I just went through this exact same frustrating process when trying to buy a phone and activate a new line of service with T-Mobile. After three days of back an

I just went through this exact same frustrating process when trying to buy a phone and activate a new line of service with T-Mobile. After three days of back and forth on Twitter (yes, it's the best way to actually talk to them) and phone, I was finally told what I was trying to do simply could not be done because the order could not be "verified" by their system. I've had the same T-Mobile account for over a decade, and I spend nearly $200/month on mobile service with them...but, I can't be "verified". I think it was the billing/shipping mismatch (I travel full-time, so my billing address is a forwarding service in a city I'm unlikely to see again for years, while my shipping address is wherever I'm parked this month). But, their system wouldn't allow changes once the verification had failed. No level of "escalation" could resolve the issue. It was simply a "sorry, no". I guess I am now in a permanent state of "unverified" with T-Mobile, and if I want to buy another phone or activate another line it'll have to be with another provider. I had similar problems with Sprint, which is why I ended up trying to add another line to T-Mobile (I have both, for a variety of reasons, and Sprint would have been a better deal, but their customer support is even worse, if that's imaginable). It's scary how systems like this can make it impossible to provide a basic level of customer service to someone who doesn't fit the systems exactly. There was a time when customer service reps, or at least their managers, had the ability to override the system when the system prevented a reasonable level of customer service. That doesn't seem to happen anymore, at least in my limited recent experiences dealing with customer service reps at big companies.