Should We Praise Deadbeat Parents Who Care for Someone Else’s Kids?
Posted on by Jon Colgan
Here’s the setup. Suppose a parent failed to feed his own kids in order to feed someone else’s kids. Is this praiseworthy?
I don’t really know such a parent. But I do know of an analogous situation.
T-Mobile is rumored to soon offer early termination fee rebates to customers of AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint who terminate their contracts early and switch to T-Mobile. T-Mobile’s marketing objective is to support the perception that they are somehow better, perhaps nobler, than the other major carriers–the so-called “Uncarrier” image. Attacking dread ETFs? Well that’s praiseworthy, right? T-Mobile must really care about consumers.
If T-Mobile really cares about ridding the world of early termination fees, then why don’t they start by so improving the lives of their own customers? This campaign to save the day for customers of a competing carrier neglects the customers they already have. It’s like a parent who feeds someone else’s kids instead of his own.
What this suggests is that more kids would be neglected by their own parents if such a thing as “kids-fed” market share existed. T-Mobile doesn’t care about the interests of consumers. It cares about market share. They just want to score another photo-op for their CEO to be seen in a pink shirt and feather necklace. Well, here. I’ll grant their wish:
Want to be praiseworthy, T-Mobile? Start by caring for your own.