Fuck T-Mobile, man. Fuck them!
Here’s the skinny: I have a wireless router, and it’s a piece of shit. I’m also both cheap and poor, which works out, so I’ve mainly been bitching as much as humanly possible about what a flaming dog-pile off hairy shit this cocksucking router is. I periodically scan sales for good router prices, but nothing has hit my sweet $20 price range. There are some routers that periodically pop up on Frys’ for $15, but I always seem to miss them before they sell out.
Not too long ago, a friend alerted me to a deal T-Mobile was having — an upgraded version of the router I already have, with more RAM and an ability to support the third-party firmware that will supposedly rescue my router from its extreme suckitude, for $20, with additional money off if you use Microsoft’s retarded Live CashBack thing. That might not be what it’s called. I just abuse it for savings. I don’t commit it to memory.
It seemed like a fine deal, people on nerd forums suggested all was on the up and up, so I rolled with it. When I placed my order, it warned me the router would be backordered until after Christmas. I wasn’t ordering it for a holiday gift, so I didn’t care. I proceeded through, got a confirmation that, again, warned me of its “backorder” status. Again, I didn’t care.
Four days later, I received the following e-mail from T-Mobile:
Dear T-Mobile Customer,Thank you for ordering the T-Mobile @Home® Linksys router. Due to high demand, this router is currently out of stock.
We will be upgrading your order and shipping you the T-Mobile @Home® HiPort™ router instead. You should receive your order on or before Tuesday, December 23. We’ll send you an e-mail once your order has shipped, so you’ll know it’s on its way.
We thank you for your patience and apologize for any inconvenience.
Sincerely,
T-Mobile Customer Care
The… Fuck?
I didn’t order this piece of shit to get it on or before Tuesday, December 23. It warned me twice of its backordered “will not arrive by Christmas” status, and I placed the order anyway.
I also didn’t order the router because I wanted any old piece-of-shit router. I want the specific piece-of-shit router I ordered. The goddamn T-Mobile @Home® HiPort™ router doesn’t even support the third-party firmware I so desperately desire.
I just have to ask: why? I’ve done a lot of online ordering and my day, even reaching back to the hoary days of mail-order, and I can’t recall a single instance of being “upgraded” against my will. I’ve had phone support people attempt to upsell me, but they’ve never done anything insane like, “Say, I know you said you want the cheap old Boss orange distortion pedal, but I’m going to go ahead and put you down for the Dallas-Arbiter Fuzzface pedal instead. It’s only $120 more, but you can get those good Hendrix and Billy Corgan* sounds.”
You might think this is an exaggeration. “They just upgraded you,” you’re saying. “It’s not like they illegally charged you more for something you didn’t order and didn’t want.” Don’t you ever get tired of being wrong?
The total cost of the router, after all my scheming, was around $18. That’s what they charged my credit card on December 13th. On December 17th, the date of this e-mail, I got an additional charge of $35 and change, which approximates the “upgraded” router’s usual $50 pricetag plus tax or maybe shipping. I have no idea since they never sent me a goddamn invoice, those jackal prick motherfuckers. Even when I got the fucking box with the router in it, the packing slip invoice didn’t include a total price. What kind of operation is this?
“What’s that?” you ask cautiously. “The box arrived. You didn’t call their customer service and cancel?”
Fair question, reader. I’ll tell you why: because the “upgrade” e-mail included an inexplicable (and unnecessary) image attachment, my mail program filed it as junk. I didn’t notice it in the junk folder until more than a day later, and it literally shipped while I was on hold waiting to talk to one of their douchenozzle, ass-faced CSRs. I figured there was no goddamn point in wasting my time. They couldn’t cancel it now that it’s shipped, and I’d end up having to call them again to get return authorization on the package.
It’s a moot point, anyway. While I waited on hold, I browsed those same mystical forums that alerted my friend to the sale. Everyone had been similarly baited and switched, and after waiting for hours on hold, the CSRs — and their supervisors — told every caller that, because of the holidays, they couldn’t possibly cancel an order! It’d ruin everything, especially their quarterly profit figures! As for the additional charge, the CSRs came up with the laughably convoluted explanation that they have to charge something in order to process the upgrade and ship the order. No explanation on why they couldn’t charge $0.00 or $0.01 instead of the exact balance of a non-sale router and shipping/tax — they just promised that the extra charge would be removed…someday.
None of this — except the additional charge — would bother me if they had asked. An e-mail saying, “Hey dude, we know the holidays are coming up, so we can upgrade you to X router for $Y if you want. Give us a call or respond to this e-mail and we’ll hook you up.” A phone call with similar patter would work, as well. I wouldn’t even mind a hard-sell approach. I’d say, “Blow me,” and hang up, but the point is to give me the option. I ordered what I ordered for several reasons, none of which include “Christmas.” It’s a steaming bowl of bullshit to just assume I need it for the holidays and switch the order up without asking, and then charge more for it, and then refuse to cancel the order. I don’t know the laws on this, but it feels illegal.
I considered trying to haggle with customer service to get the router I actually wanted, but after the business practices they’ve exhibited, I don’t want to do anything but kick every single shithead employed by T-Mobile in the nuts. And I know they employ a bunch of women, so I want them each to undergo the long, brutal process of gender-reassignment surgery, on T-Mobile’s dime. Then I want somebody to create some kind of sensory receptor that will approximate the feeling of getting kicked in the nuts (because I hope and assume their man-molded junk doesn’t have the exact physical properties that will give the same feel of beating on the spermatic plexus with a heavy wooden spoon).
I know nobody reads this blog, but maybe some T-Mobile employee will try to get ahead by Googling “how to fuck over more T-Mobile customers” and stumble across this post. I welcome comments from any and all T-Mobile employees. Explain your company’s justification of this sort of business practice. Don’t forget to leave your mailing address so I can kick you in the nuts.
*Back in the olden days, getting a Billy Corgan sound was considered a selling point, not an embarrassment. [Back]
Posted by Stan on January 7, 2009 3:45 PM