Miss M. called T-Mobile customer service last night around midnight. She was happy with the customer service she received, and went to bed with her problem solved. When the company called her back to ask her to answer a survey about the call, she would have been happy to give them a nice evaluation….except that the call came at 5:30 in the morning.

Here is my story. Last night around midnight I was having problems sending email from my cell phone, and I called T-Mobile customer service. The rep was very nice and helped me solve the problem. I’d have been glad to give him a great evaluation. But, a call from a computer requesting that I fill out a survey about my customer service experience came on my cell phone at 5:30 am! Not knowing who it was, I picked up the phone. I already have problems sleeping and was finally drifting off. I hung up and called T-Mobile customer service again.

I told them it was very disrespectful to call at that hour. They said “It’s computer generated, we have no control over it.” I said humans program computers and they can control when they call. She just kept repeating the same line as above. I said I want the number of the department to speak to about this. She said “we don’t have that information.” I said then I would like to speak to your supervisor. She said there was no supervisor available. Then I said I would like to cancel my account. She put me through to account cancellation. They told me if I canceled I’d lose my number, and if I wanted to keep it I’d have to first sign up with another company and transfer it. So I postponed the cancellation for now.

I’d rather stay with the service but not get these calls, however, they “have no control over it!” I am now afraid to ever call customer service again, and the phone is pretty buggy.

I have not received a customer survey call about that second call I made.

Many places do these surveys via email. It’s unfair to me and to the rep who actually helped me to make a call at the bizarre hour of 5:30 am. I have no phone other than my cell and I leave it on in case of emergencies.

Is depriving the customer of sleep a new corporate trend to break down our resistance to products?

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