Don’t you love those T-Mobile TV commercials? The graphics are kind of punk, with lots of bold flashes of black, magenta and white. Everyone is cool and young and running around, flexing their muscles, chest-thumping, shouting. They’re rebelling! Against the Man!
The Man in this case is other, bigger cellphone companies, which are totally stodgy. Not like T-Mobile. Nope. T-Mobile is hip. T-Mobile understands you. It’s the “uncarrier,” as it says in ads. It’s on your side. It wants you to swing by its loft for pizza. There will be hip people there — a skateboarder, a dude with a trumpet, models — and music by bands you’ve never heard of.
This, at least, was the Haggler’s impression of T-Mobile for the last couple of years, from those ads. Then he helped one of the company’s unhappy customers.
Q. Eighteen months ago I bought a pair of smartphones, one for me, one for my daughter, at a T-Mobile store. Part of the package was Premium Handset Protection — insurance that promised that if either phone broke, it would be replaced ASAP. T-Mobile billed me about $125 a month, insurance included, which seemed reasonable.
My phone, a Nexus 5, failed to power on a few weeks ago, so I took it back to the store, where it was declared unfixable. I assumed that T-Mobile would hand me a new phone, because the company’s description of PHP promised that enrollees “won’t miss a beat.”
Instead, I was told to mail the phone to a return center in Texas, and it was nine days until a replacement was mailed back. Unfortunately, it was missing the tray that holds the SIM card. T-Mobile doesn’t stock them, so I bought one from Amazon for $15.
All of this was frustrating; then it got weird. When I turned on the phone, I found a cute baby staring at me from the home screen and lots of unfamiliar apps. This was clearly a refurbished phone that wasn’t wiped clean. I had access to the former owner’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, as well as a contacts list. A woman once owned this phone, I quickly deduced. I knew where she worked, and I could view all her photos and videos.
Everything about this experience has been lousy. And I haven’t been reimbursed for that SIM card tray.
Tom Paterson
Tiverton, R.I.
A. The Haggler envisioned calling T-Mobile, which is based in Bellevue, Wash., and having to shout over a party. That didn’t happen. But first, let’s talk about the insurance that Mr. Paterson purchased.
It does not promise an instant, in-store exchange, though one could be excused for assuming so, given that “won’t miss a beat” promise. Maybe T-Mobile thinks that its actual customers, as opposed to the kinetic actors who play them on TV, live in superslow motion. They march to a drummer who hits the snare once every 10 days.
So if your phone is gone for nine, you won’t miss a beat!
What isn’t particularly clear about the PHP description is that you need to mail your broken phone to a repair center, part of Assurant Solutions, a subsidiary of a Manhattan-based company called Assurant. Mailing your phone and waiting for someone to confirm that it’s kaput takes time, of course.
About the best that can be said of this insurance program is that it is poorly described.
What did T-Mobile have to say about all this?
A spokeswoman, Tolena Thorburn, wrote a perfectly cordial series of emails, one of which correctly noted that the PHP program offers new, or like new, replacement phones. In Mr. Paterson’s case, that meant sending a refurbished smartphone, which is fine. What isn’t fine is giving someone a device loaded with another customer’s personal information.
That is a serious breach, and it makes the Haggler cringe on behalf of the woman whose digital life was splayed out before Mr. Paterson.
Ms. Thorburn wrote that T-Mobile requires its vendors to wipe customer content from all devices before they are returned or traded. “We are looking into what happened in this specific instance with our vendor,” she said. Then the company told Mr. Paterson it would give him a month of free service, and soon after Ms. Thorburn wrote this to the Haggler: “I’ve verified that our care team spoke with the customer and that he is satisfied. This should be ‘case closed.’ ”
Really?
“No, I have not expressed satisfaction to T-Mobile,” Mr. Paterson told the Haggler.
The Haggler wasn’t satisfied either. In fact, the Haggler found the words “case closed” a little presumptuous. He had more questions, like why wasn’t that smartphone wiped clean? Ms. Thorburn said she was looking into it, but added, “We consider this matter closed.”
Well, reopen it, quoth the Haggler. She did, and a few days later wrote with news.
Forget Assurant. It wasn’t involved in this transaction at all, she reported. After digging deeper, she learned that Mr. Paterson’s smartphone — which was still getting Snapchat photos sent to its previous owner — was mailed from a T-Mobile center. Apparently because Mr. Paterson’s device was still under warranty, the replacement was covered by T-Mobile.
Wait, was Mr. Paterson paying for insurance he didn’t need? The Haggler asked this and other questions, and boy did things get tedious. Suffice it to say, all those aspersions that were earlier cast in this column on Assurant Solutions — uncast them. Or simply recast them, onto T-Mobile.
“We pride ourselves on listening to customers and delivering a great experience,” Ms. Thorburn wrote. “Obviously, we fell short on Mr. Paterson’s phone replacement!”
You sure did! Of course, any company can err, and we’re talking about one smartphone here. What grated about T-Mobile’s performance in our little episode was the sense that the company was more interested in minimizing damage, or at least ending the conversation, than a full reckoning.
And there’s nothing very “uncarrier” about that.
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