Okay, Tristan’s phone probably isn’t possessed by anything supernatural, but it does definitely have a defect that leaves it making phantom keystrokes, freezing, and dropping calls. T-Mobile’s support isn’t all that interested in helping him, though, and even hung up on him for “threatening legal action” when he quoted his warranty.

So last year, I purchased a phone from T-mobile, a Samsung Gravity II. Apparently, this was a clear cut mistake, since the phone has underperformed in every category possible. However, the method by which it has underperformed is not in the typical capabilities level, but on the level of severe fault. At the core of this phone is an issue, likely a short, that causes the keyboard to randomly enter keystrokes when nothing is pressed, when the phone is pressed in certain areas(Hint: Not the keys), or in some cases, not enter keys that are entered normally, or even sometimes entering a completely different key than was pressed. Sometimes the keystroke is from a nearby key, sometimes not, and the problem seems pretty random. Additionally, the phone has a bad habit of dropping calls… by resetting during calls randomly. This happens in just about any area of any place, whether high traffic or low, whether high bars or low, peak hours or not. The phone will shut off randomly when the battery is completely full, and at times, when it is plugged into the wall. Recently, the phone has also begun to hang(Lock down completely) during the sending of text messages. The phone also hangs when attempting to copy a file over about 512kb from the phone to the memory card and/or back again, and at times, it hangs when writing a photo to the drive from the camera. The phone’s text incoming notification has ceased to function as well.

While I can concede that some of these problems are software related, that’s great, whee, whatever, but it does not solve the problem at the core of the phone. There is a power fault with the phone itself that causes the phone to power down due to a “Low battery”, likely related to the keystroke short. There is a limited possibility that this could be related to a defective battery, but the trouble with these sorts of batteries is that once the damage has been done, it’s been done. The phone needs to be replaced, completely, with a different model.

So I brought this to the attention of the T-mobile staff. Twice. First in January, and now again to see if their customer service has improved. In January, my contact went all the way to the executive customer relations department, and their refusal to offer satisfactory customer service remained adamant. Today, my contact was much the same with the customer service and troubleshooting department, with one key difference. This time, the troubleshooting wanted to run a software reset test. On a hardware problem. A pedantic, needless garbage attempt to force the customer off of their phone so they wouldn’t have to be the one to process a replacement request(I’m familiar with the offices in question, both in [redacted] and in [redacted], I know the way things tend to work there). Upon escalation to a troubleshooting supervisor, the supervisor informed me that they would be 100% unwilling to replace the phone or offer any service at this time. I quoted my warranty and my rights to proper and decent service therein, and he forced the call, saying that I had “Threatened legal action”, and hung up.

So I ask you, T-mobile. Is this the service you’re keeping as a standard in your office? Is this how you handle and comport yourselves and your company? Are you really on the bandwagon of insulting your customer’s intelligence in order to avoid paying an extra dime that you should have paid in the first place? Like a mechanic trying to force you to purchase an oil change in order to fix a damaged hood latch, you seem intent on wasting your customers’ time, while pulling as many more dollars out of their pocket over time as you can. Because you think that’s okay, somehow. You seem to think it’s somehow tolerable to say “Oh well, they’re stuck in a contract, why give good service?”, it seems.

If your answer to the above core question is “No”, and you feel that you Can offer decent customer service and a satisfactory result to the claim above, then by all means, contact me in regards to it, and we’ll hash this issue out properly. But until then, it seems that one of your troubleshooting supervisors ([redacted], specifically) has proven that your company doesn’t seem to give a damn.

This sounds like the world’s most useless mobile phone. One idea might be to contact Samsung itself: not the way things are normally done for phones, it’s true, but it’s clear that T-Mobile doesn’t want to help.

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