T-Mobile made the unfathomable choice to discontinue e-mail support, instead requiring users to go to live chat. However, you wouldn’t know this when visiting their support page:
Chat with Customer Care Specialist >
Fill out a quick form to chat live with one of our specialists. If all agents are busy, you can even send us an e-mail instead of waiting.
So, I typed up a nice long descriptive email, something that they would need to read and investigate before responding. But because T-Mobile doesn’t do email support any more, I’m being forwarded to their “instantservice.com” provided live chat service. Of course, they’re not going to be able to help, because they won’t have time to investigate the problem. Brilliant.
May 22nd, 2009 at 5:53 am
Messages entered into that support page form are passed to InstantService and queued for viewing by customer service agents in the InstantService interface. When chat agents are available, you’d receive quicker service than you’d ever get through email. And your “pre-chat message” on that form can be up to 3-times longer than this blog post (2,248 characters in length – I just tested the form). If you have included your telephone # in the message (as requested on the form page), you will be able to return to the chat and an agent can call up your previous message.
Still, entirely dumping email seems a little clunky if you’re not going to man live chat support 24/7, but that’s a T-Mobile problem, not an InstantService failure. Moreover, InstantService offers a comprehensive email support system alongside chat – why they wouldn’t use it is anyone’s guess.