Until they start charging for keystrokes, people will use the internet to hand companies their asses back to them on a platter when they treat them like crap. I did a Twitter search for "AT&T" after hearing about consumer complaints, and after going through an endless list of complaints except for one dude talking about that he got a discount from AT&T, but it took forever for him to be able to use it, which is a kind of back-handed compliment I suppose. I do not have a smart phone, but I need one and the question has been, iPhone vs. BlackBerry. I've come to no conclusion, but this certainly doesn't help Apple's case. "People were saying the Palm Pre would be the iPhone killer. ... nope, turns out that AT&T will be the iPhone killer", according to @brickworkz.
Long story short, with the iPhone 3.0 coming out, existing customers have to doll out $200-300 to upgrade. There are lots of technical complaints about tethering and MMS that I'll let others complain about at length. My complaint is the short-fall in customer care. Like most giants, they're good at attracting new clients, but not good at maintaining those relationships long term. How many times have one of your service providers offered some fantastic upgrade, offer or benefit to new customers that they won't extend to you, the loyal long-term loyalist? They apologize, explain their position, but all you really hear is sit down, shut up, and keep rowing, slave.
This is more to talk about customer depreciation than the merits of different phones or their service providers. My other least favourite depreciation tactic is the Reverse Sales Call. You call up to ask a question and they withhold the help you need until you sit through a sales pitch to upgrade or upsell my services. Perhaps when I have a problem to solve, and I've just run the gauntlet of "press one for this, press two for that", this is not the best time to be asking for more money. I'm just ranting at this point. I've come to no conclusion on iPhone vs. BlackBerry, but first I'll have to see what flaming hoops my current provider will want me to hop through to terminate my current service. And if anyone wants me to test out a Palm Pre, I'm wide open.
Posts
