yet another

My first cell phone was with Sprint, and I had it for a year and a half. It was expensive as hell, but the service was so beautiful and wonderful that I never really thought about how I was being gouged. Then my T-Mobile friends finally got to me. “Why are you paying $40 a month for 200 minutes?” they asked me. “For ten bucks less, you can get practically unlimited calling with T-Mobile!” So after a year and a half of them begging me to jump ship, I did. I cut my contract with Sprint, paying a hefty $200 early cancellation fee in the process. “Don’t worry about that,” my friends said. “You’ll practically earn that money back once you’ve made the switch to T-Mobile. That’s how much money you’ll save.”

Screw you, T-Mobile users.

I got suckered into signing a two-year contract that would charge me $45 a month for 300 minutes, as well as having that Top 5 crap. I didn’t get mobile-to-mobile because the monthly bill was getting to be ridiculous; whatever happened to T-Mobile plans with unlimited minutes being wayyyy cheaper than Sprint?

Then the dropped calls. OH MAN. There were so many dropped calls. I can’t even begin to tell you how many dropped calls I’ve had with T-Mobile. Sprint spoiled me by never dropping any calls whatsoever. Then there would just be weird bullshit stuff. At least a third of my calls through T-Mobile would have this weird echo effect, where I could hear what I was saying a split second after I said it. What the hell? I never had this problem with Sprint, or indeed ANY other phone service.

Whenever I e-mailed T-Mobile about these complaints, they’d send me a generic “Thanks for the feedback!” letter and not do anything about it. When I tried to actually call T-Mobile support to find out what the hell was going on, I’d get routed through several different recorded messages, none of them taking me to a flesh-and-blood human being. In the end, I never got the echo effect to ever go away, I just learned to deal with it the best I could.

Then yesterday at noon I decided to end my plan with T-Mobile and just switch to prepaid cards. Since I moved back in with my parents, I can just leech off of their land line and not have to really use my cell phone except for emergencies and whatever; why pay $45 a month when I can just pay as I go, like the commercials say? I called their support and somehow, against all odds, I managed to get in touch with a human being. This is the absolute first time that it worked, and it will probably be my last.

She told me that since my contract ends in April 2009, I’d have to pay an early cancellation fee. “What?” I asked. “Why should I pay a cancellation fee? It’s not like I’m ending my T-Mobile service.” Well, you’re ending your contract early, so you need to pay the fee. “But… I’m not really ending my contract, am I? I’m still with T-Mobile.” Ma’am, I don’t think you understand. You are ending your contract that includes your Top 5 and 300 minutes a month, so that means you’re ending your contract early, which means you need to pay a fine.

I have to pay a freaking cancellation fee even though I’m still going to be USING YOUR SERVICE? What the hell? Okay, well, whatever. I tell her I’ll pay the fine. She gives me the website to go to in order to put minutes on my phone, tells me I’ll be able to keep my phone number, says that I have 5 minutes of time on my phone so that I can set up my voicemail, and says that everything should be switched over within 24 hours. She recommended that I put some minutes on my phone so that I wouldn’t be left in the dark once the switch was made, so I went to the website and put down $50 for prepaid minutes.

Within an hour of that conversation, my phone’s signal completely died. I thought that was pretty weird since she said that I had five minutes or whatever to set up my voicemail, and I hadn’t used them yet. I figured that it was because they needed that 24 hours to get set up or whatever.

Fast forward to this evening. Right now it’s after 8pm, a full 32 hours after I had that conversation with the woman at T-Mobile. My cell phone still has no signal. I used the house phone to call T-Mobile’s customer service line. The automated message asks me to enter my cell number, which I do. It then routes me over to the T-Mobile prepaid hotline, where I am again asked to enter my cell number. This time, however, the system tells me that there is no record of my number in the database. WHAT. If there is no record of my number, how did you know to send me over to the prepaid department?! I ask to speak to an operator, except that for some genius reason I can’t speak to a representative unless I enter a legitimate T-Mobile number, and the automated system wasn’t accepting my number. ARGH!!

I call my cell phone from my house line and get a “The number you have dialed has been disconnected” message. WHAT THE FUCK. That woman from yesterday said I’d be able to keep my number, but all this bullshit does NOT look like I’ll be able to. Plus, where the hell did my $50 go?!

I call the T-Mobile number again from my house line and ask to speak to an operator. After being put on hold for twenty minutes, I get disconnected. This is actually the kind of thing that used to happen to me all the time back when I would first complain about the echo effect. I tried again, and after being put on hold for another fifteen minutes, I was disconnected again. ROAR.

So now tomorrow I have to catch the bus to the T-Mobile store and pray that someone there will be able to help me. I’m so pissed about this. I never had any problems like this whatsoever with Sprint. I wish I hadn’t switched over. If they tell me that my $50 is gone forever or that I can’t keep my phone number, I’m going to throw a fit, demand refunds for everything, and take my business back over to Sprint. I don’t care if Sprint’s plans are ridiculously expensive in comparison. I’d rather pay a little more for quality than skimp out and get bogus service with T-Mobile.

Fuck T-Mobile.