Telekom. Witness my Personal Shitstorm Live.

Juli 29th, 2010 • Brands, CRM

This morning I checked my German bank account and found out that 1,400 Euro were missing. The reason? My former telecom provider Telekom had withdrawn the money. I had terminated my iPhone contract months ago. So why did they withdraw so much money?

In Germany you usually have two year mobile contracts.

  • If you cancel your contract prior to this two year period, your telecom provider is nice to you, offers new handsets, special conditions etc. to make you return to him
  • If you forget to terminate the contract it is automatically prolonged for another year without a real option for you to get out

Sounds bizarre? Yes, absolutely. Actually we all know that keeping a pleased client is much cheaper than acquiring (or reacquiring) a new one – but telecom providers in Germany don’t seem to think that far.

Back to the 1,400 EUR. Where were they? In April 2010 I found out that I am moving to Amsterdam to start a new job. I immediately withdrew from my iPhone contract which was still in effect by September 2010. In other words – I had to pay at least 4-5 more months.

Later I realized, there is  a way out of this little problem. Simply because I moved abroad – Germany’s Telekom could not offer their services in the Netherlands. A German law gave me the right to instantly terminate the agreement  if this is the case. So, in June (while already being in Amsterdam) I sent them another letter, withdrawing from my German mobile contract with instant effect.

What I did not know was – by withdrawing for the second time my first contract termination was considered as inoperative. The result…

  • Telekom disconnected me instantly
  • But (as I withdrew ‘too late’) they prolonged my existing contract for one more year and
  • Made me pay for this prolongation for the whole prolonged year = 1,400 Euros

Very twisted ‘reality’. Of course I instantly screamed at a poor guy from customer service who promised me to solve the problem asap. And as usual, nothing happened. I called up my bank and got the money returned…but of course the problem with Telekom was not yet solved.

Getting ugly

One thing was clear – I would not let myself get screwed by Telekom. Interesting fact – after updating my status message on Facebook quite a bunch of people had something to say about Germany’s biggest mobile carrier. I mean, hating Telekom is not very uncommon in Germany. But I was pretty surprised of my friend’s reactions (screenshot in German).

After getting no feedback by Telekom’s customer service I turned to twitter. With a fucking expensive iPhone contract (by 2 months ago), about 1,700 twitter followers and a successful private blog about digital marketing/tech I do consider myself as an Alpha CRM lead. Time for a tweet.

The tweet was read by a couple of people. My friend @sideburnjim pointed me to Telekom Germany’s new service twitter account @telekom_hilft (‘Telekom helps’). Time for another tweet in which I linked the mobile carrier to the conversation on my Facebook account.

Telekom wakes up

Less than an hour later a young lady who works for Telekom friended me on Facebook. Her reaction was kind, positive and she asked me in a very friendly way if I wanted to start a conversation on how to solve the problem. Of course I wanted to. She quickly tried to understand the problem, stayed calm and positive and promised quick feedback tomorrow.

It’s indeed interesting to watch a company like Telekom reacting to a really, really pissed off customer. There is absolutely no way on earth I will pay any money to them. But while my complaints at Telekom’s telephone hotline trailed off, they, at least, reacted quickly and professionally via twitter.

The problem is not yet solved.

I hereby promise I will do my best to turn the new hashtag #failecom into a trending topic by tomorrow afternoon if they insist on receiving the payment. Nevertheless I expect the issue to be history very soon. Why?

Simply because my personal reader and followership converts me into a potential dangerous client. This is good in a way – simply because I can defend myself from my ex mobile carrier’s maltreatment more effectively. On the other hand it is unfair as my 60 year old dad who is not on twitter has to deal with Telekom’s fucked up telephone service hotline and cannot unfold his personal shitstorm.

Anyway…T-elekom, both of us still have the chance to say – fair enough, shit happens. But as I said, I promise to be really loud once you pretend that this action was in any way justified.

By the way – a pissed off customer does not want to get an automatized tweet from your service account that replies with ‘Anyway, we wish you a lot of fun online’.

I will keep you in the loop. No not you, Telekom. My readers.

—————————————————

Update – the morning after, 9 am

—————————————————

What I expected did happen. Telekom just called me up and admitted that something had gone terribly wrong. I don’t know if this was because of four dozen tweets or just because they really took a deeper look at what happened.
My personal summary? Shit happens, Telekom. I have to say @telekom_hilft seems to work well as a customer service tool and in case anything like that happens again, I will of course get back to you via twitter. ;-)
Again – it’s not about staging a twitter PR stunt. It’s about having good reliable processes and a mainstream telephone hotline that works. Unfortunately this was not really the case here. If I was an ordinary customer at Telekom’s telephone hotline the problem would not yet be solved. And that is a shame, Telekom.

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  • http://amendedestages.com/ Christian

    Hi Gerald, I understand that you're pissed of. But there's one thing I do not understand about your behaviour: Didn't you contact Telekom via phone prior to the second withdrawl? I think your case is not the one that both – Telekom employees and you – are used to. So maybe the best would have been to find a solution on the phone and then act as discussed there.

    I think we sometimes do really have too high expectations towards companys. You've signed a contract, you confirmed that you've read the terms of service. That's the basis of your relationship to Telekom. That means to me that you would at least have had to give them a call to let them know about your really special situation. Of course, then they'd have to give you back your money. And I think, they will do so now.

    Btw, I worked for Telekom in an agency up to last year. But I think my opinion would have been the same if I had not.

  • ghensel

    Of course I had a direct conversation with them. I received to letters by them saying 'Your contract will be terminated'. And then they disconnect me, prolong my contract at the same time and withdraw 1,4K from my bank?

    Sorry, that's ridiculous and does not have anything to do with me not understanding the product.

  • http://www.between0and1.org tim

    Ah, your case gives me hope, Gerald. I am in similar trouble with local Telstra / Bigpond (why are all the ex-monopolists so bloody ineffective and chaotic?). I might not yet have 1700 followers (I don't get paid to hang out on social media like you) but hey, influential-alpha-advertiser_and_occasional-ubergeek is a title I happily subscribe to.
    So it may indeed be time to kick up a storm of online feces. I did tweet @bigpondteam already, let's see what happens…

  • ghensel

    Yes, Tim. Twitter helps. I wonder what you will experience…

  • http://amendedestages.com/ Christian

    As I said, I agree that Telekom did not really act clever in it. But I think, oral conversation could have made it easier.

    Btw, is there only 1 iPhone provider in NL aswell?

  • http://www.telekom.de/telekom-hilft Telekom_hilft

    Hallo Herr Hensel,
    tut uns leid, dass hier etwas sehr unglücklich gelaufen ist. Anscheinend haben sich die beiden Kündigungen überschnitten und unser System hat versehentlich den Grundpreis für das komplette Jahr auf einmal abgebucht. Das Problem lag somit klar auf unserer Seite. Der fragliche Betrag wird Ihnen, wie ja bereits mitgeteilt, selbstverständlich vollständig zurücküberwiesen.

    Natürlich darf so etwas eigentlich nicht vorkommen. Aber hin und wieder passiert trotz größter Sorgfalt halt doch mal ein Fehler und für die daraus entstandenen Unannehmlichkeiten möchten wir uns herzlich bei Ihnen entschuldigen.

    Übrigens hätten wir dieses Problem auch ohne Twitter, Blog und “Shitstorm” genauso schnell gelöst. Wir bieten allen unseren Kunden den gleichen schnellen und zuverlässigen Service – unabhängig von dem Kanal, über den sie uns ansprechen. Sollte Ihr Herr Vater also einmal ein Problem mit einem Telekom-Produkt haben, kann er sich jederzeit gern telefonisch an uns wenden. Bei Twitter muss er sich dafür ganz sicher nicht extra anmelden… ;-)

    Beste Grüße
    Ihr Telekom-hilft Team

  • ghensel

    Danke fuer die Antwort und ja, die Schuld lag wirklich bei Ihnen. Aber das ist eine Sache. Sie haben sich gut um die Loesung des Problems gekuemmert und daher: Kein Vorwurf an Sie.

    Dennoch: Da gab es auch andere Faelle. Ich persoenlich wurde vorher per Hotline vertroestet und nicht – wie versprochen – zurueckgerufen. In unserem Fall hat die Kommunikation per twitter ganz gut geklappt. Andere User – Beispiel @janq – wurden auch per twitter Direktdraht nicht upgedatet, geschweige denn ihr Problem geloest.

    Ich habe bewusst das Ganze nach aussen getragen. Ich habe es als einen Testfall gesehen, der mir selbst zeigen sollte, ob Service per twitter besser funktioniert. Ich bin der Meinung, ja. Tut es. Dennoch hat die Telekom einiges nachzuholen. Und das zeigt sich nicht nach einer durchaus ernst gemeinten, schlecht gelaunten, privaten Social Media-Kampagne, sondern darin, dass ich als Ottonormalverbraucher am Telefon einfach nicht beachtet werde.

    Sorry, ich hab sie getestet. Und ja, sie haben diesen Test bestanden. Da draussen sind aber viele Tests jeden Tag. Und da gilt es noch ein wenig nachzulegen.

  • http://twitter.com/floco florian avdic

    awesome mate, well done. another good example showing how the means of social media can empower customers and help them to fight back corporate craziness.
    on the other hand your case also exemplifies that it's still a fight between companies and customers. it's about power and the execution of power, not about a good business relationship between supply and demand.
    clearly your father would not have been as successful as you've been. at least not that quick.
    but we can hope for the best, hope that shitstorms like yours, that visibility, searchability and sustainability of opinions provided by the web will convince companies to adjust their business models from organized fraud (sure, just some sometimes) to honesty and transparency.

    cheerio,
    florian

  • http://twitter.com/floco florian avdic

    da hat die vergangenheit allerdings viele, viele gegenbeispiele produziert. obgleich es scheint als wuerde ein umdenken stattfinden. bleibt zu hoffen, dass dies nicht beim spiel mit dem socialmediabuschfeuer bleibt ;)

    beste grueße,
    florian

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