Blackberry CEO 'Outraged,' Scolds T-Mobile Like A Child For Simple Sales Pitch To Blackberry Users
from the surely-you-have-better-things-to-do dept
Blackberry CEO John Chen has a lot to worry about. At the moment his company continues a head-first plunge into potential irrelevance, being incapable of offering compelling products that prevent Apple and Google from eroding its wireless market share (don't tell that to the company's loyal fans, though). A long line of executives keep getting shuffled in and out like party decorations on a sinking ocean liner in the hopes that somebody can fix this, but generally speaking Chen isn't having all that much fun, and most analysts aren't too sure the company's fortunes will ever get turned around.With all of this on Chen's plate, it's curious then to see where Chen's attentions are focused. T-Mobile last week apparently sent a promotion to Blackberry users that simply offered users an iPhone 5S for no money down if they switched to T-Mobile. For a company that has been writing some uncharacteristically (for wireless) hilarious press releases with a CEO who spends much of the day brutally mocking AT&T on Twitter -- T-Mobile's promotion is tame and barely worth attention. Still, it was apparently enough to "outrage" Chen, who took to the company blog to scold T-Mobile as if they were a milk-spilling toddler:
"I want to thank our loyal customers for your commitment to BlackBerry. By expressing your outrage directly to T-Mobile through tweets, calls and comments in the media and on blog posts, you sent a powerful message that T-Mobile could not ignore. Your partnership with our brand is appreciated by all of us at BlackBerry, and draws a sharp contrast with the behavior of our longtime business partner. I can assure you that we are outraged too. What puzzles me more is that T-Mobile did not speak with us before or after they launched this clearly inappropriate and ill-conceived marketing promotion."Granted T-Mobile (who barely sells any Blackberry devices) wouldn't be trying to poach your customer base if you were creating products and services a broader audience actually liked. The comments below Chen's post are somewhat of a treat as well, with Blackberry fans insisting Chen is "pure class" and "the man" for swatting T-Mobile on the nose like a puppy that has pooped on your favorite slippers. T-Mobile CEO John Legere responded to Chen on Twitter in just the way we've grown accustomed to. All of this faux outrage simply wound up making waves in the press and giving an otherwise entirely-uninteresting T-Mobile promotion -- and Blackberry's ongoing failures -- a huge bath of free publicity.
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Filed Under: iphone, john chen, wireless
Companies: blackberry, t-mobile
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The only difference if it had been an Apple response, is that there would have been more comments.
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The point of this piece was...?
BlackBerry makes some awesome devices. Try one or quit pretending like you know how "bad" they are.
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Re: The point of this piece was...?
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Blackberry executive-of-the-day whines
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Needless to say the person who did get the extended warranty never got an extended warranty again (and they ended up canceling their service anyways because for some reason they couldn't get reception where they lived though now they are considering maybe re-subscribing if they can sync their cell phones to the Wifi and get service that way, not sure if they did that already. T-Mobile had no problems waving the cancellation fee when they did cancel though after being unable to get good reception to their house for some reason). I believe the warranties now do cover 'water damage' because last time they offered it to me for my last phone they said yes, but who knows if there is some other loophole in there that it doesn't cover that they will try to exploit.
Other than that overall their service has been pretty good and I don't have any complaints.
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People actually buy those extended warranties? Consider my mind blown.
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Wow, what happened to all those people who take ridiculous amounts of compensation because of their skill in business practice and knowledge of navigating treacherous markets while meeting investor expectations? Competition? Well, that just can not be allowed!
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you missed the best part
Everything is "YAY! BLACKBERRY RULES THE WORLD!" type responses that are completely written by blackberry employees or people so delusional there is no measure.
Not a single apposing viewpoint has been allowed to be posted to the blog.
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Re: you missed the best part
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Keyboard
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Generally though, nothing I'm doing means I need more than the google keyboard with swiping. Sure it takes longer than a real keyboard, but oh well.
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Lord complex?
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T-Mobile's Response
How many people will actually take that, I don't know.
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In what way is it inappropriate? Can anyone tell me?
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How many enterprise clients received the promotion? My guess would be none.
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