We’ve always been fans of empowering your employees.

However, we recently went through an object lesson in empowerment when switching cell phone plans.

I’ve tolerated my T=Mobile cellular bill being outrageous for about six months, so I finally decided to switch. I started with Consumer Cellular, because I like their ads.

An earnest young lady at Consumer Cellular quoted me a rate that was about half T-mobile, so I said let’s switch, and then the fun began. CC couldn’t just switch me (there were a lot unscrupulous switchers in the Phone Wars of the 1990s), so I had to have TMobile’s approval. Of course, they said I had to get a switch code, which can only be given by a store. The store is presumably gonna pitch me on staying with T-Mobile.

Back in my MCI days, we had to get 3rd party verification of the switch.

The smart play by T-Mobile would have been to ask what I’d been quoted and match it; I even volunteered what I’d been quoted at by whom. Then the TM schuck and jive began: still gotta get a switch code from my local store (not over the phone).

So I go to my local TM store, and they have no idea what the switch code is. I come back to my office, prepared to rip TM a new one, but I get a very polished rep the second time who promptly with no fuss cuts my rate to close to CC, which is what the first person should have done. Clearly, not all the TM reps are the sharpest knives in the drawer, but they have a few good ones.

So I’m still with T-Mobile, but not too happily so, which is why I’m blogging about it.

But kudos to Consumer Cellular for empowering their employees to offer a good deal without any ‘I have to ask my manager’ jive.