News Former Employee: T-Mobile Misleads Home Internet Customers

[Admin]

Says company’s support reps incentivized to give customers false excuses to get them off the phone faster.

Former Employee: T-Mobile Misleads Home Internet Customers : Read more

 

[Blatantruth]

My guess would be that they oversold their network and it is forcing people off to prevent degradation in quality. It could also be a new building that is now blocking the signal between you and the tower. Trees growing can be a problem as well.

 

[demonicus]

Telus in canada isnt any better i have shaw 1.5gbps internet with shaw communications in lethbridge...i thought i was sold on telus they said they had faster speeds so i was ready to switch hoping to get a new tv with em ...so i call back to double check and they say oh in ur city we only have like 25mbps internet im like pfff what a joke i have 5 people in the house with tablets computers and phones ....that wouldnt even come close to shaw.....so thats how these places get u....get a free tv when u sign up for trash service lol....if ur in canada u want SHAW

 

[peachpuff]

"he had been with the company for several years before leaving this past spring. In his most recent position, he worked in engineering"

I think I can narrow it down to who it was if I worked there. So much for being anonymous.

"He said that service reps are penalized if calls run longer than 600 seconds or customers call back about the same problem within a week."

Someone should penalized T-Mobile for crappy service.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

I think I can narrow it down to who it was if I worked there. So much for being anonymous.

Sure, you can narrow it down, but I'm sure T-Mobile has had dozens of engineers leave in the past several months. It's a big company! Even if it were only a handful, it's still plausible deniability. The source can't be punished by his former employer since he's already gone, and T-Mobile has little to no power to prove without a doubt who the source is.

 

[amy.anikerina]

I was also sold the T-Mobile internet service, only to have constant problems with it. After I was on my third Gateway device (the round grey one), I was suddenly told that the service wasn't available at my address yet, and it should have never been offered to me.

Now I am thinking that this is just another way that T-Mobile trys to excuse their poor internet service.

 

[jesslkrug]

I had and I’m still having the same issues with t-mobile. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it have more than two bars and my location reads like I’m in a totally different state than I’m in. I had my tower replaced, but I won’t try that again because I ended up being charged over $500 for not returning my old tower, but I had returned it and had tracking information to prove it. They never admitted that the charge was wrong because then said I had two towers to return even though the second tower was the one I was using. In the end, I’m out $500 and I still have such a weak signal that unless you are in the same room as the tower, you’ll never have a wife signal. They also quoted me $10 less than what I’ve been charged for over a year.

 

[USAFRet]

Newsflash:
"Former Employee: Every Company Ever Misleads Customers"

 

[Kona45primo]

Says company’s support reps incentivized to give customers false excuses to get them off the phone faster.

Former Employee: T-Mobile Misleads Home Internet Customers : Read more

Most every large company has metrics to hit for their phone calls to "customer care" . It's not just a T-mobile thing. Shorter calls = more customers helped per rep. Plus side is T-Mobile does still use US based Call Centers & Employees for most of their care calls.. I'm sure they'll get their internet issues worked out. Guessing this article will help elevate it to a NEED TO FIX NOW priority

 

[Inthrutheoutdoor]

And this is news how ?

I've personally heard from over 50 former cell company employees in the past few years that have all told me similar, if not exactly the same, stories about their shady crap and horrible service when it comes to internet services....

That's the primary reason I have and always will stay away from them..... personally I feel should be illegal for wireless providers to offer any kind of internet service & vice versa....

The catch, at least where I live, is that in order to get home internet service from TMOz/Vorizem/ATwiT/Xflakinity, you have to also have your cell service with them, so they can gouge you on both ends.......

I have my internet from 1 local company & my cell service from a nvmo, which together costs me way less than the cell companies are charging for just one of their services.......

 

[tamalero]

Telus in canada isnt any better i have shaw 1.5gbps internet with shaw communications in lethbridge...i thought i was sold on telus they said they had faster speeds so i was ready to switch hoping to get a new tv with em ...so i call back to double check and they say oh in ur city we only have like 25mbps internet im like pfff what a joke i have 5 people in the house with tablets computers and phones ....that wouldnt even come close to shaw.....so thats how these places get u....get a free tv when u sign up for trash service lol....if ur in canada u want SHAW

Any recommendation for Vancouver area (like Port Moody)

 

[ingtar33]

i guess it's time to get starlink

 

[spomeniks]

This article explains a lot. I've had this internet for about 2 months, and one morning when it just wouldn't work, I called up. I had already gone through the restart steps, but we did a "hard reset" where I turn it off and they pretend to restart it on their end. When that didn't work, she all of a sudden "realized?" that they're doing one of these so called service upgrades in my area. She had a small spiel about it, which 100% sounded like marketing talk and I figured that it was just a BS way to say "it no work". The outage only lasted an hour or so, but she told me the tower upgrade could last up to two weeks!

 

[BigRiverBrewer]

We'll now I feel like a j-ass. Spent 5 minutes on the phone today mansplaining to my girlfriend and kids that they'll have to be patient while T-Mobile upgrades their towers. Of course I told them "but it shouldn't take too long" and "once complete it'll be a win for service quality". Which is what they told me. And why would one question that? (unless they've been so beaten and abused by shty customer service calls over the years that they lost all faith in humanity). What d-holes. For the record, this was for cell service call, not a home internet call. However, not a stretch to think there may be some spillover, given how effective it seems to be for their home internet customer service team.

 

[Awev]

Just a couple things to help shed some light on this.

Back in the mid 90s, before I went to work retail, I tried my hand (or mouth) at a help desk. I worked for a company that was a professional call center, and had a number of clients. They had won an expansion of their contract for a modem manufacture that had headquarters in the Chicago/Deerfield area of of Il, and our call center was on the east coast. It was only two levels of support - us at the first level, and then the manufacture's HQ. A couple things - we had to get make and model of the modem, the customer's name and info, and then try to trouble shoot the problem all under 10 minutes. A lot of times it was easy, they forgot to plug in the phone jack, or when you mention the CD-ROM try that looks like a coffee cup holder you find out that that is exactly what they think it is and do not know that you put the CD with the drivers in the CD tray, not your coffee cup.

I had one problem that interfered with me being the first level help - I have a speech impairment. I would of been good at the second level where there is not a time limit, yet speaking only 80 words per minute on average verses the 120 to 180 words per minute that most people speak, put me at a big disadvantage. My resolve rate was high, yet I would exceed my ten minute window to often. I just did not get the call transferred to the second level soon enough. And we where competing with two other call centers for customers, so we could take a large percentage of calls and win a larger contract next time.

My sister had it good, bad, bad, and good again. She works for a large bank, and when this story starts, she worked for another large bank. The first bank she was at their call center for a number of years, may not of been the senior call center rep, yet at 10+ years she was not a noob by any stretch of the imagination. The bank merged (really purchased) by another larger bank looking to expand, and the new owners where looking to cut cost. They had new policies - such as the help center had to sell the customer a new item - for example a checking account if they only had a savings account or a CD of deposit if they already had a checking account - 25% of the time (one in four calls). The newly formed larger bank also brought in some young punks to walk up and down the isles screaming at the senior employees about not making sales - it became a hostile environment designed to drive the better paid employees out.

Needless to say my sister left that new mega-bank and went to work for another bank, this time the call center was for loss prevention and recovery. While she did not have to sale any products, and you where still in a call center, the pressure was to have a 100% recovery of any losses reported, not a time clock to compete with. Get a new salesperson who does not understand that they are to hang onto a credit card while calling the merchant for authorization and your 100% recovery just tanked. My sister chose not to go though those headaches, and so she is back on a regular customer help desk now - just with the big time clients who do not understand why their card is not working at the pump while trying to fill up their private jet. While this is the same bank that wants 100% recovery on their losses, they are willing to have people help the customers, even if it takes more than just a couple minutes.

Just trying to provide a little insight into what is going on behind the sense.

 

[jonathan1683]

We'll now I feel like a j-ass. Spent 5 minutes on the phone today mansplaining to my girlfriend and kids that they'll have to be patient while T-Mobile upgrades their towers. Of course I told them "but it shouldn't take too long" and "once complete it'll be a win for service quality". Which is what they told me. And why would one question that? (unless they've been so beaten and abused by shty customer service calls over the years that they lost all faith in humanity). What d-holes. For the record, this was for cell service call, not a home internet call. However, not a stretch to think there may be some spillover, given how effective it seems to be for their home internet customer service team.

I had Tmobile tell me this a few times over the years always the same canned response crap, I finally figured out that they were just lying. I tried to ask more specific questions as to what towers were getting upgraded and when it would be done, but then they didn't know how to respond. I live in LA and commute to Signal hill (LOL) I get no signal and on my way home my calls drop at least twice. So I can only imagine the issues others have. If my service is crappy in such a populated area. 4G 5G who cares, they need to work on the stability of their network, not adding home internet to their cell towers draining the hell out of all their bandwidth.

 

[Albert.Thomas]

He said that service reps are penalized if calls run longer than 600 seconds or customers call back about the same problem within a week.

This is pretty typical in most (not all) call centers. When I worked for AT&T Cellular Advanced Technical support, we had similar time goals - but our callback goals were stricter. If they called back within 72 hours, it was counted against us.

 

[JoBalz]

There, he claims, he was frequently unable to solve customers’ problems but was encouraged to use an “it’s the tower” explanation so he could keep calls to under ten minutes. He said that service reps are penalized if calls run longer than 600 seconds or customers call back about the same problem within a week

I worked for 15 years in customer service, and I finally retired because I was fed up with being told to provide great customer service and to resolve the customer's issues on the first call. But the company I was with, a large, well-known national corporation, also penalized agents because of their talk-time per call (their "productivity"). It didn't matter if it took that long to resolve issues, you were expected to get them on, get them off the call. It's a metric that is employed at most company call centers. The agent feels caught in a catch-22. So I'm not surprised to hear what this T-Mobile agent had to say about their corporate culture.

 

[KWKSLVR]

I think they're miscalculating traffic on some of their towers. That's a real shame too. Around here their network is top notch. We've used T-mobile home internet for about a year now and I've been using Mint Mobile for 2. The speeds between the services are almost identical. AKA zero throttling. I have not seen 500 megs down but I typically see 250 down and 100-150 up which is far better than the 200/20 I was getting with spectrum that under delivered and cost twice as much. I own two houses side by side and network them via mesh with no issues either.

 

[itsmedatguy]

My parents are in the process of canceling their new T-Mobile 5G home plan. Salesgirl did a good job selling them on it, but the speeds for them in rural VA are terrible. They're getting ~2mbps down which is slower than the awful and expensive satellite internet which has been their only other option. Mom said she's going to try AT&T next but apparently fiber is supposed to be coming to their area in the next year or so...

 

[AD B]

Welcome to capitalism.

I worked in the telecom industry for more than 14 years and they all lie about various things to their customers - you wouldn't believe some of it honestly. The worst was what the salespeople were allowed to do to get a buy commitment.

Sadly, here in the US our politicians have decided to protect the corporations instead of the citizens, because the former give them more $$$. So these lies are allowed.

 

[Deleted member 431422]

I'm not really sure what the problems is. It was the same with 4G. Where I live, and it's not US, T-Mobile and other service providers said the towers are unable to serve so many requests. Which can cause connection or bandwith issues and that the situation will improve with more towers upgraded to 4G standards. I expect at least a year or two before 5G can be a viable upgrade to 4G. Until then 5G smartphone is a waste of money.

 

[tanman05851]

I think they're miscalculating traffic on some of their towers. That's a real shame too. Around here their network is top notch. We've used T-mobile home internet for about a year now and I've been using Mint Mobile for 2. The speeds between the services are almost identical. AKA zero throttling. I have not seen 500 megs down but I typically see 250 down and 100-150 up which is far better than the 200/20 I was getting with spectrum that under delivered and cost twice as much. I own two houses side by side and network them via mesh with no issues either.

You were paying $100 /month for stand alone internet from Spectrum? Wow and here I thought 70 bucks was bad.BTW they are now 300 down. I'm not a Spectrum fanboy for sure but I've had few issues with them going back quite a ways.

 

[JPor]

The thing is, these sort off issues happen quite often with technical kit - but especially cisco, and thats been the case for 20+ years to my knowledge, and I'll tell you how and why.

Its standard procedure when 'updating ant kit to update the firmware, and cisco have been absolte sods for decades for changing defaults in different versions of firmware. So you get an 'engineer' who goes out to upgrade a bit of kit, and/or updates the firmware without FULLY reading the update documentation.
.. and some of the long time defaults change .. and things stop working.

The phone jockeys cant do squat because they have scripts written that worked based on prior versions, but just re-do the f-up when run with the new firmware.
So the 'engineer' who didn't read (or at least understand the implications) the documentation fully goes out again and thinks everything is as it should be.

all pdn ip network connection error :
A configuration issue Easy to find the cause with even a single example given -provided that error messages are checked. Cisco error messages are verbose and meaningful.


oops - silly me didnt check the date as I'd seen this specific issue raising it head again and posted without checking the date on this one - DUHHHH

 

[tanman05851]

Here is my CSR story. The one time I got a complete scrip reader at Spectrum(was Charter).
My next door neighbor had a contractor back into his driveway and take down the actual cable wire so that it was lying on the ground and needed to be reinstalled-a truck roll in other words.
Conversation went something like this.
Me: Hi-my next door neighbor had a contractor back into his driveway and he took down the cable wire.It's laying on the ground and I have no service.
Him-I'm sorry for the service interuption.Have you tried unplugging and then replugging your modem?
Me-you are not listening.
We did eventually come to an understanding and to their credit the issue was taken care of that day.