Another Way Carriers Screw Customers: Premium SMS 'Errors' 198
An anonymous reader writes "Almost no one likes their carrier. And with the behavior described in this article, it's not surprising. TechCrunch catches T-Mobile taking money from a new pay-as-you-go customer after signing her up to its own premium horoscope text message service — and taking money before she's even put the SIM in the phone. Quoting: 'Perhaps carriers think they can get away with a few “human errors” in the premium SMS department because these services aren’t regulated. Perhaps it’s also symptomatic of the command and control mindset of these oligarchs. What’s certain is that if carriers dedicated a little of the energy they plough into maintaining these anachronistic, valueless (to their customers, that is) premium SMS ‘services’ into creating genuinely useful services that customers want to use then they would have a better shot at competing with the startups leapfrogging their gates. Or they would, if they hadn’t spent years destroying the trust of their users by treating them like numbers on a spreadsheet.'"
Summary is wrong (yet again) and inflammatory (Score:4, Interesting)
After reading TFA .. yes the newly minted SIM card was receiving premium SMS before even being inserted into a phone. But from TFA, they talk about how phone numbers are recycled, so there is a chance that the previous owner's profile was not properly scrubbed before the number was re-issued and that previous owner had subscribed to that service.
The TFS and TFA are beat ups based on the complainer speculating that because they were given the run around by customer service that T-Mobile is acting in a nefarious manner. That and *gasp* they had to give their elderly family member's birthdate over as a part of the activation , and that the horoscopes being received matched the birthdate.
So as far as I see .. it's all speculation and conjecture.
(And yes I admit that I am a happy T-mobile customer, but that has nothing to do with this hatchet job)
This is why... (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been using prepaid for a few years now. Tried Boost first, didn't like it. Switched to Straight Talk which was OK. Then just recently I switched over to Page Plus. Liking it a lot better. Page Plus uses Verizon's network and just about any Verizon phone can be activated on their service without being unlocked (though 4G/LTE phones can be a pain). That said, all of the prepaid carriers I tried were a fine replacement for a contract carrier, and far less expensive.
Re:I like T-Mobile (Score:5, Interesting)
They're by far the least evil of the major carriers in the US.
Only for certain definitions of "evil". I've been with them for 7+ years and every year the service gets a little worse, the plan gets a little more expensive, and they offer fewer new phones that I actually want to purchase. Sure, their customer service is cheery and all, but they rarely actually accomplish anything.
If Verizon Wireless is the Republican party - interested just in clever new ways to extract more money from those with the least money to spend so they can funnel it to the top executives - then T-Mobile is the democratic party, promising all kinds of things that they can't deliver while ultimately giving you the same lousy and uncaring product as the Republicans but with a fresher face to it.
Re:Valueless? (Score:5, Interesting)
If customers find them valueless, why do they sign up for them? They are optional. So optional, I've never heard of them even after being a ten year customer of T-Mobile.
Often they don't sign up for them, they just magically find themselves signed up; and all attempts to "unsign up" and get a refund are met with the carrier disclaiming all responsibility and refusing to do anything.
Back when I was on Orange, I was signed up to 2 premium SMS services through no fault of my own on 2 separate phones (one of which had never been used). Orange wouldn't do anything about it other than continue to bill me, they informed me that I needed to contact the SMS service provider and insisted that I had somehow signed up for these services, even to the point of "well maybe someone else signed you up on a website without your knowledge". In one such instance the conversation went something like:
"You need to contact the SMS service provider and have them stop the messages and send you a refund"
"Ok, can you give me contact details for them?"
"Yes, their number is 0123456789"
"That number doesn't work - I just get a number unobtainable tone"
"Well, you'll need to contact them about that"
"How do I do that then?"
"Their number is 0123456789"
"I just told you, that number doesn't work - can you give me some other contact details?"
"You'll need to ask them"
(This conversation went round and round for a good few times before I gave up).
At the end of the day, I _did_ manage to get both SMS providers to stop sending me messages; I even got a refund off one of them. I was left about a fiver out of pocket with the other. The financial cost was small, the time and hassle cost was high. And this is why they get away with it - if it had been a significant amount of money, I would've taken Orange to the small claims court; but it was about a fiver, so not worth it. Multiply that by thousands of customers and it just isn't in their interest to be customer focussed about these kinds of issues - they're making money by screwing the customers, but the amount they are screwing each customer by makes it not worth that customer actually investing the time to do something about it.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to sell phones for Verizon. There is a 'Block Premium Text Messaging' account option. I selected it for every subscriber I signed up by default unless they indicated otherwise.
Note that blocking premium SMS also blocks some non-evil stuff, like being able to donate to charities like the Red Cross via SMS, which has become popular after a tragedy these days. So while I probably saved a lot of people from billing headaches, I may have inadvertently barred people from making easy charitable donations. C'est la vie.
I worked for t-mobile (Score:4, Interesting)
It was a _requirement_ of your job to push features to customers EVERY time they called in and your metrics were based on whether or not you sold them anything. I'm sure lots of the "top sellers" were adding features onto people's accounts without authorization from the customer.
Here's the best part : If you call in and ask for a manager, your'e given the run around. If you ask to have the call pulled (since they are all supposed to be recorded), expect to wait at least two weeks and most of the time you won't get a call back ever.
Want to cancel your account? Fine. You will be credited NOTHING and will have to pay your contract termination fees. The entire call structure is built around NOT giving you access to a manager to talk to about the problem. The manager is in the background telling the rep your'e on the phone with to sell you EVEN MORE as you're complaining about being robbed. It is completely ridiculous.
From the Customer service side. (Score:5, Interesting)
First I would like to point out that customer service representatives are people. And as people they make mistakes. I worked in cellular customer service for over two years and probably made a few mistakes. The first representative probably got the 3030 service mixed up with another service. There are many of them and sometime it is difficult to keep them straight. Give the people a break as it is human error. I just love when the article says "spokesperson". It implies that the CSR is speaking for the entire company when all they are really trying to do is help the customer in the best way they know how. Why didn't the CSR call back? Maybe they were not on shift yet.
The recycled phone number issue is getting more and more common. Some people change their number much too often. The problem occurs because the separate system that provisions the horoscope messages may not be cleared when a phone number is cut of. The system may not even recognize the number is cut off and continue to send messages. The sender does not care because they do not get charged for the messages. The issue is when a new account gets attached to the number and the number is still subscribed to old services. As for the horoscope being the correct one there are two possibilities. First that pure chance may have hit. There is a 1 in 12 chance of having the same sign as the previous owner. Another option is that there may be a query into the T-Mobile system that shows the horoscope system the birth-date of the owner of the phone.
Remember Hanlon's razor [wikipedia.org]; "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
CSR's can be pretty stupid at times. I know I have had to fix quite a few stupid mistakes.