had I not already punched too many buttons. I was going to have to call the dreaded Customer Care line.

Visions of a 2 hour hold, surly CSRs, “ring around the rosy” computer dialing choices, digital voices, and that awful, awful music only interupted by “All our representative are busy right now, please hold for the first available representative”; I almost caved in to procrastinating. I am very good at procrastinating. But I called the 800 number.

Guess what? I was talking to a CSR within 3 minutes, and that’s counting getting through the “push 1 for english,….” list. Jeff was very nice, I pulled the battery, gave him some numbers, and in 30 seconds he was giving me the PUK number to input, and after choosing a PIN the phone was working (yes John, I wrote it all down). I was delighted, thanked him profusely, told him that I wouldn’t be so stupid again (his response was that “T-Mobile didn’t have stupid customers”), and also that I was happy with the service, phone, and his help. When he asked if I would mind telling same to supervisor, I said “Sure”. Sad to say it took longer to be transfered to his supervisor than it had for the whole repair call (although even that wasn’t too long).

I still hate Express-Scripts Customer Care line (unhelpful rude jerks), but I’m giving T-Mobile a thumbs up, and a good job.

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