bye bye t-mobile
 

So, I have had this problem with T-mobile which totally shocked me. I have been with them for almost 5 years now and never had a problem. They have always upgraded my phone if I had an ancient cheap one for free, and they have always swapped my phones out of warranty no problem.

Until about Feburary of this year, I started having problems with my phone (motorola v300 series - newest rev) which I purchased as a brand new phone in like September of 05. So it is still under warranty. My first problem was dropped signal. I first noticed it while driving on the highway. I would frequently drop signal completely and then re-establish it a few moments later. After talking with my co-worker (who used to work for t-mobile), he says that it is more than likely a problem with the phone not being able to switch towers fast enough and that is why it drops and reestablishes signal so often when driving on the highway. Okay, well that is fine I thought I really don't need to be jabbering on my phone on the highway, but what if I got into an accident or something similiar and needed to use my phone and was in that dead spot between towers?

So, I called t-mobile and they said there was nothing they could do and that I should just reboot my phone everytime I have a problem with it. So thats what I did and like 5 weeks goes by and the problem starts to get worse.

I now drop signal inside buildings and more frequently where it used to work just fine. I have an old nokia phone from 1999 that I keep as a back up and it works fantastic. it was a free phone i got when i frist signed up with tmobile. So, why does my old free phone work a lot better than my new 200 dollar phone?

I call t-mobile again and this time they have an 'engineer' test out my towers. I give them the zip code I live in and the zip code I work in and they do a tower check and are suppose to call me back with in 72 hours. 1 week goes by no call back, no voicemail, no email from them at all. I did however get a text msg that my bill was three days overdue:mad:

So, I call them back again and this time they get me to their help desk. I run through some basic troubleshooting and nothing gets better. The phone at this point locks up while in use, and now also does not hang up calls when I hang up. Instead the calls stays connected for about 30 seconds after i hang up. They run me through some more steps and say thats all they can do and still will not exchange the phone.

Finally its june and the problem has gotten worse and worse over the last few months and is to the point where the phone is now useless. So i call t-mobile for like the 6th time and have to explain my story all over again. I just ask for a supervisor at this point and they end up sending me to some help desk specialist who is going to fix my phone over the phone (i was on a land line). so he finds out i have IT background and asks if I am cofortable taking apart the phone. i said yes, I have no problem with that. So we take it apart and he asks me about this white sticker under my battery. I look around for it and notice a white sticker that has a slight shade of pink in the middle of it (about 1/8 of the sticker is slighly pink) and ask him if its the one with the pink center. he tells me its a liquid sticker and that I have had liquid damage to my phone and have voided all warranty. so i look up this whole red sticker business on the internet and find, well a ton of people who have had the same problem.

so now i am pretty ticked off and i call back and talk to a supervisor directly. i told them that there was no way it had liquid damage that it was barely pink due to some sort of moisture. After all i live in Kansas city where it can get pretty dang humid in the summer. the supervisor admitted to me over the phone that it was probably some sort of moisture due to sweat through my pocket or I had it in the bathroom while showering or from the humidity outside. they even admitted to me over the phone that those things can cause it. i have never had a liquid spill on any of my electronics, let alone my cell phone. they told me to go in to a tmobile store and have one of their csrs or specialists or whomever look at it. then they could call back and demtermine there was no liquid damage and they could exchange the phone.

finally I thought after tons of my time wasted they were finally going to help me out. so i went to the tmobile store at the great mall which is near my office kind of and talk with one of their reps. he tells me that he can't do anything and has no idea why a tmobile manager sent me in to the store to get help. i explain it to him so he looks at my phone and notices the slight pink spot in the middle of the sticker (i mean it is totally white around the edges). he says its liquid damage. i told him it was due to moisture and that i already established this with a tmobile help desk (or tech support or whatever they are) person. then i explained that when you have liquid damage on electronics there is always some sort of calcium lime or rust deposits somewhere on it, or something similiar to show that there is liquid damage. i told him to take the phone apart and verify that none of that evidence is there. he responded that any of that can be brushed off with a tooth brush in a matter of seconds. i grabbed my pos phone and left. Mind you i have never raised my voice to anyone at this point, and I have remained calm and expressed my opinions on this matter in a very calm way. I used to work customer service waaaay back in the day and I hated every hot headed customer. every nice customer i ever had i went out of my way to help since they were cool. I know that keeping your cool goes a way longer way than yelling and screaming and crying, unless you are complaining to someone high up or whatever then it can work to your advantage.

so i call t-mobile again and explain this again and explain how i am not happy because they sent me to a tmobile store and the guy at the store was not helpful, had an attitude with me, and basically told me it was pointless for me to have even stepped in there. tmobile says i can mail them in my phone and they will service it, and give me a loaner, but if they find any evidence of abuse in any way i will be charged 80 dollars for a refurbished phone. I immediately ask if i have the choice of getting a refurbished phone and she said no. she said that if they find abuse they will mail me a refurb and it will be tagged on to my bill. so i was like, so i get no say in this? Nope, she replied thats how it goes. Can I talk to a tech first? Nope! Can i at least pay the difference and upgrade my phone? Nope, you can't upgrade your phone until the middle of august, unless you want to pay full price.

so my 5+ years with them is ending in august. they wouldn't even give me a free working phone. I asked for the lowest, least featured, cheapest phone and they said no. Then I asked to pay them money for an upgrade and they said I can't until august, which, well was like 5 weeks away when i was on the phone with the manager at tmobile. so then the manager on the phone says one last time go to another tmobile store and tell them to look to see if there is liquid damage, if they can confirm it we will swap out your phone.

so i went to the tmobile store on johnson drive and was talking with this younger dude, he seemed cool at first. he looked at my phone and showed me some upgrade options but then realized i couldn't get an upgrade. then i asked him why would they not do that with a customer that has over 5 years loyalty with tmobile? he said that they wouldn't even do it for him, and he is an employee. Then I asked him why they won't exchange it under warranty and showed him there was no liquid damage on the phone (at this point i was taking it apart). His response is pretty much what made me give up on tmobile 100%.

he said:

"Well, I can see if that was like a cheeseburger from like mcdonalds and it was defective or made wrong you could probably go back to mcdonalds and get a new one for free, but this is a cell phone and not mcdonalds"

well for one, I have worked sales in the past and he totallly ****** up that analogy, two, how in the world can you acutally compare a 200 dollar cell phone to a 99 cent cheeseburger? I don't understand. My cell phone came with a 1 year warranty (which expires in september) and my cheeseburger cost me a buck, and if I didn't like it, I would probably just throw it away. Really what that sales guy told me is - go to my competitor.

I get no signal at all on my block and in my apartment I get singal only outside on the third floor, and I live on the first floor. so my tmobile phone is currently forwarded to my nextel blackberry and come mid august I am canceling my tmobile account and going with cingular. I have already been to a cingular store and talked over with their sales rep and read through their whole agreement. Plus I have several friends on cingular whose phones have been exchanged under warranty no questions asked. I remember a time with tmobile was like this and they replaced my defective phones under warranty, and they gave me free upgrade options after my second year for being such a loyal customer. Where did that all go, and how in the hell is tmobile ranked #1 in customer service? That has to be a bold faced lie, at least not after the experience I had with them.

Just thought I would share, I am so fed up with them that I think everyone should switch to their competitor.

Wow. I must say I don't actually know anyone here in the UK that uses T-Mobile, my family is all O2 (cept dad who went Orange for a year as they had the cheapest deal, but he finds the signal so crass moving around the country he's coming back to O2 when his contract with Orange runs out.)

All my friends are either O2 (they bothered to check deals out) or Orange (they just went into the one! phone store in town and asked for a phone + sim card (the shop is orange only.))

And yet again, big corporations are screwing over the customers, for the sake of a $200 phone. I guess they do have to draw the line somewhere though, and they probably just treat everyone the same (as they have no background on people) but 5 years with them and then they treat you like that? Dude, you're making the right decision.

when i mentioned i had been with them for over 5 years one of the help desk guys tells me that all 20 million of tmobiles customer's are subject to the same contract.

i have no idea where tmobile comes off like this. i had voicestream back in the day that got bought out by tmobile and well it was good. my phone got stolen once so they gave me half price on any new phone (except for the real expensive ones of course) which i thought was way cool. now they won't even replace my phone under warranty.

i am switching. (kind of appropriate for a mac forum, or maybe they just made a trend out of the word 'switch')

I am not sure exactly how cell services over in europe work but my friend who is from germany told me that every cell provider over there never charges for incoming calls, since they see it as someone is calling you why should it waste your minutes. she told me things like text messages and unlimited nights and weekends were free. Here in the US you have to pay for the unlimited features on top of your basic plan rate.

I still don't agree with those commericals and that article on digg on how t-mobile is #1 in customer service. I found out that a few of my co-workers have gone through similiar problems with t-mobile, and my friends girl friend also had similiar problems with t-mobile and all of them have switched.

I just got figure out exactly how to switch services, keep my same number and not get charged a cancelation fee of 200 dollars for a phone i can't use. lol

t-mobile is in fact a wholly owned subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, something your german friend certainly knows.

It sounds like they really conspired to piss you off...

Early adoption of GSM and efficient customer protection laws make dealing with mobile phone operators probably a bit easier in Europe.

I have cingular. I am very happy with my service.

I have Cingular too, but having lived for years in Asia and Europe I can tell you that phone companies here are well behind in many ways, even accounting for the size of the country and sprawl. The proprietary technologies used here are a disaster for innovation, and the ability to lock phones, maul them and the like disgraceful. It's just that no country is the most advanced in everything, and the US lags behind most of the countries I have seen, including developing ones like India. Their best protection is that here people are not that informed on what happens around the world, so the cellular companies can advertise their gorgeous wares when they should shut-up.

Good luck, since every carrier sucks. I have to deal with all of them in my job.

I am with Sprint now after being with T-Mobile for about 7 years. My six months with Sprint have been hell. I had almost exactly the same issue as far as supposed water damage. But they were far worse about helping and attitude. I've waited hours only to talk to someone who could do nothing. Every visit to a Sprint store takes at least 30 minutes of waiting, sometimes they estimated 1-2 hours of wait to see someone. Once you do see someone they tell you it will be 30 minutes and then you wait again.

Verizon has done similar things to my clients. They also have major anti-consumer anti-competitive practices like disabling a phone's built-in services then charging you to use their services for data transfer.

Cingular is a merger of the company with the worst customer service rating with the company with the worst system reliability rating. A few years ago I had AT&T and went through three days of them randomly deleting voice mails and lying about it. I lost a bunch of business, sued them, and won. About a month ago, some clients with Cingular reported the same thing.

Alltel seems the most reliable though bland. Low-tech phones. Slow phone service, but no horror stories. Expensive.

Oh, and the call drops and reception issues are VERY common for Motorola phones, particularly the V300 and V610. Motorola makes crap phones.

yeah i am going back to nokia or maybe a samsung phone.

i think cingular is my best bet at the moment. one thing that really irks me is how they high jack all the prices of phones and only offer them at affordable rates for locked in contracts.....which is lame!

Cingular should work great for you...until you need something. Good luck.

Any GSM phone will work, so you don't have to buy it from them. If you want a discount, of course you have to sign a contract. If you want to see the "real"price of phones, just shop on eBay. There are always tens of thousands of GSM phones available.

are there any web sites that just sell gsm phones direct with no service contract? I would like to avoid having a 2 year contract if possible and don't want to spend over 100 dollars on a decent phone

carlos

I did a gis and found this right here, seems tiger direct sells cell phones at about half the list price

http://techbargains.pricegrabber.com...0cell%20phones

any experience with this sort of thing? Are these refurbs or used or are they brand new?

There's no free lunch. The kickback for a new contract is $150 towards any phone, so contracts are a big deal. Note that T-Mobile only requires a one year contract for the phone kickback, everyone else is two years (or smaller kickback).

I've always bought phones from otgsolutions.com if they're not available on eBay for some reason. But for the most part, pretty much all GSM phones are available on eBay.

I don't know anything about phones from Tiger Direct. However, this won't solve your problem. None of the carriers will let you sign up month-to-month to begin with, even if you have your own phone. They demand at least a year contract to start.

well tmobile now does two year contracts for a huge discount and one year for a so so discount, they also do not allow you to upgrade during your contract period.

a one year contract would not be bad as long as i got a decent deal, a 2yr is what I am trying to avoid since my last phone with tmobile worked great for the first 5 months, then went to crap and then they turned into jerks, so at least I am not stuck with tmobile for another year, i would be really mad then:mad: being a sub contractor on the side for a few companies i need a working cell phone i lose out on extra work.

either way i will go into a cingular store this week and find out exactly what can be done for me, my tmobile contract ends august 4th i found out today, so i must transfer my number on the 4th to avoid early cancelation fees

Or get a new phone with them on the 4th. Regardless of your experience, you're probably not doing any better with Cingular. Several people have told me the same story with them. One client just switched to T-Mobile a few months ago because Cingular told him to buy a new phone or cancel (he had an AT&T TDMA/dual-band phone).

sadly i think you are probably right carlos, the more i research it on the net the more i see how crappy our cell providers are in the states....

i will just play it by ear for now and see what happens.

As with a lot of services, we demand them to be cheap and we want free phones; nobody is willing to pay for service. I lamented the continual drop in price many years ago because I could see that paging and cell services were going away from business-level services to very cheap consumer-level services. Few people consider the service aspect when they shop; just the dollars.

European cell carriers don't seem to subsidize phones as heavily, so they have shorter contracts (if any). Also since the rest of the world pretty much runs on GSM without the onerour anti-competitive control of the FCC, it's easy for people to simply switch to one of the other 5 carriers at the drop of a hat.

I switched back to T-Mobile today. Had yet another Sprint issue, wasted yet another hour and some getting nowhere. As I was considering the options I got a call from a client who was sick of Verizon and wanted to know if he should go to T-Mobile. I later talked to another who mentioned that Alltel also charges to replace a phone even in warranty (a month ago we paid Sprint $55 for a used phone to replace a dead phone that was only six months old...it died again, and they wanted to charge us again).

So while I was on hold with Sprint, the wife went to T-Mobile. She had a new pair of phones before Sprint CS even answered my call.

We'll have to pay two termination fees, but it's worth it.

I bought a SE Z600 from welectronics.com 2 years ago after the screen on my T616 broke. They have a number of unlocked GSM phones in the neighborhood of $100.

I sympathize with your phone problems. I actually switched from Cingular to T-Mobile at the beginning of the year. I am relieved to get away from Cingular.

My main goal is to not talk to anyone at my phone company for a year. I can take dealing with these companies once a year but not much more than that.

I also have a good relationship with a semi independent phone store near me. You may want to look for a nice person who owns or works in a place like that.

There are a couple of online places that I shop at, letstalk.com has the basic phones and mobilebee.com has the more exotic stuff. Both offer contracts with the major US carriers and discounts on the phones as well.

I had this same problem with T-Mobile. Who knows what I will do, I am really pissed at them so I don't want them to get my monthly money, and my block seems to be a T-mobile dead spot. My nextel blackberry works fantastic but I am not sure if I like any of the phones Nextel offers.

I got till august 4th to make a decision.

yeah well, i have like 5 friends on cingular and they say its better, a few of them have switched from tmobile.

I live in KC and don't even bother with sprint, even though their HQ is right here. Their signal drops inside buildings worse than any other provider I have seen. One of my old jobs sold sprint phones and we were offered an employee discount for service (roughly 20 dollars per month for your average plan minutes wise) since we sold sprint products. Every single employee who had it, couldn't get signal in our building, or in their house, and god forbid you go down in someone's basement - never signal there. however, outside it seemed to work okay.

if I stay with tmobile I will not sign any contract agreement, I will just bite the bullet and pay more for a phone online. I have found some nokias that would meet my needs for around 100 dollars, which is what I would pay with an extension of my contract.