A T-Mobile rep working at a TPR store, thanks us for shining light on the T-Life issue impacting reps and consumers.
Recently, we’ve been telling you about T-Mobile management’s decision to give its reps a monthly goal for using the T-Life app for a certain percentage of the transactions they handle inside company-owned and Authorized Retailer locations. Depending on the store, we’ve heard that reps have to use T-Life to handle 60% to as much as 90% of the sales they make or face getting fired. It’s obvious that there is an endgame that revolves around laying off most reps, closing most stores, and turning T-Mobile into a digital carrier where all account changes and equipment purchases are made via the T-Life app.
We told you earlier in the month about a T-Mobile customer who couldn’t replace a broken phone inside a T-Mobile store. Why? Because with a broken phone, the customer could not access the T-Life app, and the rep didn’t want to hurt his T-Life usage percentage for the month. So T-Mobile made a change to its policies and now allows a rep serving a customer with a lost, stolen, or broken phone, to open a new device and hope that the customer has enough equipment credit or the ability to make the down payment for the replacement.
Once the new device is opened, the customer’s personal data is loaded on the replacement phone so the T-Life app can be installed and the transaction for the new phone can be run through the app.
As preposterous as this all sounds, I received an email this afternoon from a rep who works in the Midwest for a T-Mobile Authorized Retailer. He has been working there for about a year and wishes to remain anonymous, so I will, of course, honor that wish.
