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Last night, and really for the past month I’ve had a lot of reason to wonder how it is possible that T-Mobile wins customer service awards.

The Backstory:

At the beginning of July, I bought an iPhone. I ported my number out from T-Mobile (rather begrudgingly I might add. I was happy there). I still had a contract, apparently. I did not realize this at the time, as I was explicitly told otherwise. At any rate I intended to remain a customer and planned transferring my plan to a hotspot-only account so that I can hop on wi-fi networks at Starbucks. This all seemed very possible to everyone and they were going to do a sim release on my old sim card and enable my account for hotspot only.

That was just over a month ago. Last Thursday, my bank account was billed for my last month of service, and a $200 early termination fee. I immediately called and re-explained what I wanted. However at this point, my account had been inactivated, and re-activating it has proven quite difficult.

The Current Issue:

Last Thursday I spent about three hours total on the phone and in a T-Mobile retail location (and on the phone in the T-Mobile retail location) re-enabling my account and purchasing a SIM card. I found the SIM card issue particularly odd, as I didn’t want a cell phone at all. I wanted a hotspot plan with a contract so that my term could continue. During all of this, it was confirmed to me several times that what I wanted was indeed possible. The final decision after cycling through several reps, and repeating everything several times, was that I needed activate a voice plan first, which could then be switched to a hotspot plan. I did so. I decided I would wait a week to let the dust settle before I called to switch everything over.

Last night was one week later, so I called T-Mobile to switch the plan to a hotspot plan. And so begins the adventure. I immediately noticed that they had credited the $200 back to me, which was great. However they credited it to my T-Mobile account. My inactive T-Mobile account. After a couple of transfers around, I found someone who would be able to to an immediate refund to my bank account. She took my information and processed it all. I checked about ten minutes later, and the transaction had hit my bank account… as a debit. Now T-Mobile owed me $400. I explained this to the rep, who stammeringly told me that she couldn’t do a refund, that a form must be submitted. How she was able to do it when she screwed it up the first time, but not able to do it to correct the mistake is beyond me. At this point, I felt as though I had been taking crazy pills, so I asked, “Am I taking crazy pills?” - to which she had no response. I asked to be transferred to a supervisor. She put me on hold, and I was completely disconnected about 2 minutes into the hold.

At this point I was fuming… I took a couple of minutes to regain composure and calmly called back knowing that I was going to get yet another rep, and have to explain everything again. I talked to a very nice lady who saw to it that a refund was put through. However, it isn’t immediate… So my bank account is missing $400 at this point. Finally, she figures out that she can’t switch my account to a hotspot plan, and I would need to cancel the account, have the fees waived, and open a new hotspot plan. This is what I figured out ohh… back in July, but nobody wanted to acknowledge that fact. She transfers me to cancellations.

Of all the folks I’ve spoken with at T-Mobile, I think she was the only one that actually got the problem. She canceled my account and ensured there would be no fees. Somehow I don’t *really* believe that. I think T-Mobile will see that the account was inactivated and then reactivated to avoid an early termination, and will take the money out again (probably before they do the $400 credit, which will bring the total to $600. More than the security deposit I had to put down on the phone to begin with.

The funny thing? After all this I still want a freakin’ hotspot plan - so I can use the wifi access at Starbucks on my laptop and iPhone.