How to drive a small business nuts

T-Mobile yesterday "upgraded" its BlackBerry Internet and e-mail service. This is exactly the kind of thing a small-business owner like me doesn't need. I had subscribed to the BlackBerry service from T-Mobile because it was priced well, I could add Wi-Fi hot spots to my account for a discounted rate, Bluetooth Internet service was included in the price, the service was fine, it worked internationally without chip-swapping, and so on.

T-Mobile warned me recently in a few e-mail messages that everything was changing as of October 2, and it sure has. I just spent about 25 minutes on the phone with a reasonably helpful woman (named Mace, she said) after being on hold for about 25 minutes, and she gave me some unfortunate news:

I told her that e-mail I haven't read is now being marked as read on my Web-based account (it forwards to the BlackBerry via POP access). She said she'd have to "escalate" the problem because she didn't have an answer.

I have to reenter filters I'd set up to keep certain e-mail from forwarding into the BlackBerry. In addition, I no longer can filter e-mail by size, which had been a great way to keep large attachments from clogging my device.

I had to go back into another Web-based account that also forwards to the BlackBerry and reconfigure one of the POP rules I'd already set.

The new Web interface is somewhat confusing, and not all the fields are explained. And I received error messages when I tried to change certain settings on both T-Mobile's Web interface and my BlackBerry.

I could go on, but the bottom line is that I've had a frustrating drop in functionality from this supposed upgrade, and I'm spending a valuable chunk of time redoing settings I had already set.

Word to vendors: If you're trying to capture more business from small-fry companies that may grow bigger, this is really not the way to go about it. I'm looking forward to the end of my T-Mobile contract in a few months, when I will gladly explore other services.