Cell Phone Service

Stick Together, I guess that's loose marketing talk for some sort of unified communications. Anyway, certainly mobility is a big part of unified communications, and attempts at single number access to anyone. A great idea, actually single number connectivity has been around decades, it seems, (I remember a big paper from Nortel on this at least 10 years ago). So I've ordered a Google phone from T-Mobile. Try out this smartphone stuff (I'd rather have an iPhone, but I prefer T-Mobile cell service).

Yes, cell phone service, does anyone have good service? First, call quality and connections, cell phones, all of 'em, pretty much suck, don't they? Are any vendors really any better at this? But then, I'm spoiled, used ISDN for years, the absolute Nirvana of voice communications. So cell phones are sort of like MP3s, a degradation of quality. Yet, a necessity (and, yes, I have an iPod... but prefer a lossless algorythm for music storage).

OK, we put up with cell phone calls. What about customer service? Another issue where vendors compete. If we all get dropped calls from all vendors, maybe customer service will differentiate between the competing cell phone companies. Recently, a noted columnist in a noted industry mag slammed T-Mobile for it's customer service. I had to write him immediately, because customer service is why I stick with T-Mobile. Here's some of what I sent him, three incidents that keep me a customer:

Initial Sign Up:

My son was moving to LA in a couple months, so when we wanted to get cell service here in Utah, we requested an LA phone number. Several companies I talked to said it was not possible to get an LA phone number, or acted like they had no idea what to do. Made me quite cynical about the level of competence of the representatives. We walk into T-Moble, me carrying a
chip on my shoulder from the previous experiences. The T-Mobile rep says "no problem" and about 30 seconds later we have a 213 Area Code number while still in Utah. And all other cynical questions were completely answered. Unbelievable! Somebody knew what they were doing. Besides, she was incredibly cute... cute and competent, a combo that really drives me wild (but I digress...).

Phone Replacement:

A couple years after the intial contract, we sign up again. My son gets a new Razr. After about 6 months, the keyboard craps out. I note we have a 1 year warranty, but my cynical side girds for a war with T-Mobile. We walk in, the rep says no prob. The only kink, we are led over to a computer hooked up for a video conference with customer service back at the main T-Moble ranch. Way cool! I'm into video. Another cool babe comes up on the screen, asks us a few questions, looks at the phone via an auxillary camera, and we are in biz. New phone on the way, just make sure to send back the old one. And she winked at me (my son says she winked at him!), but I digress again...

Billing Resolution:

This summer, we got a bill with lots of expensive extra minutes. I noticed that a large block of minutes was actually from the previous month. A phone call to T-Mobile got me a very responsive and helpful agent who spent quite some time examining the bill, and, while having a excuse for the previous month's minutes, did give us full credit, removed the excess minutes charge, and gave me some helpful suggestions to reduce the overall bill in the future. I'm sure she was cute and winking, although I guess I once again digress.

I guess YMMV, but I'm happy. So on to the Gphone...