January challenge: take a look around T-mobile’s website and try finding the page that lets you cancel your mobile contract. Go on, take a minute. Good luck.

If you think call centre telephone systems are a way of companies sending you round in circles, this site was designed with the same penmanship. Not only is there is no cancellation page, button or form, there’s not even a mention of how to do it (e.g. by email, letter or telephone).

The ‘Contact Us’ page doesn’t show a list of departments with corresponding telephone numbers, rather it’s a loop of FAQs and forums. None of the FAQs mention cancelling. However, if you click to enter a specific FAQ (rather than just reading several on the page) there’s a feedback box to leave comments. Maybe we should try there?

Yes, yes, yes, this is a rant, but don’t we all understand now that customer service includes having the option to NOT sell. It’s the dentist offering preventative methods of cleaning. It’s the petrol company educating on how to drive more efficiently. It’s the social network that allows you to export all your contacts and data (to probably use at a rival). It’s the advertised cooling off period and no quibble returns policy that reassures buyers they’re not entering a hostile marriage.

An example of such customer service producing a winner is Zappos. It’s so good in fact, Amazon paid $1.2bn to buy the company.

I totally understand T-mobile don’t want the holes in their sales funnel to be bigger than the mouth of it but come on folks. Do they really think that after trawling their site and then spending over 30 minutes on the phone to their foreign call centre that I’ll be more enamoured with their brand?

They haven’t lost me as a customer this time around; they’ve lost my family and me for life. T-mobile: love their flashmob advertising, hate their stickiness.