Srcasm

As everyone around me knows, I’ve become a huge fan of the G1 and the Android OS.  I’ve written about it a few times on the blog and I will continue to.  Today’s post is more about the service provider behind the product.

In my mind, TMobile never had great coverage.  I tested a TMobile Blackberry 8700 about 3 years ago and was getting dropped calls right in Olde City, Philadelphia.  That’s just not good.  Sure the coverage was decent on the highways and even up near my parents house in Quakertown, PA but to have calls drop out in a major city, no way I could use it.

Fast forward about 3 years to today.  The G1 is an excellent phone.  From design to execution it has been a total pleasure to work with (not that it hasn’t come with its kinks).

I called up TMobile yesterday and spoke to a wonderful woman named Luciana.  Her rep ID ends in 32880 and she’s in the Dallas, TX call center.  She was pleasant to talk to, she understood my problem (the hing seemed a little wobbly and I didn’t want it to fall apart) and she simply ordered me a new one — free of charge.  I didn’t even have to go into a store, they ship it UPS to me.

Many people might think it’s crazy that I’m excited about such a simple thing but calling customer service at any cell phone company can be aggravating.  I will usually go through 4 or 5 different people before I find the one I need to talk to and then they send me through a whirlwind of questions until they finally come to the conslusion they should, replace it.  TMobile didn’t make me do this at all.

I will definitely be sticking with TMobile for the time being and I will be trying to give Luciana a call the next time I have any issues.  TMobile is lucky to have someone like her on their staff because she just won them a customer that was with AT&T Wireless for 6 years and a blog post dedicated to them.  Customer service FTW!

Frank Eliason (aka @ComcastCares) and his team of phenomenal people are at it again!  They’ve had a bit of publicity on ZDNet, Brian Solis’ blog and even the Get Satisfaction crew is getting satisfied.

Today, I had a strange issue — I could no longer get the music channels on my digital box.  A quick reboot of the box didn’t fix it so I sent an email to Frank’s team.  Within the hour Catherine, from PA/De Corporate Escalations, had both called me and emailed me to see if we could get to the bottom of my problem.  After a quick call back, she had booked a service call for 7-9pm on Thursday (that’s right, a two hour window next day).  About 5 minutes later she called to ask if anyone had sent a signal to the box yet.  Nope?  She did and within seconds the music channels reappeared.  The fiancée was happy and so was I and she got to close a ticket in probably near-record time.  I want to make sure I say thanks to that whole team.  And keep up the great work, Comcast.

As for everyone else, learn from this.  Comcast has had historically poor support but they are working their butts off to get better.  When I call Verizon, AT&T, PGW and the rest of the bunch, I would love to actually get an educated, nice person on the phone — or at least be able to reach out to them on Twitter.