9 ms·

I emailed the CEO of T-Mobile and he killed my contract

211 points by amerf1 13y ago

paul9290 13y ago
I'm in a similar situation with Sprint where I wanted to get an iPhone 5s as I have had the 4s since its introduction. Well I was told I couldn't get it until Dec. or I could pay $150 to get out of my contract and get a new contract to get the 5s now. I actually ended paying the fee and after doing so was told to text 1311 for more info. There in the text it said I could upgrade now or go with their new and better plan OneUp. No one told me about OneUp which is the more modern and better option. Sigh I spent $150 because Sprint hasn't trained their reps on this program, but they put the info in their SMS marketing....errrr :( Well Sprint did solve that issue but then after solving it and because its still a new option/plan mis-information abounds. Getting a new iPhone with Sprint or trying has taken to much time and effort and have tried to work with them for the past two weeks. But I'm done... See ya Sprint!
ulfw 13y ago
We live in a world were people feel entitled to bring their little contractual issues all the way up to the CEO of a company with over 30 MM customers. So you either believe a) you're above those other 30 MM and can just do your CEO 1:1s if need be or b) you foolishly believe that the CEO of a major corp has the time and willingness to deal with customer support for 30 Million people. Just wow
- epochwolf 13y ago
  People would email Steve Jobs all the time. This isn't a new thing. Before the Internet CEOs would get letters.
  - dandrews 13y ago
    Yep. Back in the PCs Limited days I wrote Michael Dell an appreciative letter for some out-of-warranty customer service I'd received. Got a nice acknowledgement letter back from a VP. That little exchange indirectly earned Dell a lot of business from my employer in later years when we dumped HP and were casting about for a new desktop provider.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - ryanobjc 13y ago
    one should definitely do what they are told to at all times! Stepping outside the boundaries even a little bit is very very bad and will result in the destruction of civilization! For what are we, but rule following machines?
- Woost 13y ago
  Your rant is quite misguided. In this case, the CEO explicitly asked for people to email him: "I discovered that Legere put an emphasis on customer service -- listening to calls and even sharing his email address." From the other article: "had customer complaint emails forwarded to him. He also gave out his email address, ..., for anyone to contact him."
- batbomb 13y ago
  When you realize the world consists of people, and you realize the customer is just a person, just like the CEO is a person, then this doesn't seem so strange. I don't like the world where a CEO is somehow better than the average person, completely insulated from customers, from real people.
- Denvercoder9 13y ago
  You missed the part where the CEO announced that he wanted to focus on customer service and put his e-mail address for anyone with problems to personally contact him?
- thebranman 13y ago
  Sometimes you just need to deal with someone who is not only outside of the original situation but has the power to do something about it. The complete corporate directory isn't available for people to sift through to find someone to help us. We just know about customer service...and the CEO (more or less). For example, back when the white plastic MacBooks came out, my wife got one -- it was riddled with problems, including case cracking and loads of other problems (don't remember them anymore). Long story short, months of getting no where with regular Apple support (going through repairs, weeks w/o her laptop), she emailed Steve Jobs. She got a brand new laptop as a replacement. It's unfortunate to have to contact a CEO to deal with a seemingly low-level problem but as customers paying thousands of dollars (on a MacBook, or over the course of a cell phone contract), when we have a problem that we can't get rectified through low-level employees and their supervisors, what are we supposed to do?
- rpedela 13y ago
  People are just people. CEO is not special.
gkoberger 13y ago
The title seemed negative to me (I thought he complained and the CEO said "we're done with you!"). But really, the T-Mobile CEO was helping -- the author wanted out of his contract (well, out of the $200 fee). (EDIT: The original title was "I emailed the CEO of T-Mobile and he killed my contract, no joke")
- CamperBob2 13y ago
  Yes, this is one of those cases where the HN mod(s) should have made some editorial tweaks to the title.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- derefr 13y ago
  I had to think about it for a second. You're meant to read it like "killing something is bad, but contracts are bad, so killing a contract is good." Although it'd be perfectly valid to use "contract" as a metonym for "service" or "account", people don't tend to; the contract is just the evil thing binding you to pay for your account, and doesn't get mentally associated (by most consumers) with the service itself. So killing a contract is wholly good. But forcing people to go through a thought-process like this to figure out what is meant is bad "communications-design UX", and the editor could probably have come up with something clearer.
  - dwc 13y ago
    People are not forced to go through any thought process. Most people will take it at face value (as I did) and assume that service was cancelled for having the gall to email the CEO. I clicked through only because I have had good experience with T-mobile customer service and was surprised to see something like this. So the misleading/ambiguous headline actually got me to read the article where an accurate headline wouldn't have.
    - 3825 13y ago
rjzzleep 13y ago
It's funny how people immediately mock someone's sense of entitlement. You know what? Sometimes you indeed are entitled to something and the only reason you don't is because everyone else just accepts the sewer everyone is in. I once received an apology letter after helping my mom bringing her complaint to the governing board of deutsche Bank. Because god forbid she was right and that douchebag bank worker wasn't. Indeed just wow. I wish people would complain more, when there is a need. What do I mean with when there is a need? That's the thing. Were not supposed to be machine(even though a lot of people wish for the opposite). Were supposed to evaluate the choices given to us and act accordingly. And for all of you running a small business and thinking of the douchebag client you don't want. I apologize, because I know exactly who you're talking about and you're right.
- harshreality 13y ago
  This reporter wasn't entitled to get out of his contract early. Either he was too lazy or stupid to know when his contract was ending (a dangerous thing for a journalist writing articles to inform the masses), or he knowingly pressured T-Mobile into letting him switch to a contract-free plan early. He thought he was special (he had the power to write a misleading, negative article about T-Mobile if they didn't cave, or a positive one if they did). If that's not an improper sense of entitlement, I don't know what is.
  - ZoFreX 13y ago
    Did you read the article? He admits that he was mistaken, obligated to pay the amount, and was willing to do so.
    - harshreality 13y ago
      Did you? That was at the very end, after he'd insisted T-Mobile was wrong about when his contract was ending, and had emailed the CEO about it, only to be told again that he was wrong. Why would a reporter call customer service to ask whether he could switch plans? Wouldn't he look at his contract?
rjzzleep 13y ago
It's funny how people immediately mock someone's sense of entitlement. You know what? Sometimes you indeed are entitled to something and the only reason you don't is because everyone else just accepts the sewer everyone is in. I once received an apology letter after helping my mom bringing her complaint to the governing board of deutsche Bank. Because god forbid she was right and that douchebag bank worker wasn't. Indeed just wow. I wish people would complain more, when there is a need. What do I mean with when there is a need? That's the thing. Were not supposed to be machine(even though a lot of people wish for the opposite). Were supposed to evaluate the choices given to us and act accordingly. And for all of you running a small business and thinking of the douchebag client you don't want. I apologize, because I know exactly who you're talking about and you're right.
rjzzleep 13y ago
It's funny how people immediately mock someone's sense of entitlement. You know what? Sometimes you indeed are entitled to something and the only reason you don't is because everyone else just accepts the sewer everyone is in. I once received an apology letter after helping my mom bringing her complaint to the governing board of deutsche Bank. Because god forbid she was right and that douchebag bank worker wasn't. Indeed just wow. I wish people would complain more, when there is a need. What do I mean with when there is a need? That's the thing. Were not supposed to be machine(even though a lot of people wish for the opposite). Were supposed to evaluate the choices given to us and act accordingly. And for all of you running a small business and thinking of the douchebag client you don't want. I apologize, because I know exactly who you're talking about and you're right.
rjzzleep 13y ago
It's funny how people immediately mock someone's sense of entitlement. You know what? Sometimes you indeed are entitled to something and the only reason you don't is because everyone else just accepts the sewer everyone is in. I once received an apology letter after helping my mom bringing her complaint to the governing board of deutsche Bank. Because god forbid she was right and that douchebag bank worker wasn't. Indeed just wow. I wish people would complain more, when there is a need. What do I mean with when there is a need? That's the thing. Were not supposed to be machine(even though a lot of people wish for the opposite). Were supposed to evaluate the choices given to us and act accordingly. And for all of you running a small business and thinking of the douchebag client you don't want. I apologize, because I know exactly who you're talking about and you're right.
rjzzleep 13y ago
It's funny how people immediately mock someone's sense of entitlement. You know what? Sometimes you indeed are entitled to something and the only reason you don't is because everyone else just accepts the sewer everyone is in. I once received an apology letter after helping my mom bringing her complaint to the governing board of deutsche Bank. Because god forbid she was right and that douchebag bank worker wasn't. Indeed just wow. I wish people would complain more, when there is a need. What do I mean with when there is a need? That's the thing. Were not supposed to be machine(even though a lot of people wish for the opposite). Were supposed to evaluate the choices given to us and act accordingly. And for all of you running a small business and thinking of the douchebag client you don't want. I apologize, because I know exactly who you're talking about and you're right.
Asterick6 13y ago
It's a good thing that John Legere places customer care/service as a high priority, but it seems like you didn't take the time to figure out the problem yourself. Instead of "getting frustrated" and taking the issue to the CEO, you could have spent some time and effort to resolve it yourself. Also, this post doesn't provide enough information about your issue and why you had a misunderstanding. If it did, then it would be more meaningful.
rjzzleep 13y ago
It's funny how people immediately mock someone's sense of entitlement. You know what? Sometimes you indeed are entitled to something and the only reason you don't is because everyone else just accepts the sewer everyone is in. I once received an apology letter after helping my mom bringing her complaint to the governing board of deutsche Bank. Because god forbid she was right and that douchebag bank worker wasn't. Indeed just wow. I wish people would complain more, when there is a need. What do I mean with when there is a need? That's the thing. Were not supposed to be machine(even though a lot of people wish for the opposite). Were supposed to evaluate the choices given to us and act accordingly. And for all of you running a small business and thinking of the douchebag client you don't want. I apologize, because I know exactly who you're talking about and you're right.
001sky 13y ago
Reporter: For $200, I will write a nice article about you. CEO: Deal
- enraged_camel 13y ago
  That is really what this whole thing is about. Nothing more, nothing less.
- mturmon 13y ago
  Yes. Now, how does that model of customer service apply to the rest of T-Mobile's customers? Not very well.
- m_ram 13y ago
  I'm not sure if this is true. The picture accompanying the article shows the reporter using what looks like his personal email address [1]. I guess he could have signed it with his company and job title information. Either way, I don't think one anecdote is enough to change my view that all wireless companies are horrible. [1] http://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/blog/2013/03/t-mobile-blog-customer-service.html?s=image_gallery http://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/blog/2013/03/t-mobil...
- stonewhite 13y ago
  Viral marketing is The leading market these days
derefr 13y ago
> "But how is that so? I have had a full upgrade since November." Usually, phone upgrades are offered starting two years into a three-year plan. They don't want to let the contract expire before they try to reel you back in with an upgrade; that'd be incredibly dangerous for retention. They want to offer you the phone while you're still good and legally bound to them, but when you feel like you're almost out.
skittles 13y ago
I want to like T-Mobile, but I'm in the middle of the US with access to 100+ Mbps Internet but no T-Mobile signal in my house. T-Mobile is pushing itself hard in my area, but they just don't have the coverage.
- JoshTriplett 13y ago
  If you're willing to use a T-Mobile branded phone rather than your own phone, T-Mobile has wifi calling available. Alternatively, if you can get any signal at all, anywhere in your house, you can get a signal booster; you can either buy one yourself from Cel-Fi, or T-Mobile will give you one with a two-year contract.
lucb1e 13y ago
Well this is nice of T-Mobile and shows they do somewhat care about customer service. I can chime in and add my experience with the English (American?) division of T-Mobile: they responded to a mention at a social network while I was not even really meaning to ask them a question, I merely mentioned them. The Dutch division is not as great, but oh well. Still, I'd say it's how it's supposed to be. In the Netherlands it'd be illegal to upgrade contracts like this. You can't start charging more without giving the user an option to quit the contract for free (or continue the old contract for the old price). Also after the contract period (one or two years), consumers have a right to cancel the contract each month, also for free.
- harshreality 13y ago
  They didn't start charging more. Telecom companies pull some shady tricks with plans and billing, but increasing the monthly fee without notice part way through your contract is not one of them. He signed a contract for some period of time, and it wasn't up yet. After it was up, he would have had the option of one of the new plans, or switching providers, just like everyone else does.
  - smartwater 13y ago
    With mobile providers in the US, if you don't use your "upgrade" you can keep using the service with no contract. If you accept their upgrade, an offer of getting a new phone at discount, you lock yourself in for another year.
- mangotree 13y ago
  Well, it shows they'd are about one customer. They haven't cancelled this clause for everyone, and would probably lose money if they did.
Keyframe 13y ago
Article/blog post (whatever it is) reads like a PR article, which it probably is.
tempestn 13y ago
If he didn't have one already, Legere is certainly going to need an assistant to triage his personal email now.
- kordless 13y ago
  He's the CEO of TMobile. I guarantee he has an EA working that already.
  - tempestn 13y ago
    Indeed. In which case giving out his own email address is just a convenient way of filtering out a a certain type of customer service request, while also being good PR. He'd want a way to get important emails quickly without the EA having to manually screen them; I wonder if he uses a separate address, a whitelist, a tag (ie johnlegere+internal@tmobile.com), or a keyword in the subject. Guessing whitelist.
kordless 13y ago
I've had a mobile phone since the Motorola Brick days. Over the years I've grumbled and complained about various cell phone companies policies, dealt with contract obligations, bad service, horrible experiences with switching plans, etc., etc. The worst of the worst was moving to the bay in late 2007 and having to use AT&T on an iPhone. Last year I bought a Nexus 4 from Google and signed up for a prepaid T-Mobile plan. A few months later they switched over to offering no-contract plans and I followed suit by putting both my kids and myself on a single plan. My entire experience with the company since signing up has been nothing short of stellar. Great customer service, low wait times while calling in, friendly faces in the stores, and always a willingness to do whatever it took to make me happy with my service. My contract, with my two kids tacked on, is about what I paid Verizon a month for an iPhone. About the only complaint I have with T-Mobile is that I can't really surf the net while I'm in the BART tube under the Bay on the way into the city. Other than that, it's been a great experience! It just goes to show that one person at a company, with the power to make real changes, is what it takes to change an entire industry. It feels great to give my money to a company that actually cares about customer service.
Gonzih 13y ago
Very very misleading title.
dsr_ 13y ago
It's terrible customer service. The CEO should not have to get involved. Status as a journalist should not be required. The first doesn't scale, and the second, if true, is hopelessly corrupt. Every customer support supervisor ought to be able to make an exception based on reasonable circumstances. The article should have ended with "and anyone else in my situation, or a similar one, should contact T-Mobile customer support. If the first line worker can't help you, they should be able to put you through to a supervisor who can, based on the policy changes that T-Mobile has implemented." Anything less at best means a flood of emails in the CEO inbox, and at worst continued customer dissatisfaction.
- lancewiggs 13y ago
  The CEO is modelling behaviour for everyone else at the company. He should not have to do this for every customer as by now the word should be spreading internally that if the CEO can do it, then so can you/
  - ruswick 13y ago
    > if the CEO can do it, then so can you That's not how it works. I doubt that the customer service reps have the ability to arbitrarily dole out perks with no justification other than that they felt like it.
    - edanm 13y ago
      FYI, isn't that exactly the power that Amazon customer service reps have? I'm pretty sure they can decide to arbitrarily give someone refunds, send them new merchandise, etc. Or rather, they can do so but probably within limited rules, not arbitrarily. I agree that it takes a CEO both showing what to do, and empowering the people below him to do it.
shmerl 13y ago
T-Mobile is probably the best mobile provider in US.
jamesmcbennett 13y ago
Desire Paths 101. See Tom Hulme talk. http://mcbennett.wordpress.com/2013/09/17/tom-hulme-john-maeda/ http://mcbennett.wordpress.com/2013/09/17/tom-hulme-john-mae... Taking inspiration from Urban Design where a path runs along the outside of a park expecting everyone to take the architected route. However people cut through the middle when they don't like the given route, following their desire path. Over time, the grass wastes away from the thousands of footsteps and bicycles that take their preferred route. The park owners have a choice to put up a sign saying "Do not walk on the grass" or altenatively pave the new path. In business, when consumers take a new path, there is an option to pave their path as a new product line. Watch Tom's talk above to see how Facebook didn't pave their users desire path giving space for snapchat to grow. An example where a business put up the "do not walk on the grass" sign is Kickstarter who blogged, "Kickstarter is not a store," moving away from the desire path. In this case, the CEO of T-mobile has helped a user cross the middle of the park, the question remains whether he should pave it.
- mcherm 13y ago
  > the question remains whether he should pave it. Actually, that question has been answered. T-mobile has started offering no-contract plans, a complete change from the rest of the US industry. The only thing done here was to let a customer move to the new system sooner than they otherwise would.
  - jamesmcbennett 13y ago
    great! Thx for update. (I don't live in the US, so don't know much about the industry there.)
joeblau 13y ago
Dang it. I got hooked by the link bait! I'll be the CEO of T-Mobile is going to get a ton of e-mails now.
jfoster 13y ago
This isn't particularly scalable for T-Mobile and I'd say they haven't done themselves or their customers any favours. The customer service experience should be the same regardless of whether you go in from the top or the bottom. If a customer has a better experience by going in from the top, I think that just implies that the customer service frontlines are failing. It's good that the CEO is so accessible, but no reasonable customer should need to reach out to the CEO in order to get the a good CS experience.
personlurking 13y ago
There's the old but true "never take a No from someone who doesn't have the authority to say Yes." So in most situations, the CEO wouldn't be helping, thus the customer service agents should have some authority. I've worked in a call center, I know the kind of BS that's pushed. Everyone just says what needs to be said to get the sale or get the customer off the phone (if it's a problem). As an aside, I once had a problem with my Citibank and I found a little known 'elite team' of Citibank people who called me in a foreign country, on my cell phone, within minutes of me contacting them via email and resolved my problem in about 2 minutes flat. And they reversed charges I felt I shouldn't have had in the first place.
wpietri 13y ago
I've got a theory that this can all be explained by cost of communication. For a long time, word of mouth was what determined what people thought of businesses. Plus, high cost of communication kept most businesses small. Newer communication technologies made very large companies practical, but the tech was expensive enough that it was most effectively used by those large companies both internally and externally). This a) meant a large company could override word of mouth with enough advertising, and b) encouraged the rise of professional managers, who spent very little time in contact with customers and mainly knew what their underlings told them. But now, with the Internet, the pendulum swings back. Things like email, Facebook, and Twitter have brought low-cost one-to-one and one-to-many communication to the masses. Advertising doesn't work as well, and one person with a good or bad experience can tell hundreds, thousands, millions. If a CEO wants to know what people are saying, a simple Twitter search will tell them, with no underlings to soften or filter. So smarter companies are recognizing that they can get a competitive advantage by acting like a small-town business has all along: the person in charge opens themselves up for unfiltered feedback, using that to fix their organization and get great word of mouth in the process. What I really wonder is where the new equilibrium point is. Advertising has less manipulative power, but it's not gone. And large companies will try to control new media just like they tried to control what turns up in the press.
geophile 13y ago
A similar technique worked for me. I had an IOmega Jaz drive, which accomodated 1GB cartridges. (The same company produced the better known Zip drive.) The cartridges kept getting stuck, and any attempt to remove the drive seemed to completely destroy the hardware. After several replacements, I got fed up and asked for a refund. They weren't going for it. I finally called the CEO, and received a refund pretty quickly. I suspect that it's cheaper to just refund a few bucks and make the irritant go away, rather than deal with it at that level.
ruswick 13y ago
On the one hand, it's nice to see that executives are receptive to their customers. However, the OP clearly states that they did not quality for a free transfer, and the fact that they got it seems sort of arbitrary. What if the CEO hadn't responded, or if the other executive hadn't chosen to cancel the contract? What if that person were having a bad day, and chose not to make such a gesture to the OP? One data point isn't conclusive, especially under such odd circumstances. Good service is service that is both high in quality and in consistency. I highly doubt the ability of a single CEO to handle every email in the same way (if at all), and I'm not sure if I like the idea of unwarranted perks being handed out at the discretion of executives. It seems too much like a lottery, especially because the OP did not qualify for the transfer in the first place.
TheMagicHorsey 13y ago
Oh, what a huge surprise. A CEO of a major corporation making sure that a journalist is taken care of. Talk to any tech journalist. They all get special treatment now and again.
jennita 13y ago
Once, my phone actually flushed down the toilet, and I tweeted about it. T-mobile ended up sending me an upgraded version of my phone the next day, for free! Pretty sure they did it because they were laughing so hard about my ridiculousness. But that's cool by me. :)
hknozcan 13y ago
I used t-mobile from around 2000 to the end of 2007 in NYC. Never had any problems but data was not a big issue back then. They even assigned me a 212 mobile number from a batch of 10 numbers that they received. With the right wording and timing, these things happen. Around 2002, I was searching what books to buy and e-mailed Amazon support what books Jeff Bezos has read in the past 6 months. They replied immediately to told me to ask him directly providing his e-mail address. I forwarded the e-mail and got a reply back with a list. This was even cooler than having a 212 number.
galaktor 13y ago
I wouldn't conclude that this is good customer service. More bad service as the support team couldn't (or weren't officially allowed to) kill the contract. This was just a case of ultimate escalation which was brought to resolution as quickly as possible.
jordanbaucke 13y ago
I tweeted him a few weeks ago after I wrote a follow-up to a letter I dispatched to their legal department a few weeks ago over the $299 cancellation fee http://onemanmilitia.blogspot.com/2013/09/to-get-out-of-my-contract-with-t-mobile.html http://onemanmilitia.blogspot.com/2013/09/to-get-out-of-my-c... I agree with the comments I've seen here - their customer service is helpless, and I explained so in my letter.

211 points by amerf1 13y ago

I'm in a similar situation with Sprint where I wanted to get an iPhone 5s as I have had the 4s since its introduction. Well I was told I couldn't get it until Dec. or I could pay $150 to get out of my contract and get a new contract to get the 5s now. I actually ended paying the fee and after doing so was told to text 1311 for more info. There in the text it said I could upgrade now or go with their new and better plan OneUp. No one told me about OneUp which is the more modern and better option. Sigh I spent $150 because Sprint hasn't trained their reps on this program, but they put the info in their SMS marketing....errrr :( Well Sprint did solve that issue but then after solving it and because its still a new option/plan mis-information abounds. Getting a new iPhone with Sprint or trying has taken to much time and effort and have tried to work with them for the past two weeks. But I'm done... See ya Sprint!

ulfw 13y ago

We live in a world were people feel entitled to bring their little contractual issues all the way up to the CEO of a company with over 30 MM customers. So you either believe a) you're above those other 30 MM and can just do your CEO 1:1s if need be or b) you foolishly believe that the CEO of a major corp has the time and willingness to deal with customer support for 30 Million people. Just wow

epochwolf 13y ago
People would email Steve Jobs all the time. This isn't a new thing. Before the Internet CEOs would get letters.
- dandrews 13y ago
  Yep. Back in the PCs Limited days I wrote Michael Dell an appreciative letter for some out-of-warranty customer service I'd received. Got a nice acknowledgement letter back from a VP. That little exchange indirectly earned Dell a lot of business from my employer in later years when we dumped HP and were casting about for a new desktop provider.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- ryanobjc 13y ago
  one should definitely do what they are told to at all times! Stepping outside the boundaries even a little bit is very very bad and will result in the destruction of civilization! For what are we, but rule following machines?
Woost 13y ago
Your rant is quite misguided. In this case, the CEO explicitly asked for people to email him: "I discovered that Legere put an emphasis on customer service -- listening to calls and even sharing his email address." From the other article: "had customer complaint emails forwarded to him. He also gave out his email address, ..., for anyone to contact him."
batbomb 13y ago
When you realize the world consists of people, and you realize the customer is just a person, just like the CEO is a person, then this doesn't seem so strange. I don't like the world where a CEO is somehow better than the average person, completely insulated from customers, from real people.
Denvercoder9 13y ago
You missed the part where the CEO announced that he wanted to focus on customer service and put his e-mail address for anyone with problems to personally contact him?
thebranman 13y ago
Sometimes you just need to deal with someone who is not only outside of the original situation but has the power to do something about it. The complete corporate directory isn't available for people to sift through to find someone to help us. We just know about customer service...and the CEO (more or less). For example, back when the white plastic MacBooks came out, my wife got one -- it was riddled with problems, including case cracking and loads of other problems (don't remember them anymore). Long story short, months of getting no where with regular Apple support (going through repairs, weeks w/o her laptop), she emailed Steve Jobs. She got a brand new laptop as a replacement. It's unfortunate to have to contact a CEO to deal with a seemingly low-level problem but as customers paying thousands of dollars (on a MacBook, or over the course of a cell phone contract), when we have a problem that we can't get rectified through low-level employees and their supervisors, what are we supposed to do?
rpedela 13y ago
People are just people. CEO is not special.

gkoberger 13y ago

The title seemed negative to me (I thought he complained and the CEO said "we're done with you!"). But really, the T-Mobile CEO was helping -- the author wanted out of his contract (well, out of the $200 fee). (EDIT: The original title was "I emailed the CEO of T-Mobile and he killed my contract, no joke")

CamperBob2 13y ago
Yes, this is one of those cases where the HN mod(s) should have made some editorial tweaks to the title.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
derefr 13y ago
I had to think about it for a second. You're meant to read it like "killing something is bad, but contracts are bad, so killing a contract is good." Although it'd be perfectly valid to use "contract" as a metonym for "service" or "account", people don't tend to; the contract is just the evil thing binding you to pay for your account, and doesn't get mentally associated (by most consumers) with the service itself. So killing a contract is wholly good. But forcing people to go through a thought-process like this to figure out what is meant is bad "communications-design UX", and the editor could probably have come up with something clearer.
- dwc 13y ago
  People are not forced to go through any thought process. Most people will take it at face value (as I did) and assume that service was cancelled for having the gall to email the CEO. I clicked through only because I have had good experience with T-mobile customer service and was surprised to see something like this. So the misleading/ambiguous headline actually got me to read the article where an accurate headline wouldn't have.
  - 3825 13y ago

rjzzleep 13y ago

It's funny how people immediately mock someone's sense of entitlement. You know what? Sometimes you indeed are entitled to something and the only reason you don't is because everyone else just accepts the sewer everyone is in. I once received an apology letter after helping my mom bringing her complaint to the governing board of deutsche Bank. Because god forbid she was right and that douchebag bank worker wasn't. Indeed just wow. I wish people would complain more, when there is a need. What do I mean with when there is a need? That's the thing. Were not supposed to be machine(even though a lot of people wish for the opposite). Were supposed to evaluate the choices given to us and act accordingly. And for all of you running a small business and thinking of the douchebag client you don't want. I apologize, because I know exactly who you're talking about and you're right.

harshreality 13y ago
This reporter wasn't entitled to get out of his contract early. Either he was too lazy or stupid to know when his contract was ending (a dangerous thing for a journalist writing articles to inform the masses), or he knowingly pressured T-Mobile into letting him switch to a contract-free plan early. He thought he was special (he had the power to write a misleading, negative article about T-Mobile if they didn't cave, or a positive one if they did). If that's not an improper sense of entitlement, I don't know what is.
- ZoFreX 13y ago
  Did you read the article? He admits that he was mistaken, obligated to pay the amount, and was willing to do so.
  - harshreality 13y ago
    Did you? That was at the very end, after he'd insisted T-Mobile was wrong about when his contract was ending, and had emailed the CEO about it, only to be told again that he was wrong. Why would a reporter call customer service to ask whether he could switch plans? Wouldn't he look at his contract?

rjzzleep 13y ago

Asterick6 13y ago

It's a good thing that John Legere places customer care/service as a high priority, but it seems like you didn't take the time to figure out the problem yourself. Instead of "getting frustrated" and taking the issue to the CEO, you could have spent some time and effort to resolve it yourself. Also, this post doesn't provide enough information about your issue and why you had a misunderstanding. If it did, then it would be more meaningful.

rjzzleep 13y ago

001sky 13y ago

Reporter: For $200, I will write a nice article about you. CEO: Deal

enraged_camel 13y ago
That is really what this whole thing is about. Nothing more, nothing less.
mturmon 13y ago
Yes. Now, how does that model of customer service apply to the rest of T-Mobile's customers? Not very well.
m_ram 13y ago
I'm not sure if this is true. The picture accompanying the article shows the reporter using what looks like his personal email address [1]. I guess he could have signed it with his company and job title information. Either way, I don't think one anecdote is enough to change my view that all wireless companies are horrible. [1] http://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/blog/2013/03/t-mobile-blog-customer-service.html?s=image_gallery http://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/blog/2013/03/t-mobil...
stonewhite 13y ago
Viral marketing is The leading market these days

derefr 13y ago

> "But how is that so? I have had a full upgrade since November." Usually, phone upgrades are offered starting two years into a three-year plan. They don't want to let the contract expire before they try to reel you back in with an upgrade; that'd be incredibly dangerous for retention. They want to offer you the phone while you're still good and legally bound to them, but when you feel like you're almost out.

skittles 13y ago

I want to like T-Mobile, but I'm in the middle of the US with access to 100+ Mbps Internet but no T-Mobile signal in my house. T-Mobile is pushing itself hard in my area, but they just don't have the coverage.

JoshTriplett 13y ago
If you're willing to use a T-Mobile branded phone rather than your own phone, T-Mobile has wifi calling available. Alternatively, if you can get any signal at all, anywhere in your house, you can get a signal booster; you can either buy one yourself from Cel-Fi, or T-Mobile will give you one with a two-year contract.

lucb1e 13y ago

Well this is nice of T-Mobile and shows they do somewhat care about customer service. I can chime in and add my experience with the English (American?) division of T-Mobile: they responded to a mention at a social network while I was not even really meaning to ask them a question, I merely mentioned them. The Dutch division is not as great, but oh well. Still, I'd say it's how it's supposed to be. In the Netherlands it'd be illegal to upgrade contracts like this. You can't start charging more without giving the user an option to quit the contract for free (or continue the old contract for the old price). Also after the contract period (one or two years), consumers have a right to cancel the contract each month, also for free.

harshreality 13y ago
They didn't start charging more. Telecom companies pull some shady tricks with plans and billing, but increasing the monthly fee without notice part way through your contract is not one of them. He signed a contract for some period of time, and it wasn't up yet. After it was up, he would have had the option of one of the new plans, or switching providers, just like everyone else does.
- smartwater 13y ago
  With mobile providers in the US, if you don't use your "upgrade" you can keep using the service with no contract. If you accept their upgrade, an offer of getting a new phone at discount, you lock yourself in for another year.
mangotree 13y ago
Well, it shows they'd are about one customer. They haven't cancelled this clause for everyone, and would probably lose money if they did.

Keyframe 13y ago

Article/blog post (whatever it is) reads like a PR article, which it probably is.

tempestn 13y ago

If he didn't have one already, Legere is certainly going to need an assistant to triage his personal email now.

kordless 13y ago
He's the CEO of TMobile. I guarantee he has an EA working that already.
- tempestn 13y ago
  Indeed. In which case giving out his own email address is just a convenient way of filtering out a a certain type of customer service request, while also being good PR. He'd want a way to get important emails quickly without the EA having to manually screen them; I wonder if he uses a separate address, a whitelist, a tag (ie johnlegere+internal@tmobile.com), or a keyword in the subject. Guessing whitelist.

kordless 13y ago

I've had a mobile phone since the Motorola Brick days. Over the years I've grumbled and complained about various cell phone companies policies, dealt with contract obligations, bad service, horrible experiences with switching plans, etc., etc. The worst of the worst was moving to the bay in late 2007 and having to use AT&T on an iPhone. Last year I bought a Nexus 4 from Google and signed up for a prepaid T-Mobile plan. A few months later they switched over to offering no-contract plans and I followed suit by putting both my kids and myself on a single plan. My entire experience with the company since signing up has been nothing short of stellar. Great customer service, low wait times while calling in, friendly faces in the stores, and always a willingness to do whatever it took to make me happy with my service. My contract, with my two kids tacked on, is about what I paid Verizon a month for an iPhone. About the only complaint I have with T-Mobile is that I can't really surf the net while I'm in the BART tube under the Bay on the way into the city. Other than that, it's been a great experience! It just goes to show that one person at a company, with the power to make real changes, is what it takes to change an entire industry. It feels great to give my money to a company that actually cares about customer service.

Gonzih 13y ago

Very very misleading title.

dsr_ 13y ago

It's terrible customer service. The CEO should not have to get involved. Status as a journalist should not be required. The first doesn't scale, and the second, if true, is hopelessly corrupt. Every customer support supervisor ought to be able to make an exception based on reasonable circumstances. The article should have ended with "and anyone else in my situation, or a similar one, should contact T-Mobile customer support. If the first line worker can't help you, they should be able to put you through to a supervisor who can, based on the policy changes that T-Mobile has implemented." Anything less at best means a flood of emails in the CEO inbox, and at worst continued customer dissatisfaction.

lancewiggs 13y ago
The CEO is modelling behaviour for everyone else at the company. He should not have to do this for every customer as by now the word should be spreading internally that if the CEO can do it, then so can you/
- ruswick 13y ago
  > if the CEO can do it, then so can you That's not how it works. I doubt that the customer service reps have the ability to arbitrarily dole out perks with no justification other than that they felt like it.
  - edanm 13y ago
    FYI, isn't that exactly the power that Amazon customer service reps have? I'm pretty sure they can decide to arbitrarily give someone refunds, send them new merchandise, etc. Or rather, they can do so but probably within limited rules, not arbitrarily. I agree that it takes a CEO both showing what to do, and empowering the people below him to do it.

shmerl 13y ago

T-Mobile is probably the best mobile provider in US.

jamesmcbennett 13y ago

Desire Paths 101. See Tom Hulme talk. http://mcbennett.wordpress.com/2013/09/17/tom-hulme-john-maeda/ http://mcbennett.wordpress.com/2013/09/17/tom-hulme-john-mae... Taking inspiration from Urban Design where a path runs along the outside of a park expecting everyone to take the architected route. However people cut through the middle when they don't like the given route, following their desire path. Over time, the grass wastes away from the thousands of footsteps and bicycles that take their preferred route. The park owners have a choice to put up a sign saying "Do not walk on the grass" or altenatively pave the new path. In business, when consumers take a new path, there is an option to pave their path as a new product line. Watch Tom's talk above to see how Facebook didn't pave their users desire path giving space for snapchat to grow. An example where a business put up the "do not walk on the grass" sign is Kickstarter who blogged, "Kickstarter is not a store," moving away from the desire path. In this case, the CEO of T-mobile has helped a user cross the middle of the park, the question remains whether he should pave it.

mcherm 13y ago
> the question remains whether he should pave it. Actually, that question has been answered. T-mobile has started offering no-contract plans, a complete change from the rest of the US industry. The only thing done here was to let a customer move to the new system sooner than they otherwise would.
- jamesmcbennett 13y ago
  great! Thx for update. (I don't live in the US, so don't know much about the industry there.)

joeblau 13y ago

Dang it. I got hooked by the link bait! I'll be the CEO of T-Mobile is going to get a ton of e-mails now.

jfoster 13y ago

This isn't particularly scalable for T-Mobile and I'd say they haven't done themselves or their customers any favours. The customer service experience should be the same regardless of whether you go in from the top or the bottom. If a customer has a better experience by going in from the top, I think that just implies that the customer service frontlines are failing. It's good that the CEO is so accessible, but no reasonable customer should need to reach out to the CEO in order to get the a good CS experience.

personlurking 13y ago

There's the old but true "never take a No from someone who doesn't have the authority to say Yes." So in most situations, the CEO wouldn't be helping, thus the customer service agents should have some authority. I've worked in a call center, I know the kind of BS that's pushed. Everyone just says what needs to be said to get the sale or get the customer off the phone (if it's a problem). As an aside, I once had a problem with my Citibank and I found a little known 'elite team' of Citibank people who called me in a foreign country, on my cell phone, within minutes of me contacting them via email and resolved my problem in about 2 minutes flat. And they reversed charges I felt I shouldn't have had in the first place.

wpietri 13y ago

I've got a theory that this can all be explained by cost of communication. For a long time, word of mouth was what determined what people thought of businesses. Plus, high cost of communication kept most businesses small. Newer communication technologies made very large companies practical, but the tech was expensive enough that it was most effectively used by those large companies both internally and externally). This a) meant a large company could override word of mouth with enough advertising, and b) encouraged the rise of professional managers, who spent very little time in contact with customers and mainly knew what their underlings told them. But now, with the Internet, the pendulum swings back. Things like email, Facebook, and Twitter have brought low-cost one-to-one and one-to-many communication to the masses. Advertising doesn't work as well, and one person with a good or bad experience can tell hundreds, thousands, millions. If a CEO wants to know what people are saying, a simple Twitter search will tell them, with no underlings to soften or filter. So smarter companies are recognizing that they can get a competitive advantage by acting like a small-town business has all along: the person in charge opens themselves up for unfiltered feedback, using that to fix their organization and get great word of mouth in the process. What I really wonder is where the new equilibrium point is. Advertising has less manipulative power, but it's not gone. And large companies will try to control new media just like they tried to control what turns up in the press.

geophile 13y ago

A similar technique worked for me. I had an IOmega Jaz drive, which accomodated 1GB cartridges. (The same company produced the better known Zip drive.) The cartridges kept getting stuck, and any attempt to remove the drive seemed to completely destroy the hardware. After several replacements, I got fed up and asked for a refund. They weren't going for it. I finally called the CEO, and received a refund pretty quickly. I suspect that it's cheaper to just refund a few bucks and make the irritant go away, rather than deal with it at that level.

ruswick 13y ago

On the one hand, it's nice to see that executives are receptive to their customers. However, the OP clearly states that they did not quality for a free transfer, and the fact that they got it seems sort of arbitrary. What if the CEO hadn't responded, or if the other executive hadn't chosen to cancel the contract? What if that person were having a bad day, and chose not to make such a gesture to the OP? One data point isn't conclusive, especially under such odd circumstances. Good service is service that is both high in quality and in consistency. I highly doubt the ability of a single CEO to handle every email in the same way (if at all), and I'm not sure if I like the idea of unwarranted perks being handed out at the discretion of executives. It seems too much like a lottery, especially because the OP did not qualify for the transfer in the first place.

TheMagicHorsey 13y ago

Oh, what a huge surprise. A CEO of a major corporation making sure that a journalist is taken care of. Talk to any tech journalist. They all get special treatment now and again.

jennita 13y ago

Once, my phone actually flushed down the toilet, and I tweeted about it. T-mobile ended up sending me an upgraded version of my phone the next day, for free! Pretty sure they did it because they were laughing so hard about my ridiculousness. But that's cool by me. :)

hknozcan 13y ago

I used t-mobile from around 2000 to the end of 2007 in NYC. Never had any problems but data was not a big issue back then. They even assigned me a 212 mobile number from a batch of 10 numbers that they received. With the right wording and timing, these things happen. Around 2002, I was searching what books to buy and e-mailed Amazon support what books Jeff Bezos has read in the past 6 months. They replied immediately to told me to ask him directly providing his e-mail address. I forwarded the e-mail and got a reply back with a list. This was even cooler than having a 212 number.

galaktor 13y ago

I wouldn't conclude that this is good customer service. More bad service as the support team couldn't (or weren't officially allowed to) kill the contract. This was just a case of ultimate escalation which was brought to resolution as quickly as possible.

jordanbaucke 13y ago

I tweeted him a few weeks ago after I wrote a follow-up to a letter I dispatched to their legal department a few weeks ago over the $299 cancellation fee http://onemanmilitia.blogspot.com/2013/09/to-get-out-of-my-contract-with-t-mobile.html http://onemanmilitia.blogspot.com/2013/09/to-get-out-of-my-c... I agree with the comments I've seen here - their customer service is helpless, and I explained so in my letter.