Cell Phone Woes
This week our gripe is about cell phones. I guess you can say I've made the rounds, from AT&T, to MCI, on to Cingular and currently with T-Mobile through the years. Each time, I got a better deal, and the allure of a shiny new phone caused me to move on to the next company.
I've been with T-Mobile for a while, and generally satisfied with their service, until recently. in fact, I've traveled with this phone both in the South, and in the West, and it easily jumped onto the Cingular network with no issue. This is great as I have no roaming charge. My contract was up a few months ago, and I hadn't decided if I was going to re-sign and get a new phone or jump ship and start again with a new carrier. Between the included long distance and national roaming I was inclined to stay.
The other reason is that there is less and less competition in this area. When Nextel merged with Sprint, and AT&T joined with Cingular, I think the competition went down the tubes. They used to give out great phones, with all the accessories and a rebate to boot. Well, that era is no more, and while the monthly bills are more expensive than ever, the bonses have been cut back. We're talking no rebates, and discounted accessories if you're lucky.
The battery has been declining in my Siemens flip phone that I like very much, so I knew I was headed for a change, but I was holding off as it was no rush. For the last two weeks though, my hand has been forced. Let's just say that Murphy's Law has been visiting my house lately, or more specifically the cell tower by my home.
When I try to make a phone call on the cell phone it doesn't go through. I still have three bars of coverage, as I always had. The phone rings, and then I simply get a series of beeps. The call is not connected. If I try this ten times in a row, maybe once the call will go through. When someone calls the phone, they get my voice mail.
I noticed two things before the masses jump to the conclusion that it is my phone. The first is that the phone works fine at all other locations except my house. Also, when a friend was at the house with his T-Mobile phone, they had the same symptoms. My conclusion was that the cell tower by my house ws experiencing difficulties.
Always the helpful one, I decided to call T-Mobile. After all, they don't call me "digital doc" for nothing. In short, I shouldn't have bothered. They could care less what I was saying, and had their own agenda.
The first person I spoke to from customer service told me to get my phone. she tried to call it and it didn't go through. She then told me to remove the battery and the SIM card, and read every possible number on the inside of the phone. After I did this, I reassembled it, and held the power button down. I have no idea what this was supposed to accomplish, but then she pronounced my phone as dead, and informed me I needed a new one.
I was then passed to another agent, this time in accounts. She pointed out that my account had expired, and we needed a new phone. Maybe I pay my bills on time, and they wanted to keep me? Anyway, next thing I know, she's selling me a new phone. I again explain my dilemma, and inform them that I don't want to resign a two year contract if by luck the cell tower by my house is out and nobody is doing anything about it. Then, like I've driven a bargain, she tells me that she'll send me a new phone for free. The catch is that I have to resingn for two years, but she leaves that out for a while as if it slipped her mind. Kind of clever, but also annoying. Let's say that it didn't work.
I hung up wondering what to do. Ironically, one day later, I get a letter from T-Mobile offering the same phone for the same two year contract postmarked prior to my phone call. I don't think I was getting anything special in the end.
So, for now I will wait and see if the cell tower is fixed. What I don't understand, is why don't I roam onto the Cingular tower, as I know I had coverage with them previously. Also, if they are working on the tower, why the home office has no clue about it.
In the end, we have big business once again caring far more about the profits than about satisfying their customer. When I move to another carrier, they shouldn't wonder why. With less carriers, and less competition, the consumer loses. This is getting as bad as the regular phone company.
--Jonas
I've been with T-Mobile for a while, and generally satisfied with their service, until recently. in fact, I've traveled with this phone both in the South, and in the West, and it easily jumped onto the Cingular network with no issue. This is great as I have no roaming charge. My contract was up a few months ago, and I hadn't decided if I was going to re-sign and get a new phone or jump ship and start again with a new carrier. Between the included long distance and national roaming I was inclined to stay.
The other reason is that there is less and less competition in this area. When Nextel merged with Sprint, and AT&T joined with Cingular, I think the competition went down the tubes. They used to give out great phones, with all the accessories and a rebate to boot. Well, that era is no more, and while the monthly bills are more expensive than ever, the bonses have been cut back. We're talking no rebates, and discounted accessories if you're lucky.
The battery has been declining in my Siemens flip phone that I like very much, so I knew I was headed for a change, but I was holding off as it was no rush. For the last two weeks though, my hand has been forced. Let's just say that Murphy's Law has been visiting my house lately, or more specifically the cell tower by my home.
When I try to make a phone call on the cell phone it doesn't go through. I still have three bars of coverage, as I always had. The phone rings, and then I simply get a series of beeps. The call is not connected. If I try this ten times in a row, maybe once the call will go through. When someone calls the phone, they get my voice mail.
I noticed two things before the masses jump to the conclusion that it is my phone. The first is that the phone works fine at all other locations except my house. Also, when a friend was at the house with his T-Mobile phone, they had the same symptoms. My conclusion was that the cell tower by my house ws experiencing difficulties.
Always the helpful one, I decided to call T-Mobile. After all, they don't call me "digital doc" for nothing. In short, I shouldn't have bothered. They could care less what I was saying, and had their own agenda.
The first person I spoke to from customer service told me to get my phone. she tried to call it and it didn't go through. She then told me to remove the battery and the SIM card, and read every possible number on the inside of the phone. After I did this, I reassembled it, and held the power button down. I have no idea what this was supposed to accomplish, but then she pronounced my phone as dead, and informed me I needed a new one.
I was then passed to another agent, this time in accounts. She pointed out that my account had expired, and we needed a new phone. Maybe I pay my bills on time, and they wanted to keep me? Anyway, next thing I know, she's selling me a new phone. I again explain my dilemma, and inform them that I don't want to resign a two year contract if by luck the cell tower by my house is out and nobody is doing anything about it. Then, like I've driven a bargain, she tells me that she'll send me a new phone for free. The catch is that I have to resingn for two years, but she leaves that out for a while as if it slipped her mind. Kind of clever, but also annoying. Let's say that it didn't work.
I hung up wondering what to do. Ironically, one day later, I get a letter from T-Mobile offering the same phone for the same two year contract postmarked prior to my phone call. I don't think I was getting anything special in the end.
So, for now I will wait and see if the cell tower is fixed. What I don't understand, is why don't I roam onto the Cingular tower, as I know I had coverage with them previously. Also, if they are working on the tower, why the home office has no clue about it.
In the end, we have big business once again caring far more about the profits than about satisfying their customer. When I move to another carrier, they shouldn't wonder why. With less carriers, and less competition, the consumer loses. This is getting as bad as the regular phone company.
--Jonas
posted by digitaldoc at 9:45 PM
8 Comments:
I've been with T-Mobile and before that, VoiceStream for a really long time, when my old phones died I found exact replacements on E-bay. When I got the "new" phones I had a small problem, they were locked for a different carrier. While talking to an account rep about our bill or something, my wife asked if there was anything they could do. The rep connected her with the service desk, they asked the serial numbers of the phone, and a few days later I received an E-mail with instructions and codes to unlock the phones. Last year they replacements started to have problems, so I looked at the web site looking for new phones, needles to say, the selection is bad. I decided to call and complain, I asked why they valued new customers more than the old. The rep wasn't sure how to respond. In the end I got 2 new phones that were supposed to be $100 each for free, I did have to renew for a year, but I'm ok with that. Bottom line? You have to know how to talk to these people. I've been doing service related work for over 20 years, I always put the customer first, and I expect the same when I am the customer. If I feel like that's not the case I give them a line like " If I treated my customers the way your treating me, I wouldn't stay in buisness for long." That usually gets me a better responce, But not always.
Thanks for sharing the experience Rapcomp. I'm just going to have to wait them out I think. Hopefully, the cell site by the house will come up again, and I can renew.
The selection of phones for new customers is a lot better than for the existing customers. They're well, basic,and limited really to one brand, Samsung. I've never used a cell phone from them, and I don't really hold their products in high esteem, but that's based on optical drives which has nothing to do with this, except for the Samsung name.
I'll keep you posted as to how this gets resolved, if at all.
Cell phones suck for the original purpose for which they were intended - namely telephone calls. Want good audio quality from a cell phone? Go back to the analog days. That's when cell phones worked and worked well.
Digital cell phones are optimized for data, not voice. And all the carriers keep reducing the bit rate for phone calls to stuff more users into the same amount of cell site hardware. Text messaging works great, phone quality stinks. The American consumer has been somehow been lulled into thinking that the crappy quality of most cell phones is acceptable. Bah humbug.
I started with Verizon with an analog phone. Nothing worked as well as that phone. Then the switch to AT&T and a digital phone. When I had coverage it wasn't bad, but there were more places than not that I didn't have coverage. Solution. Get rid of my old phone, sign up for two more years and get a GSM phone.
Screw 'em. I went back to Verizon. Better coverage but the damned phone still didn't work reliably at my home. I live on a mountain and higher ain't better when it comes to cell phone coverage. But now, on top of the coverage at home issues it's dropped calls.
So later this year I'm going back to AT&T, now Cingular and see what that's like. We had T-Mobile here at work and the coverage was awful. More places than not the phones had no service. Same with Nextel plus the Nextel phones were in the shop for repair more than they were in use.
Add to this the cell phone companies little trick of "selective availability" (in times of crisis they can turn off anyone and everyone if they want to) and you have to ask yourself just why in the hell we all need cell phones? How did we ever survive when there were only pay phones?
Unfortunately, there's so few pay phones left that you'd be hard pressed to find one in most places.
My first AT&T phone used to switch between the analog and digital signals depending on the coverage. I alsways thought that the digital was clearer. At the time, it was explained to me that the cell tower had four times the capacity with digital over analog. Then again, this was the guy in the cell phone store and not an engineer.
A buddy of mine who was an RF guy for Verizon, told me to always buy a tri-mode phone so you would have analog. His comment was, that when all else fails, the analog will still get through.
Digital audio doesn't have to sound bad. It's not the technology that's broken. It's the way the cell phone companies implement it.
And I still see plenty of pay phones. Trouble is, instead of a convenience, they've become a profit center. The cost of a payphone call is way over the top.
I have a Samsung phone now, It works as well as the Ericsson it replaced. The best part? It's a phone! No camera or music or anything else I don't want.
Oh, yeh, it's tuff too, I tripped and fell a couple of months ago, had the phone open in my hand and landed on it, it has alot of scratches and gouges, but it still works.
The old phones are completing the call on the 3rd or 4th try now. At least that's better than 9th and 10th.
Thanks for the info on the Samsung phone, sounds like a winner from my stand point.
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