Theft by Phone

Today I am sharing with you an injustice that has been perpetrated against me and my family.  Have you ever been subjected to ‘overage’ charges by your phone carrier?  Were the charges reasonable?  Well, mine were not.  In my opinion, the financial penalty charged against my account for using too many minutes last month is ethically indefensible.  They may have the legal right to suck my bank account dry, but their actions are nevertheless immoral. 

Following is the letter I sent to my carrier today.  Even though most or all companies use similar tactics, you will notice that I include the identity of the offending organization.  They don’t care about customer service, they don’t care about customer satisfaction, they don’t care about what is ethical or unethical.  What they care about is getting your money into their corporate account.  Use this information as you will, and be warned. 

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T-Mobile Customer Relations

P.O. Box 37380

Albuquerque, NM 87176-7380

To whom it may concern:

Funny way to start a letter, isn’t it?  “To whom it may concern.”  But this issue does indeed concern me, and I hope that it soon will concern you, the recipient.  I hope that in a short amount of time it will concern some people higher up in the T-Mobile organization.  Time will tell.

Here are the unvarnished facts.  The normal monthly payment on my T-Mobile account is about $90.  January $90.  February $94.  March $91.  A bit high, but agreed and expected.  Then comes my most recent bill.  $383.  Really?  $383?!  No, I didn’t miss a payment.  So what happened??

Apparently, one of the people on my plan went over their allotted minutes, and received a few texts, as well.  Wow.  Perhaps a small additional fee would be appropriate.  But let me tell you what is NOT appropriate.  Quadrupling my monthly payment is NOT appropriate!

What did it cost T-Mobile to provide those extra minutes?  A few pennies for electricity or server usage?  A dollars-worth of accelerated maintenance?  Apparently T-Mobile wants me simply to accept that an additional $290 is a reasonable charge for those extra minutes.

Let me tell you something, T-Mobile.  Your fee may be legal (I’ll be checking on that) but it sure as hell is neither reasonable nor ethical.  Perhaps you have found a legalistic way to justify robbing me and my family.  Probably you will get away with it.  But it is NOT going unnoticed.

Now I understand why T-Mobile – and most of the other cellular and cable providers out there – force their customers into contracts.  It’s not so you can plan to meet the anticipated need.  It’s not to enable you to provide better service.  No, your demand for contractual arrangements as a business model is for two unspoken and insidious purposes:  (1) To establish legal justification to stick your corporate hands into the pockets of innocent customers who are unlucky enough to have chosen you as their provider and naïve enough to think going a few minutes over the plan limit will be okay.  (They think that because they are naïve enough to trust you to do the right thing, which is laughable to a profit-driven organization like T-Mobile, isn’t it?.  Funny, huh?)  The second reason to insist on contracts?  It is (2) to legally bind customers to your company so that it is difficult for them to leave when they realize how despicable your business practices are.

Your quadrupling of my bill for those extra minutes is like my grocer charging me $1 for the first head of cabbage in my shopping cart, but charging $3.25 for the second head of cabbage, because I was on the “One Cabbage Plan’.  Would you take that from your grocer?  I wouldn’t.

You are a part of the reason the masses are beginning to turn against capitalism as it is presented in America.  You see, most of them don’t have enough education or experience to realize that this is not actually capitalism.  Real free-market capitalism would mean your customers would continue to do business with you because they like the service you provide and the price at which you provide it – or they would be free to seek the services they want from another provider.  This is NOT capitalism.  This is a quasi-legal scheme to extract massive amounts of money from the bank accounts of unsuspecting (or jaded and hopeless) people for an insignificant return.  You are able to do this because of that contract you force on customers as a precondition to service.

I don’t know how we the public allowed a handful of companies to gain this sort of power over us.  It feels like a monopoly.  It’s not, of course, because T-Mobile and the other providers are separate entities.  Yet they all play this rip-off game the same way, leaving the customer no real choice.  Maybe it’s more like price-fixing, which is also illegal.  Except that this is more a matter of illicit practice-fixing.

You probably will get away with picking my pocket.  In fact, today I am mailing the tribute you have demanded.  You may even suck a little more out of me because I am a few days late owing to investigation of all this.  That’ll add insult to my injury, won’t it?  That ought to show me who’s in control, right? 

You know what you won’t be able to do, though?  You won’t get my respect.  And as soon as I find a company that is demonstrably more ethical, you won’t keep my business.

You know what else you won’t have?  My silence.  Feel free to read this letter again on my blog.  You can find it with a web search for any quotable phrase herein.  Frankly, I don’t care if you read it on my blog or not.  I didn’t put it there for you.  I put it there because I want to warn other trusting souls of the dangers they may not suspect that are inherent in your unethical corporate practices.

Enjoy your ill-gotten gains.  Your time to fleece the public eventually will come to an end.  Soon, I hope.

Sincerely,

[Gryphem]