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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.'"
...if they hadn’t spent years destroying the trust of their users by treating them like numbers on a spreadsheet.
Clearly this was the work of a video gamer.
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.
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.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
They're by far the least evil of the major carriers in the US.
Only for certain definitions of "evil". I've been with them for 7+ years and every year the service gets a little worse, the plan gets a little more expensive, and they offer fewer new phones that I actually want to purchase. Sure, their customer service is cheery and all, but they rarely actually accomplish anything.
If Verizon Wireless is the Republican party - interested just in clever new ways to extract more money from those with the least money to spend so they can funnel it to the top executives - then T-Mobile is the democratic party, promising all kinds of things that they can't deliver while ultimately giving you the same lousy and uncaring product as the Republicans but with a fresher face to it.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Fixed.
Or not. Because he has little to do with it. He is CEO of T-Mobile USA and the report is of "errors" by T-Mobile UK.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
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.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
If customers find them valueless, why do they sign up for them? They are optional. So optional, I've never heard of them even after being a ten year customer of T-Mobile.
Often they don't sign up for them, they just magically find themselves signed up; and all attempts to "unsign up" and get a refund are met with the carrier disclaiming all responsibility and refusing to do anything.
Back when I was on Orange, I was signed up to 2 premium SMS services through no fault of my own on 2 separate phones (one of which had never been used). Orange wouldn't do anything about it other than continue to bill me, they informed me that I needed to contact the SMS service provider and insisted that I had somehow signed up for these services, even to the point of "well maybe someone else signed you up on a website without your knowledge". In one such instance the conversation went something like:
"You need to contact the SMS service provider and have them stop the messages and send you a refund"
"Ok, can you give me contact details for them?"
"Yes, their number is 0123456789"
"That number doesn't work - I just get a number unobtainable tone"
"Well, you'll need to contact them about that"
"How do I do that then?"
"Their number is 0123456789"
"I just told you, that number doesn't work - can you give me some other contact details?"
"You'll need to ask them"
(This conversation went round and round for a good few times before I gave up).
At the end of the day, I _did_ manage to get both SMS providers to stop sending me messages; I even got a refund off one of them. I was left about a fiver out of pocket with the other. The financial cost was small, the time and hassle cost was high. And this is why they get away with it - if it had been a significant amount of money, I would've taken Orange to the small claims court; but it was about a fiver, so not worth it. Multiply that by thousands of customers and it just isn't in their interest to be customer focussed about these kinds of issues - they're making money by screwing the customers, but the amount they are screwing each customer by makes it not worth that customer actually investing the time to do something about it.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
I used to sell phones for Verizon. There is a 'Block Premium Text Messaging' account option. I selected it for every subscriber I signed up by default unless they indicated otherwise.
And is that why you no longer work for Verizon?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I watched the following happen. T-mobile launched "pay per use" web service and were putting the service on customers' phones without notice. All phones (like any other computer) is going to try and use a network connection if it has one. Customers with flip phones would call in and have a $10.00 data bill. It was discouraged to credit the money back.
It was a _requirement_ of your job to push features to customers EVERY time they called in and your metrics were based on whether or not you sold them anything. I'm sure lots of the "top sellers" were adding features onto people's accounts without authorization from the customer.
Here's the best part : If you call in and ask for a manager, your'e given the run around. If you ask to have the call pulled (since they are all supposed to be recorded), expect to wait at least two weeks and most of the time you won't get a call back ever.
Want to cancel your account? Fine. You will be credited NOTHING and will have to pay your contract termination fees. The entire call structure is built around NOT giving you access to a manager to talk to about the problem. The manager is in the background telling the rep your'e on the phone with to sell you EVEN MORE as you're complaining about being robbed. It is completely ridiculous.
First I would like to point out that customer service representatives are people. And as people they make mistakes. I worked in cellular customer service for over two years and probably made a few mistakes. The first representative probably got the 3030 service mixed up with another service. There are many of them and sometime it is difficult to keep them straight. Give the people a break as it is human error. I just love when the article says "spokesperson". It implies that the CSR is speaking for the entire company when all they are really trying to do is help the customer in the best way they know how. Why didn't the CSR call back? Maybe they were not on shift yet.
The recycled phone number issue is getting more and more common. Some people change their number much too often. The problem occurs because the separate system that provisions the horoscope messages may not be cleared when a phone number is cut of. The system may not even recognize the number is cut off and continue to send messages. The sender does not care because they do not get charged for the messages. The issue is when a new account gets attached to the number and the number is still subscribed to old services. As for the horoscope being the correct one there are two possibilities. First that pure chance may have hit. There is a 1 in 12 chance of having the same sign as the previous owner. Another option is that there may be a query into the T-Mobile system that shows the horoscope system the birth-date of the owner of the phone.
Remember Hanlon's razor; "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
CSR's can be pretty stupid at times. I know I have had to fix quite a few stupid mistakes.