T-Mobile Astoundingly Incompetent

[apostolakisl]

I have had ATT service for my cell phones and was looking at changing, but I still needed a GSM provider for my HAI C3 unit alarm dialer. I purchased a T-mobile prepaid card and tried to activate it. Literally I was on the phone 5 different times for 40 mintues or more each time and they could not do it. The first two times was a month ago. We left the conversation with, the card will be working in less then 24 hours. After 3 days i called back, they had no record of me calling before, did not know who I was and had no knowledge of what they should do with the reference number I had been given, nor any way to verify that my SIM card number had ever been entered in the system (not that it hadn't been entered, they simply didn't know). We tried again. Still no activation. Now I tried again today. I was transferred 4 times. Each time I told them exactly what I had and what i was doing. The computer always gave me the wrong person. Then, I would be transfered by a human back to the computer. Finally I insisted on being transfered to a real person. Guess what, the real person transferred me to the non-prepaid department. Half the time I got someone in India who I could hardly understand, mostly becuase I think the used something half as good as Skype to connect the call. This from a "phone" company. No wonder T-mobile is losing customers and going bankrupt. We'll see if ATT merger can save them.

 

[Smarty]

.....SHOCKING!!!!.......

They all stink MOST of the time. Once in a great while you can get lucky.....

 

[JonW]

Put the prepaid card into one of your old phones and get it activated. Then move it to the C3 unit.

 

[apostolakisl]

Put the prepaid card into one of your old phones and get it activated. Then move it to the C3 unit.

That is actually what I was trying to do. But they literrally took 4 transfers before they could get me to a person who supposedly could activate my card, but actually that person couldn't either. It happened the same way all three times I tried to get this working. And by all three tries, I mean three separate days where each attempt included more than one phone call and at least 4 transfers and more than one hour of time. Each transfer got me to a new person who started reading there little script. They have turned people into brainless automatons incapable of answering a question or performing a task. And if you are so unlucky to get one of their India phone centers you have to deal with a heavy accent and a phone line connection that sounds like the first ever transatlantic phone call. They are so damn cheap they won't even pay for enough band width to get a reasonable phone call. I talk to my buddy in China on Skype all the time with 10 times the quality.

If they just fired the worst half of their employees and actually trained the other half, things might actually get done properly the first time using 1/4 of the time. They really are the worst company I have ever dealt with as far as the debrained, scripted customer service rep.

 

[video321]

Did you actually switch to T-Mobile for your regular cell service? My parents had talked me into going over to T-Mobile a few years back and it was the worst decision I ever made in my life! I had more dead spots than when I had a local cellular service almost 20 yrs. ago with a 25 min. plan! They're fine in a metropolis, but once you wonder out you're doomed.

 

[apostolakisl]

No. I won't be doing business with t-mobile at all, ever.

I'm either going to switch to Sprint HTC Evo 4g or trade up to the ATT iphone 5 when it comes out. I never was considering tmobile for anything but my HAI C3.

 

[JonW]

Wasn't there a post somewhere about a simple prepaid plan working well for the C3 units?

 

[Ira]

From AT&T, you can get a Samsung SGH-a107 phone for $10, and couple it with a "ten cents per minute" rate plan (i.e., no monthly charge or prepaid minutes to lose). Couldn't a person use the SIM chip from that phone after it's been activated in a HAI C3?

 

[apostolakisl]

From AT&T, you can get a Samsung SGH-a107 phone for $10, and couple it with a "ten cents per minute" rate plan (i.e., no monthly charge or prepaid minutes to lose). Couldn't a person use the SIM chip from that phone after it's been activated in a HAI C3?

That would be perfect. I see it on ATT's website, I will look into whether it has a GSM sim card I can pull and put into the C3 unit. That literally could cost me as little as a $1.00 per month. Somehow there must be some fine print.

 

[apostolakisl]

It has a minimum $25 purchase of minutes which expire in 90 days or you can buy $100 prepaid that lasts 1 year. Both ways work out to roughly $8/mo. Unless someone knows of a better way to do this, I will be setting it up this weekend.

Just an FYI, the online chat session person actually answered all of my questions right away without any rediculous scripting.

 

[apostolakisl]

I just switched to ATT prepaid. It took 5 minutes at the ATT store. I can't believe all the hours I wasted with Tmobile.

A little trick with ATT is pay at the kiosk. If you are barely using any minutes and are more in need of length of time before minute expiration this is how to do it. If you put $100 in the kiosk, you get one year of valid minutes and the sales tax is deducted from the $100. If you pay at the counter, they add the sales tax to the $100. So, since I will likely not use the minutes before one year, it saves me $8.00. Wooohooo, I'm rich!