I recently gave Tmobile a try and they've made me regret it immensely. Every single customer-facing part of their web services (activation, account management, etc) is riddled with pants-on-fire bugs, and their phone support is terrible.
When I tried to activate my new account online, I got to a form for payment that was demanding I fill out fields that didn't exist on the page. This is insane from a major carrier. I then had to call in to activate, and after having me on hold for half an hour, they made me verify with one of those things where they want to know a nearby intersection from where you lived six years ago - which of course I couldn't answer. I hung up on that guy, called again, and they let me verify my card through my bank. And now that I had an account, I tried checking out their account management site, and it was so broken as to be nigh unusable. And then I found out like the OP that a noticeable amount of sites are broken or just plain unreachable on their network.
I now understand why they can offer such a great-sounding plan for $30/month.
I've actually had really good experiences with T-Mo support. They have different tiers of "support" but if you get past what is essentially the "weed-out" tier, they are by far the nicest and most helpful telco support staff I've worked with.
I came from AT&T and can't compare T-Mo to much else. Do any of the telcos have what you would consider to be fantastic support?
Entirely possible I've just been unlucky. I should have maybe tried escalating. Virgin Mobile's service was good to me and their website at least worked even if it was simple, and Verizion was pleasant if overly expensive.
But when Tmobile forces me to call, which I was trying to avoid, because their web engineering is so completely terrible, and then I have to wait on hold for half an hour, and then the cust service guy acts like I'm a criminal when I'm going through all this pain to give them money - a saner person would've given up.
One thing I fail to understand is how they failed to inform me, with this magical new ETF refund feature that they have, that I couldn't preorder the new Sony Xperia straight from the website and get my ETF refund. Now I have to go trade both my old AT&T device and my new T-Mobile one back at the store and get a new new Xperia Z1S, even though their own website for device trade-in says nothing about this.
Ohoho, just wait until you need to go somewhere semi-rural, like a distant college town. The reception is SO BAD! You'll get 0 bars indoors, and maybe 1-2 bars of HSPA+ outside if you're lucky. Here in Charlottesville, VA, things are really, really bad.
That's actually the one part that's been great - well, aside from the price. I live in a pretty rural area. On Verizon you can't connect to 3G from my house, and can't even use voice unless you stand in front of a south-facing window. Tmobile gives a full 5 bars with very decent 3G speed. And it's not just around my house, the broad area is incredibly well covered.
I realize that's probably just local circumstances and I know Tmobile's network is a fair bit smaller, but I can't personally complain about that aspect.
Comments
I recently gave Tmobile a try and they've made me regret it immensely. Every single customer-facing part of their web services (activation, account management, etc) is riddled with pants-on-fire bugs, and their phone support is terrible.
When I tried to activate my new account online, I got to a form for payment that was demanding I fill out fields that didn't exist on the page. This is insane from a major carrier. I then had to call in to activate, and after having me on hold for half an hour, they made me verify with one of those things where they want to know a nearby intersection from where you lived six years ago - which of course I couldn't answer. I hung up on that guy, called again, and they let me verify my card through my bank. And now that I had an account, I tried checking out their account management site, and it was so broken as to be nigh unusable. And then I found out like the OP that a noticeable amount of sites are broken or just plain unreachable on their network.
I now understand why they can offer such a great-sounding plan for $30/month.
I've actually had really good experiences with T-Mo support. They have different tiers of "support" but if you get past what is essentially the "weed-out" tier, they are by far the nicest and most helpful telco support staff I've worked with.
I came from AT&T and can't compare T-Mo to much else. Do any of the telcos have what you would consider to be fantastic support?
Entirely possible I've just been unlucky. I should have maybe tried escalating. Virgin Mobile's service was good to me and their website at least worked even if it was simple, and Verizion was pleasant if overly expensive.
But when Tmobile forces me to call, which I was trying to avoid, because their web engineering is so completely terrible, and then I have to wait on hold for half an hour, and then the cust service guy acts like I'm a criminal when I'm going through all this pain to give them money - a saner person would've given up.
One thing I fail to understand is how they failed to inform me, with this magical new ETF refund feature that they have, that I couldn't preorder the new Sony Xperia straight from the website and get my ETF refund. Now I have to go trade both my old AT&T device and my new T-Mobile one back at the store and get a new new Xperia Z1S, even though their own website for device trade-in says nothing about this.
Ohoho, just wait until you need to go somewhere semi-rural, like a distant college town. The reception is SO BAD! You'll get 0 bars indoors, and maybe 1-2 bars of HSPA+ outside if you're lucky. Here in Charlottesville, VA, things are really, really bad.
That's actually the one part that's been great - well, aside from the price. I live in a pretty rural area. On Verizon you can't connect to 3G from my house, and can't even use voice unless you stand in front of a south-facing window. Tmobile gives a full 5 bars with very decent 3G speed. And it's not just around my house, the broad area is incredibly well covered.
I realize that's probably just local circumstances and I know Tmobile's network is a fair bit smaller, but I can't personally complain about that aspect.