[pygorex]

I had a similar experience in a T-Mobile store a few doors down from my local Apple store. Wanted to get my hands on the Galaxy S3 to check it out, surf, etc. before purchase. Took the sales guy 10 minutes to find a demo model in the back-room. Then fumbled with the phone with the sales guy looking over my shoulder, constantly peppering me with questions and small-talk. Apparently he had to keep an eye on me, as they don't have their demo phones secured and didn't have the staff to prevent theft. No internet access on the phone either. Very awkward experience. Needless to say I did not purchase the phone.

[rogerbinns]

T-mobile is hurting pretty bad at the moment. Due to the whole AT&T attempted takeover they "optimised" many parts of the business. That included consolidating call centres and making call centre employees also have sales and similar quotas. They reduced own store staffing to absolute minimum levels. The corporate owner (DT) doesn't have much interest in T-Mobile, certainly not enough to invest or pay much attention to management.

Eventually the AT&T thing collapsed and tmobile sank to the bottom of various satisfaction ratings (from usually being at the top). There is much debate as to what the cause of the malaise is, and how to get out of it. Some think this is purely a lack of iPhone issue, while others have pointed to phone selection, customer service, coverage, management, marketing, sales and who knows what else. None of these things are easily fixed, although they are addressing the iPhone issue by changing frequency usage around to the more common ones used by AT&T and others.

There is a new CEO, and he has done the usual rallying the troops ra-ra stuff. As you noticed it didn't really help.