[cjs_ac]

The danger in assuming that all your customers who request support are the sort of person who couldn't empty water from a boot with instructions written on the heel is that all of your competent customers will seek out your more respectful competitors, leaving you with only those who couldn't empty the boot, thus maximising your support costs.

[omcnoe]

It’s a self fulfilling prophecy. You can see these exact same market dynamics at work in the mobile telco industry. Newer online only upstarts able to save on costs because they don’t operate a retail store you can visit to get help resetting your email password.

[teeray]

It’s always amazing going to these stores and seeing the support they provide for frequent “how do I computer?” questions. To me, this is like going to the water department because you need a new faucet on the kitchen sink. We make no such distinctions about who fixes what for purveyors of Internet services though.

[dehrmann]

One time, I needed this. I lost my phone with a physical SIM card and needed a replacement that day. Now I'm trying to remember the eSIM transfer flow to know if this is still an issue.

But also, which MVNO should you go to? Carriers supposedly prioritize their own customers, so it feels a bit like running on spot instances.

[karlgkk]

> Carriers supposedly prioritize their own customers

They explicitly do, even among their own customers and plans. If you Google the carrier name plus QCI, you’ll find tables where people have documented, which plans are in which priority group

[wolvoleo]

Yes. Basically: you get what you pay for.

I've also seen MVNOs be denied frequency bands or cells that were in the highest demand, leading to worse connectivity despite being on the same network.

[eru]

> But also, which MVNO should you go to? Carriers supposedly prioritize their own customers, so it feels a bit like running on spot instances.

If you are so paranoid, just get multiple SIMs? Most phones support that these days, especially multiple eSIM. And the plans are really cheap (at least where I live).

[neild]

Mint (T-Mobile MVNO) has been great for me, $20/month/line and my one experience with international travel was good ($20 for 10 days). I used to be on Verizon and the quality of service doesn’t seem any worse while the price is dramatically lower.

[SapporoChris]

Mint works well until it doesn't. I travel a lot and use voice over ip(VoIP). One day I called and got an automated message that my account needed funds. It didn't, my annual payment was months away.

My call to tech support was the generic worst. He insisted there was trouble with my current cell tower and I should reboot my phone. (ignoring the fact that I was able to get automated message). I explained I was using voice over ip, but the tech support didn't seem to understand that technology. Perhaps it wasn't in the script. I was on the call for about 30 minutes and eventually gave up. Phone started working about eight hours later.

Previous issue was with their roaming in foreign countries, however with VoIP that hasn't been an issue for years. So, a couple problems in about eight years. I rank them as one of the best among the terrible options.

[ericpauley]

Insisting on saying VoIP to the Mint rep instead of WiFi Calling (the term used by Apple, Google, Mint, and practically everyone else) is asking for a bad time.

[gzread]

Indeed. To a carrier, VoIP means WhatsApp, Discord, Google Meet.

[piperswe]

US Mobile gets you QCI8 (same priority as Verizon postpaid) when you're on the Verizon network with a 5G device, and they let you pay for QCI8 on AT&T.

[mortenjorck]

USM is the only MVNO I've seen that actually advertises QCI tiers. I had to look the term up when I was initially considering them, as I'd never even encountered it before. It was a major factor in finally feeling confident I wouldn't be giving up too much by leaving AT&T.

[craftkiller]

eSIM transfers are an absolute nightmare on T-Mobile. I recently did two of them and both times, the transfer started but never finished, so I ended up with no service on either device. That means no ability to call their support line and no ability to receive the confirmation SMS they use to verify you are the correct person. They also immediately permanently nuke your physical SIM card so the only way to go back to sanity is to purchase another $10 physical sim card or get one of the physical sim cards that you load eSIMs onto (I did the latter so it won't self-destruct every time I do a transfer).

1. They only do transfers through their native app, not on their website. To log in to their native app, they will do SMS verification. So I sure hope you are still logged in before they lose your eSIM and leave you with no service at all.

2. If you are able to get into their native app so you can access their tech support, their AI chatbot will flat-out lie to you and tell you that T-Mobile cannot send you a QR code to download your eSIM (even though T-Mobile's own website states that they can). If you ask politely for a human, it will resist. I've found "connect me to a human you worthless fucking bot" is the secret passcode to get a real human.

3. If you request they send you a QR code, some of their support staff will ignore that request and still try to initiate the transfer through their app, so clearly requesting the QR code is not a common procedure.

4. When you request a QR code, even though you provide the EID, they will ask for an IMEI number. They then generate the QR code for whatever EID they have associated with your IMEI number in their database, completely ignoring the EID number you sent them. They did this to me _three_ times. The only way I managed to break the cycle was I sent them an IMEI number for a phone that was never on their network so they'd finally listen to me when I told them my EID number.

I'm never buying a phone without a physical sim card slot again. There's nothing wrong with the eSIM technology but the carriers have decided to make it as miserable as possible. The hardest part about transferring a physical SIM is finding a paperclip.

[dghlsakjg]

Wow. That really sucks.

As a counterpoint (not sure if this was t-mobile, apple, or both), I just upgraded from an iPhone 11 with physical sim, to iPhone 17 with esim.

All I had to do was hold the new phone next to the old one, and it just transferred the line over and deactivated the old sim automatically. I wasn't even in the US (so not even on their network), and it was stupidly seamless.

It sounds like t-mobile support has gone downhill. Last time I had to contact support was 2020, and it was really easy back then. I rarely had to wait more than 5 minutes to get a human, and I once had an issue escalated to the "executive resolutions" team and resolved to my satisfaction the day it was opened.

[joecool1029]

Apple’s system mostly works. If you need to reissue an esim without being able to transfer from an existing device on T-Mobile though need to either call in and give imei or get past the chatbot and there’s a page text support can give you to enter details. I was never able to successfully use the shit t-life app’s manage esim option.

[craftkiller]

> Last time I had to contact support was 2020, and it was really easy back then

Looks like that was 2 CEOs ago (Mike Sievert in 2020 and Srini Gopalan in 2025) so one of them probably bears the responsibility for this decline.

2024 might have been the start of forcing us to fight with toasters: https://www.t-mobile.com/news/business/t-mobile-launches-int...

and 2024 seems to also be when they locked down their esim transfer process: https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/1cnphk4/android_es...

So I guess Mike Sievert drove t-mobile into the ground?

[sagarm]

You were on the happy path. I just had to get involved for a family member that broke their Apple phone and couldn't get their SIM transferred. Even after adding them as an authorized user under duress, they had to physically go to a T-Mobile store to get their phone on the network.

[joecool1029]

> When you request a QR code, even though you provide the EID, they will ask for an IMEI number.

Everything else you say is accurate but they do not require this, T-Mobile is the only major in the US that doesn’t match EID to IMEI. I know because I use a removable esim (esim.me) euicc with multiple phones. I have to read the super long eid off to support to activate it. I cannot activate service on this card with verizon or at&t as its eid doesn’t match to an imei for them.

[craftkiller]

I think you're misunderstanding. I'm not saying T-Mobile locks the EID and IMEI together. I'm saying their tech support will completely ignore any EID you send them and instead look up an EID in their database based on the IMEI you send them. If you manage to convince the tech support to actually listen to you and use the correct EID then yes, everything will work out fine and you'll be able to move the card across devices.

I was also using a removable esim (from jmp.chat) and they did this to me three times. Each time it went like this:

> Me: Please send me a QR code to download my esim. My EID is XXXXXXXX

> Them: Thanks for providing your EID, please send me your IMEI (the first time this was just a plain message, the 2nd and 3rd time they sent me a link to a form to submit my IMEI to them)

> Me: <sends them my IMEI>

<at this point, the first two representatives initiated a transfer through their app and told me to wait 2 hours and then the transfer would finish. I told them whatever automatic transfer they just initiated will not work and they _need_ to send me the QR code.>

> Them: What is your e-mail address

> Me: My e-mail address is [e-mail]

and then they'd send me a QR code. I'd then attempt to download it to my jmp.chat esim and I'd get an error that the EID was incorrect. Then, I'd try using the QR code to activate the built-in eSIM on the phone with the IMEI that I sent them, and it would work, proving that they were looking up the EID for the IMEI that I sent them rather than paying attention to the EID that I started the chat with.

The 4th and final time, I sent them my Librem 5's IMEI which had never been on T-Mobile and does not support eSIM. They told me that the phone was carrier locked, I assured them it wasn't and explicitly told them "it is important the QR code is for the EID I provided you. The past representatives have ignored that, leading to the error message <pasted the error from EasyLPAC's logs that was something like EID is incorrect>". THAT time they finally listened and sent a QR code for the correct EID, which let me download the eSIM to my jmp.chat card. At that point I was able to move the card across devices without issue.

[joecool1029]

Apologies on getting back late but… I’ve never had that experience. Historically I would call during day and get someone stateside. They would ask for IMEI and I would say ‘it’s not in your db but EID works’ and then they’d let me read that off, never an issue. Now I use the chat, it’s faster since they just give a portal link you drop the details to.

Call during day or you get the Philippines and they don’t understand specific requests like this as well. If you must do it at night use the chat route.

[dv_dt]

Ive been happy with US mobile - you can actually switch between their VZ backed network or their ATT backed network.

[yencabulator]

Google Fi punches above its weight class as an MVNO. It's apparently often even prioritized better than many telcos' own cheap plans.

(Obvious downside: It's Google.)

[mey]

Personally switched from VZW to Google Fi. It's on TMOs network. As you can imagine, when engaging with Google's support was hilarious when there was something I needed, but overall I don't miss Verizon and pay drastically less.

[laurencerowe]

Is Google Fi particularly cheap? Their normal prices seem to start at $35/month for 30GB of data which is more than Verizon's Visible plans at $25/month. (The current 50% off offer on Google Fi does seem a good deal though.)

I ended up switching to Mobile-X since I'm on wifi so much I only use a few gigs of data a month. $2/month + $1.90/GB vs Google Fi's flexible plan of $20/month + $10/GB.

[verdverm]

My Google Fi is $20/m for connectivity and then $0.01/Mb until I hit 6Gb ($80) at which point everything after is no cost. Most of my data is on wifi, so my bill rarely goes above $25

[laurencerowe]

I usually end up paying about $5/month, though that is a data only plan as I just use Google Voice for calls and use maybe a couple of gigs of data.

Having moved here from the UK where I was used to cheap mobile plans I just grate at how extortionate they are in the US.

[Sohcahtoa82]

> Is Google Fi particularly cheap?

If you travel internationally, they're really cheap relative to everyone else who will charge you absolutely ridiculous roaming fees.

[laurencerowe]

I just buy local eSIM's online when I go abroad now. Lycamobile is usually good around Europe if you land in a country with them. Their UK and Portugal subsidiaries are £5 or €4 / month with 30-50GB in country including 12GB roaming in other European countries. Order before you go and get the eSIM QR code by email. But you must be in the appropriate country to activate.

The Google Fi plans with roaming are either $65/month (100GB) or $20/month + $10/GB. I often end up using quite a bit of data abroad.

[rootusrootus]

For those of us who have crappy coverage with TMO, Verizon themselves offer a much better alternative to their postpaid service, called Visible. It's pretty hilarious how much better of an experience it is, and you are on the same network.

[throwaway27448]

I haven't had any issues with tmobile coverage (that wasn't also a problem with verizon) in well over a decade now. Hell it even worked well in the dense hilly jungles of burundi. Verizon customer service was so bad before I switched I swore them off for life....

The single place I noticed verizon gets coverage and tmobile doesn't is three levels underground in a concrete parking garage.

[laurencerowe]

Coverage is very specific to your situation. I've had basically no coverage on Verizon in offices in the Bay Area where T-mobile worked fine while colleagues could only get Verizon at home.

[axus]

I was able to transfer eSIM for a lost phone using their website, I think the online carrier had run into that issue before.

[slumberlust]

They're all fungible if you aren't addicted to your phone.

[nitwit005]

Those stores generally turn a profit eventually. A smaller company is just going to struggle to afford building out the stores and running ads to get people in the door.

[tencentshill]

Those startups eventually need legions of fools with which to easily part their money.

[Clent]

Isn't that the opposite though? Having a store for the customer to get face-to-face support is sometimes necessary even those who prefer it all to be online. It acts as a stop gap to people otherwise low support customers.

The newer upstarts you mention are self selecting for customers who would do everything they can to never make a support call. They are just another form of having a 15 minute wait time because online only is it's own customer service barrier.

[xp84]

No. In the case of cell phone carriers, the only times in the past 10 years I have ever darkened the door of a retail store is times when the carrier was too incompetent to let me get my problem solved another way. For instance, there was a time at AT&T where if you had acquired a brand new unlocked iPhone that needs eSIM, you needed to receive a physical piece of cardboard printed with a unique QR code on it in order to activate it successfully.

I’ve been with US Mobile for years now and never once felt the need for a physical store.

[ssl-3]

Centralizing support generally saves money.

There's a lot of reasons for this. One of them is that it tends to be a lot cheaper to have one building in Denver to host support people than to have many buildings in every city.

Besides that concept, they're selling telephone and data services. It makes sense to -- you know -- make use of them.

When we had a telephone issue back in the landline days, we didn't load ourselves up into the car and go to a store to get help from someone in person; we instead used the phone.

(That may have been done by using the neighbor's phone, but whatever. We still have neighbors and not all of them are dicks. And these days, we still have cell phone stores for those who can't empty the water from a boot. The days of brick and mortar cell phone sales are not, at this time, numbered.)

[nebula8804]

>it tends to be a lot cheaper to have one building in Denver to host support people than to have many buildings in every city

I'd kill for the building in Denver. Instead I always get some extremely compressed voice connection in the Philippines.

[massysett]

Yeah, but Baby Bell would dispatch a technician to your house if needed.

[array_key_first]

With sims switching to e-sim there's basically no reason to have in person support for cellular service. There's nothing they can do, outside of what they can already do online or over the phone. Like, if you go to an AT&T store with a broken e-sim they can't wave a magic wand. They'll probably just reset it on their end, like they could do over the phone.

[ryandrake]

Some people just prefer going into a physical place and talking to someone in a face to face conversation they can understand. I’ll very rarely want to sit in a phone queue just to talk to “Jason” who has a thick Filipino accent sitting in a crowded support room talking through what sounds like a a 1kbps VOIP connection. And I’m never going to text chat an AI bot for help.

Contrast that to my kid who is horrified by in person interactions and thinks that the kiosks at McDonalds were the world’s greatest recent invention.

Not to mention people with disabilities that make one form of communication the only option.

People are different and good companies try to serve them all.

[gzread]

The person at the store has direct contact with the broken device, this is a much shorter feedback loop than telling you what to do, having you misinterpret it, having you read back the results, and then misinterpreting them.

[gib444]

For a few years now, I've found every support department has been trained to treat every single person as if they were a dumb 5 year old.

The condescending replies from the outset, the 'clear your cookies' first line response to every bug report, the ignoring everything you say because you /must/ be wrong, the weird need to explain that they understand your feelings and frustrations (before even expressing any frustration)...

Drives me insane. There is no breaking through it. You will continue to get LLM replies tweaked for 5 year olds.

[LeifCarrotson]

There is no breaking through it because those LLM replies are not tweaked for 5 year olds due to managerial decree, they're tweaked for the average callers to those support departments due to cold hard reality.

If 99 out of 100 callers are wrong, are frustrated, and don't know how to clear their cookies, and then you call in, they'll treat you like those 99. Even if you're correct, just cheerfully trying to be helpful, and even if you did clear cookies literally identified the obvious typo in their Javascript that makes it work again or whatever, you're an outlier.

Maybe you can get that person to readjust their expectations for you, maybe you can't, and maybe their management can embark on a massive education and training effort to teach their customer support agents to assume that each new caller is an intelligent expert who's aware of and has already tried the obvious things, but tomorrow they will regress to the mean.

[gib444]

Nah, that doesn't wash. I can understand a default initial response for 99% of callers (a verbal FAQ as it were), but I do not accept the lack of breaking through. That is because managerial decree has mandated cost-cutting and chosen not to provide any real customer support.

After I exhaust the L1 flowchart I expect some real support. I've done my bit to prove it, I expect them to reply in kind.

The reality is that companies have gone on aggressive cost cutting to maximise profits, and customer support is absolutely included in that.

What next? Shrinkflation is because 99% of people expect smaller portions?

They know getting to L2/L3 support increases costs. Eg applying a refund when legally required, delivering what was contractually agreed etc.

Also, the more we accept people are 'dumb' and dumb down our interactions with them, the dumber everyone will get. Do teachers not need to believe in the capacity of children, lest education totally go to hell?

[dwedge]

Is this not begging the question that 99 out of 100 were wrong? This totally depends if the aim is the solve problems or to reduce support costs - which are not necessarily the same thing.

If only 1% of tickets ever got past level 1 then okay but I doubt this is the case in most places. And if you already tried to fix your issue online there is nothing more frustrating than being told to do so repeatedly while on hold.

I have an issue today where a service accidentally cancelled my package but still charged me. I asked for it to be reinstated or refunded, and three times I got the same identical automated output pretending to be a person, the fourth attempt is simply a credit card charge back and a lost customer

[sigseg1v]

I have a very similar issue where yesterday I found a company sent me to collections for not paying for an item that is paid for and I have the receipts and bank statements for. Trying to get the chat bot to drop the charge on my account is literally not possible, and I understand why, but why is it so excruciating to get in contact with someone to resolve this? The effort levels are totally disproportionate; they have an automated system that sends me emails and threatens me if I don't pay, but I cannot similarly have a 0 or 1 button process that removes that error.

[sevenseacat]

If there's a button to bypass all their automated systems and get to a person, then far too many people will press it - nearly entirely people whose problems can already be resolved by the automated systems.

[BobaFloutist]

Maybe the online FAQ/support flow should give you a one-time skip-the-line code that you append to the phone number or something.

[lol768]

One of the first things I did when I was involved in the set-up of online support ticket system for a GB rail retailer was https://xkcd.com/806/ compliance. If the support request body contains the phrase "Shibboleet" the ticket will be assigned to an engineer.

Equally it's not hard to teach front-line when to escalate, and ensure L2 and beyond are approachable. Even better if L2/L3 can keep half an eye on tickets that come in for anything that looks particularly interesting.

[gib444]

Hah, I've seen your posts on RailForums!

> One of the first things I did when I was involved in the set-up of online support ticket system for a GB rail retailer was https://xkcd.com/806/ compliance. If the support request body contains the phrase "Shibboleet" the ticket will be assigned to an engineer.

I get the feeling you wouldn't joke about this. I can't believe how amazing this is LOL. I /think/ I know which retailer...good to know!

> Equally it's not hard to teach front-line when to escalate, and ensure L2 and beyond are approachable. Even better if L2/L3 can keep half an eye on tickets that come in for anything that looks particularly interesting.

Right!? I did L2/L3 support many moons ago and it was very much my job to keep an eye on PFYs to ensure they weren't dismissing interesting tickets.

[nitwit005]

While I haven't heard of that idea being implemented, I have heard of the support page you're looking at determine who you got routed to if you started a support chat.

[progval]

> don't know how to clear their cookies

Why do users even need to manually clear their cookies?

[gib444]

It fixes like 1% of problems but sounds plausible to probably 95% of the population. Hence why it's peddled so often.

[johnisgood]

Yeah, this honestly scares me.

[wccrawford]

I used to work tech support. Those lines are there because they work. In only 9 months, I had a few different people tell me they were pc repair techs and knew what they were doing, and I didn't need to do the basics.

I did them anyhow because the company said so, and I found that more often than not, it fixed the problem.

If I had sent that to second-level support without making sure of it, I'd have been written up.

So yes, they're trained to treat callers like they don't know what they're doing, because they often don't. Even if they claim to.

The best thing you can do is just go along with it quickly and get it over with, even if you've already done it. There's no way around it.

[gib444]

> I used to work tech support

Me too. Long time ago though. I get it.

But my problem and main point is that now L2/L3 doesn't seem to exist, or is way way harder to access.

When I did L1, I was trained to permit escalation. Now, it seems people are trained to gaslight people that actually nothing is broken and it's all their head.

[Spooky23]

I ran an enterprise help desk for a few years. I wasnt in the day to day, but would listen to calls sometimes. The reality is, dumb 5 year olds are often smarter.

We had a large (250k) workforce with a pretty wide variance in roles. We had probably about 100 people in the call center, although some of them did more interesting stuff too. It was a very good support organization with multichannel contact capabilities and really good, well paid staff.

Basically there was a barbell distribution with the lowest ranked people and highest ranked employees being the worst. (Think attorneys and other special IC and middle managers. Executives had dedicated support and didn’t use this method.) The most expensive 20% of users make 80% of the calls. The high ranking ones were dumber to deal with and took more time, the low ranking ones called too often for dumb reasons but resolved quickly.

I cannot imagine the hell on earth the general public could be.

[wat10000]

At most places, 95% of the customers are dumb as rocks. And 95% of the support staff is also dumb as rocks. So they're conditioned to assume everyone calling in is an idiot, and it's very likely that whoever you're talking to is not equipped to understand what you're saying to try to convince them that you're not.

My favorite instance of this was with an ISP that rhymes with Bombast where it was very clear that the modem wasn't getting a signal. The lights indicated it, and I was also able to connect to the modem's internal monitoring and see that it wasn't seeing anything on the line. The support agent kept asking me to reboot my computer.

[weaksauce]

I was a programmer at a small company that had their programmers field tech support calls and there is a good reason they do this... most of the people calling in are dumb as rocks when it comes to whatever they needed help with... some called while driving for help that required you to be in front of a computer.

[LtWorf]

People suicided because of that, and the UK post office knew fully well it was their own fault.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

[ceejayoz]

> I've found every support department has been trained to treat every single person as if they were a dumb 5 year old.

That's quite reasonable on their part.

I do wish I could take a quiz to bypass it, though.

[bityard]

Have you tried saying "shibboleet"?

[soopypoos]

I'd rather die.

[driftnode]

The real issue is that L2/L3 barely exists anymore. L1 scripts I can deal with. But when escalation just loops you back to the same script read by someone else, that's where it breaks.

[anonymars]

Similarly when layoffs hit and morale gets low, guess what caliber of employee is going to jump ship and which is going to stay?

[gopher_space]

Everyone knows morale is a dump stat... if you don't track consequences.

[marcosdumay]

Well, you can't measure it, so it can't matter.

[gopher_space]

Interesting to think about how often I'm fighting both sides of that coin.

[anonymars]

With time, I've come to think the trouble is--as usual--there's no singular right answer, only trade-offs

Sabermetrics (Moneyball) captivated us with the idea that "gut feelings" and "stories" were inferior to raw hard data, but that same notion could also accurately be called "the McNamara fallacy"

[ticulatedspline]

While I tend to lean towards libertarian the reality is that "someone will fill the market gap and customers will leave" is largely a myth. Even without lock in or other reasons the market tends to be rather shallow with only a few choices. Maybe HP is the instigator but it largely signals to their competitors that "hey you can be abusive too". This creates a casual follow-the-leader collusion then everywhere sucks and there's nowhere to go anyway so why leave.

[graemep]

Its the economics of an oligopolistic market compounded by an information problem - mist people do jot know how good customer support will be at the time they buy.

[throwaway27448]

To be fair, HP lost their competent customers a long time ago.

[aworks]

FWIW, I'm typing this on my sub-$500 HP laptop and it's fine. I would only call for support as a last resort, and I haven't needed to do that.

[zombot]

Which is still not enough punishment for a decision like this. But without adequate consumer protection laws abuse like this is to be expected.

[dowoopwoop]

> leaving you with only those who couldn't empty the boot

Is this bad though?

[estimator7292]

> thus maximising your support costs

Yes