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T-Mobile Rocks

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61–70 of 187 posts

Re: T-Mobile Rocks

#61
post #43
post #18

> Because if all of us move to T-Mobile, the other carriers will have no choice to join them in being customer friendly. No, if all people move to T-Mobile, they will just start behaving like the other carriers. The only reasons they're customer friendly is because they have a low market share and try to win customers, not because it's their company culture. Just look at their German parent company, Deutsche Telekom…

Exactly. In Croatia, T-Mobile is absolutely the worst carrier. Highest fees, worst customer support. They can get away with it because they have the most customers and it's just too much of a hassle to change providers. At least that's how it was around 3 years ago. I don't live there anymore so maybe something changed (I doubt it).

t-mobile isn't own by the same entity in Croatia

Re: T-Mobile Rocks

#63
post #21

I'm glad that T-Mobile has become a customer focused company in recent months, but let's not forget that just a short while ago, they were just like all of the other major carriers. T-Mobile had a sudden change of heart not because they give a shit about their customers, its because their network wasn't good enough for people to put up with typical carrier bullshit. As a normal carrier, they were losing money and cus…

Same as Apple - when they were almost dead they had to use and contribute to open source projects and treat the customer fair. Nowadays they are making it clear all iThings out there belong to Apple and working hard to wall Mac OSX as well.

[deleted]

Re: T-Mobile Rocks

#64
post #21

I'm glad that T-Mobile has become a customer focused company in recent months, but let's not forget that just a short while ago, they were just like all of the other major carriers. T-Mobile had a sudden change of heart not because they give a shit about their customers, its because their network wasn't good enough for people to put up with typical carrier bullshit. As a normal carrier, they were losing money and cus…

I've always had really good customer service with T-mobile. I remember once time almost 5-10 years ago when I needed help getting the right AT commands to connect to GPRS using Linux. The help desk heard me use the appropriate technical terms (AT commands, chat script, GPRS, etc.) and immediately forwarded me to the level 3 help desk folks who actually could handle technical questions, and they helped me even when I told them I was using Linux and could set up my own chat/expect script once I knew the required parameteres for their GPRS network.

Compare and contrast that with my previous experience with AT&T, and there was absolutely no comparison.

Re: T-Mobile Rocks

#65
I'm wondering if there's a purpose-built, fast FirefoxOS device that works on T-Mobile that could help Fred make the transition.

Is there's anybody that knows of something faster than the ZTE-based phones?

Re: T-Mobile Rocks

#66
post #18

> Because if all of us move to T-Mobile, the other carriers will have no choice to join them in being customer friendly. No, if all people move to T-Mobile, they will just start behaving like the other carriers. The only reasons they're customer friendly is because they have a low market share and try to win customers, not because it's their company culture. Just look at their German parent company, Deutsche Telekom…

The marketplace isn't static. If all people move to T-Mobile, other carriers will be forced to become less hostile to their customers.

Re: T-Mobile Rocks

#67
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple still contributes to open source A LOT.

Barely. OpenDarwin is dead. WebKit was stolen from KHTML. CUPS has barely any development anymore. Apart from LLVM, what have they really contributed to OSS? Okay, it's more than Microsoft, but net contribution is still nothing compared to Google or Sun (when they were still alive).

WebKit is itself open source, so you can't discount that just because it was derived from another open source project.

Aside from LLVM/clang and WebKit (both of which are significant enough to deserve massive accolades all by themselves), you also have stuff like launchd (which didn't catch on outside Apple, but hardly their fault), libdispatch, and mDNS.

But apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

Re: T-Mobile Rocks

#68
post #18

> Because if all of us move to T-Mobile, the other carriers will have no choice to join them in being customer friendly. No, if all people move to T-Mobile, they will just start behaving like the other carriers. The only reasons they're customer friendly is because they have a low market share and try to win customers, not because it's their company culture. Just look at their German parent company, Deutsche Telekom…

Yeah, the goal is to have a marketplace where market pressures lead to all competitors being incentivized to behave like T-Mobile does currently. I’m just not sure whether that’s possible.

And I agree, Deutsche Telekom in Germany is awful and incompetent when it comes to customer service. If only their network weren’t so goddamn great … (It feels like a reversal of the situation in the US: Their technology is great and they are very competent at building their infrastructure – but how they treat customers is the exact opposite of that. And when I say technology I mean the network, not the technology they use to interface with customers. Stupid story time: Recently, after changing some notification SMS setting online, I got an e-mail thanking me for my change in contract and telling me that my monthly fee is €50, not the €50 minus €10 online ordering discount I knew I got when I entered into the contract. When calling their support hotline I was told that their system is apparently unable to display individual discounts on any and all communication with the customer except the monthly bill. The support agent also told me that I wasn’t the first person to call him because of that …)

Re: T-Mobile Rocks

#69
I'm really confused when reading articles like this because it sounds like a different company to the one I know which was formed out of "Deutsche Post" during the 90ies and patronizing and shitting on its customers ever since, at least in Germany.

The biggest thing with them this year was their 384kbps Speed Throttle[1], where after your family consumed 75GB of data (download and upload) the speed of your DSL (flatrate) will go down to 384kbps for the rest of the month.

Ok you could say "this is Deutsche Telekom, the parent company, but T-Mobile is very different!" but sorry, that is not the case.

I wanted to buy a Alcatel One Touch Fire with Firefox OS when I was on holidays in Poland this year so I went to a T-Mobile store and well, there was advertising and everything and they even sold them there. But only together with a contract, which I didn't want (because I can't use it in Sweden where I live). They send me to another store so I went there, they told me the same and send me to a third store where they told me that they only sell a couple of them without a contract and only in the main cities.

I mean wtf? They have been doing advertisement all over the place that they sell it for 404 zl without a contract, even in those shops, but they wouldn't sell them to me, or they would but only with a two years contract which ended up costing around 1200 zl. So I gave up.

At home again I checked their website[2] again, and yep, there they still (and to this day) advertise it for 404 zl.

I later found out that if you have a polish ID you can order one for 404 zl from their website which I did with help of my fathers ID.

So they were just fucking with me, again, and yeah, this was not the first time. I had big time problems back then when I still lived in Germany and chose a different DSL provider after being very disappointed with T-Online. Basically they didn't send a technician for two months who would fix the tech so the new provider could provide me with internet so I was without internet for two months. That is kind of a big thing if you're working from home.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/technology/deutsche-teleko... [2] http://www.t-mobile.pl/pl/indywidualni/telefony/telefon-ze-s...

Re: T-Mobile Rocks

#70

I ended up switching to T-Mobile for their $30 prepaid plan - 5GB of data (not at reduced 2G speeds either, actual data) a month, plus a reasonable amount of voice minutes and the ability to text. Way cheaper than what I'd pay on AT&T or other carriers, really simple to set up.

Do you have a link to the $30 prepaid plan? I can just find the $50 one (?)

http://news.cnet.com/8301-33620_3-57587175-278/is-this-the-b...
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