Kieran Jones Co UK

I have a T-Mobile contract, and it’s great really. I have their Flext 35 package with the Web ‘n’ Walk option added too it so that I have basically £90 of a allowance to use on either texts or calls and I get “unlimited” mobile internet and email access from my phone. Pretty good and I would recommend a Flext contract to anyone really.

But they have recently changed my opinion, following some Ofcom guidelines they felt the need to increase the costs of their call rates to 0845 and other non-geographic telephone numbers, in my case landing me with a 100% price increase.

Now, seeing as I hate my phone (An LG Viewty) I saw this as an excellent opportunity to ditch the contract free of charge, afterall a 100% price increase is clearly large enough to satisfy the clause in the contract about price increases above the retail price index, so called “material detriment”. But alas, T-Mobile are sneaky and in their recent T&Cs update moved numbers starting 08 into non-standard charges, making them exempt from the clause. Clearly premeditated when they changed the terms in preparation for a price increase they knew people would want to leave over.

I know companies are meant to make profit, but to make profit at any sneaky little turn they can at the expense of customer satisfaction? Seems a bit wrong to me, very wrong in fact, not just a bit.

Now, I will admit that perhaps, possibly there is a large part of me that saw this as an opportunity to ditch T-Mobile just weeks before a certain phone produced by Apple is released with O2. And I’m sure that many people are the same, but still had this been at any other time it’s still wrong to abuse your customer relationships like this and to just take money at any chance you can.

Of course I still want the new phone what with it now being 3G and of course the addition of uber cool MobileMe but I guess if I want rid of T-Mobile I’ll just have to pay the termination fee… grr. Not sure I can really justify paying it just so I can get a shiny new phone, haha.

What you think? Is a 3G iPhone really worth it?

Update - I have just written a letter to T-Mobile to cancel my contract under the terms and conditions (7.2.5.2 and 7.2.5.3 to be precise). We shall await with interest as to whether it works. I think I’m correct, and I put forward a very logical and easy to follow argument. My hope is that they will just give in if I cause enough trouble rather than fight me, although either way is fine by me.