T-Mobile Ongoing manipulation of contract while enabling company to reap financial benefit. Bellevue, Washington
Prior to cancelling my service December 2011, I was a loyal T-mobile customer for six years. Initially, I was rather pleased with its customer service. Unfortunately, during its quest to sell the company off to AT&T, it was quite noticeable that the same customer service was not available. Slowly, my bill continued to increase monthly. My monthly rate became unbearable to even want to maintain. I began filing on-line FCC complaints. Upon moving from one location to another, still staying within T-mobile's service area within a major city, T-mobile service was unavailable within my apartment. Upon complaining to the company and then to the FCC, their answer was the same --- manpower, outages, equipment, tower, etc. etc. etc. -- was the cause of poor reception. My monthly bill was approximately $275 for three lines but could not get service. T-mobile continued to add or increase by monthly billing by altering the contract to benefit itself, I then just cancelled. T-mobile did not initiate the cancellation until three months later and I received a bill that ended in December requesting a payment of $639 now over $2000. This $2000 charge does include the $200 per line cancellation.
I am equally perplexed regarding the benefit of the FCC. Complaints go unheard through them.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Jim Martin
Kendallville,Indiana,
USA
Response to OP
#2Consumer Comment
Mon, April 09, 2012
I am equally perplexed regarding the benefit of the FCC. Complaints go unheard through them.
The FCC does not investigate every complaint. They take the complaints and look for patterns, i.e. if a company receives hundreds of complaints about the way a certain company is billing their customers.
What you need to do is call them and ask exactly what was charged to your account. You would have been charged for $200 per line x 3 lines for a total of $600. Then, if they kept the account going for 3 months like you claim, you would have been charged $275 per month x 3 months for a total of $825. When you add the 2 amounts together you get $1425. The remainder of the $2000 bill would be for late payment fees because now their system thinks you have fallen behind on your payments.
I'm not sure why t-mobile would keep the service going for 3 months without you making a single payment. Most companies would disconnect your service once you go 30 days late, read your contract on that. It should also say in your contract exactly what their late payment fees are.
As for poor customer service, that complaint is pretty much a staple on this and many other forums.
Your rising bill happens all the time and people always complain about it. My favorite was the Netflix customer who was billed for 6 months at their "new" rate then came to this site and complained that Netflix did not notify them of the price increase. Her excuse for not noticing it on her bank statements is that she is not one of those check book balancing losers. I am. I check my account balance daily. At least you noticed the rising rates immediately, right?
Do you actually have proof that they altered the contract? That may be grounds to get the debt thrown out but only if you can prove that you weren't notified of the changes to your contract and given time to cancel.
Now to your reception. A lot of factors come into play on that. You gave a few in your original post, but a lot of times what is around you can have an effect, too. Aluminum siding on the building or other electronic devices are both major causes of interference. I currently use t-mobile's prepaid service and I can be sitting in one spot on my couch and get no signal what so ever but move to the other end of the couch and get perfect signal.
And no, I don't work for, nor have I ever worked for T-Mobile or any other wireless service. I have just been through the same things with other companies.