Dear T-Mobile,

Dear T-Mobile, 

A couple of months ago I decided I was tired of the intermittent service and decided to call in every single time I dropped either voice or data services to report the outage. Now, as you can imagine, without voice service I couldn't call so I had to wait, sometimes a few minutes, and sometimes a half hour or so, until I gained service back and could make the call.

After about the fourth time the customer service representative in "retention" offered me a new phone, any handset I chose, to try for 20 days and see if my service was better. We talked about it, I asked what she had in mind since I wasn't interested in a bare-bones entry-level phone. She said, since I'd been such a good T-Mobile customer, she would make available any handset I was interested in. I informed her I had been eyeballing the HTC One S and the Galaxy SIII, but couldn't decide which was a better piece of hardware. We talked over the merits of each and I also mentioned I was interested in the rumor of the Galaxy Note becoming available on T-Mobile coming soon. She confirmed the rumor and asked me if I wanted to be made aware when it was available.

At this time, I wasn't sure if staying with T-Mobile was an option. I have the opportunity to jump a friend's family plan on another network, still giving me unlimited data and text, but with shared minutes. Two-thousand shared minutes of which barely 500 were being used every month. She said she understood and would mark the call log with her offer if I decided to stay a current customer with T-Mobile.

A couple of days later I called again with a loss of service notice. I was in downtown Denver, near the Auraria Campus when I lost all data connection. The CSR I spoke with noted the previous offer and after a discussion he told me to go to a T-Mobile storefront, hold the different handsets I was interested in my hands and let them know which one I would like to try for 20 days. Again, I'd mentioned the Galaxy SIII and the HTC One S.

As much as I would like the idea of a new handset, my G2 has been going strong and I was skeptical about giving up the physical keyboard for a virtual one only.

I'd lost service a time or two since then --  sometimes only data, sometimes only voice and sometimes both. Sometimes I would go from an indicated 4G signal to an indicated 2G signal in the middle of whatevering. It was annoying, but I'd learned that T-Mobile's only response was to offer me a new handset, nothing else so I didn't call. And then there were the times I couldn't call or it would have been rude for me to leave the company I was with just to call and complain to my service provider.

Today the landline ISP has been going in and out as long as I've been on my computer and logged onto the internet. Time and time again the service would drop for a few minutes and then start working again. While working with the ISP's customer support I tried responding to some emails from my phone. 

I noticed then that my phone service was nil. That's right, nothing. So, I tried responding to an email via a text message, but without service that wouldn't work. Okay, so I called 611 to no success. It completely slipped my mind that voice wouldn't work with no bars. I felt a little dumb, but it happens. When I finally did get service (without having moved from my desk) I called 611 and told Shirley (?) near Atlanta, that I was tired of losing service all the time and was interested in the previous offer.

She denied any such offer. Really? After two retention CSRs had both made me the same offer T-Mobile was now going to recant said offer? She told me she went back in the notes and noted an offer for a discounted handset, but not a free one. And definitely not a free flagship piece.

I told her this changes everything. Now I have to reconsider my options and staying with T-Mobile might not be an option anymore -- especially, if they're not going to properly log and honor their verbal offers.

Since I am on an older plan that isn't offered anymore (a MyFaves plan) she tried to offer me unlimited everything for the same price I'm paying now. I don't use all my minutes, SMSes and MMSes on my MyFaves plan, why on Earth would I need unlimited everything for the same price? You want to make me happy, lower your monthly cost for my plan. We all know voice services are cheap, even considering maintenance and since I sit on wifi most of the time, I'm not gobbling up a lot of data, T-Mobile should find some way to lower my costs, especially if they're offering sub-par inconsistent services. The best she could do was offer me the plan she offered me which gave me more for the same price, but it's more than I need.

I told Shirley (?) that since the Galaxy SIII was available on all the major carriers it didn't matter where I went, I could have that handset. She then informed me the SIII was only available on T-Mobile and at&t. Um, no, I told her, the SIII is available on TMo, Sprint, at&t and Verizon, as far as I was aware. She told me she likes to go to Wal-Mart and look at the phones there and the store only showed the device being available for T-Mobile and at&t. 

So, I get the impression Shirley (?) isn't the most informed person you have working in customer service. I will call later, perhaps, and see if another CSR can read the log notes better. If not, I'm back to reconsidering... if so, I will probably remain a loyal customer.

Anywho, I thought you should know. The only reason I haven't left for the offer of family plan elsewhere (with a monthly portion of a little less than half of my current T-Mobile bill) is I didn't want to lose autonomy on my account. Now I'm wondering if saving $50 a month isn't worth having to go through my friend when I have a loss of service or an technical issue.