After months of rumors, T-Mobile finally announced that the T-Mobile G2 phone would start taking pre-orders this weekend. I was psyched! I've had my G1 for a little over a year (when my Nokia 9500 Communicator that I loved finally died) and jumped online to do the pre-ordering. That's when I hit the existing customer roadblock. You see, the phone is $199 for new customers, but folks like me -- existing customers who have been with T-Mobile for several years now, the cost would be $329.
Now, I want to start by saying that the help I got when I went to a T-Mobile store was excellent. Really excellent. They did everything they could to try and help me make this work. They came up with options. I could cancel my account, pay some cancellation fee and then get a new account, porting my cell phone over. Or I could add a line for Sydney (who's only 9, so we don't really want her to have a phone), put the G2 on that line and then switch sim cards with my G1 so I wouldn't lose my phone number.
But since I'm getting a smart phone I would then need to add a $30/month internet service for a phone for Sydney, something that's not needed. Plus, that would add $720 ($30/month for 2 years) to the cost of the phone, and that seemed pretty dumb. I'm more then willing to re-up for another two years, I like my T-Mobile service. Heck, I'd re-up for 3 years to be treated like a new company.
So, here we are in the age of relationships, a time when the consumer is in control and yet T-Mobile still treats its new customer better then its existing customers. Not that this is only a T-Mobile issue, most, if not all, US carriers do the same thing.
So, maybe cell phone companies don't know that the consumers are in control today? Maybe they haven't gotten the memo's about this? Or maybe they just don't care that consumers are in control.
Or maybe we, the consumers, only think we're in control.
Cell carriers here in the US do all kinds of things that show that we're not in control. In fact, it was just announced that this new G2 won't support tethering (T-Mobile G2 Will Not Support Tethering At Launch) despite the fact that the phone supports it. Why? Because carriers would lose money on other services that they sell to let people tether their phones today.
So, I'll keep pestering T-Mobile in the hopes that I'll get the right deal on this phone and maybe they'll surprise me. But until that happens, it's pretty hard for me to believe that I'm in control.
Photo: Engadget Mobile