An open letter to T-Mobile USA

This communication is explicitly not a request to renew my contract. I intend to remain OUT of contract until T-Mobile corrects some serious deficiencies in its service and phone offerings.

I was amused to receive a marketing piece from T-mobile today offering me $49.99. This was described as a "free month of service." Hardly. My average bill with T-mobile is always over $100. The goal of the marketing piece was to get me to renew my contract - which I will not do.

I have no complaints with customer service - once I got your support organization to take me seriously they bent over backwards to get the problem fixed. I am generally a happy customer.

Why won't I renew my contract - especially for a paltry fifty bucks?! Every so often I go to the "upgrade phone" section of your site and I see that I already own the most "advanced" most expensive model on offer - the Wing.

T-mobile was "a day late and a dollar short" six months ago with regard to rolling out 3g coverage. It adds insult to injury that your company has chosen a frequency band designed to be incompatible with any other 3g device.

I will renew my contract...
- when there is 3g coverage in the Phoenix metro area and...
- when there are phones on the market that not only support the incompatible 1700 mHz AWS band but are usable to roam on 3g services abroad.

I have no intention of switching to AT&T. Alltel, Sprint, Verizon - forget it, CDMA phones are useless outside the USA. Looking at my usage history you'll see that more months than not I have internataional roaming or text messaging charges.

So, once 3g coverage is available in Phoenix and there are "business-class Windows Mobile or Android" 3g phones available (other than the few 3g feature-free toys available - targeted at high school kids and soccer moms) then I'll sign a contract. Until then, forget it. I'll pay my bill every month and stay contract free until T-Mobile USA catches up with the rest of the world.
(signature)

A copy of the same message was submitted verbatim to T-mobile's customer service. As soon as I publish this post I will take this $49.99 "voucher" and feed it to my paper shredder.