There are times in life when one must take off the gloves and wage war with no mercy. I am taking off the gloves and there will be no mercy. Now you may ask who I am waging war against…and the answer is simple…T-Mobile and Motorola. Now, I am sure you all have heard of these two companies and I am sure there are those who have already taken their gloves off. So, here is my dilemma. I purchased a Motorola A630 from T-Mobile in April of 2005. Of course, I was not eligible for an upgrade so, I was charged the full price of around $350.00. I am not some Neanderthal when it comes to caring for my cell phone. I do not throw them around, sit on them, chew on them, or use them as a doorstop. I am gentle on them, carry them carefully, and try to avoid dropping them all together. I figure hey, it is my investment in the phone, so I better take care of it. Now, I have had fairly good experiences with Motorola phones in the past so, I figured (in retrospect incorrectly) that I would have another good experience from them…little did I know. Hindsight is one of those beautiful things. It let’s you look back and make a decision with complete knowledge of the future, absolutely beautiful; however, absolutely worthless when you actually have to make a decision. So, I purchased the phone and went on my merry way. However, in August a slight obstruction, in my merry way, cropped up when my phone stopped charging. Now, I am technologically rather together; so, I quickly deduced that there was an issues with the charge connector in the phone and that the “juice” was not getting to the battery. So, I took it to T-Mobile and they were nice enough to order me a replacement. At this point 100% satisfaction was on my mind. What can be better, a phone stops working and they send you a new one…beautiful. So, a few days later in August I receive the new phone and send the old one (the damaged one) to the cell phone graveyard…compliments of a fully padded box and pre-paid postage. So, August was good and then the natural progression of the year took me to September and then into October. So, late October rolls around and guess what? “Houston We Have a Problem”. Low and behold the phone stops charging again. Now, as you can imagine a phone that has no battery is about as useful of a communication tool as a rock. So, I fidget with the thing over the weekend (October 29th and October 30th) and alas…nothing. So, today (November 1, 2005) I take a little trip to T-Mobile and explain the situation to a nice sales associate named Autumn. Now, Autumn is unable to do anything from the store. Which is extremely frustrating, but totally understandable, because gone are the days when a store can apparently make things right for their customers. So, she calls T-Mobile Customer Service and I get connected to what I will refer to as the “single most unhelpful individual” I have ever encountered. Now, this person was so unhelpful that I will refer to him as SMUI from now on. If you didn’t follow that one look at the quotation marks above and you should piece it together. So, SMUI tells me that the only thing he can do it send me another replacement. Of course, SMUI fails to see that if two A630s have gone bad on me in less than 6 months that I probably don’t want to get another one. Also, SMUI gives me the brilliant advice of buying a new phone. Of course wouldn’t T-Mobile love this? Every time a phone (that they sold you) gives you a problem – you just go buy a new phone. Wow, I am sure that is great for T-Mobile, but it’s not so great for the consumer. So, after going around and around with SMUI for about 15 minutes I asked to speak to his supervisor. Now, I want to stress here that I never raised my voice and remained cordial the entire time I was on the phone with SMIU. However, I had to talk to his supervisor after he failed to piece together that if T-Mobile sent me a replacement that I was indeed on my second phone and not on my original phone. Hey, I am not saying that I am the smartest guy in the world, but even a 3rd grader can piece together that if something is replaced that you had to have an “original” one and that you get a “replacement” to REPLACE it. However, I guess SMUI failed 3rd grade. Whatever. So, I get transferred to Dwight. Now, I will say this about Dwight, Dwight understood where I was coming from and could at least follow my points and generally could keep up with my conversation. Dwight, I appreciate your help, I sincerely do…but, even you have to admit I am still taking one where the sun don’t shine. So, after explaining the situation to Dwight he recommends the same. I either get a replacement or I buy a new phone. So, I explain to Dwight that I am not going to pay for another phone and the last thing I want is another A630. I explain to him that getting another A630 would be postponing this situation for another few months. After I explained to him that T-Mobile pulled the phones (less than 6 months after carrying them) for, among other things, the recurrent charging issue he agreed that I probably wouldn’t want another A630. So, after a 15 minute discussion on how I would think that T-Mobile would want to keep a customer that pays around $100 a month for phone service (and probably will continue to do so for the foreseeable future) as compared to losing a customer for a $350 phone made absolutely perfect sense. After this discussion and realization on Dwight’s part he realized that making me somewhat happy would probably be the best recourse. So, he agreed to sell me a phone (from a different manufacturer) for a greatly reduced cost (basically their cost) of around $77 and that he would “waive” the shipping cost as a “courtesy”. Now, I told Dwight that I am still getting hosed on this one and that I am basically eating the cost of the A630 ($350) after 6 months and that I am not too happy about that. Dwight agreed that I had a right not to be happy…but, that he could do nothing about it…ridiculous. So, Dwight gave me the phone number for Motorola….to which, he said I could carry my complaint. So, after about an hour (lunch break) I decided that the conversation was going no where with Dwight and that I needed to escalate it once again. So, I asked Dwight to transfer me to his supervisor…of course, Dwight did not want to do this and told me that there was no way that his supervisor was available or that I could contact him. So, I politely told Dwight that he was full of the smelly brown stuff and that I found it hard to believe that a supervisor at a telecommunication company was unreachable. I explained to Dwight that under consumer protection laws that he had an obligation to honestly present the facts to a consumer and that by telling me that his supervisor “was not reachable” that he was indeed violating my rights as a consumer…so, once I explained that to Dwight I asked him if that was his intention. So, Dwight immediately transferred me to his supervisor’s voicemail. So, I left Roland a nice voicemail and asked him to get back to me at his earliest convenience. Of course, I have yet to here from Roland…I am not sure when his earliest convenience will be, but I am going to bet it is not going to be ASAP. So, I left the T-Mobile store slightly frustrated, realizing that in today’s day and age that indeed the consumer is really on his/her own. So, I get back to the office…and call Motorola. Of course I get some “Foreign Customer Service Agent” (FCSA) that I can barely understand and who can barely understand me…I had to repeat my number four times…four times. Who has to repeat a ten digit number four times for it to be heard? Ridiculous. Anyway, after explaining my situation to the FCSA and relaying to her that I did not want another A630; she told me that they would gladly fix it or replace it. This, after detailing that I did not want, under any circumstances, another A630…it was like talking to a Customer Service Robot. I don’t know where they get these people. So, I told her that Motorola just lost a customer of 11 years. So, what was her response? “Is there anything else I can help you with?” Help me with…you didn’t help me in the first place. So, I just hung up…frustrated…and quite frankly pissed. In this day and age we cannot get customer service. I tell you, it is ridiculous that a company cannot help their customers resolve their issues. It makes me appreciate companies that go out of their way to resolve issues. So, having said all of that, what is my recourse? Well, I am going to write some letters to the executives of both companies and relay my “wonderful” experiences. I am not one to just take a kicking and stay down…I always get up and I always get up with my fists up. In this case, I have just taken off my gloves. This is round one…round two is mine all the way.
