This is what happens when your retention schmucks don’t listen to the person who calls.

Matt Haughey:

Today I called to cancel and I knew it might be painful so I decided to record it. The total call was 12 minutes long, about half of that spent with a retention specialist. The best part of the call was both the first support rep and the retention guy saying “you got an iPhone! how is it?” and sounding genuinely interested.

Of course they’re genuinely interested, and the fact that they’ve offered a T-Mobile wing as something comparable (a phone I reviewed for PocketPC Thoughts) is laughable. The fact that a carrier can offer the Wing with a straight face (as something more compatable; whatever that means) to a customer looking for an iPhone means that carriers really just don’t “get” the iPhone in the first place.

I’ve seen internal documents from various carriers. Carriers love pimping the fact that “our phones are music players too!” and “You can download music directly from our phone!” and “we have e-mail too!”

Folks… It’s not about having the feature. It’s about doing it right. It’s not about being able to download music from your service while I’m on the go. It’s about being able to download music without it costing me $2.00 or $3.00 per song and $15-$20 a month for the privilege of doing so.

It’s not about being able to browse the mobile web on Pocket IE or a BlackBerry. It’s about viewing actual web pages on a device that’s the same size.

Until carriers get their heads out of their ass and realize that it isn’t just about the feature, but doing them right and not gouging on them (Verizon, for example, just launched an e-mail app. It’s available on 2 phones, and costs $5 per month to use your already-paid-for data plan to get your e-mail. To whom does this sound like a good idea?).

There’s a reason the iPhone sold anywhere from 300,000 to 750,000 units this weekend (depending on which analyst you believe) and it isn’t just because it’s Apple or just because it’s pretty.