Another Way Carriers Screw Customers: Premium SMS 'Errors'

An anonymous reader writes "Almost no one likes their carrier. And with the behavior described in this article, it's not surprising. TechCrunch catches T-Mobile taking money from a new pay-as-you-go customer after signing her up to its own premium horoscope text message service — and taking money before she's even put the SIM in the phone. Quoting: 'Perhaps carriers think they can get away with a few “human errors” in the premium SMS department because these services aren’t regulated. Perhaps it’s also symptomatic of the command and control mindset of these oligarchs. What’s certain is that if carriers dedicated a little of the energy they plough into maintaining these anachronistic, valueless (to their customers, that is) premium SMS ‘services’ into creating genuinely useful services that customers want to use then they would have a better shot at competing with the startups leapfrogging their gates. Or they would, if they hadn’t spent years destroying the trust of their users by treating them like numbers on a spreadsheet.'"

Comments

This is why we despise Slashdot editors

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps carriers think they can get away with a few “human errors” in the premium SMS department because these services aren’t regulated. Perhaps it’s also symptomatic of the command and control mindset of these oligarchs. What’s certain is that if carriers dedicated a little of the energy they plough into maintaining these anachronistic, valueless (to their customers, that is) premium SMS ‘services’ into creating genuinely useful services that customers want to use then they would have a better shot at competing with the startups leapfrogging their gates. Or they would, if they hadn’t spent years destroying the trust of their users by treating them like numbers on a spreadsheet.

Okay, see that entire section of the summary? The one that started out with the weasel word "perhaps" and spun right off into wild speculation and generic "grrrrrrrrrr NERD RAEG!!!1!"? Yeah. That whole part could've been ditched. Not only would it not have hurt the summary to get rid of it, it would've IMPROVED it by not making Slashdot look like just another bog standard snide news website.

Oh, what's that, you say? Then the summary would've seemed too short? No problem. How about adding in one or two actual DETAILS, rather than something that just boils down to "RRRRRRR CARRIER DONE SOMETHING WITH SMS! HAAAAATE SMS!"? That would get you above your word quota.

Only because people are dumb

[holophrastic]

As I type this, my father is on his phone yelling at his carrier. He's now spent over 20 hours this month yelling at them over the same billing error. He's furious, and it all makes sense.

I have the same carrier. I'm very happy with my carrier. But I've done things very differently. And I continue to do things differently.

The carrier did mis-bill my father. Absolutely and without question. Whether or not it was intentional is optionally obvious. But it's irelevant. My father, like most people, calls them, expects them to work out the issue on the phone for him immediately. And while we all know they should, and they could, it takes twenty minutes and then they don't. Again, intentional or otherwise is up to you.

I've seen all of you guys get frustrated with this sort of thing. So I've solved the problem. Here's what I did, and what I do.

First, I have a "business account". The only difference between a business account and a consumer account is that I asked for a "business account" and they call it a "business account". Otherwise, it's the same. All plans are available to me the same way. If anything, it actually reduces the availabitily of customer support because I need to be transfered to a business account person. Again, true or not is up to your own belief system.

Second, I don't expect anything to ever get done immediately over the phone. About once a quarter, sometimes once a month, I have some sort of an issue to deal with. Maybe billing, maybe account change, maybe whatever. I call, I leave the phone on speaker-phone until I get the right person -- sometimes I'm on hold for twenty minutes, rarely but sometimes. Doesn't matter, I'm working to hold music instead of to my own music, big deal.

Then, I ask for whatever I want. If it doesn't get done and solved perfectly in five minutes by the first reasonable-correct agent, I simply say: "I need to go, please work this out and call me back tomorrow at this time." 90% of the time, that's exactly what happens, and it's perfect. The remaining 10% of the time, if they don't call me back and it doesn't get done, then I walk into the physical brick and mortar store, and say exactly the same thing -- to someone wearing a manager tag. I smile, I shake her hand, I flirt a little (it works between men too, by the way), and I ask them to do me the personal favour and call me back with the solution -- and I give them a full week.

I think a lot of you forget that, assuming your phone is functional, all of these billing- and plan-, and account-related issues can be worked out retro-actively. There really is no rush. It's not urgent.

So I live a very happy life. I get problems solved within a week, with minimal time and effort spent by me. Why does anyone need any more? You deserve to have your problem solved. You don't deserve to have your problem solved within an hour.

Re:Only because people are dumb

[holophrastic]

Actually, then I'll brighten your day -- even though I hate humanity too, it's for a different reason.

Fours reasons.

First: it's a competitive industry. Why spend money to bulid and upgrade systems when your competitors don't? Unless your customers are willing to pay extra for better customer service, there's no profit in it. Being worse makes things cheaper, which can be passed on to the customers in the form of cheaper services.

Second: employees aren't the company. employees make mistakes, some are new, some are young, some don't care. Not only are you holding a 16 year old drama student responsible for immediately servicing your telephone service, you're demanding that they do everything perfectly, quickly, and without assistance.

Third: your carrier puts policies in place to ensure that those crummy employees don't make things worse -- their version of do-no-harm. Keeping things bad is better than making things worse. You probably never called to complain about over-billing only to be billed even more. So the employees can do only those things that they can do without authorization. Some things require authorization.

Fourth: I also run a business. You know that customers are really mean, and demanding, and won't stop asking for more. And then, when it's all fixed, and it's all retro-active, and nobody died, they'll ask for a discount for the trouble. What the hell?

So by asking for whatever you want, and providing the time for it to get done. The employee can get authorization, look up how to do things, the system can go down and be brought back up, the manager can take-over, they know that you won't ask for more -- because you aren't even there to ask for it -- and they can do it during non-peak-customer-calling hours when they really aren't pressured by a hundred customers per hour.

The big trick is for you, as the customer, to really not care about your problem with any degree of urgency.

And here's the advanced class.

Take $200. Right now. Out of your own personal bank account. Put it under your mattress. Call it the budget for the year's crappy frustrations.

Throughout the year, every time some stupid problem like this crops up, just remember that you've budgetted $200 for this sort of thing. At the end of the year, you'll find that you've got $75 left over, and zero stress. Do the same thing with $2'000 for your car every year. Another $1'500 for your house. Another $500 for restaurants. Another $1'000 for friends, $500 for travel emergencies, and $500 for bribes.

At the end of every year, you'll find left-over money, zero stress, no problems, and you won't have spent countless hours yelling at people just to spend the same money anyway. And while you're at it, throw in $1'000 for the love of your life.

Re:Really?

[pwizard2]

From what I've heard, carriers in other countries are far superior (better service, period) to what we have in the US. Trying to wring every last dime from the customer is par for the course in this country. Why else would we have crippled, locked-down phones that force you to pay extra to use built-in features like tethering, an absolutely absurd system where the recipient pays for SMS messages (thereby allowing scammers like Jamster to spam people with impunity), and so-called "unlimited" data plans with caps?

The whole phone system in this country needs serious government regulation since they can't seem to "regulate" themselves without fucking everybody over in the process. Trust the private sector to regulate themselves, indeed. I have no idea how anyone can say that with a straight face.

Read TFA, T-Mobile UK Already Fixed It

[TheSpoom]

As part of an Ofcom directive to ensure that the UK doesn’t run out of numbers, PAYG numbers are recycled. In this instance, it appears that the premium text service attached to the number remained when the number was transferred to [the customer]. When PAYG numbers are recycled, they are attached to new SIMs so no personal data is transferred.

We have placed a block on [the customer's] account to stop any further texts and we have credited her account to cover the charges incurred.

This was an isolated human error and no personal data was shared. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Shitty nonetheless, but they did fix it once they realized what was going on.

Re:Really?

[hairyfeet]

Well duh, America has been a corporatocracy for a few decades now, its common knowledge that laws affecting a specific business sector is often written by the lobbyists FOR that sector and simply handed to the congress critters for submission, so is anybody REALLY surprised by this?

This is why I really can't stand those that beat the "free market herpa derp" drum, because honestly the USA hasn't had a free market since the New Deal, probably even earlier than that before you can find a market that wasn't steered by insiders in one way or another (teapot dome, Standard Oil, the trusts, etc) so frankly shit like this is pretty much par for the course in the USA. We get lousy service, price gouging, backdoor bullshit like this, cheery picking and duopolies, its the same old insider "wink wink" crap we've had to put up with for ages now and it stinks but what can you do? Both sides are as crooked as a snake, there is 4 lobbyists for every person in congress, and voting is like playing 3 card monty with a street hustler and thinking if you put enough money on the table eventually you'll get ahead. unless your last name is Gates or Dell or Buffet you won't, its not a game for the citizen, its for the elite.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Canada. I would give my left nut to have your wireless plans over ours.

Re:Really?

[PhotoJim]

It's a US site with a ton of foreign users. It's a lot more appropriate to just surrender to this fact. "Almost everyone in the US" is not that hard to type.

Re:Really?

[gsgriffin]

Visit India for me. Then you may want to restate that carriers in other countries are far superior (better service, period) to what we have in the U.S. After being in India a month, I couldn't wait to get home for cell phone and data plan to work properly. It took 6 days just to turn on the phone there! Then another several days to get a data package that was used up on 2 days which I was not allowed to upgrade or refill for 30 days. In other words, I got 2 days of internet and not allowed to have anything above 64k download the rest of the time. You purchase from people at small shops on the roadside that don't know what they are talking about. You get the run-around constantly. Same struggles in South Africa and Zimbabwe for me.

Sure, we have issue to resolve here in the US, but don't assume the whole world works much better. It's not better in the 20 countries I've been to. ;(