T-Mobile floors loyal customer with amazing service recovery

Earlier this year I had a lengthy interaction with my mobile phone company. After too many conversations I finally got the best price I could on a new phone. I was pleased!

But my pleasure didn’t last long. Because there was one, tiny little problem.

My new phone sucked.

Sorry for the course language but I like to be clear. And that is as clear as I can be about that phone (the Samsung Highlight). Since this blog post is not a product review I won’t go into the details. But, understand, I hated that phone.

The problem was (or so I thought) I used up my loyalty credits so I wouldn’t get another upgrade for about two years. So I suffered in silence. Arrgh!

But, as often happens, I was brilliantly reminded how I should never assume anything. After several months of agony with this horrible excuse for a phone, I couldn’t take it anymore.

So I called T-Mobile.

Honestly, I had no expectations. I just wanted help. I wanted a change. I wasn’t even concerned about the cost. I was ready to pay my dues. At this point, anything different would have been better than what I had.

What happened next almost knocked me down.

The person I spoke with seemed genuinely concerned that I was not happy with my phone. And she thanked me for my many years of loyalty to T-Mobile. Then she offered me a sweet deal that I could hardly believe.

I won’t yawn you with extensive details. But I will tell you I got a fantastic price on a new Android phone, a discount on their data plan and the fastest, easiest upgrade I have ever experienced with a mobile phone company.

Happy didn’t even begin to describe how I felt. Shocked, amazed, floored. Now we’re getting close. I had a 24/7 smile pasted on my mug for the next three weeks.

What really amazed me was how different this experience was from the last one, only seven months earlier. The difference was more than night and day. More like Jekyll and Hyde.

Being no more than a customer of T-Mobile, I have no idea why the change. Maybe their churn rate is too high and this is their latest strategy to combat it. Maybe I had a pleasant demeanor and they responded to that. Maybe the stars just happened to line up that day in my favor.

Or, maybe T-Mobile is starting to put their money where their message is. More than once they’ve beat the “we appreciate your loyalty” drum. But too many times it rang hollow because their actions didn’t align with that message.

But now they seemed to have gotten it right. At least in my case, they nailed it. Now, I can only hope they stick with this new way of doing things. If they do, I’ll continue to stick with them.

What has your experience been with T-Mobile? Have you noticed an improvement lately in how they treat you?