I am writing this here, because it looks like T-Mobile is paying attention to this site—but I can't get through any online means of a complaint on their site.
I elected to order phones through Wirefly because they offered a better deal than T-Mobile—and I gave T-Mobile the opportunity to meet/beat it. The process of credit approval has dragged on for over five days, even though T-Mobile tells me that I am approved with no deposit. Wirefly tells me they cannot move forward without T-Mobile's approval. T-Mobile tells me that approval is Wirefly's responsibility. We went through a whole malarky of faxing various confirmatory documentation to T-Mobile (directly to T-Mobile), due to a fraud alert I have placed on my credit report (all this really requires is a phone call to me to confirm that I am the person who is actually making the purchase). Every day there was a new piece that had to be faxed (who knew that the back of a Social Security card was important) and finally insisting that all of the information had to be faxed from a T-Mobile company store. And every contact with T-Mobile is telling me that Wirefly has nothing to do with them and that credit approval is their job. AND strongly suggesting that I come into a store and order from them (for an additional several hundred $).
Now let's think about this relationship. Wirefly is not making any money from giving away free phones (even if they never rebate a dime). Free phones is not their product. What they are selling is a sophisticated online system of scraping up wireless customers and then delivering them to various wireless companies—T-Mobile included. For this service T-Mobile, and other companies pay them so much per customer. AND since customers that don't hang around aren't much good to them—they don't pay up unless the customer stays with them for a minimum time—which is the function of the rebates at 6 months with a paid up bill as documentation.
As a result of the AG ruling, this payment scheme will be altered—spreading the payments out and making Wirefly less dependent on (financially) beating up customers who opt out early. But now—it would be to T-Mobile's advantage to make Wirefly look bad—maybe customers will use their website to compare—but then return to T-Mobile to shop.
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