My $36,000 Disney Cruise
Welcome to The Real Tim Jones. If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or for more frequent, informal updates, you can follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
Well, maybe not that much, but it came very close to costing me that much money! You see, Disney provides cellular phone service to guests on-board, however, the information sheet you receive upon boarding states in bold letters at the bottom, “contact your service provider for any roaming charges that you may incur.”
I did not pay a lot of attention to this warning, as I had no intentions of using my cell phone during the cruise. As I stated on Twitter last week, having wireless internet access seemed a bit too much for a vacation, anyway. However, as I boarded the ship, I learned that my paternal grandmother had passed away, so I knew I would be getting some calls from my Dad and I might need to be able to communicate with him during my cruise. So, I gave T-Mobile a call to find out about any additional roaming charges I’d incur for these calls. As expected, they were quite high at $4.99 per minute (only slightly less than the cruise sea-to-land calls at $7.99 per minute). What I did not think about was the fact that my BlackBerry is continually transferring data.
The T-Mobile customer (no) service rep was kind enough to inform me that I would incur this $4.99 per minute charge just for having my cell phone on over the weekend, due to the data transfers! I was just going to leave my phone on for the whole cruise, even if I did not use it to make a call, as was my wife. It’s a good thing we made this call to T-Mobile, or we would have received a bill for $36,000, just by leaving the phones on over the 3-night cruise! That would be one expensive cruise!
T-Mobile Customer Service Fail
For a whole host of reasons that you do not care to hear (the failings of the post office and banks among them), my bill payment to T-Mobile was one day late, this month. Although this formed the impetus of my story, it bears little significance to the overall point.
First, T-Mobile sent me a polite “reminder” text on a Saturday that I needed to pay my bill. Having already paid the bill, electronically, I ignored the message. Besides, it was SATURDAY, what could I do?
Well, first thing Monday morning (by chance (ha!), the date of the delivery of my electronic payment), T-Mobile shuts off my phone! Not even half a business day after my “reminder.”
Here’s where things get interesting. I call to “inform” T-Mobile about the payment, with the fully processed, electronic payment confirmation in hand and the computer voice on the other end of the phone says, “Until you make a payment, I cannot forward your call to a representative.” WHAT?! I cannot speak to a real person? What kind of customer service is this? Are you kidding me?
I finally got to a real person through the back-door method of not entering my phone number and just hitting “0,” immediately. Of course, they were not able to resolve the issue, but this really isn’t the point. I was still astounded by this unbelievable lack of customer service that I was not able to actually speak about a problem regarding my account with a real person!
In an age when the CEO of Sprint gives out his personal email (even if it is a gimmick, it’s a good one), anyone can start a blog in a day, register a complaint with any number of sites, portable cell numbers, and forums everywhere, how can a major company get away with treating customers this way?
Finally, I get my second bill this week and it does not reflect the payment, even though it was printed well after the payment posted and they turned my phone back on.
The whole experience has been absolutely stunning. I wonder, if I’d known this to be the case before buying the phones and service from T-Mobile, if I’d still gone ahead with the deal? Probably. In my humble opinion, all cell phone service providers suck. Some just suck worse than others and I strive to get the least amount of suck for the least amount of money. Therefore, I expect to take some bad with a little bit of good. However, not being able to speak with an actual person? Is this too much bad to be balanced out by the good? What are your thoughts?
LOVE My New Blackberry Curve
Well, love may be a strong term for a cell phone, but this thing is amazing! There are more features and uses for this phone than I can use, right now. I wish I’d had this thing at Affiliate Summit when my laptop died on me. I could go days without a laptop, as long as I had my Blackberry. I now understand the whole “crackberry” terminology — kind of similar to “It’s a Jeep thing, you wouldn’t understand.”
I’ve already loaded it up with the Google Apps, TwitterBerry, and Facebook. Any other must have applications that you recommend? I’d love to hear any tips and tricks my readers have, so I can really use this thing to it’s full potential.
*****Shameless plug warning*********
I ordered the phones through LetsTalk.com on Sunday. This is the second time we ordered our cell phones through LetsTalk. Two years ago, we had a friend that recommended Wirefly.com, because they had a bunch of exclusive Wirefly discounts. There was a reason Wirefly had all the discounts — their customer service sucks so much that they have to discount the products to get people to buy from them. In the middle of our bad experience with them, we checked the BBBOnline to find they had hundreds of complaints over the previous three months.
We finally called after over a week without a change in our order status from “picking order.” After many hours on the phone with someone in India, we canceled the order. We still needed phones, though, so I just searched for online cell phone companies and found LetsTalk.com. LetsTalk got us our phones faster with their normal service than Wirefly “promised” to get them to us after hours on the phone and free overnight shipping (they apparently had no way of speeding up the “picking” process).
With the end of our two year contract on Monday, I decided to get a head-start and check out LetsTalk for our new phones, again. Once again, I was not disappointed. Their prices were great, they offered an exclusive LetsTalk discount that actually makes me $100 after all the mail-in rebates (something we did last time, also), and when I called with a quick question, they gave me two free carrying cases, also! Remember, I made this order on a Sunday. The sales agent said our phones would ship on Tuesday. Cool. By Monday morning at 10:18AM, my phones had shipped by Fed-Ex Two-Day shipping for free and by Wednesday at 11AM, I had my new phones.
Yes, this was a shameless plug for LetsTalk.com. However, I try to give credit for the good experiences I have with businesses when they happen. Quality customer service seems to be disappearing from business and I want to congratulate those businesses that still provide a quality, seamless experience as a normal part of their business model. This company excels at customer service.
Yes, those are also affiliate links (what can I say, I’m an affiliate marketer), but if you do not want to give me credit for any purchase you make from LetsTalk, please just go directly to http://www.letstalk.com — I would rather they get a new, happy customer than turn someone away, just because I added affiliate links. Businesses that do right by their customers deserve to grow their business and beat the competition.
