RSS LJ

March 6, 2006

When correspondence attacks ()

by fluffy at 10:06 PM
Thank you for contacting T-Mobile. My name is Rod and it is my pleasure to help you today.

I see you are requesting information on a T-mobile to go account. I also see you had an issue with verifying your account which in the past has been clearly verified and I apologize for that. However what is not entirely clear is the exact issue we are dealing with in terms of T-mobile to go. I want you to be aware if you decide to change your account to T-mobile to go, it carries a $200 cancellation fee with it.

If you have any further questions regarding this issue or other T-Mobile services and features, please respond to this email referencing case # and we will be pleased to assist you further. You may also call our Customer Care line at 1-800-937-8997 or 611 then SEND from your handset and a representative will be happy to help you with any questions or concerns.

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you. We appreciate your business and value you as a loyal T-Mobile customer.

I realize that you are probably very busy and underpaid, so if you would like to cut to the meat of this message, just skip to where it says ===> HELLO <=== (but I think it could be very valuable for your customer service procedures if you were to forward this entire message to a manager)

I didn't have any problems with verifying my account. Let me re-explain the whole thing so that the next CSR who handles this doesn't have to go back through the whole conversation:

Yes, I was interested in converting to T-Mobile To Go when my contract was up (because the number of minutes I use in any given month makes T-Mobile To Go much more economical for me), but I didn't know if it was possible to convert a post-paid account to pre-paid as the T-Mobile.com FAQ only mentioned going the other way. Janet R (rep 1165807) said it was possible and mentioned the cancellation fee.

Then, knowing that it was possible to convert an account, I wanted to know if the included T-Zones service had full access or if it was limited to the carrier page. Jerry B (rep 72-60410) said that To Go's T-Zones was limited to the carrier page, but mentioned Take Control, which I hadn't heard of before, and asked for more information about why I was thinking of changing to To Go. Looking into it on the T-Mobile website I found information on some of the plans and they seem to be the best fit for my usage patterns, but I couldn't find any information on actually getting a Take Control account so I replied to Jerry's email about the reason I was asking about switching.

To that I got the completely useless response from Deborah J (#7217774) asking me for more information without specifying what she needed more information about, so I politely replied asking for someone to just review the entire trail of correspondence so I wouldn't have to go through a long-winded recap of the conversation like what I am doing right now in response to Rod R. (rep #7212519) who seems to have continued to miss what the entire thread was about. I don't know which rep is going to service this email, but I do hope that I haven't bored you out of your mind with the entire story of how I came to ask this question:

===> HELLO <===

Are T-Mobile Take Control accounts available in my area (Seattle, WA), and do they have the unlimited T-Zones service (the same as what's on my current plan) available as an option?

Thank you.

Comments

#7137 03/07/2006 12:33 pm
Okay, I just got this response from Ashlee:

Ashlee B, rep #7245439

Thank you for taking the time to contact T-Mobile via email. My name is Ashlee and I am here to answer any questions or concerns you might have regarding your services.

I understand from your email you would like to know if Take Control service is available in Seattle, Washington and if unlimited T-Zone service is available. I can certainly understand how important this information is and I will be happy to assist you today.

I have reviewed your email and I would like to express my sincere regret for your time and frustration faced while dealing with this issue.

We do offer Unlimited T-Zone service for our Take Control customers. It is a monthly fee of $4.99.

Take Control rate plans are only available in the following markets:

-Austin, TX

-Boston, MA

-Dallas, TX

-Philadelphia, PA

I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you.

Upon further review, I notice that you have been with us since October, 22nd 2001 and I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for being a loyal T-Mobile customer.

If you have any further comments, questions or concerns please feel free to contact us at anytime via email or by calling Customer Care at 1-800-937-8997, or 611 send from your handset.

You are a valued customer and we want you to know that T-Mobile appreciates your business!


Oh well. The Take Control plan is definitely the best deal of all of the rate plans ($30/month for 300 minutes and then 10 cents for each additional minute), but it's not available here, so, oh well.
#7138 03/08/2006 11:53 am
Ashlee

-Austin, TX
-Boston, MA
-Dallas, TX
-Philadelphia, PA


That's an unusual assortment of service areas.

I wonder if they plan to expand that at all.
#7139 03/08/2006 01:02 pm
It could be there for regulatory reasons. The only difference I can tell between Take Control and the normal 300 minutes/month plan is that Take Control essentially has 10 cents per minute for overages, which you opt into (or otherwise just have no service until the new billing cycle), while the regular plan is 40 cents per minute and they slap you with it unexpectedly.
#7140 03/13/2006 08:48 pm [OT] Broken syndication feed
Off-topic, but:

The syndication feed for your blog seems to be broken. Going to http://beesbuzz.biz/blog/index.rdf spits out some lovely PHP errors:

Warning: Unexpected character in input: '34' (ASCII=28) state=5 in /Users/fluffy/beesbuzz.biz/html/blog/rdf.php on line 48

Warning: Unexpected character in input: '35' (ASCII=29) state=5 in /Users/fluffy/beesbuzz.biz/html/blog/rdf.php on line 48

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /Users/fluffy/beesbuzz.biz/html/blog/rdf.php:48) in /Users/fluffy/beesbuzz.biz/html/blog/rdf.php on line 1
#7141 03/13/2006 10:45 pm
Neat. I'll look into it.
#7142 03/13/2006 10:48 pm
Apparently PHP doesn't like having non-printable characters in a heredoc, which I'd copy-pasted out of T-Mobile's email. Hooray.
#7143 03/13/2006 11:03 pm
Hee. Rod. Also, yay Philly.
#7144 03/14/2006 07:54 am
Yay, it's working again!
#7145 03/14/2006 08:51 am
yep