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ducky12
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Move over, 3rd degree burns. Switching to T-Mobile takes the cake.
Part 1: Customer Service Via Phone Call Had the absolute worst customer service experience of my life tonight. My family moved over to T-Mobile from AT&T today (getting a solo phone plan is expensive, and my folks are kind enough to let me stay on theirs). My parents went to a store and did their transfers in person while I was at work. They were assured that I'd be able to do it over the phone, no problem. I picked up my new phone from them along with all the relevant information, called the number, and was faced with an hour wait. Whatever, it's inconvenient, but that gives me time to drive home and get ready for bed while I wait. Got home, and they called back slightly before I was expecting. "Perfect!" I thought. "I'll be able to deal with this super quick." Oh, sweet summer child, how naive you were. I wish I could go back to that moment just to be rid of the past 3 hours' worth of stress and frustration. I attempt to answer the phone. The new phone apparently doesn't answer calls the same way as the past 6 phones I've had, but I got it answered. "Hello?" I answer. Silence. "Hello?" I say once more into the void. "click" goes the other end of the line. "Call disconnected" reads the screen. So I call back. This time it's a 2 hour wait. I decide to stay on the line. Turns out this was a terrible decision, given that T-Mobile has the worst hold music I've ever encountered, and you can't just turn it down because then you'll miss when someone finally answers (and the constant interruptions of the voice telling you you could just use the website instead (which I couldn't; I wouldn't be making a phone call if I could) always give you false hope while just increasing the irritation levels). Well, given that my existing phone still has service, I'll just call the number and see if I can try any of those tricks to talk to a representative faster. I'm not sure what did it or how, but that call gets answered while the first call is 41 minutes into the awful hold music. I don't blame the representative I spoke to. I know they're given scripts. But asking questions felt like talking to an AI chat bot (which we'll readdress soon). Sure, there were responses with words that danced around the relevant topic. But answers? None. It took 6 attempts at rephrasing the same question to get a response I felt reasonably confident confirmed what I wanted to know (the direction of the number porting and that I would, in fact, keep my same number). The next snag was that, while I was given the account numbers, the transfer pin, and the account pins, I was not set up as an "authorized user" on the account, so she needed approval from the account holder (my dad). Well, I can't just put him on the phone because I don't live with him. And at this point he might have gone to bed already because it's 10:30pm. At some point when she put me on hold for a couple minutes for something, I was able to text him and see if he was awake to answer the call. Luckily he was, and we were able to proceed. Once she had initiated the transfer, I got the text from AT&T asking me to confirm that it wasn't someone trying to steal my number. Since she had told me that once she transferred it, our call would be disconnected (given that I was calling from that number), I waited until we were finished and she assured me everything was ready and would go through within the next 2-4 hours and we got off the phone to respond to AT&T. Now, this was my bad. I should have just responded before hanging up because the reply told me to ask the new carrier to resubmit the transfer request. At this point, friends, I was defeated. I was resigned to a night of restless sleep, waiting until I could just talk to a person from a store 11 hours later. But! The bright, if solitary, positive of this experience! I got a call back from the representative with whom I'd been speaking earlier. She saw that the number had come up as blocked, and she transferred me to someone who very confusingly explained the situation to me after I had already said that, "yes, the number had been held, but I confirmed it with AT&T, and they said to request it again." But I guess it got done? Theoretically? It hasn't transferred yet, and I didn't quite understand the contradicting information I received variously assuring me that it would happen immediately after a restart but could take up to 24 hours (guess I'm carrying 2 phones until it happens?) but will take effect within 2-4 hours. Part 2: The Search For Feedback Not so much feedback, I suppose, as a place to give it. While on the initial phone call, I asked the representative where I could submit feedback about the whole situation. I assured her that I wasn't upset with her and that I acknowledge she's doing her job and working with what she's been given to try to help people. I get it, I know customer service is a tough job. And instead of hiring more people to handle the number of calls, companies just slap a "we're experiencing higher than normal volume of calls" message to make people feel better about it. But I'm getting off topic. I asked her how I could submit feedback about T-Mobile's customer experience. She told me I could find it on T-Mobile's website. "Great. Thank you. I appreciate your time. Good night." I hang up, and to the computer I go. Not a single hint of a way to get in touch about anything beyond the AI Chat, a list of phone numbers (that send you right to the end of that 2 hour wait), and apparently a forum? At this point growing more and more frustrated by the minute in my fruitless quest, I attempt the AI chat. Eventually it claims it's connecting me to a representative. I still have some doubts about whether that rep was actually human, but it's possible they were just copy and pasting from a document of prewritten answers. Honestly, the whole chat felt like a parody. "I can see how you would be frustrated with the situation, and I'm happy to help." My buddy, my pal, my brother in christ, you can't see anything because I've told you nothing. My situation is that I've asked for how to give the company customer feedback. After a shockingly long amount of time using far too many words to say nothing, we finally reach the conclusion that this rep has no insight into feedback beyond the fact that there is a spot for feedback when the chat ends. "Great, fine, thank you," says I, "End chat." "I can't do that manually, it will end automatically," comes the response. "Okay. How long does that take?" I ask. "I don't know," comes the reply. After waiting 5 minutes for the chat to end, a valedictory message from the representative pops up, presumably extending the time I now need to wait for the chat to end and exacerbating my frustration. I continue to poke around the site for a couple minutes, hoping in vain to find what I hadn't found before. Then I turned to the wider internet, searching to see if perhaps reddit had any leads as to where I could submit my feedback. That was where I finally found this forum, unsurprisingly through other posts about the poor customer service. And so, dear reader, if you've made it this far, I appreciate you taking this journey with me. And I can say without a doubt that I would rather re-experience a 3rd degree burn than ever repeat this process. Next time I need to speak with T-Mobile customer service, I'm just throwing my phone in a lake and telling people they can contact me by mail, because that would be significantly more convenient than the alternative.51Views1like0Comments