T-mobile review: T-mobile continue to unimpress.

Finally I manage to get through to their customer service line and sales line (twice before they cut me off and before that the call back service I had an email saying they could not get through to me – I replied, but got no response).

I place an order for the K800i Brown with FREE bluetooth headset (the offer I am staring at ON LINE at the time of order) only to be told “Sorry we have run out, there are no more.” So WHY is it still on the website? How LONG does it take to remove that offer from the website? How LONG did they know that they were going to run out of headsets for? As a customer, its infruriating. I have not even made a call on the T-mobile network and I’m already really f***ed off with them. It is not a matter of money – I can afford a bluetooth headset – Its a matter of attitude and of promising and not delivering.

They should have run a congress session at 3GSM called “Basic customer service: How do we as mobile network operators re-learn basic business practise and not really f*** off all our customers”.

Unreal.

European mobile subscriber saturation? Apparently damp but not yet dripping…

Analysys reports recently that “mobile penetration, which reached 96.2 per cent at the end of last year in Western Europe, will continue to grow to 108.8 per cent by 2011, largely driven by operator’ efforts to attract under-served segments including the older demographic.”

Most of us have two ears, afterall.

Exodus to the Valley of Silicon

I was interested in this thread “Top 100 people lost to the valley” on Mike Butchers blog;

To which I added my usual two penneth (or more!)…

I’m sure there are plenty of U.S. people having made the switch to the U.K; but those working for large corporates (which sorry everyone, but Google, Excite and Yahoo are or were!) dont count as entrepreneurs in the sense we’re talking here. Moving out to the U.S. to get your start up funded or having peer support and enthusiasm which is often left wanting here, is different to being sent over here as part of a business and later deciding to stay. How many tech/net companies have chosen to move from SV to London to startup? I’d venture that the number is close to zero. Yes of course we (and Europe) can produce great businesses -and some have rightly been mentioned here- but do we have any one area in the U.K. (or Europe for that matter) that has the focus of innovation, enthusiasm, support ecosystem and WILLINGNESS TO INVEST that is present in SV? I think the answer has to be an emphatic no.

I am here in Silicon Fen, here in Cambridge; but its a joke really. Yes there are numerous hi-tech or Bio-tech firms here, yes it is a centre of excellence, yes, Library House, Bango and ARM are based here – but is this a culture of entrepreneurs? No. Is there funding available? Some. Is there funding for the next big consumer-orientated-mobile-or-internet-brand (I’m thinking the beasts like Google, FlickR et al) – The answer is no. Big successes in this sector are thin on the ground. Innovation is indeed a plenty; but most U.K. VCs are simply not willing to stump up the amount of money needed to push a startup from zero to light speed within a few months or a year or two. You simply cannot build a YouTube without money behind you – However good your technology is or your underpaid out-of-uni staff are.

I remember back in 2002 my company worked on a Digital Asset Management system for video and searching (its still live – www.britishpathe.com) and I suggested it could be used for user generated content, but the parent company at the time just “didnt get it”. Now, it might well have turned out to be early to market, because of broadbands limit reach at that time; but it is a recurring theme that investors here dont seem to have the same vision as their U.S. counterparts. In addition our cultural in general here in the U.K. frowns on failure and those who have failed.

This cultural difference IS true; I have spent time in NYC (although less on the West coast in honesty) and the difference you can taste in the air. Many people over here just “dont get it” until they see it big and succesful. If you’d explained YouTube to a Brit company or VC very early on, they just wouldnt believe it. I’m having the same problem with Mobile Social Networking and LBS services today – I’ve been saying the same thing for nearly 2 years and the market is finally moving in the direction I’ve described yet many people still “dont’ get it”. There will be a MySpace on mobile -and probably better!- and it will only be a matter of time; this is as obvious as falling off a log. But when it arrives and yet again its from a U.S. backed or U.S. based AND backed startup, yet again the conversation will be had as to why we cant do the same in the U.K. ….OK, my rant over.

Good to learn that t-mobile are as crap as every other MNO.

Go to the website. Try and order online. Website crashes so I ask for a call-back. I get a speedy call back (better than last time, when I never got a call back). I order the phone. I have a preference for the Samsung Z400. Stupidly, but unsurprisingly, they wont offer me the free headset which you get with the Sony Ericson W800, even though this is a more expensive phone to buy to start with. In anycase I order the Z400. I emphasise that I need it by Thursday, as on Friday I fly out to 3GSM and will be using the phone in Spain. We have a conversation about foreign tariffs and I say I will need roaming “You can roan on this tariff that will not be a problem”.

The phone arrives on time. I try the phone, it works. I try my O2 SIM also. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it doesn’t work as the phone is locked. An annoying practise but I suppose I do understand why the MNOs do it. I arrive in Spain. Turn on phone. No connection. Try all networks, no connection. Call T-mobile (from my O2 phone). After pressing 4 menu choices AND punching in my mobile number, I get through to someone. I am asked for my mobile number “But I’ve just typed it in!” I explain. “I’m sorry I just have to ask you for it”. I’m then asked for DOB, password, company name. Fine. Then there is then a password which is my company registration number. I was not explained about this before, or in any paperwork. Luckily, I have it with me. I’m told if I want to change it, I will have to send a fax with my signature on it. How very modern in this internet-account driven age. As an aside the whole premise is flawed anyway, I can go on to companies house for free and find any limited company number. What a completely flawed, stupid and ill conceived excuse for security, which isn’t secure at all and probably simply annoys a lot of people.

After all this usual rigmarole I’m told I have to pay £250 deposit if I want to call abroad. I am furious. I was not told this before; infact I explicitly said I needed to call abroad.

The funny thing is, the same thing happened when I joined O2 in 2005, except this time I found out after arriving in New York with a 5 hour time difference.

Customer service for mobile phone network operators is abysmal. Its uniformly shit. There really is no other word for it, and I apologise for such gruff tones. I really wish they would get their basic core-business house in order, instead of harping on about content, blocking the growth of the mobile internet for everyone and generally trying to walk before they can run. There is little or no customer loyalty because there is no-one to be loyal too! THAT’S the problem. It is incredible that after so long I can’t find ONE colleague or friend who has anything good to say about ANY of the networks – infact, exactly the opposite. They all hate them, they are all pissed off with them, and they all begrudge them their custom. But it is like the banks – there is little choice. What else do you do instead? Invest in a pigeon farm?

I will be returning my T-mobile phone and cancelling my contract, on Wednesday when I return from 3GSM, not because I cant pay a £250 deposit (my bills hover around the £450 mark every month!) but on principle because I was not told this at the time of sale. Better the devil I know, which in this case, is O2.

Spin me round like a record

In my case a stuck record. Once again I trotted out the same thing I’ve been saying for the last 3 years (if not more) this time I’m sure to the delight of those poor souls subscribed to the momoLondon feed. I blame Peter. Peter (whowever he is – sorry Peter) set me off by writing:

“As long as the mobile internet, WAP, little internet (what ever you want to call accessing a site from a handset) is constrained by the gateway you access it through, namely your network provider, we will see very little innovation and in turn usage. No matter what the usage figures show, they would be an order of magnitude higher if both serving up a site and accessing a site was unhindered by corporate policy such as content filtering, different privileges based on service plan, blocking of perceived competitive sites, walled gardens, preventing access from other networks, browser type etc etc.

I order for mobile usage and innovation to grow as it has on what is being referred to as the “big internet” this is the first barrier that needs to be removed. Until then yes technically they may be the same thing but commercially they are different.”

Too true, I responded….

Give that man a hand(set?)! Peter- I’m absolutely and completely in agreement with you.

These basic barriers to growth need sorting, the rest – while technically
interesting and while it might be useful to sort out meanwhile – is a
smokescreen for this real show-stopper. Only last week I was ranting the
same on a W2F thread.

Hopefully with 3 UK’s new tariffs and more MNO’s to follow during 2007, we’ll
see things shift a little – However, with concepts such as content filtering
and tariffs access differences yet to be resolved sensibly, I fear 2007 will
still not be the explosive growth for the ‘mobile internet’ that many hope.
We’ll see growth, sure, but IMNHO we’re still circa 1997/8 on the
‘big-internet’ timeline; and dare I say it, possibly bubble-wise too!

Justification for these statements? Well, in the late 90’s the US government
estimate net traffic was doubling every one hundred days (and we’re
certainly not there yet with mobile data), but recent wireless venturing is
plain for all to see, and warming up nicely!

Just my two penneth. Andrew.

…I only wish I’d spell checked it before I posted it to the entire UK mobile executive community.