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I called up T-Mobile customer services (I used the term ironically) today. I want to ask them about some calls I was charged for on my bill. It's not a lot of money but it could be a mistake, so it makes sense to ask them, right?

When you call any company of reasonable size these days, you have to work your way through a seemingly interminable sequence of options: Press 1 for this, 2 for that and 3 for the other. And then when you do press 1, it takes you through another round of options. It is like wading through treacle.

Here's a funny thing. With T-Mobile there is no option to "Ask about your account" or "Ask about your bill". I mean, we know there won't be an option to "Speak with an advisor" - that would be silly - but you might expect that making inquiries might be in there somewhere. Apparently I can leave T-Mobile, upgrade my price plan, ask for handy tips or indeed a variety of other specific things. But actually just ask a question? No, fuck off. Anyway, I plumped for the closest match - "Change your account details" (well, it had the word "account" in it) and I stuck it out for the ten-or-so minutes the IVR warned me I would need to wait. It seems that whenever I call T-Mobile the contact centre is extremely busy. Imagine that.

Finally I got through to a man for whom English is clearly not his first language. Why would it be? - he lives in the Philippines. I was irritated enough that I have to decipher what the man is saying through a heavy accent but when I found that he just did not listen to me and would only repeat what I had said to him, I was getting a bit cross. Finally we arrived at an understanding of what my question was.

My question is simple, really: I've been charged for some calls on my latest bill and I don't know why. I think they should be included in my call allowance. I'd like an explanation. The contact centre agent finally understood what I was asking. He then failed to exhibit basic thinking skills and offered nonsensical explanations - reasons that do not stack up against other details clearly apparent in the bill.

So the man said he would like to call me back and in the meantime would find out the answer to my question. I expressed my anxiety about ending the call, since it took me ten minutes just to get through the first time. He said he would call me back in five minutes. That was nearly an hour ago. Imagine my surprise.

This was actually my second conversation with a T-Mobile contact centre representative. I asked the same question a couple of weekends ago. Same story, only in that call, the representative was even stupider. His lips must have been moving. Noise was coming out of his mouth. But none of it made any sense. T-Mobile then sent me a text-based survey to evaluate my satisfaction with my call to the contact centre. I scored all the questions pretty much as low as possible. For the "Please tell us what we could do better" question, I gave a fairly candid couple of suggestions, to amplify my scores. I wondered if such a low score would generate some further follow-up call to placate a disgruntled customer. What was I thinking?

28-Aug-2013 UPDATE:-
While I never did receive a return phone call from T-Mobile, the spurious charges did appear to get refunded on a subsequent bill. There was no explanation. That is all.

"It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out."
- Carl Sagan



"Some minds are so open that they need to be closed down for repair."
- unattributed

"Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain, and most fools do."
- Benjamin Franklin

"When you lose, don't lose the lesson."
- Dali Lama

Local Hero.

This one is a little bit Zen...

NAILS IN THE FENCE

There once was a little boy who had a bad temper.

His Father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, he must hammer a nail into the back of the fence.

The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence.

Over the next few weeks, as he learned to control his anger, ! the number of nails hammered daily gradually dwindled down He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence.

Finally the day came when the boy didn't lose his temper at all.

He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper.

The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone.

The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence.. He said, 'You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence.

The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one.

You can put a knife in a man and draw it out. But It won't matter how many times you say I'm sorry, the wound will still be there.

A verbal wound is as bad as a physical one.