Comments on: T-Mobile Considering Discontinuing T-Mobile@Home Service?

By: billy

billy — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 02:43:20 +0000

TMO did not at launch, and does not today have the talent to market @home. TMO is now in shore up the quarterly numbers mindset. tmo will likely stumble their way into a deeper hole.

@home is cooked as “new” management is unlikely to risk creating success.

By: reply

reply — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 05:59:16 +0000

JakeB – I believe they offer a $15 a month instead of a $10 a month if you do not have a cell contract.

By: JakeB

JakeB — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:13:40 +0000

I’ve had Tmobile@Home service for 1 1/2 years and have been pretty happy with the service the past year (first six months was horrible). Anyway, I recently got a cell phone (AT&T) from my employer so I do not need my Tmobile cell phone any more. My cell phone has been out of its contract for a few months now but my @home service still has 6 months left. Is there a way to keep the @Home service without the cell contract? I know that was a requirement when I signed up 18 months ago but maybe something has changed. I would love to keep the @Home service (even if the price goes up a bit) but it sounds like I’ll have to pay an ETF of $100 if I cancel the @home line.

By: GS

GS — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:09:07 +0000

Man, you guys are complaining that Reps should get better training, that they should care about what theyre selling, and that they should wipe your ass on your way out the door. Fuck that! When you’ve been with a company for so many years and they still cant give you a raise more than $0.25 a year or if any at all, and when have to stand up all day unless you take a 15, I think you too will be drained and demotivated and your CS will go down the drain after a while. You know, its not even the raise that bothers me b/c Im pretty resourceful, but its the lack of chairs.

When i walk by every other carrier, they ALL have chairs with the exception of the greeter of course. How do you expect someone standing up all day, running back and forth from customer to customer, going to the back room, etc. for 5, sometimes 7 days a week, to provide world class customer service and all that other bullshit. Im not even gonna sit here and give you my detailed opinion on this as im sure you can draw your own conclusions, but Im completely confident that all my fellow co-workers will agree.

By: ThatDB

ThatDB — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 04:04:16 +0000

T-Mobile is not getting rid of @Home service, we are simply not going to be pushing it as much anymore ore doing much advertising for it.. As far as us not advertising it at all, that would be false. There were several advertisements both in print and on television for it. In addition to this, when reps were answering phones in the stores, they would say something like “Thank you for calling tmobile, home of the $10 home phone, my name is (insert name here) how can I help you?”
But anyway — it is still going to be available to customers. They may purchase the equipment for it either in store or online at tmobile.com..and thats pretty pretty much all there is to it. There is no longer a need for the unlimited UMA ftr to be added to the new plans (Even More & Even More Plus) because you can get unlimited calling for very cheap, about the same as adding the feature to those plans. It is, however, still available if a customer is on a legacy/grandfathered plan. The UMA technology itself is still available on all Tmobile UMA phones and will be put into upcoming devices because this alleviates signal issues for customers in problem areas where building a tower would either be too costly or local community will not allow a new tower to be built. the latter happens surprisingly frequently. Its funny, people will protest a new cell tower til they are blue in the face and then complain about not having signal.
Anyway – to sum it up, we will be keeping @Home, it will be available upon request, and the reps who assist with troubleshooting and activating the service will still remain in their positions. Also – in regards to all employees being on the same page – It is a little more difficult for a Tech rep to stay up to date on all aspects of billing and the same goes for a billing rep.. they are two completely different realms and rarely cross over, so that is why it can take a little longer for them to complete tasks that are outside of their scope. For a tech rep, maybe 1 out of 100 calls, maybe even less require accessing billing information in detail or making any account changes other than changing a web plan.

By: john

john — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 01:10:20 +0000

Actually, there is no more wifi unlimited calling feature, ie entirely removed from the billing system as it relates to the em and em plus plans, it is entirely incompatable, the designers of the system can make features that just don’t work with the plans all together.

By: mehere

mehere — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 00:11:16 +0000

welp I would be bummed if they drop @Home…I only pay 5 bucks a month for it…comes in handy except when you forget to pay your cell bill…dooooooohhhh

By: Bill48105

Bill48105 — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:14:43 +0000

Wow ItsMANgenta, $5 is it? LOL no wonder TMO reps don’t want to sell it. Anyway something I want to add that either points out reps like yourself don’t understand how @Home works (and therefore contributed to poor sales) or perhaps you just didn’t include it in your comment *BUT* FYI TMobile sells 2 pieces of @Home equipment.. (Well there was the old old WIFI@Home one that is NOT the same as @Home phone line that has long been discontinued that I won’t even go into) One is a Linksys/Cisco HiPort ROUTER & the other is a Cisco/Linksys ADAPTER. (I make the distinction because the ROUTER is as you said is a wifi router like average Joe would call up Geeksquad for vs ADAPTER is about as plug & play as they come. Plus the ROUTER is older style Linksys before they were bought from Cisco vs the ADAPTER is newer style Cisco after the buyout but guess that tidbit doesn’t really matter too much) Anyway, the point I’m tryin to make is that the ADAPTER requires NO CONFIG 99.9% of the time meaning if someone went to a TMo store & bought one & the sales person put the SIM in it they should be able to take it home & plug 3 cables in & wait for the blue PHONE light to come on. (Usually a firmware update is required which means it can take a good 10 minutes for that to download then it reboots & is ready but that’s here nor there because the customer doesn’t really need to know that, just plug the thing in & wait 1/2 hour & see if light is on & dialtone.) Or odds are the customer can figure out how to insert the SIM too because on the ADAPTER it is dead easy: Just slide SIM into slot until it clicks. Like I said almost true Plug & Play. In rare circumstances their home router will happen to be on same subnet or it might have a firewall/filters that block the traffic but if that was the case something like Vonage or such wouldn’t even work. Now the ROUTER on the other hand is a beastly mess for a few reasons. Many TMo reps had the wrong impression it was required for @Home service. Obviously for the @Home phone line it is not or why else would they sell the ADAPTER version too? BUT if you want the full ‘@Home experience’ then perhaps a TMo rep might be correct in pushing it so that anyone with a UMA WIFI@Home enabled phone can utilize the wireless function of the ROUTER version since it simplifies (ie automates) the UMA phone connecting to it (vs manually adding a non-TMobile router which isn’t too hard but the average person might struggle a bit) BUT if they already have a router (especially one with wifi) then adding the ROUTER version is redundant and has a higher change of problems than if they just got the ADAPTER instead. IMO the ADAPTER should have been sold 99% of the time over the ROUTER because of those issues. About the only 2 reasons to sell the ROUTER over the ADAPTER is if they needed 2 @Home line (There are 2 SIM slots but BEWARE they are shitty as hell & ez to break so odds are a customer will have troubles so not a good thing. Keep in mind if they really need 2 @Home lines they can just get 2 ADAPTERS instead which will work most of the time). The other would be if they didn’t have wireless already (especially if getting UMA phone) but if I were a TMO rep I’d suggest they get Geeksquad out to install one of THEIR routers & sell them an ADAPTER instead. Make Geeksquad do the heavy lifting & have Tmo sales focus on selling.

Anyhow my point wasn’t to bash you or attack TMo reps. I believe much of the problem with both @Home services (the home phone line & WIFI@Home aka UMA) is confusion as to what their purpose is (perhaps was at this point) and what was required to get them in the simplest fashion that would just work. After reading your comment about how Geeksquad would be required to setup @Home and that it’s like setting up WIFI it made me cringe because I thought to myself “No wonder they had a hard time selling & had high rate of returns!” Probably too little too late but hopefully this helps clarify some things. Heck maybe you TMo reps can break some @Home records before it gets dumped. :D

By: ItsMANgenta

ItsMANgenta — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 20:38:00 +0000

I will speak my opinion as an employee for T-Mobile for 4 years now. T-Mobile’s @Home phone service is/was a great idea however the execution was extremely poor. Marketing for the service was horrible as well as there was no advertising for it. T-Mobile left it up to the sales reps to be it’s advertising campaign.

If a customer came in for an upgrade or payment, they want the reps offering the service. Not only does the company only make a measly $10/mo on it but the sales reps were only making a $5 spiff on selling it. What rep wants to exhaust themselves pushing this thing to make $5? A rep would much rather exhaust themselves activating that unlimited plan waiting in line.

The service is not fool-proof. Let’s face it, if you’re tech savvy you can setup a wireless network at home with no problem. Non-tech savvy customers (the primary base of customers that would utilize a home phone regularly) rather call geek squad to set the wi-fi up. I mention this because an @Home phone service is basically setting up wi-fi in order to use the phone.

There are some good reasons for the service but for each and every one there are about 5 more reasons to get rid of it. We, as a company, will never move up the ranks by offering senseless services. The company should focus on upgrading the overall lineup. Android phones are awesome but not when AT&T and Verizon are getting the better ones. That’s a whole other argument. In short, I would love to see our @Home service disappear.

By: ItsMANgenta

ItsMANgenta — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 20:25:25 +0000

T-Mobile was offering those $200 for customer’s to port in from another carrier to help cover the costs of an ETF if applicable. It wasn’t just to activate an @Home service.