Poor Slouchy Cousin Asks T-Mobile and Motorola for a Favor
I'm going to start this section with a crappy-device, corporate disinterest rant.
About a year and a half ago, I bought a Motorola RAZR through T-Mobile. This phone was taken care of like a baby princess; always nicely cushioned, rarely exposed to daylight or made to work...
One month after the first year had passed, the mini-screen on the phone decided it needed to stay on all the time, showing a cool little BSOD (reminiscent of the best days of Microsoft); which sucked up so much power the phone would only stay charged for half a day.
I emailed T-Mobile but got no response other than the standard e-mail back stating 'thanks, we received your cry of indignation and shall respond to it in short order.' They didn't, so I called. The rep said since it was past the one year which would have been sort of covered, they could do nothing. I'd need to call Motorola, which I did very quickly, right after my phone was charged back up.
Motorola said 'sure we'll fix it for you - just mail it to us in the original box with a check for $89.' Umm, what? The phone you said was a revolution spontaneously breaks after a year of minimal use, and I have to pay you?
This is when the buzzard really came home to roost. The product I was told I was getting - a paragon of phone technology - existed only in the imagination. In meat-space (otherwise known as the human reality), I would receive a product which had a certain degree of fallibility, a possible chance of failure. Anyone who bought one of the phones would receive this.
And this would not have to be a problem, except that T-Mobile and Motorola hold the customers responsible for the failure. So they spew out upon the world a plethora of hand-helds, of which a certain number are bound to crap out, and when those phones do fail, the customer has to deal with it. Nice, huh.
Just to check my thinking, I called Verizon and posed the question to a rep - what if my phone failed after the first year, due to no fault of my own? She said they'd mail me a very low-end model, no charge, to get me through until I was due to renew my contract.
I'm going to start this section with a crappy-device, corporate disinterest rant.
About a year and a half ago, I bought a Motorola RAZR through T-Mobile. This phone was taken care of like a baby princess; always nicely cushioned, rarely exposed to daylight or made to work...
One month after the first year had passed, the mini-screen on the phone decided it needed to stay on all the time, showing a cool little BSOD (reminiscent of the best days of Microsoft); which sucked up so much power the phone would only stay charged for half a day.
I emailed T-Mobile but got no response other than the standard e-mail back stating 'thanks, we received your cry of indignation and shall respond to it in short order.' They didn't, so I called. The rep said since it was past the one year which would have been sort of covered, they could do nothing. I'd need to call Motorola, which I did very quickly, right after my phone was charged back up.
Motorola said 'sure we'll fix it for you - just mail it to us in the original box with a check for $89.' Umm, what? The phone you said was a revolution spontaneously breaks after a year of minimal use, and I have to pay you?
This is when the buzzard really came home to roost. The product I was told I was getting - a paragon of phone technology - existed only in the imagination. In meat-space (otherwise known as the human reality), I would receive a product which had a certain degree of fallibility, a possible chance of failure. Anyone who bought one of the phones would receive this.
And this would not have to be a problem, except that T-Mobile and Motorola hold the customers responsible for the failure. So they spew out upon the world a plethora of hand-helds, of which a certain number are bound to crap out, and when those phones do fail, the customer has to deal with it. Nice, huh.
Just to check my thinking, I called Verizon and posed the question to a rep - what if my phone failed after the first year, due to no fault of my own? She said they'd mail me a very low-end model, no charge, to get me through until I was due to renew my contract.
About a year and a half ago, I bought a Motorola RAZR through T-Mobile. This phone was taken care of like a baby princess; always nicely cushioned, rarely exposed to daylight or made to work...
One month after the first year had passed, the mini-screen on the phone decided it needed to stay on all the time, showing a cool little BSOD (reminiscent of the best days of Microsoft); which sucked up so much power the phone would only stay charged for half a day.
I emailed T-Mobile but got no response other than the standard e-mail back stating 'thanks, we received your cry of indignation and shall respond to it in short order.' They didn't, so I called. The rep said since it was past the one year which would have been sort of covered, they could do nothing. I'd need to call Motorola, which I did very quickly, right after my phone was charged back up.
Motorola said 'sure we'll fix it for you - just mail it to us in the original box with a check for $89.' Umm, what? The phone you said was a revolution spontaneously breaks after a year of minimal use, and I have to pay you?
This is when the buzzard really came home to roost. The product I was told I was getting - a paragon of phone technology - existed only in the imagination. In meat-space (otherwise known as the human reality), I would receive a product which had a certain degree of fallibility, a possible chance of failure. Anyone who bought one of the phones would receive this.
And this would not have to be a problem, except that T-Mobile and Motorola hold the customers responsible for the failure. So they spew out upon the world a plethora of hand-helds, of which a certain number are bound to crap out, and when those phones do fail, the customer has to deal with it. Nice, huh.
Just to check my thinking, I called Verizon and posed the question to a rep - what if my phone failed after the first year, due to no fault of my own? She said they'd mail me a very low-end model, no charge, to get me through until I was due to renew my contract.
posted by Leo at
10:09 AM
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