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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.'"
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.