Sunday, June 21, 2009

Incivil servant

I have a broadband contract with T-Mobile, the severed arm of the former German communications monopoly, das Deutsche Fernmeldeamt. Their employees still have a tendency to bureaucratic give-a-damnedness, as the following example shows.

T-Mobile provides wireless services. I pay a flat monthly rate for a high-speed connection. As I reported recently, it turns out that the fine print in the contract allows T-Mobile to degrade my service for the remainder of any month in which I download a total of 5 gigabytes. I hit that limit again today around 18:00, and then it took over 5 minutes to load Crown's home page. There is probably high traffic around this time, but still, this is more like termination than degradation.

My father always told me to "go to the top" with complaints, and take a wad of bills with me. So I called the service line, but couldn't get past the first call center smoothie who took my call. I asked how much would I have to pay to upgrade my service to avoid this volume restriction, but was told that it was impossible to do that. The schmuck didn't even suggest an alternative. He seemed offended by my question, as if I had tendered a bribe.

2 comments:

AJP CROWN said...

He seemed offended by my question, as if I had tendered a bribe.
That just means you'd touched a nerve. Don't be put off by that kind of thing. It was his defenseless response to a reasonable suggestion.

Stuart Clayton said...

What good advice! I'd never thought of that. I often expect too much of people.

In a sense, one could say I'm a fair-minded guy, because I don't assume other people are inferior to me.

Another way of looking at it, unfortunately, is that I assume everybody is like me. So I am inclined to punch them if they get out of line, just as I expect to be punched. Isn't that called the Golden Rule?