A few weeks after my poor experience at the T-Mobile store, I found myself driving an acquaintance home from an event I hosted. Let’s call her Amy. Amy has a day job working for T-Mobile, and occasionally takes on freelance jobs for me.

I spent the early part of the ride mocking the drones who Amy works with at T-Mobile, albeit at a different store. Amy very badly wanted my business, her store is according to her the lowest volume store in the Chicago area, she was saving up for a move out of the area, and she knows me personally, so she had incentive to take care of me. I was willing to give her the business, but explained to her that she only knows my friendly side, and should T-Mobile prove to be further incompetent, she would see my ugly side. I explained this to her in simple language, and with no diplomacy or sugar coating. Hey, Amy, I love you, but if you screw this up… Our relationship is out the window, and I will become your nightmare customer. My cellphone is my office. I work in a virtual world, without it my businesses are at risk, and that is not happening on my watch.

Amy assured me that she understood my warnings, and nothing would go wrong.

It doesn’t take a genius to see the obvious foreshadowing to this story does it?

I was sick, and Amy took my information over the phone to setup my phones from her store. She would bring them home for me, and I could pick them up later on. Of course, porting my number over took place faster than anticipated (a bright point to this sequence of events) and I was without phone service. I dragged my sniffling, coughing self into the car and drove over to her place to pickup the phones.

Amy was kind enough to setup my phone for the WIFI service I was interested in (and had paid for.) I had chosen the WiFi plan for both clear signal, and because it allowed me to drop my cell minutes plan in price and use.

I went back home to use the free WiFi minutes on my phone for the next two days I was home sick. I did not leave the house being incredibly ill, but imagine my surprise in finding that all my minutes were disappearing. Apparently the cell minutes were in use, and the WiFi never worked. I immediately called Amy, who it turns out hadn’t realized that the WiFi deal didn’t work on my plan.

Her computer at the store had accepted what we were trying to do, but corporate hadn’t changed the computer to reflect the fact that they didn’t want her doing it. Has anyone bothered to inform the front line employees what decisions corporate is making?

Over the next few days, I wound up spending twelve, yes, 12, hours cancelling my T-Mobile account, trekking to Amy’s store to return my phones (she wasn’t there,) fighting for refunds, signing up for renewal of service with Verizon, porting my numbers back, switching my phone contacts, and responding to the customer service survey from T-Mobile.

My relationship with Amy is pretty much over. She finally left me a voicemail five days later after I called her from the store while trying to return the phones and cancel service. Her voicemail was matter of fact, her instant messages were hostile. Apparently my candid responses to the T-Mobile survey got her into a bit of trouble. Regardless of the level of culpability she might have had in this, T-Mobile seemed to blame her for not keeping me happy. Oh well, I suppose she would have been quite a bit more upset had I sent her a bill for my wasted time.