4 ms·

I got rid of T-Mobile after my phone would randomly stop working. They have major issues across the board. I would go to the store and they would reactivate my

I got rid of T-Mobile after my phone would randomly stop working. They have major issues across the board. I would go to the store and they would reactivate my phone and there would never be any explanation of what happened. I would have to call in every few months because the bill would magically start creeping up for no reason. The final straw was when my phone stopped working while I was traveling. I called them and they told me they couldn’t fix it over the phone, I had to go in again. The nearest T-Mobile was an hour away and I literally had to take an Uber there and back. On the way back, in the Uber, the phone stopped working. Like no service at all. There’s nothing wrong with the phone, it’s some access issue. I had to take yet another Uber back to the store (called via WiFi). I complained and was offered nothing. Every time I went to the store the place was completely empty but the staff was still rude and seemed to be checked out and visibly struggling with the T-Mobile IT systems & complaining about them. I switched to AT&T and have had no issues whatsoever. A few months ago a T-Mobile rep called me to ask why I cancelled and I told her the story, she said she could see all the problems in the account history and still had no explanation. She asked, “What would it take for me to be a T-Mobile customer again?” I said “How about covering the Ubers I had to take?” and she laughed and hung up the phone. A few days later I got an automated survey about how T-Mobile is doing and I actually took the time to do it and never heard from them since. What an odd, dysfunctional company.

daedalus_j 3y ago
just to n=1 in the other direction: We had tons of issues with AT&T. Incorrect billing, getting random charges that weren't ours, and a huge pile of "you have full bars, but absolutely no data and calls can't go through" issues. (during the early iPhone days I worked at the Apple Store, we had a standing policy in several local stores of sending one of our sales reps to the AT&T store across the mall with a customer to get issues resolved because AT&T lied to customers so often to try and upsell them to something else, or out of sheer incompetence.) After switching to T-Mobile we've had great service, no billing issues, no problems with international roaming or surprise charges, and a couple of cold-calls with offers to update to a new plan which was actually cheaper. The only issues we've ever had have turned out to be hardware related. I think the truth may be that mobile carriers, much like ISP's, are a complete crapshoot, and reliability/service may entirely depend on which market you're in.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  > I think the truth may be that mobile carriers, much like ISP's, are a complete crapshoot, and reliability/service may entirely depend on which market you're in. The customer service is always a crapshoot, which is why I do my best to avoid dealing with them, which is why I never go to a store (whether it be ATT/T-Mobile/Verizon). I just paid full price for an iPhone at the Apple Store, took it to a T-Mobile store to add to my mom’s T-Mobile plan. Next month, my mom ended up being charged a monthly fee for the iPhone itself, as if she had bought it on contract from T-Mobile. Had to tell T-Mobile they would have to prove in court that they sold my mom the iphone, and we had a receipt from Apple showing the serial number.
- soupfordummies 3y ago
  I had so many horror stories with managing corporate IT accounts with AT&T at a previous job. So much so that they are one of my only hard-true-boycotts. For a time I knew how to get free iPads from them due to an exploit in their horrendously long shipping and failure to activate them without several layers of phone calls. Not to mention endless hours of hold time with support to fix their mistakes such as totally illegal unagreed-to upsells and charges. Can't tell you how many times I would specifically decline something like "mobile device insurance" only to see it on the bill the next month.
op00to 3y ago
I have not thought about my T-Mobile phone for years. The price has been the same for years. The service just works in the NE US where I am.
atkailash 3y ago
[dead]
foobiekr 3y ago
The amazing thing is that for 5g, T-mobile has, by far, the best network. And that's not just the radio network but the interior as well. Friends with t-mobile report the problems above regularly. AT&T has an absolutely terrible network - janky glued together hell - but I've never once had an issue in over 20 years.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
mechhacker 3y ago
I personally haven't had much of a problem other than where I now live doesn't have the best service indoors. Another thing that I really liked was when I was traveling in Europe, I had free basic internet and texts. This was NOT the case with when I had Verizon. They just send you a text when they detect you there, tell you what is free and what costs extra, and you can use your phone like normal. I even got a local esim with them when I was in Europe more long term (it was surprisingly cheap to get a dedicated European line). I originally got a phone that could handle a physical sim and additional esims for this reason. Don't know much about the company other than that.
BeetleB 3y ago
Also in the other direction: Been a T-Mobile user for over a decade, and never had technical issues. The store staff are beyond useless. I always get help from their phone support personnel - but I almost never need to. It just works. Their online portals are beyond crap. Example: I used to have one prepaid plan and would log in to make payments. Then I switched to another plan and I could no longer log in to manage it - my email address was tied to the prepaid plan I no longer had, and everyone I spoke to said "Our IT folks say they can't do anything and that I should just create a new account with another email address". In order to avoid manually making the monthly (prepaid) payments, I set up automation with them - it would automatically charge my card each month. Except they could never align the date properly - so for about a day every month I could not make calls. They could never fix it - the problem just went away when I switched plans.
tapvt 3y ago
I have Verizon for my personal phone, but opted for T-Mobile for my home (5G) internet and a new iPad. I made this decision after using T-Mobile for my company-paid phone with zero issues. Aside from a janky customer app on iPhone, I'm quite pleased. That said, I've never been to a physical location.
mrbonner 3y ago
I have been with Tmo for more than 10 years. I don’t have any problems per sẽ. But their reception is bad near my house. I only have 1 bar and the nearest tower is less than 250 yards away. I called them numerous time to complain and even escalated to senior tech guy. They all said there was weird issue with tower assignment and my phone was hooked to one 2.5 miles away. They couldn’t do anything to help. It’s been like this for 4 years. Please let me know if you know how to make this work.
xp84 3y ago
I decided to try postpaid for the first time in a while, signed up with T-Mobile and traded them a year-old phone for about $800 in bill credits. They didn't send me a label for my phone for a couple weeks, so I reached out to them and a rep sent me a UPS label, which I used. (Apparently their ecommerce website had simply eaten the part of my order where I declared a trade-in.) The bill credits never showed up, so I started reaching out to social media customer service on Twitter or Facebook Messenger. This is the only competent arm of their whole CS org. And they're actually empowered to follow up independently so you don't have to keep calling them. Anyway as far as I can piece together my phone was sent to their returns center instead of their trade-ins place, and after being signed for, it was never seen again. (I assume somebody recognized it didn't belong there and made sure it fell off a truck). Eventually the reps got a supervisor to okay a solution, which happened to be in my favor -- they just credited the full amount they owed me against my installment plan immediately, so I only owed like another $150 on the new phone at that point, paid it off, and had it unlocked. I think I stayed about a year. I got lucky with my issue, but they are definitely not great overall at their one job of providing wireless service. AT&T's prepaid service runs on an account/billing platform and website that is straight out of 2003, but the plans themselves are great and the service works well in my part of the country (T-Mobile sucks in most of the West by comparison).

daedalus_j 3y ago

just to n=1 in the other direction: We had tons of issues with AT&T. Incorrect billing, getting random charges that weren't ours, and a huge pile of "you have full bars, but absolutely no data and calls can't go through" issues. (during the early iPhone days I worked at the Apple Store, we had a standing policy in several local stores of sending one of our sales reps to the AT&T store across the mall with a customer to get issues resolved because AT&T lied to customers so often to try and upsell them to something else, or out of sheer incompetence.) After switching to T-Mobile we've had great service, no billing issues, no problems with international roaming or surprise charges, and a couple of cold-calls with offers to update to a new plan which was actually cheaper. The only issues we've ever had have turned out to be hardware related. I think the truth may be that mobile carriers, much like ISP's, are a complete crapshoot, and reliability/service may entirely depend on which market you're in.

lotsofpulp 3y ago
> I think the truth may be that mobile carriers, much like ISP's, are a complete crapshoot, and reliability/service may entirely depend on which market you're in. The customer service is always a crapshoot, which is why I do my best to avoid dealing with them, which is why I never go to a store (whether it be ATT/T-Mobile/Verizon). I just paid full price for an iPhone at the Apple Store, took it to a T-Mobile store to add to my mom’s T-Mobile plan. Next month, my mom ended up being charged a monthly fee for the iPhone itself, as if she had bought it on contract from T-Mobile. Had to tell T-Mobile they would have to prove in court that they sold my mom the iphone, and we had a receipt from Apple showing the serial number.
soupfordummies 3y ago
I had so many horror stories with managing corporate IT accounts with AT&T at a previous job. So much so that they are one of my only hard-true-boycotts. For a time I knew how to get free iPads from them due to an exploit in their horrendously long shipping and failure to activate them without several layers of phone calls. Not to mention endless hours of hold time with support to fix their mistakes such as totally illegal unagreed-to upsells and charges. Can't tell you how many times I would specifically decline something like "mobile device insurance" only to see it on the bill the next month.

op00to 3y ago

I have not thought about my T-Mobile phone for years. The price has been the same for years. The service just works in the NE US where I am.

atkailash 3y ago

[dead]

foobiekr 3y ago

The amazing thing is that for 5g, T-mobile has, by far, the best network. And that's not just the radio network but the interior as well. Friends with t-mobile report the problems above regularly. AT&T has an absolutely terrible network - janky glued together hell - but I've never once had an issue in over 20 years.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

mechhacker 3y ago

I personally haven't had much of a problem other than where I now live doesn't have the best service indoors. Another thing that I really liked was when I was traveling in Europe, I had free basic internet and texts. This was NOT the case with when I had Verizon. They just send you a text when they detect you there, tell you what is free and what costs extra, and you can use your phone like normal. I even got a local esim with them when I was in Europe more long term (it was surprisingly cheap to get a dedicated European line). I originally got a phone that could handle a physical sim and additional esims for this reason. Don't know much about the company other than that.

BeetleB 3y ago

Also in the other direction: Been a T-Mobile user for over a decade, and never had technical issues. The store staff are beyond useless. I always get help from their phone support personnel - but I almost never need to. It just works. Their online portals are beyond crap. Example: I used to have one prepaid plan and would log in to make payments. Then I switched to another plan and I could no longer log in to manage it - my email address was tied to the prepaid plan I no longer had, and everyone I spoke to said "Our IT folks say they can't do anything and that I should just create a new account with another email address". In order to avoid manually making the monthly (prepaid) payments, I set up automation with them - it would automatically charge my card each month. Except they could never align the date properly - so for about a day every month I could not make calls. They could never fix it - the problem just went away when I switched plans.

tapvt 3y ago

I have Verizon for my personal phone, but opted for T-Mobile for my home (5G) internet and a new iPad. I made this decision after using T-Mobile for my company-paid phone with zero issues. Aside from a janky customer app on iPhone, I'm quite pleased. That said, I've never been to a physical location.

mrbonner 3y ago

I have been with Tmo for more than 10 years. I don’t have any problems per sẽ. But their reception is bad near my house. I only have 1 bar and the nearest tower is less than 250 yards away. I called them numerous time to complain and even escalated to senior tech guy. They all said there was weird issue with tower assignment and my phone was hooked to one 2.5 miles away. They couldn’t do anything to help. It’s been like this for 4 years. Please let me know if you know how to make this work.

xp84 3y ago

I decided to try postpaid for the first time in a while, signed up with T-Mobile and traded them a year-old phone for about $800 in bill credits. They didn't send me a label for my phone for a couple weeks, so I reached out to them and a rep sent me a UPS label, which I used. (Apparently their ecommerce website had simply eaten the part of my order where I declared a trade-in.) The bill credits never showed up, so I started reaching out to social media customer service on Twitter or Facebook Messenger. This is the only competent arm of their whole CS org. And they're actually empowered to follow up independently so you don't have to keep calling them. Anyway as far as I can piece together my phone was sent to their returns center instead of their trade-ins place, and after being signed for, it was never seen again. (I assume somebody recognized it didn't belong there and made sure it fell off a truck). Eventually the reps got a supervisor to okay a solution, which happened to be in my favor -- they just credited the full amount they owed me against my installment plan immediately, so I only owed like another $150 on the new phone at that point, paid it off, and had it unlocked. I think I stayed about a year. I got lucky with my issue, but they are definitely not great overall at their one job of providing wireless service. AT&T's prepaid service runs on an account/billing platform and website that is straight out of 2003, but the plans themselves are great and the service works well in my part of the country (T-Mobile sucks in most of the West by comparison).