After we printed a narrative about my T-Cellular dwelling Web service dying with customer support unable to repair the issue, I received quite a lot of messages from readers with comparable experiences. Three T-Cellular staff (two former and one present) who dealt with / deal with dwelling Web assist calls additionally reached out, claiming that the corporate makes use of canned excuses like “we’re upgrading the tower” with a purpose to get prospects off the cellphone and pad their stats.
Replace (9/2/2022): This text has been up to date to replicate new, corroborating info from two new nameless sources: one present and one further former T-Cellular Dwelling Web worker. Each reached out to us after preliminary publication.
All of our T-Cellular sources requested to stay nameless however supplied proof of present or current former employment on the firm. In a single former worker’s most up-to-date place, he labored in engineering, which he mentioned is the final stage of escalation for issues with the house web service. There, he claims, he was ceaselessly unable to resolve prospects’ issues however was inspired to make use of an “it’s the tower” clarification so he may maintain calls to underneath ten minutes. He mentioned that service reps are penalized if calls run longer than 600 seconds or prospects name again about the identical drawback inside per week.
In keeping with all the sources we spoke to the corporate additionally penalizes assist reps if a buyer calls again with the identical drawback inside a sure variety of days (one former rep mentioned 7 days and however the present worker and different former worker mentioned 3 days). Due to this fact, they’re incentivized to inform you one thing that can maintain you from calling once more for that point interval.
“We had a metric known as IOCR/FCR – our bonus was closely weighted round not having the client name again for 3 days after I was there,” our second former worker supply mentioned. “We have been coached into a lot of methods to confuse or deceive the client to stop them from calling again.”
In my case, after spending a number of minutes on the cellphone with assist doing all the things from energy biking to eradicating and changing the SIM card, I used to be placed on maintain whereas my rep mentioned he would “do a number of issues” to repair the issue. He then returned and instructed me that my native cell tower was being upgraded and that I shouldn’t count on to have service for 48 hours, at which level I cancelled my service. Although I used to be on the cellphone for practically 20 minutes, it nonetheless felt like the corporate was attempting to present me an excuse, as a result of they couldn’t truly assist me.
“Regarding the explicit error code you have been getting [All PDN IP Connection Failure], and the shortage of response from T-Cellular as to the specifics of that error, the reply is kind of easy; they do not know,” our first former worker supply mentioned . “I may inform you tales all day lengthy about calls from prospects with points on their dwelling web service that by no means received solved, as a result of nobody in any of these departments, irrespective of how excessive up the chain we went, had any thought learn how to repair the issue.”
In keeping with our first former worker supply, T-Cellular customer support reps hope {that a} exhausting reset of the 5G Gateway does the trick if a buyer calls in with an issue. The corporate will usually ship alternative {hardware} to appease prospects if that does not work. However as we have heard from prospects on T-Cellular’s boards and Reddit, even this is not a surefire technique to repair connectivity points.
“If that does not repair it, they don’t have any clue the place to go from there, and you’re usually out of luck at that time,” he defined. “The ‘tower is being upgraded’ response is a canned response that’s given after they don’t have any different reply for what is occurring.”
The previous worker mentioned that, if the tower close to me have been actually being upgraded, my rep would have instructed me immediately. It is because buyer assist reps have a number of screens in entrance of them and may pull up a real-time map of the service space tied to your tackle. So if there have been a tower outage or improve in course of, the assist rep would current that info to the client inside the first minute or two of the decision.
In keeping with our second former worker supply, assist reps would do what they might to discover a believable tower excuse that wasn’t a whole lie. As a substitute, they’d zoom out on their pc maps till they discovered a tower that was having points.
“If you happen to report sluggish service or no service, I might question your tackle and zoom out on the protection map till I may see a tower that had any work being completed on it (Generally, we’d zoom out 25-50, 100, and even 200+ miles to drive one other tower to populate),” our second former worker supply mentioned. “I might then inform you, ‘It seems like work is being completed in your space, please permit as much as 72 hours for the problem to resolve’ to successfully finish the decision, stopping you from calling again inside 3 days. Individuals who continuously known as again dinged the rep’s stats.”
We reached out to T-Cellular for touch upon our supply’s accusation that the corporate’s assist reps are underneath stress to get prospects off the cellphone (and due to this fact are incentivized to mislead them). The preliminary assertion we received again didn’t actually tackle the problem:
“We ceaselessly make enhancements to our 5G community to assist providers like Dwelling Web. On some events, that may trigger brief interruptions in our service. Whereas prolonged points are unusual and usually final lower than 12 hours, we encourage Dwelling Web prospects to achieve out to our award-winning buyer care workforce for assist in these circumstances.”
Nonetheless, after we printed this text, the corporate despatched a extra direct response, saying:
“Our care mannequin is designed to place the client first, which suggests resolving points as shortly as doable with the most effective info at hand. As is the usual in our business and others, we prioritize NPS to measure our prospects’ experiences with us, and we additionally depend on effectivity metrics to repeatedly enhance how we’re delivering the expertise.”
Each the present T-Cellular worker and the primary former worker attributed the problems T-Cellular Dwelling Web prospects are encountering to a scarcity of foresight into the calls for and rigors of counting on mobile knowledge for dwelling web service.
“It often comes all the way down to the identical factor, lack of protection. What most of us really feel is that T-Cellular is in a rush to get as many purchasers as doable on HINT w/o contemplating the shortage of bandwidth regionally,” the present worker mentioned. “Now, they’re providing HINT in locations that technically had the max quantity of customers (per native capability), which causes us to suppose these buyer complaints are about to get a lot worse. They name it Dwelling Web Lite.”
Our first former worker supply agreed.
“The corporate merely didn’t take the time to turn out to be subject material consultants within the business, and didn’t correctly parse out the small print of potential points they’d run into, earlier than launching headfirst into the house web world,” he mentioned. “They only wished to be a part of the sport, and have that further perk to supply prospects, they usually wished to have the ability to say they have been the primary to supply ‘nationwide 5G Dwelling Web.'”
Different readers reached out to me, together with Chris, who wrote in regards to the All PDN IP Connection Failure error message I obtained, theorizing that the corporate could not have sufficient capability on the newer towers that assist the house Web service.
“I used to be instructed that it has quite a bit to do with towers that also exist within the wild that are not able to dealing with connections for a number of causes. There are nonetheless Dash towers that must be totally built-in, and older towers that simply do not assist sufficient connections to be dependable. All of this upgrading occurs with little-to-no discover as a result of they do not suppose it is necessary when there are towers close by that needs to be a superb fallback. Not so true for the house web customers!
It is value contemplating that the router connects with totally different parameters than would a cellphone. A cellphone crawls the community seamlessly altering from “cell” to “cell” that’s coated by whichever tower. The web service requests a connection in a little bit of a unique means, not anticipating to be on the transfer however certainly anticipating to make use of extra bandwidth.
When there are a number of towers close by and never all of them are totally suitable with the house web service, you are doubtless not going to get far sufficient to be assigned an IP tackle. If for some cause it connects to an older Dash tower, or a tower that is at restrict for consumer capability, there shall be points. Your system will ask the PDN for entry and get denied. An incompatible tower might not be configured for the requests made by your system. A superbly good T-Cellular tower could already be at capability and so your system sits in queue hoping for a connection. It may not attempt indefinitely and so it turns into essential to energy cycle it.”
I requested our T-Cellular supply about this chance, and he mentioned it might be a consider some prospects dropping connectivity instantly.
One other reader, Stanton, reached out to inform me about his issues. He was additionally instructed about tower upgrades in-process and had no bother with T-Cell phone service in the identical location:
“So I received T-Cellular dwelling web again throughout the pilot days. I’ve bumped into the identical errors as you. I have been by means of 5 to six gateways of theirs. They’ve claimed tower improve for over 6 months. My space is nothing however 5g and 5guc towers. My iPhone as effectively would not have points with connectivity in these areas.
I have been ready over 6 months for them to resolve this subject. Finally I instructed them to pause my web so I do not pay them for crap I am not utilizing. My subject is my location would not have entry to fancy spectrum and such. Our greatest landline offers are cable which desires virtually $200 a month for what T-Cellular gives or AT&T which claims the quickest they will present is 18mbps.”
Gary truly had his points solved after T-Cellular despatched him a brand new, upgraded 5G Gateway:
“I, too, had full failure of my silver CYLINDRICAL gateway. They supplied me a more moderen model (sq. black gateway) and my drawback went away. I’m stunned they didn’t supply it to you. Sure, they went by means of the entire litany of doable causes… tower improve, reboots, transfer location of gateway, and so on. Once they supplied to switch the gateway with a more moderen model, I jumped on it. It has been working tremendous now for 3 months.”
Apparently, Carl contacted me to say that he signed up for T-Cellular Dwelling Web solely to have horrible reception at his location. The corporate’s clarification: The service was not truly accessible in his space they usually by no means ought to have bought it to him.
“Studying your article about your T-Cellular Gateway expertise introduced up my very own horrible expertise as a primary time T-Cellular cell and residential web expertise. Lengthy story brief, it by no means labored very effectively in any respect from the start. Barely had two bars. Always getting tech assist. Was shipped three further models to ‘attempt’ by tech assist over 90 days. Downside was, I wasn’t speculated to have been bought dwelling web. She confirmed my tackle and knowledgeable me that the ‘service was NOT accessible in my space.’ I should not have been bought the unit to start with.”
Washdc, a commenter on my prior article, wrote:
“This might have been written by me… over 10 hours on the cellphone with customer support and their “tech workforce,” three totally different gadgets, 48-hour tower outage (I reside about one mile away from two towers) and completely no constant protection. I’ll give this inconsistency a number of extra days, hoping that after three weeks the system “settles down,” after which crawl again to fios. Good bye to all of the financial savings, hi there to working web. Fios have to be so proud.”
To be truthful, not each particular person we heard from has had issues with T-Cellular. Anshel Sag, an analyst who tracks 5G with Moor Methods and Perception, mentioned that he’s not conscious of issues with T-Cellular’s dwelling Web service and that he makes use of it efficiently himself.
“In my expertise with the service, it operated at roughly the identical pace and reliability as my smartphone,” he mentioned.
Sag mentioned he spoke to his contacts at T-Cellular, who mentioned that mine feels like an remoted incident.
Because the suggestions I’ve gotten exhibits, clearly I’m not the one one who has skilled critical issues with T-Cellular Dwelling Web. Nonetheless, it’s unattainable to know what proportion of customers truly needed to cancel their service on account of unresolved points. After all, folks on-line are faster to level out issues with a services or products than they’re after they have good experiences. These with good experiences do not often have a cause to talk out.
When the T-Cellular Dwelling Web providers works, it’s unbelievable. The five hundred+ Mbps downloads and 70+ Mbps uploads I received throughout my two profitable weeks with the service have been unbelievable and much superior to what my earlier supplier, Spectrum, was in a position to present. Nonetheless, the prospect of unreliable service was sufficient to scare me away, sending me again into the open arms of Spectrum.
Regardless, for those who have skilled prolonged outages, been fed untruths by T-Cellular staff, or have been despatched a number of {hardware} replacements in useless in hopes of fixing the problems, the optimistic potential doesn’t matter.
