The Belly of the Beast

Here is a lovely set of discourse from a T-Mobile customer. The audio is —

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This is a rather longish audio recording just to let you know.

the customer’s problem? His brand new blackberry came with a bum battery. So he wanted a replacement battery sent. T-Mobile’s solution — send back the whole unit and we will send you a refurb!

Now needless to say this experience is no different than any other of the wireless carriers. Their call centers stink. The rotation of staff in those centers is so bad that no one is trained and the expectation is to just read off a script. If the ‘process’ is broke, which it is in most cases somewhere, then the customer is just left staring at a blank phone. That is why we at ThirdPipe advocate a decoupling of the purchase of a phone from the actual usage of that phone. So long as the carriers have you captive handset and all, nothing will change.

HT: Consumerist.