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T-Mobile Offers Glimmer of Hope – or $100 Credit – in Data Loss Debacle
T-Mobile has indicated that some of the data Sidekick users lost due to a Microsoft server failure may be retrievable after all. Those who can’t get their data back will receive a $100 credit toward purchases or bill payments at T-Mobile. All data customers will get a month of free service — and, no doubt, many more apologies as the company struggles to manage the problem.
Right now, the company is probably feeling its way through the crisis, Scott Testa, a business professor at Cabrini College, told the E-Commerce Times. Offering customers $100 for their trouble is a good first step — but the carrier is going to have to do much more if it wants to restore faith among its customer base, he said.
“It will have to come clean about the server failure and how it happened — and, more importantly, the steps it is taking to make sure it never happens again.” For example, he said, T-Mobile should release a detailed plan — a, say, five-point plan for backup — in the near future. “Right now, they are doing a good job managing expectations by telling customer to expect the worst. So they have some credibility in this respect.”
That appears to be the smartest game plan T-Mobile can adopt going forward.