The Anti Pimp

If you’ve all been reading for the last few months you are well aware of my recent switch to ATT from Crackberry (service through Sprint) and I couldn’t be happier.  My wife has T-Mobile and she’s been a loyal customer for years…multiple…like almost TEN.  Today (11/3/09), T-Mobile’s entire nationwide network went down for almost 3 hours (and still may be down at time of this post).  I did what any loving husband would do and called T-Mobile and asked for some sort of credit.  I was offered $1.66.  No kidding.

It’s apparent that T-Mobile is one of the behemoths that still does not grasp the idea of customer service in a new, dare I say post-recession economy.  In addition, they’ve failed to wrap their big pink arms around the impact of mis-guided corporate tactics like offering $1.66 as a credit for such an epic failure.

Here’s what happened in the last quarter 0f 2009 – SO FAR.

October 10th – T-Mobile’s Sidekick server crashes completely and there’s no back up.  Rather than listening to their customers (you know..the ones that pay the bills and keep the lights on at T-Mobile), they sent the following letter:

T-MOBILE AND MICROSOFT/DANGER STATUS UPDATE ON SIDEKICK DATA DISRUPTION

Dear valued T-Mobile Sidekick customers:

T-Mobile and the Sidekick data services provider, Danger, a subsidiary of Microsoft, are reaching out to express our apologies regarding the recent Sidekick data service disruption. We appreciate your patience as Microsoft/Danger continues to work on maintaining platform stability, and restoring all services for our Sidekick customers.

Regrettably, based on Microsoft/Danger’s latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device – such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos – that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger. That said, our teams continue to work around-the-clock in hopes of discovering some way to recover this information. However, the likelihood of a successful outcome is extremely low. As such, we wanted to share this news with you and offer some tips and suggestions to help you rebuild your personal content. You can find these tips at the T-Mobile Sidekick Forums (http://www.t-mobile.com/sidekick ). We encourage you to visit the Forums on a regular basis to access the latest updates as well as FAQs regarding this service disruption.

In addition, we plan to communicate with you on Monday (Oct. 12) the status of the remaining issues caused by the service disruption, including the data recovery efforts and the Download Catalog restoration which we are continuing to resolve. We also will communicate any additional tips or suggestions that may help in restoring your content.

We recognize the magnitude of this inconvenience. Our primary efforts have been focused on restoring our customers’ personal content. We also are considering additional measures for those of you who have lost your content to help reinforce how valuable you are as a T-Mobile customer.

We continue to advise customers to NOT reset their device by removing the battery or letting their battery drain completely, as any personal content that currently resides on your device will be lost.

Once again, T-Mobile and Microsoft/Danger regret any and all inconvenience this matter has caused.

Even after that fiasco, one could fathom they’d come up with a better customer service solution than a $1.66 credit.

For those readers that are current T-Mobile customers and want to take them up on such a stellar “I’m sorry that you can’t use the phone and I hope your parents aren’t trying to reach you for a family emergency or your house is on fire, or your spouse is locked out of the house or I tried to offer you that job but your phone service was dead so you must be a loser and can’t pay your bill or Oh, I get it, you must be switching service to a better provider….”

Please call Vincent at T-Mobile – Supervisor No. 8837365 at 1-800-937-8997.  He’ll hook you up.  With your $1.66 credit, you could get a 3/4 cup of coffee from Starbucks or a whole canned ham from McDonalds.