Uh oh, T-Mo

Background information.

In addition to my personal account, i’m also responsible for a business account that has 6 blackberries and 2 windows mobile smartphones, which averages about $900 monthly, all lines are out of contract.

And i’m pulling ALL of them from t-mobile, because i’m officially pissed off.

Friday, I ordered a Mytouch. Dispite giving them the promo code for Kickoff24, I still was unable to get it for the 99.99 pricepoint. I ended up paying $200 for the phone, and renewed for 2 years.

Monday night I recieved the phone. Charged it overnight and was using it since this AM.

Problem #1. Despite the fact that this (El Paso, TX) is a major metropolitan area, as well as in the top 100 largest wireless markets, 3G is still not fully rolled out here. In fact, El Paso is listed as fully covered by t-mobile, HOWEVER, less then 30% of the city (Geographically) is actually served by t-mobile 3G equipment.
Again, T-MOBILE LISTS THIS CITY AS HAVING 3G COVERAGE, HOWEVER LESS THEN HALF OF THE CITY IS COVERED BY PHYSICAL 3G EQUIPMENT.
… At my parents house, which is near the center of the city, in an older, upper middle class neighbohood (understand, we’re not in the middle of nowhere, or at the edge of a fast growing city) there is no 3G coverage. Heck, at their westside store, there is no 3G coverage.

Problem #2. My phone, when it was taken to a 3G area today rebooted 6 times. One of those reboots caused it to hang on the green spash screen. A battery pull reset the phone to normal, and i disabled 3G because of it. During troubleshooting, they determined the software version was up to date, and the phone was likely bad. They advised me to do a factory reset, which resulted in a lockup at the splash screen again. They said to take it to the store for a possible swapout. No problem, took it to a store. They agreed that the phone itself was defective, however, since it was ordered thru telesales, they couldnt swap it. They made the phone call to care for me, handed me the phone.

Problem #3. The rude agent at care informed me that in order to get a replacement, i would have to:
-Ship the phone back at my expense.
-Wait until its recieved and processed.
-Be billed for a new phone to ship to me ($22 if i wanted express).
It was unacceptable to me that i’d have to PAY for a replacement for a failed device AND be without a device for at least 2 weeks

Problem #4. I called to cancel this contract and return the phone. I was told that they can replace it, and offered me a $50 credit for the inconvenience. However, when she tried to process the replacement, she was told that because i’m in the 14 day buyer’s remorse period, that theres no way to replace it, i’d have to send it back. Again, at my expense, and i’d be without a device for 2 weeks or longer. Oh, and it might take up to 60 days to refund my credit card for the price of the phone, and longer for them to issue a check for any positive balance on the account.

Fine. I’m packing and shipping this piece of crap back tomorrow. I’m calling VISA and filing a chargeback for the purchase price (Defective equipment/not as described) and letting them deal with t-mobile for me.

I’m also posting this thread on a few forums to get the information out there. Its a sad day that a formerly good, customer-oriented company like t-mobile has policies that made it that hard on the customer.

This entry was posted on 23. September 2009 at 19:00 and is filed under Written Entries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.