T-Mobile Fail. A Little Effort, Please?

I'm a little, no, a lot irritated with T-Mobile. A couple months ago, I was looking to upgrade from my Motorola RAZR to something a little more fun, sexy and with current technology. The iPhone G3 being the benchmark for what I was looking for. So I called T-Mobile to find out what they had to offer. Let me preface that I don't need or want a Blackberry, I don't have that kind of life that requires a Blackberry, nor do I want one. The friendly T-Mobile representative I spoke with was not at all shocked that I was calling to basically tell them I was going to switch to ATT. More like, this person was tired of having the same conversation with different T-Mo customers all day and really at this point, didn't give a shit anymore. Having already sent his resume to ATT, just waiting for a call back.

What I was told was T-Mo had two "smart phones" on offer. One of many different models of Blackberry, or the SideKick which can barely be classified as a phone, let alone a "smart phone." Being a late 30's heterosexual male, I laughed at the mention of a SideKick and asked if that was it. Was there anything coming out in the near future that would make me want to stay with T-Mo? A company I really liked? Nope, nothing. Of course, now I see that the person I was talking to really was ready to quit his job and jump to the competition. Hindsight being 20/20 and all. The G1, recently released to the public was a secret at the time, at least a secret kept from the Cellular Carrier Jumping Public, the CCJP I like to call them.

Ultimately, I left my beloved T-Mo and signed up for a two year contract with ATT. I don't really like ATT, but what was I going to do? Sip my coffee at Starbucks while tapping away on my SideKick? I don't think so. If I had known that T-Mo was going to have a phone like the G1 within months of my switching, I would have waited. So now I'm stuck with ATT. Don't get me wrong, I like my iPhone, in spite of all its annoying problems, that Apple will never fix. Mostly, I'm irritated that no one at T-M0bile had the forsight to tell the people who answer the phones, that T-Mo DID have something coming, and with a little patience, T-Mo customers would be rewarded.

In the mean time, the CCJP will wait out their contracts with a cellular providers that they don't really like (ATT) with a phone that is far from perfect (iPhone G3). But really I want to thank the kind people at T-Mobile for making me and all the other people who jumped ship feel like ungrateful sods. Oh, and for costing us all a bunch of money for cancelling our contracts and buying stupid iPhones. Given the oportunity I would have taken the chance on the new G1 from T-Mobile/Google. Even knowing that there would be growing pains. Thanks.

And one more thing to all those people who bitch and moan about first generation "smart things" being flawed and to not buy till the second generation... The iPhone G3, the Second Generation iPhone, is far from perfect. There is no cut and paste feature. Your address book will not synch with your calendar or your email or SMS. If you want to transfer a phone number from an email or SMS to your address book, you still have to use analog technology, the pencil and paper. The camera will not zoom in or out. There is no video feature. Google Maps is great, but as a GPS navigation device it is garbage. Battery life is terrible. The QWERTY keyboard for texting or email is borderline unusable for anyone with human size fingers. I can keep going on and on. So, stick that "wait for the second generation" argument in yer rear. You know who you are, and I know you're reading this now.

Photo of first Playstation is an example of First Generation technology that people said wouldn't work or would have so many problems that people wouldn't buy it. Hmm.