Tag: Modern Problems

Posted on

Alright this kinda pissses me off but it was not unexpected.

The final T-Mobile bill showed up.

They are totally Sprintified now. Between the old Sprint’s terrible billing practices and T-Mobile’s well renown awful billing practices what you get, when you leave them is a bill that is about DOUBLE your normal rate. 

My monthly bill for years was 120.00. Then when I lost Jerry my bill dropped to $75.00. Then T-Mobile decided to raise their prices while other carriers were advertising lower rates.

Since I had the temerity to ask, about lower rates and was essentially told by a representative off shore that I shouldn’t be asking about lower rates. I made arrangement to go to one of those other carriers.

As Expected T-mobile had to make this a bad divorce, complete with alimony.

I suppose in the world I’d choose to live. I’d have expected them to ask why I’m leaving.

I’d have expected them to say, “Here’s your final bill and it’s prorated such that you only owe us for the days that you actually used our services. We’re sorry to see you go after 14 years and want you to know you’re welcome to come back to us at any time.“

Nope!

What you get is a psychotic blend. 

“We’re Sorry to see you go. You owe us 140.07“

They printed some really weird itemization. It looks like the phone line being ported to the new company collapsed the bundled plan that had my iPad and Apple Watch attached. But you can’t have a phone line on an Apple Watch by itself without a cell phone plan so in theory the watch plan should have ended when the phone plan did. 

Except it didn’t… The iPad plan since it was no longer attached to a phone plan jumped from $20 a month to $77 a month and then they doubled it. They didn’t care or notice that I manually cancelled these plans 2 days after the phone number had been ported. Nor did they care that I couldn’t cancel these plans because when they killed the phone line, they also killed my online access to the entire account.

They were acting just like a psychotic bitch burning your clothes on the front lawn!

I could call them, I could fight with their foreign customer service and get “The plan is the plan” or just pay the bill.

I’m going to choose the latter because I don’t have the energy to fight what will be a losing battle, just on principal. We all know that none of the foreign customer service people have the ability to “DO” anything. They’re just punching bags reading from scripts. AI will soon replace them and do just as fine a job as they do. Mindless recitation of a script with no comprehension of the words and less comprehension of the customer issue at hand.

Nope. I’ll simply make sure that I let as many people know T-Mobile is just as shitty as the other big carriers these days. They’ve arrived! They’re on Par with AT&T, and Verizon. Congratulations T-Mobile!

In closing,

Why are any of you reading this, paying top dollar to one of the big three when you can get comparable service for 1/3 or 1/2 the price from one of the alternate providers?

Just for the ability to flip them the finger about their shitty customer service and billing practices it might be worth switching.

However, I’d suggest that you contact your particular carrier and force them to calculate the exact day you cancel service to prevent them from screwing ya with a divorce settlement.

I might report T-Mobile to the FCC and CPUC, just to have it on file if there’s a class action lawsuit about unfair billing practices.

Posted on

After Years (more than a decade) T-Mobile & I end the relationship in a shitty way

T-Mobile logo pink.I transferred my number to another carrier.

T-Mobile acts these days lot more like the shitshow formerly known as SPRINT.

The relationship came to an end when one of TMobile’s representatives said, “The Plan is the plan” 

She was explaining to me that TMobile was still going to bill me $75, a full month of service, which also included service for my phone line, (cancelled on 5/31) when I was pulling the plug on the first of the month.

What’s really annoying is that I was just auto-billed my monthly $75, 3 days ago. I’d have thought that any services would be prorated.

I asked the representative if the billing was pre or post paid.

The little foreign girl didn’t seem to understand what I was asking and just repeated 

“The Plan is the Plan”

As if that answered my question or concern about their billing practices.

WOW!!!!

Sprint Corp 742392705.This by the way is exactly how I felt when I finally terminated my relationship with SPRINT long distance years ago. I remember the same sort of billing bullshit and that is exactly why I avoided SPRINT as a mobile phone provider.

It’s just bad business practices and the corporate heads simply expect you to swallow it.

My new carrier is based in Georgia and their customer service folks are all American. T-Mobile’s customer service is at least partially out outside the country.

Worst case scenario I’m being billed the equivalent of Alimony for breaking up with T-Mobile. Thankfully it’s only one month.

Depending on what they do, I may or may not report their behavior to the FCC and Better Business bureau.

At this point, I could see putting T-Mobile on the “Avoid at all Costs” list. 

Recently, I’ve been wondering, am I the only person noticing that customer service is getting worse and worse?

Posted on

Porting gone wrong!

Well that was an EPIC Fail!

I decided that I wanted to get a cheaper cellular plan. I’ve been with T-mobile for years and well, recently there have been some issues that have put me off on them.

$80 a month seems excessive even though I have multiple devices.

I’m also less and less impressed with their customer service.

Anyway, I found a plan, that was probably going to be workable and signed up. After an hour or two I got a notification on my phone that a new esim was available for installation.

That’s where it all went to hell!

I wanted to keep my phone number so there was supposed to be what they call a port of the old number to the new carrier. After a really long time I got a message saying that the esim activation failed.

Immediately after that I got a message from TMobile saying that there had been changes to my account and it appears that they deleted my phone number from their systems and in the process they took away my access to the account that still has my watch and iPad connected. 

Oh and my phone can no longer make or receive phone calls. Since this is my only voice line it leaves me in an interesting situation. I can’t call customer service to ask for them to help me out.

Don’t laugh! IT’S NOT FUNNY!!!!

(Okay, yes it is kind of funny.)

So then I write the new carrier an email and explain that something has gone horribly wrong. I’m still waiting for an answer.

I’ve also found that I cannot log into the new carrier’s web site as I was told I could do. So something else has gone terribly awry. 

I will get all of this sorted out eventually.

What remains to be seen is will I still have my phone number or will there be a new number?

There is a temptation to just not have a phone number at all. I can still dial 911 from my phone. Is that all I need?

I’ve been looking into getting phone service of any kind so that I can call the new carrier. I thought, “Hey maybe I can just purchase a new plan with a new number from them, then use that number to call custom support to clear up the first problem, then cancel the plan with the new number. 

I was thinking that would make everything contained in just one phone call. 

They won’t allow me to do that. Probably something to do with the pending stuff that isn’t working in their system. 

I’m thinking that I’m going to have to buy a burner phone or at least a burner esim to get voice communications up & running again.

Thus far I’m only mildly annoyed and / or amused.

This is why I was a good Software QA person. If something can go wrong, it will go wrong on my stuff.

I wonder if VOIP is an option. I’ve got 1GB fiber. Ughhh Google Voice! I hate Google.

Anyway, I thought I’d send up this flare to let anyone who might have been trying to call me the 1 or 2 folks that is, That I’m alive and well and just having some technical difficulties.

Well it only took 4.5 hours!

I now have my phone working again and My Apple Watch is online too. Oh and I’m able to log into the customer portal.

I’m now using the new carrier to kill the rest of Tmobile

Then I need to figure out how to wipe the google talk account. But I’m wondering if it might not be a good idea to keep it just in the event that I end up in a similar situation in the future.

The devil is in the details isn’t it?

Voice mail
SMS
MMS

I haven’t had to set up these things for years! I mean decades. Migrating phones on the same carrier is pretty dang seamless in the Apple Ecosystem. So easy that you can forget the little things completely.

Since I haven’t switched carriers in a very very long time, I’d forgotten about all the settings that I’d customized. 

It’s taken me a while and I hope that my voicemail is set up correctly now! Boy, the setup is very different than I remember.