“Stop the bullshit.”
Those words came straight from the mouth of John Legere, the CEO of T-Mobile. He’s referring to two year contracts which most carriers bog down their customers with.
T-Mobile officially kicked off its new ‘Uncarrier’ mobile plans today, ending the two-year contract model they’ve followed for so long. Verizon Wireless, AT&T and Sprint are still continuing to use the model and show no interest in ending such practices.
“This is the biggest crock of shit in my life. Do you have any idea how much you’re paying?”
To be fair, he has a pretty good argument. I’ll certainly agree that locking customers into two year contracts is a total ‘crock of shit,’ especially since most mobile devices are outdated in under a year. That’s not even taking into consideration how costly it all is.
Legere was in quite a rage when he spoke up on the subject, but apparently he had good reason.
“Carriers are really nice to you… once every 23 months.”
He continued to talk about the atrocities of two-year contract agreements, and about how much customers hate them, even though they love smartphones. Legere promises “if you come to T-Mobile, you’ve signed your last contract.”
To end his illustrious, yet fairly aggressive, speech he dropped this doozy.
“If we suck this month, drop us. Go somewhere else.”
I would say it’s a rare thing to hear a CEO telling you to go somewhere else if you hate their company’s offerings. Personally I can’t stand the mentality of “the customer is always right.” On the other hand, I also hate this new outlook companies have seemingly adopted, “I’m going to screw my customers out of every last cent.” Businesses genuinely need to find a happy medium between the two extremes.
I wouldn’t necessarily say that T-Mobile’s new plans are anything seriously game-changing, but it is undeniably refreshing to see someone trying something new. It’s hard to argue with that $50 unlimited plan, even more so now that there are no contracts involved.
T-Mobile probably won’t suck this month since it just announced it will be carrying the iPhone starting April 12th, and it will be running a nationwide 4G LTE network by year-end.
In hindsight, maybe that AT&T acquisition which fell through wasn’t such a dastardly thing after all.