This is a
story in two parts with the world’s easiest quiz at the end.
Part 1—Caveat
Q: When is a loaner phone not a loaner
phone? A: When you hold it for more than 14 days.
This happened on a recent visit to the US—I needed a SIM card for my
mobile phone so I could make calls and send texts while there. Now, I have lived in countries where a SIM
card cost the equivalent of USD $5, and it came with $5 credit on it. But this wasn’t one of those countries, as I soon
realized. The first store I entered wanted
$50 for a SIM card, and it came with a “plan,” meaning that the company would continue
to extract money from my account every month until it went dry or I cried
“uncle.” I declined.
But I
really needed a SIM card, so two days later I went into a T-Mobile store and
repeated my request: I was in the
country for about three weeks, and just needed to be able to communicate with
friends and family—nothing fancy—could they provide me with a SIM card for this,
sans plan? Yes, they could, for $35. This still seemed a bit high, but by then I
was becoming reconciled to the prices.
But their SIM
card didn’t work; my phone was locked, according to the T-Mobile
representatives. I knew it wasn’t,
because it had worked perfectly well with SIM cards in at least four different
countries. But they had a solution for
me: they would give me a “loaner phone,”
which would work with the SIM card, and at the end of my trip I could
just return it to any T-Mobile store and collect my deposit of $50. This was a sub-optimal solution: I didn’t want to be hauling around a strange
phone and its packaging, and then have to return it all at a later date;
besides, I would be leaving the country from a different city at the end of my
three-week trip. That was no problem,
they assured me—they had stores everywhere.
So I gave them a $50 deposit, took my loaner phone and receipt, and departed.
But here
was a problem—the first time I tried to use the phone the other party couldn’t
hear me, so I returned to the T-Mobile store.
There a different representative confirmed the phone was a dud, and he would
have given me another loaner except that this was the last one they had. So he called around to other T-Mobile stores
in the area and finally found one that did have a loaner for me. I should explain here that all this time I
was being driven around by an aunt, nearly 90 years old, and that she had been
left out in the car during these exchanges.
So I was anxious to expedite things.
At the next
store I was given another phone and the assistant and I confirmed that it worked.
He tried to send me away without a charger, but I noticed the omission,
and so was able to get one before I departed.
I was starting to think that T-Mobile was not top shelf as regards
attention to detail, but I was mistaken.
Their assiduous attention to some details became apparent on my
next visit to one of their San Francisco stores, at the end of my trip. That was when they told me that because I had
held the phone for more than 14 days, it was no longer a loaner, but was mine
to keep and cherish forevermore.
I protested
to the store manager that this 14-day limit had never been mentioned in either
of the two stores I had previously visited, but he was unmoved. He pointed out that it was outlined in bold
at the bottom of the receipt for my deposit on the loaner: the only way to get my “deposit” back was to
return the phone within 14 days. And
when I got out the magnifying glass I was able to confirm that it was indeed in
bold, and so stood out somewhat from the rest of the microscopic text. I pointed out that none of the representatives
had told me of the 14-day rule, despite my mentioning that my trip was three
weeks long, which presumably should have set off alarm bells with them. But he cut that short, and said that if he
had been in my position he would have made sure he understood all the
conditions of the contract before leaving the store, and 90-year-old aunts in
hot cars be damned. He didn’t actually
come right out and say that it was dim and irresponsible consumers such as me
who were making things so maddeningly difficult for modern businesses, but I
could tell that he thought it.
And, of
course, because I am dim and irresponsible, I didn’t think to draw his attention
to the fact that these conditions were printed, howsoever minutely, on a receipt; that receipts are typically given
at the end of a transaction, after money has changed hands; and that it used to
be considered poor form to introduce new and salient conditions at that stage
of negotiations. I mean, you might look
for this type of ex post facto legal
chicanery on a “receipt” from Geech’s Payday Loans, for instance. But you don’t (or at least didn’t formerly)
expect them on receipts from companies claiming respectability, such as, for
instance, the third-largest US mobile carrier.
Imagine paying a bill at a restaurant and getting a receipt stating, in
2-point font, that unless you remove your car from their parking area within 14
minutes, it will be towed at your expense.
Apparently the stalwart T-Mobile manager would be perfectly satisfied
with a restaurant operating on those principles, and he probably checks his
dinner receipts to see if something of the kind appears.
Trying to
end on a positive note (for I was clearly chagrined to learn that I would never
see that $50 again), the manager pointed out that since the phone was now my very
own, I was free to use it as I pleased.
Unfortunately, certain laws and the manager’s patently uncooperative
demeanor prevented me from using it in the first way that came to mind, and
since the phone was almost certainly locked, its highest and best uses back
home in Australia probably would have been as a paperweight, a pocket-sized
chopping board, or as a flat object to skip as far as I could across a still
body of water. So in the end I gave it
to my son to play with.
I have to
admit that writing this out has been cathartic, but not perfectly so. I figure it has given me about $20 worth of
pleasure to vent my spleen at the shabby business practices of T-Mobile, which
means that I am still $30 short on the “deposit” they have on permanent loan
from me. So if anyone can suggest
something I could do to lose them $30 or more worth of business, I would love
to hear from you.
Part 2—Let there be light
Two days
after our return to Australia, I was up and showered early: a technician was due to arrive “between eight
and ten a.m.” and I wanted to be presentable. This was to perform a service we
had arranged before our departure, which was to replace all the inefficient,
incandescent overhead lights in our rented home (13 in all) with brighter,
energy-saving, LED lights. After my
recent experience with T-Mobile, I didn’t really expect the tech before the
early afternoon, if ever, but no, he rang the door bell right at 8:00. He was efficient and was also friendly
without being obsequious, a balance that seems impossible for some workers to
strike nowadays. He was finished and on
his way by 8:30; our illumination since then has been much brighter and
cheaper. Oh yes, and we didn’t pay
anything for these lights or their installation, since the process was funded
by the state government as part of their program to make Victorian homes more
energy-efficient.
The Quiz
Which story
above contains an example of customer
service, and which contains an example of customer servicing (as in “Let’s go have a beer while the bull is
servicing your cow.”)? See? I told you it was an easy quiz.
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