So I'd discussed my first month as a T-Mobile customer
Here.
The experiment is busy coming to an end, and while previously I'd been kind of annoyed, I am now quite angry. For all their "uncarrier" blatherings, this is a seriously broken company.
First, the pleasant part -- all the customer facing folks I encountered were polite and behaved like they were interested in quality of service.
But this does not extend throughout the organization; some elements of T-Mobile are sheltered from customer service considerations and show little interest. What's more, they seem to have a lack of ability to consider the customer point of view.
The specific issue that caused me to decide to leave is that their coverage map, which shows that I should be roaming onto ATT in the area immediately around my house, is not telling the truth. Even if I turn off automatic carrier selection in my phone and try to manually go onto ATT's network, it doesn't work. I know the phone is ok because on a long trip to NC and back, i frequently saw the phone switch over to ATT - the phone is ok, this is a local problem.
I have opened three tickets on this subject, all of them have been closed by Engineering for various reasons. Engineering is clearly not concerned about this coverage issue; closing tickets seems to be the metric by which they are being judged, rather than actually fixing problems. This does not make for good customer experience.
Moreover, I have complained to them point blank that their coverage map is wrong, the coverage seemingly isn't going to be fixed, and this effectively constitutes false advertising - and i see little evidence that anything will be done about that, either. and it's the bogus coverage map that caused me to take this gamble.
T-Mobile has a wifi calling option, which i've been trying to use. it is erratic, likely because my TWC cable broadband is erratic. I also find that frequently i need to power cycle the phone to make it work, even though my phone always acquires my home wifi quickly.
So earlier today, a T-Mobile rep on their twitter help line offered a "CellSpot" wifi router which they're sure will help with the reliability of the local wifi calling. i don't really see why it will work - TWC broadband has always been flakey where i live, and while T-Mobile's willing to loan it to me rather than charge me the outright $200, they do want a $25 deposit for the bloody thing - and it still won't fix the broader coverage issues. so they have a non-solution to the coverage problem that will only cost me an additional $25 (from all my years in IT, i tend to have a very bad reaction to anyone that responds to their own poor performance by trying to separate me from more money.)
At the ATT store, when i called about the phone lock (more on that in a second), they suddenly offered me a cell phone booster thingy.
Now about the phone lock - back in december, i bought a full priced phone and went on no contract pricing. it turns out that they lock the full price phones and you have to be a customer either 60 or 40 days (60 according to the phone rep, 40 according to the web site, no idea which is actually true.) i haven't been a customer of theirs long enough, but i'm having a lot of trouble convincing myself to suffer this service any longer. financial prudence, though, is likely to require that i go back and suffer. i do wonder if they would continue the unlock clock, or reset it back to 40 (or 60) days in order to stretch out the suffering.
but for the moment, i have a useless iPhone 6, locked to T-Mobile with an ATT sim in it. Cell phone carriers wonder why we hate them. or maybe they know.
