UPDATED: T-Mobile: The most incompetent mobile phone company in the UK?
There are good mobile phone companies and there are bad ones. After today, T-Mobile has demonstrated to this customer that they are undoubtedly the worst!
One of the most important tools I use every day is my mobile phone. It really is a lifeline, keeping me in touch with contacts, colleagues, family and friends. Therefore I take my choice of mobile phone and mobile phone service very seriously.
I currently carry two devices – a Motorola RAZR mobile phone containing a Vodafone SIM card. That phone is the one that most of my voice traffic goes through, as the number associated with it is the one on my business cards. The other device is a Sidekick II running on T-Mobile. While also a phone, I use it mostly for data, in particular email and text messages as it has a full QWERTY keyboard and, financially at least, a good call plan for texts and data access.
I switched to the Sidekick II in March last year, having previously been a fierce and loyal Blackberry user. I still think Blackberry devices (the proper ones, not the hybrid phone ones) are great, but the Sidekick II offers certain features, such as a fully-features web browser, that trumps the capabilities of a Blackberry. I also really like the Sidekick’s ZX Spectrum-like rubber keyboard.
Anyway – back to today’s saga. Having decided that I’m fed up carrying two devices and nursing two mobile bills, I wanted to start the process of moving from two devices and mobiles services to one. The plan was to leave Vodafone, and move my number to T-Mobile, having first made sure I had like-for-like services set up and working with T-Mobile before going to Vodafone (who I would like to add have been extremely reliable and offered good service over the years – I was planning to leave purely on cost-cutting and practicality grounds).
With Vodafone I have a service called Vodafone Mail, which allows people to send faxes to a number associated with my mobile number, with the faxes landing in my voicemail for me to forward on to a fax machine of my choice or to view online. T-Mobile has a similar service called Fax Messaging. It doesn’t allow for online viewing, but is otherwise a like-for-like product. Therefore I wanted it enabled.
Should have been an easy enough process – it’s a standard feature costing £1.50 a month and advertised on the T-Mobile site.
No!
The first person I spoke to cut me off, as did the second, and the third. The fourth person spent ages allegedly setting the service up, only to reveal after nearly 25 minutes that he knew nothing of the service and would need to transfer me to Technical.
The first person within T-Mobile Technical I spoke to (person five in total) knew nothing of the service and spend another 25 minutes looking up the service and allegedly enabling it.
With the service enabled (after I explained to him what it was and read the entire web page to him) I gave it a full hour before trying it out. A problem – the so-called Fax number rings straight through to my Sidekick. Manually bouncing the call to voicemail results in voicemail rejecting the call because it can’t handle faxes….because the service hasn’t been enabled.
I call back – and am cut off by the person who answered the call (person six) who claimed to be transferring me to Technical.
I call back again (person seven), and am transferred to Technical (person eight) who hasn’t a clue what is wrong. He takes my office landline number and promises to call back in 15 minutes.
THREE HOURS LATER – no call. So I call back. The person I speak to (person nine) put me on hold for about seven minutes while they talk to Technical. I’m promised a call back from technical in five minutes on my landline, amid claims that they had tried several times to call me but the line was engaged. I explain that this is untruthful – no call received and my line has voicemail, not an engaged tone, and no message was left to say they had tried to call.
ANOTHER HOUR LATER – Still no call – so I ring again. The person I speak to (person 10) claims attempts were made to call me, but my line was engaged. I again explain that this is untruthful – no call received and my line has voicemail, not an engaged tone, and no message was left to say they had tried to call. Claims are then made that a text was sent to my mobile saying that attempts had been made to call me but my landline was engaged. This text eventually turned up at 5.15pm, which doesn’t speak well for T-Mobile’s ability to deliver its own SMS messages in a timely fashion. Also – no effort was made to call the phone the text was sent to.
My call is passed on to a chap in Technical called David (person 11) who does at least have the courtesy to call back and to do so exactly when he said he would. Several calls are then exchanged between us, with each time David ensuring me that everything has been set up, or re-set up and this time it will really work, or give it up to an hour and it will work. Each time, the same thing happens - the so-called Fax number rings straight through to my Sidekick. Manually bouncing the call to voicemail results in voicemail rejecting the call because it can’t handle faxes….because the service hasn’t been enabled.
As I am sure you can appreciate – I’m not happy. My entire lunch break and other time has been well and truly wasted by T-Mobile’s inability to enable an advertised service on my account. I ask for two things – first, that the technical problem be escalated immediately to the next line of technical support. I’m told this will be done straight away but that it will take up to THREE DAYS before I get a call from someone to deal with it. I also ask for a complaint to be escalated as I am unhappy with the time wasting, inconvenience, aggravation, lying and poor customer service I have experienced. Begrudgingly, this is also agreed to.
I’m not expecting much as I’ve had previous experience of how T-Mobile deals with customer complaints – ignoring them basically. Hence this blog post so that this experience can at least be of use to potential and current customers.
As I finish writing this, it’s just gone 7pm. I’ve just had a voicemail from David. For what feels like the hundredth time today he’s said that he has redone the divert setting for the fax number and it really will divert straight to the fax-enabled voicemail service, and that all the fax services that need to be enabled on my account are set up and working.
NO - THEY ARE NOT!!!!!!
The fax number still rings straight through to my Sidekick, and bouncing the call to voicemail see the call answered by the dulcet tones of my voicemail greeting, shortly after which the fax call is rejected by the T-Mobile voicemail system. Exactly what it has been doing since 11am this morning when this was supposed to have been first set up.
Just saying it’s all fixed doesn’t make it so – you actually have to physically do something to deal with the issue. The failure to resolve the issue and the disrespectful way that this issue and I as a customer have been dealt with by various people at T-Mobile today is nothing short of sickening. It certainly isn’t professional! I’d also like to mention that at no point in this saga have I referenced or in any other way used my credentials as a journalist to try and get preferential treatment. I have approached this as any other ordinary customer would.
The scary thing was – at 10am this morning, I was seriously planning to axe my Vodafone account and port the number (which is the one on my business cards) over to T-Mobile, and with it all the call traffic that is associated with that number. On current form – it’ll be a cold day in hell before that happens!
* AN UPDATE: Just had a call from a supervisor at T-Mobile Technical. He was no use whatsoever, offered a derisory £5 goodwill gesture, and confirmed that despite being told at 6pm that the problem would be escalated, it still had not been passed on to anyone higher-up the technical food chain or competent. He also stuck to the claim that attempts had been made to call me (which they were not), and that my landline phone was engaged (not true, our landline phones at IT PRO cut to voicemail when busy, not an engaged tone – and no voicemails were left by anyone from T-Mobile). He seemed uninterested in doing anything about the previous individual – allegedly called Ian – who was sticking by his false story that he had tried to call me back. The safe money says that the technical call back I’ve been promised for tomorrow will not happen, and that T-Mobile will do nothing about my complaint in regards to having endured a combination of being messed around and misled by in total 12 different people over the course of today.
Also - at this stage I fully sympathise with the BBC’s John Sweeney when he lost it during the Panorama look at Scientology – T-Mobile have wound me up and messed me around to such a degree I want to do exactly the same thing to their head of customer service.
* ANOTHER UPDATE: It’s now noon the next day - no response from anyone at T-Mobile regarding either the complaint or the outstanding issue - and the Fax Messaging still is not working!
* YET ANOTHER UPDATE: It is now a week since this whole saga started, and despite the intervention of T-Mobile press people and the managing director’s office, the problem still hasn’t been resolved. Even the MD’s office is proving hopeless in doing anything useful 
May 29th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Word of warning -went through a very similar nightmare experience with VODAFONE i.e being told a data service was unavailable despite having being subscribed to it for 3 months, having call depliberately disconnected, having people promising to call back etc. The best undoubtably being being sent emails saying if I had any questions to contact but then being told that the person who emailed me was not allowed to speak to me.
June 1st, 2007 at 11:44 am
Today on the 1st of June i realised that a contract i had purchased in march would no longer work in the way i had been told it would do, verbally via the sales person at the time of purchase.
I made a general call and spoke to gentleman called Asad. Who instead of being at all patient, helpful or giving any kind of advice. Was Rude abrupt and most worst of all hung up the phone after deciding trying to have an argument with a customer. One thing i know for sure there is no way i will ever purchase a contract with click mobiles again and funny enough it takes one such a case to spoil a reputation of a company in the eyes of many valuable customers.
The main enquiry of my call was to make clear that when purchasing the two contracts i was told that the 07744 number would enable me to make free international calls for 12 months(verbally via sales person who should also at same time verbally make clear that this could stop at any time), which now has stopped. I now know the t&c states this and that all the gentleman at your end had to do was make it specifically clear where this is stated in the t&c and apologise that there is no alternative number to replace this one that he at the moment knows about and perhaps say call back in a while and if he knows of any number he will let me know!
Don’t you think that would have been a more professional suitable manner to deal with the call. But no he decided to be rude have a rut n a tut and hang up. Surely as a company you can find more reputable polite friendly and gentleman salesman to do business with your respected customers. Right?
I look forward to hear wat you think about this whole drama!
In the mean time I know what I think of click mobiles and all cos of one PERSON.
June 1st, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Between the comments here and on my IT PRO blog, it seems that few people have a good word to say about T-Mobile dreadful approach, or rather lack of approach to customer service.
A week since my sorry mess started, and despite the inervention of the T-Mobile press office, I am still in exactly the same position, and a week later nobody is paying the lightest bit of attention when I explain to them exactly what needs to be done to correct the error with my account.
I would suggest you do what I am currently considering, and that is terminating my T-Mobile account as and when my contract lapses and taking my business elsewhere, namely Vodafone.
June 2nd, 2007 at 5:06 pm
Goodness! I guess at the end of the day…. luck of the draw!
June 4th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
I’ve had somewhat similar experiences with T-Mobile recently. Carphone Warehouse sold me a T-Mobile contract with Web’n'Walk - which they *said* would allow me to connect the phone to my Macbook via bluetooth as a modem.
For several months it worked. Then about three weeks ago, lots of ports suddenly became blocked through the phone. I contacted T-Mobile and they told me that I could not use various ports while using the phone as a modem unless I upgraded my contract (no doubt they are fearful of people using VOIP through the data connection).
I of course asked them why it had been working - and they responded with “we have only just begun enforcing the rules”. Strange how they started enforcing it after I had used it a lot for a couple of days…
The maddenning thing is that on the basic Web’n'Walk contract the data rate is not fast enough to use VOIP… but they are banning all ports except web and email anyway.
June 4th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
[...] be perfectly clear - the situation with T-Mobile and the Fax Messaging service has gone beyond a joke. I really did not believe a so-called ‘business’ could operate in such [...]
June 5th, 2007 at 7:05 am
Unfortunately I think you’re flogging a dead horse.
As technology has increased and the talents and qualifications of the people running many companies has changed to accommodate this technology, less and less importance has been ascribed to customer care.
Indeed, in the vast majority of concerns dealing with the public; retail, public service, government (both local and central); whatever, “Customer Care” has become a euphemism for the Complaints Department.
Of course, as so little education and training is targeted towards customer care, nobody knows how to handle complaints!
Instead of treating a complaint as an opportunity, the modern day company representative will simply run and hide. Not always his (or her) fault, they have simply not been taught how to handle a simple situation.
We used to call this “passing the buck” and it was considered the one thing that one would not want to be accused of.
I’m not pounding the “good old days” drum, but I feel that there are still desirable aspects of personal contact and good old customer care (as it was), that have a place in today’s world.
I’m pleased that customers at the cutting edge of technology such as you, Chris, and your august readers are getting fed up with the lack of care paid to you by your suppliers.
Who knows? If you start banging this particular drum, someone who gives a monkey’s might hear and we may yet turn full circle to where the concerns of the customer are worthy of consideration.
Good luck!
June 5th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
I agree it’s no way to do business and you do have to be careful who you choose. I’ve used the Orange Fax Messaging service for years and it works faultlessly - when I get a call that’s a fax, it goes straight to voicemail which answers it and saves it ready for me to redirect to the nearest fax machine.
It’s like the broadband services that claim to offer business class products - most are just rebadged home services with hiked up prices!
Buyer beware..
June 11th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
OMG I wish I had read this before leaving Vodafone for T-Mobile.
I received a SidekickII for my birthday in May and ever since I’ve been trying to get it connected to Web & Walk. I’m going round and round in cirlces with the customer service people who tell me the account is not in my name, yes it is, I registered an account in my name through their website and set it up.
Then I get escalated to a different person in Customer Service who claims they cannot understand my accent. I’m Australian and have lived in the UK for 7 years! My accent isn’t too bad, I do speak English so that was rude.
Now I’ve got a new sim, and tried to start it up again, this time it now says after creating my account online that my phone is blocked! I don’t have any access to make calls other than dialing 150 so I dial 150 and wait over 35 minutes then it says we cannot connect you to our Customer Service Department and our Automated Services are currently unavailable so it cuts me off.
I’m so angry! All I want is web & walk for my Sidekick II enabled and to get dialing access to my new sim/phone. Why is it so hard? And why does their website only give out Customer Service contact by email and not a landline number?
argh!
July 9th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Well, this has just put me off T-Mobile, whom I was considering going with after porting from O2. Looks like Orange are the only decent company left, I’ve never had problems with them, never felt pressurised to spend money I didn’t want to and always had questions answered straight and clear. Not going with Vodafone as their voicemail isn’t free, and as I call it several times a day it would be inefficient costwise.
Thanks for bringing T-Mobile’s appaulling customer services to our attention. Even if they do offer service in 130 countries on 297 networks, they have just lost another customer and loads of other potential customers through referrals.
July 29th, 2007 at 11:26 am
I have had web and walk since i started this contract with T-Mobile in September 06, I wanted it to be able to link my computer via the phone to the internet, and was told this was possible with this contract, after many hours trying and calling in several shops to ask for advice, with no joy, i had given up, recently after having a problom with my phone, I called in at a T-Mobile shop to send it away, and saw an advert promoting using a phone as a modem, on enquiring I found that it is now possible but at an extra price of £5-00 a month. What a con
September 25th, 2007 at 2:10 am
[...] ringing your phone at all (sending callers directly to voicemail), and for their legendary “I hope you have at least an hour to wait” hold times, which is why I’m not with them anymore.Anyway, after getting completely [...]
January 22nd, 2008 at 8:50 am
We are having big problems with a web’n'walk T-Mobile contract that my son took out through Carphone Warehouse. My son found after trying it that it wasn’t what he had been lead to believe by the salesman. He wanted to cancel it within what he thought was a cooloing-off period, only to find that if you buy this product straight from T-Mobile you get 7 days to make up your mind, but if you buy through Carphone Warehouse there is no cooling off period - this is for a product bought sight unseen with no chance to try it or even have a demonstration - he is now tied into an 18 month £30 a month contract. I have tried to complain but so far no one will take ownership. The latest is that the person investigating has taken the side of the salesman. I am continuing trying different strategies.
June 1st, 2008 at 9:41 am
Signed up for Web N Walk plus;
Device did not installl on delivery (corrupt installation on device so had to download drviers from another PC - this installed as a standard dial-up connection but meant no bandwidth monitor = went over 3gb downloadand they capped my connection at 56k).
Customer services cut me off 3 times (waited during one call for OVER AN HOUR then got cut off as they had all gone home!)
Now been told I have TWO MONTHS of 56k connection before they will do anything about it unless of course I would like to ‘upgrade’; £35 (extra £15 month?) No thanks (feels like blackmail?)!!!!
Whilst complaining to customer servives was told and I quote ‘You should have read the small print!”…then cut off mid-sentence.
Do me a favour - if you are considering mobile BB - Pls choose Vodafone or Three.
A very unhappy customer!
June 27th, 2008 at 9:23 am
You think T-Mobile are bad enough when you are a customer - try this!!!!
My wife had her c/card cloned and the idiot had 2 Carphone Warehouse moiles delivered to our address in HIS name!! (They were T-Mobile serviced phones). I contacted both CW and T-Mob to say that we’d all been victims of fraud and that i needed them to removed this person’s details from their records as he had no connection to my address and i didn’t wish to receive mail for him.
That was in early May. It’s now almost July and yesterday i had to make my 3rd call to T-Mobile to explain to them that they were STILL sending bills to this person at my address. “Oh the last was a confirmation bill to confirm that the account was closed [we can see here on our screens that it was a fraud case]“. I reply “so you’ve been told that this person does not live at this address, you confirm that this person’s name is listed on your database as having made fraudulent purchases with your company and you know the legal owner of the address has asked you on more than one occassion NOT to send ANY correspondence to this address addressed to this person at all for any reason”. “Yes” came the reply from T-Mobile. I replied ” but you send a confirmation bill out to this person to MY house which you have been told MORE THAN ONCE NOT TO DO - but you did it anyway”, “yes”, “That was a REALLY STUPID thing to do wasn’t it?” I would have used stronger language but i insisted that they ensure their call recording facilty be turned on at the start of the call.
How morons like this stay in business is beyond me……………
I’m looking forward to the end of July - just waiting to see if the cloning idiot gets his account closure confirmation confirmed in writing or he gets written confirmation from T-Mobile that T-Mobile are onto his case and that they will no longer be sending any documentation to this address as they are fully aware he doesn’t live there and that continued letter dropping by them to this address will result in absolutley nothing apart from raised blood pressure of the home owners.
We would complain to T-Mobile but is there any point?????????????