yonmei

07:43 pm: Ah well...
I attempted to wring a new phone out of T-Mobile. Unfortunately, it didn't work, but it was worth a try.

I'd been looking at mobile phones and had been really struck by the Nokia 8600, which is a dream of a phone - no-scratch screen, titanium case, nice design. Price: £400. But no phone company is offering that as a free phone, so I thought I'd try and brace T-Mobile for it, on the basis that I'd been with them three years, my contract expired 18 months ago at least, and hey, if I didn't ask, I wouldn't get.

02 were prepared to offer a much better price plan and a free Nokia 6500 Classic. T-Mobile were prepared to match 02, but no better than that: they would happily have offered me more and more free minutes and texts, but I didn't need more free minutes, what I fancied, frankly, and I told the bloke at T-Mobile this, was a much better phone. The best he was allowed to offer (he said, not at all reluctantly) was a Nokia 8600 for £170. As the price difference between 8600 and 6400 is more like £145 (I looked up both models on Amazon) I asked him for a PACs code instead, and he gave me one. (I need to port my number over from old phone to new. I hate changing numbers.) I'd have bargained if he'd been able to bargain, but if the lowest he was allowed to go was £170, there was no point.

letter to T-Mobile

Having not heard from T-Mobile about changing my price plan or upgrading my phone in almost two years, I looked round at other price plans on offer and discovered I could cut my phone bill and get more time via O2, along with a free Nokia 6500 Classic handset.

I was sure T-Mobile could match the offer, but wondered if you would be interested in retaining me by offering a better handset.

I opened the discussions with a Nokia 8600, and was told I could only have that if I was prepared to pay £170. As the price differential between Nokia 8600 and 6500 is more like £145, and as the person I spoke to was apparently neither empowered to reduce the price nor able to think of offering another handset, I concluded T-Mobile was not interested in retaining me as a customer, and asked for a transfer code instead, which I got.

I was slightly disappointed that T-Mobile prefers to lose customers rather than consider offering them better deals in order to retain them, but I had already figured that out when I realised how long I had been on Relax 100 without any attempt by T-Mobile to contact me.

Good luck for the future.


Tags: evil phone company plots