9 ms·

T-Mobile CEO hints at family plan disruption in 2014

22 points by wanghq 13y ago

vxNsr 13y ago
Can't wait. While they don't have the best coverage everywhere, they more than make up for it with their wifi-calling and great customer service. Right now our family is too big to fit into one "family plan" and it's too small to make it cost efficient to have two, so instead we bundle with our relatives, but it means some of us are on AT&T (aka All abouT sTealing your $$, it's too late at night to come up with a good one) and don't get the great benefits of NO overage charges and freedom to pay for our devices only ONCE!! I don't work for T-mobile, I just really like how they're one of the few consumer-friendly companies out there (I don't care about their motives).
- twiceaday 13y ago
  "family plan", "bundle", "benefits", "overage charges", "pay for our devices only ONCE". It pains me to even say this shit let alone have to navigate this trap laden environment they've set up to extract the maximum amount of money from you under the guise of "savings". Disgusting.
  - gcb0 13y ago
    the irony, T-Mobile was fine on that front until the CEO started to boast the they would 'change the mobile landscape with a the no-network' Not that they were better in any way... I remember buying the first nexus, they actually had "verizon, AT&T, unlocked" then you read the unlocked fine print "only works with t-mobile frequencies"... so you were basically buying a phone that only worked with t-mobile 3G but without the subsidies. well technically you weren't tied to a contract, yet.
- DigitalTurk 13y ago
  Great customer service?? I don't have experience with other mobile phone companies in the US, but T-Mobile's customer support line is unlike anything I had ever experienced in Europe. It made my experiences with China Unicom not seem all that bad—and that's saying something!. I have experienced the following things: - I would be on the phone for ten or twenty minutes before I could speak to an operator; - The voice recognition software utterly failed for me (granted, I'm not a native English speaker but I have few to no problems with Siri); - I would be connected to different departments several times, in circles; - I would have to enter my mobile phone number over and over again; - The operators were entirely clueless about SIM cards for iPads and about their inability to accept foreign credit cards. It's very much reminiscent of calling a national phone company for support in Europe in the 80s. Also, I've been in T-Mobile shops where they didn't know the term 'SIM card'. They would literally ask me if it was one of those cards you put into an iPhone, and then tell me I could only buy those online (indeed, they're not free!). They're also very, very expensive by European standards. Again, my previous horrible experience with China telcos made a lot more sense after being a T-Mobile customer. I now realize they just copy the US a little to eagerly! Edit: Here's an example. When you would call to top up your SIM card they would enumerate all the plans you could get starting from the most absurdly expensive plans that you wouldn't otherwise realize existed. A reasonably priced plan would only come in as the 7th option and it would take a minute or more before they'd tell you what button to press. It was a very painful process to top up my SIM card and I imagine that if I lived in the US longtime I'd ultimately give in and just get a monthly plan that I didn't really want.
  - maaku 13y ago
    Unfortunately that is entirely par for the course here in the U.S. of A.
iandanforth 13y ago
I cannot recommend T-Mobile to anyone any more. Their biggest liability is their customer service infrastructure, which is manned by the same, poorly trained, helpless, and degraded staff as always. In a recent debacle where they forced me into a new plan but promised (in writing) it would only be $30/m. In reality they forced me to a $70/m plan, and customer service was totally helpless. They knew nothing of the forced transition plan, or the letter I had received. Even the executive response team could only force through 2 months of free service rather than honoring their promise. While I respect the PR they are going for, the reality falls far, far, short, due to years of 'cost management' minded outsourcing and hamstringing of customer service. You simply cannot remake a company if you don't eliminate the cruft of crappy infrastructure. Perhaps they could hire someone from Zappos to start fresh.
- martey 13y ago
  > Their biggest liability is their customer service infrastructure I think this is a problem with all of the major US mobile carriers. I have heard so many bad customer service anecdotes about all four carriers that despite being thoroughly disappointed in my own carrier's horrible customer service (AT&T), I do not think switching would help things.
  - gcb0 13y ago
    > I do not think switching would help things. yeah, everytime i hear someone in the US says he switched mobile company because of customer service, i think of the simpsons episode where Earth is enslaved by some aliens and homer says "I voted for the other [alien that would also enslave Earth] one". Ironically, Mesh networks never took off because everyone would be weary of having your data, even encrypted, passing trhu random people networks. Little did everyone know the telcos were the worse on this front.
  - adestefan 13y ago
    The secret is to get on a corporate account. I've never been on hold nor had a bad experience with AT&T's corporate support. It's actually kinda refreshing dialing 611 and instantly having a real person answer the other end.
watchdogtimer 13y ago
The real disruption is occurring in the MVNO space. The things the major telcos are doing pale in comparison. For instance, our family and parents share 5 phone on 1 plan on Ting. There is a flat $6 monthly fee per device, and our charges are based simply on the amount of minutes and data we use. The rates are cheap (about $0.02 per minute for voice calls). You can use almost whatever Sprint-compatible device you want (we use some cheap Nexus S phones we bought used from a reseller) and can add, remove, or swap devices at anytime through their online interface. If your outside of Sprint's network, voice calls will roam over Verizon's network at no extra cost. You are free to do whatever you want on Wi-Fi at no cost, and there if no charge for tethering, either. Their customer support has been superb. We've called them a couple of times when we had some issues activating a new device (mostly my mistakes) and someone knowledgeable picked up the phone immediately. No waiting, no transferring between CSRs. Similar innovations are occurring with other MVNOs like Republic Wireless. Why people are sticking with the majors I don't understand.
- RankingMember 13y ago
  Yep, Ting is great. I wish they had more consistent support for newer phones, but I'm willing to accept the trade-off for the huge cost savings.
- r00fus 13y ago
  What's your average monthly outlay? For TMO, I pay $110/mo (plus fees) for 5 devices and great coverage.
blisterpeanuts 13y ago
My biggest complaint with tmo was their lack of international calling once I drive north into Canada or hop the Atlantic. Now, at least they offer inexpensive calling and texting in Canada, and I'm looking forward to testing the service on our next Canada trip this summer. Coverage isn't as thorough as the majors, but everything else about tmo is good: easy policy about bringing your own device, tethering, promoting Nexus, responsive customer service (in my experience, and top rated by Consumer Reports, year after year). I'm intrigued by the lifetime data tablet offer; sounds too good to be true. Amazon revoked their lifetime data for Kindle, so I'm wondering whether tmo can be relied upon for an entire lifetime. The CNET article mentions the idea of buying out customers of competitors. Now that's disruptive. It's a bit ironic that people are loathe to pay $200 to break a contract, yet spend $2 a day, 250 days a year, for coffee. Anyway, brilliant idea because they'll make back the buyout costs over time, and there are more than a few customers who'd love to stick it to ATT and Verizon.

22 points by wanghq 13y ago

vxNsr 13y ago

Can't wait. While they don't have the best coverage everywhere, they more than make up for it with their wifi-calling and great customer service. Right now our family is too big to fit into one "family plan" and it's too small to make it cost efficient to have two, so instead we bundle with our relatives, but it means some of us are on AT&T (aka All abouT sTealing your $$, it's too late at night to come up with a good one) and don't get the great benefits of NO overage charges and freedom to pay for our devices only ONCE!! I don't work for T-mobile, I just really like how they're one of the few consumer-friendly companies out there (I don't care about their motives).

twiceaday 13y ago
"family plan", "bundle", "benefits", "overage charges", "pay for our devices only ONCE". It pains me to even say this shit let alone have to navigate this trap laden environment they've set up to extract the maximum amount of money from you under the guise of "savings". Disgusting.
- gcb0 13y ago
  the irony, T-Mobile was fine on that front until the CEO started to boast the they would 'change the mobile landscape with a the no-network' Not that they were better in any way... I remember buying the first nexus, they actually had "verizon, AT&T, unlocked" then you read the unlocked fine print "only works with t-mobile frequencies"... so you were basically buying a phone that only worked with t-mobile 3G but without the subsidies. well technically you weren't tied to a contract, yet.
DigitalTurk 13y ago
Great customer service?? I don't have experience with other mobile phone companies in the US, but T-Mobile's customer support line is unlike anything I had ever experienced in Europe. It made my experiences with China Unicom not seem all that bad—and that's saying something!. I have experienced the following things: - I would be on the phone for ten or twenty minutes before I could speak to an operator; - The voice recognition software utterly failed for me (granted, I'm not a native English speaker but I have few to no problems with Siri); - I would be connected to different departments several times, in circles; - I would have to enter my mobile phone number over and over again; - The operators were entirely clueless about SIM cards for iPads and about their inability to accept foreign credit cards. It's very much reminiscent of calling a national phone company for support in Europe in the 80s. Also, I've been in T-Mobile shops where they didn't know the term 'SIM card'. They would literally ask me if it was one of those cards you put into an iPhone, and then tell me I could only buy those online (indeed, they're not free!). They're also very, very expensive by European standards. Again, my previous horrible experience with China telcos made a lot more sense after being a T-Mobile customer. I now realize they just copy the US a little to eagerly! Edit: Here's an example. When you would call to top up your SIM card they would enumerate all the plans you could get starting from the most absurdly expensive plans that you wouldn't otherwise realize existed. A reasonably priced plan would only come in as the 7th option and it would take a minute or more before they'd tell you what button to press. It was a very painful process to top up my SIM card and I imagine that if I lived in the US longtime I'd ultimately give in and just get a monthly plan that I didn't really want.
- maaku 13y ago
  Unfortunately that is entirely par for the course here in the U.S. of A.

iandanforth 13y ago

I cannot recommend T-Mobile to anyone any more. Their biggest liability is their customer service infrastructure, which is manned by the same, poorly trained, helpless, and degraded staff as always. In a recent debacle where they forced me into a new plan but promised (in writing) it would only be $30/m. In reality they forced me to a $70/m plan, and customer service was totally helpless. They knew nothing of the forced transition plan, or the letter I had received. Even the executive response team could only force through 2 months of free service rather than honoring their promise. While I respect the PR they are going for, the reality falls far, far, short, due to years of 'cost management' minded outsourcing and hamstringing of customer service. You simply cannot remake a company if you don't eliminate the cruft of crappy infrastructure. Perhaps they could hire someone from Zappos to start fresh.

martey 13y ago
> Their biggest liability is their customer service infrastructure I think this is a problem with all of the major US mobile carriers. I have heard so many bad customer service anecdotes about all four carriers that despite being thoroughly disappointed in my own carrier's horrible customer service (AT&T), I do not think switching would help things.
- gcb0 13y ago
  > I do not think switching would help things. yeah, everytime i hear someone in the US says he switched mobile company because of customer service, i think of the simpsons episode where Earth is enslaved by some aliens and homer says "I voted for the other [alien that would also enslave Earth] one". Ironically, Mesh networks never took off because everyone would be weary of having your data, even encrypted, passing trhu random people networks. Little did everyone know the telcos were the worse on this front.
- adestefan 13y ago
  The secret is to get on a corporate account. I've never been on hold nor had a bad experience with AT&T's corporate support. It's actually kinda refreshing dialing 611 and instantly having a real person answer the other end.

watchdogtimer 13y ago

The real disruption is occurring in the MVNO space. The things the major telcos are doing pale in comparison. For instance, our family and parents share 5 phone on 1 plan on Ting. There is a flat $6 monthly fee per device, and our charges are based simply on the amount of minutes and data we use. The rates are cheap (about $0.02 per minute for voice calls). You can use almost whatever Sprint-compatible device you want (we use some cheap Nexus S phones we bought used from a reseller) and can add, remove, or swap devices at anytime through their online interface. If your outside of Sprint's network, voice calls will roam over Verizon's network at no extra cost. You are free to do whatever you want on Wi-Fi at no cost, and there if no charge for tethering, either. Their customer support has been superb. We've called them a couple of times when we had some issues activating a new device (mostly my mistakes) and someone knowledgeable picked up the phone immediately. No waiting, no transferring between CSRs. Similar innovations are occurring with other MVNOs like Republic Wireless. Why people are sticking with the majors I don't understand.

RankingMember 13y ago
Yep, Ting is great. I wish they had more consistent support for newer phones, but I'm willing to accept the trade-off for the huge cost savings.
r00fus 13y ago
What's your average monthly outlay? For TMO, I pay $110/mo (plus fees) for 5 devices and great coverage.

blisterpeanuts 13y ago

My biggest complaint with tmo was their lack of international calling once I drive north into Canada or hop the Atlantic. Now, at least they offer inexpensive calling and texting in Canada, and I'm looking forward to testing the service on our next Canada trip this summer. Coverage isn't as thorough as the majors, but everything else about tmo is good: easy policy about bringing your own device, tethering, promoting Nexus, responsive customer service (in my experience, and top rated by Consumer Reports, year after year). I'm intrigued by the lifetime data tablet offer; sounds too good to be true. Amazon revoked their lifetime data for Kindle, so I'm wondering whether tmo can be relied upon for an entire lifetime. The CNET article mentions the idea of buying out customers of competitors. Now that's disruptive. It's a bit ironic that people are loathe to pay $200 to break a contract, yet spend $2 a day, 250 days a year, for coffee. Anyway, brilliant idea because they'll make back the buyout costs over time, and there are more than a few customers who'd love to stick it to ATT and Verizon.