NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Confusion or Ripoff? T-Mobile is "Hiding" Available Minutes from Subscribers
Confusion or Ripoff? T-Mobile is "Hiding" Available Minutes from Subscribers
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000600.html
Greetings. Why would a major cellular carrier want to "hide"
available usage minutes from their subscribers?
This is a question I've been forced to ask during months of runarounds
with T-Mobile, after their their Web site redesign completely
obliterated (at least from the standpoint of my account) the concept
of "conditional call forwarding minutes" (CCFM).
If you use third-party Internet-integrated voice services in
conjunction with your T-Mobile phone, such as Google Voice or YouMail
(I use both), you probably really do care about CCFM. Subscribers who
program their phones for forwarding to such services -- to replace the
seriously defective ( http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000459.html )
T-Mobile voicemail system if nothing else -- for call reject, call no
answer, or called party unavailable, are likely using up CCFM for the
duration of each such processed call.
For the typical G1 phone T-Mobile account that I use, I have a monthly
"bucket" of 1000 T-M "Whenever" minutes for normal use making and
receiving calls. But I also have a bucket of 500 CCFM, that are only
used during conditionally call-forwarded calls (e.g., to Google Voice
and/or YouMail in my case). If I use up my 500 CCFM, those calls
start eating Whenever minutes.
But how do I even know about the 500 CCFM bucket? Because on the old
T-M Web site, there was a clearly displayed line item on an account
management page that showed both the Whenever and CCFM minutes in
terms of their bucket sizes and current usages.
However, when T-M redesigned their site some months ago (again, from
the standpoint of my account at least), several strange things
happened. One issue is that they completely broke my text messaging
capabilities, due to bugs in their message filtering configurations.
This took a bunch of calls and effort to fix.
Another problem is that their new site generally requires plowing
through about five pretty pages to get basically the same information
that you used to be able to see on one fairly utilitarian page.
Most interesting to me though, was that all mention of CCFM vanished.
No mention of the 500 bucket, no explicit summary of current CCFM
usage.
When I started talking to T-M about this months back, I was assured
(multiple times) that this was just a short-term transitional issue
and that the site would soon clearly show CCFM usage again. But today
I was told that -- oops -- nothing like that is in the current site
redesign road map, apparently because "too few customers care about
CCFM."
I find this explanation to be unacceptable, particularly in light of
the rapid increase in people using conditionally forwarded third-party
services. One wonders why T-M suddenly wants to keep CCFM as such a
secret?
Now, to the observant browser of the T-M site, it's possible to figure
out some aspects of this situation. On your call usage record, CCFM
calls will be flagged as forwarded calls if you manually decode their
status designations. However, it's worth noting that they are not
separately indicated as CCFM or unconditionally forwarded calls -- and
the latter always use your Whenever minutes, not your CCFM minutes.
It's also possible to discern your current CCFM usage (though not the
size of your CCFM bucket -- only the reps can now tell you that). In
the account usage area of the T-M site, you'll see a listing of your
current total usage of Whenever minutes, followed by an itemized call
list. If you go to the very end of the final page of itemized calls,
you'll see a value for the total number of minutes used. If your
account is like mine, and you're using CCFM, this number will be
larger than the listed total of Whenever minutes used to date in the
current account cycle. The difference between the two, in my case
anyway, is the current CCFM usage.
I'd like to think that T-M is being truthful when they tell me that
they no longer wish to list CCFM on their Web site since it may
somehow "confuse" customers. On the other hand, for persons who might
consider using third-party voicemail and other enhanced services in
conjunction with T-Mobile, knowing about the CCFM bucket and related
usage could be crucial to their decision-making processes.
One might also note that most Internet-integrated third-party services
allow for voicemail message retrieval via unlimited data connections
rather than by using up standard Whenever voice minutes, so perhaps,
just perhaps, T-Mobile has a possible financial incentive for not
encouraging users to take advantage of such third-party services.
In any case, services such as YouMail and Google Voice are the wave of
the future, and CCFM are a key part of the usage of such systems for
many subscribers.
T-Mobile should immediately return to their old Web site's policy of
clearly displaying all users' CCFM bucket sizes and current total CCFM
usage, without any more excuses attempting to justify the removal of
this information.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
- People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad
- Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, GCTIP - Global Coalition
for Transparent Internet Performance - http://www.gctip.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein