I discovered that T-Mobile can blatantly steal minutes from your pre-paid account, and they've set it up so that there is no way for you to complain or prove it.
So, I've been a T-Mobile customer for years. Since my contract was long satisfied, I switched over to a pre-paid account about a year ago — you pay 9 cents/min and only pay when you run out of minutes — so that I wouldn't spend more money than I had to. Recently, it seemed like my minutes were running out way faster than they should have been. Given my typical usage, it seemed like they were taking out up to 100 minutes more than I was using. So, I went to the web site to see which calls I had spent my minutes on. I quickly discovered that there was no way to do that.
So, I called customer service to tell them that I think I suspected that I was being charged for more minutes than I was using, and I wanted to see my call history to see whether it was truly happening. The b.S. And lies that both the customer service rep and her manager gave to me to avoid accountability was beyond outrageous.
(1) First, they said they don't have any information about whom I called in their system.
(2) Then they said that they were looking at my records, and they could assure me that everything was in order and there was no problem. I asked them how they could do that if they claimed to have no call information in their records, and they could not answer.
(3) They said that if I wanted to verify a particular call, I could give them the number (or just the last four digits of the number!) and they would look it up. This essentially proved that (1) was a blatant lie. They also pretended not to understand that my problem isn't with calls that I knew about. It was with calls or charges that I didn't know about, which I obviously couldn't give them a number for.
(4) Then they claimed that they couldn't release the information because of security issues. I told them my security does not need any protection, since I was the one requesting the information and that the security of people I called was not relevent, since I was not requesting their records. So, I repeatedly asked them whose security they were trying to protect, and they could not answer.
(5) Finally, the supervisor just hung up on me, without even telling me his name.
Frankly, their policy is outrageous. They can systematically or even accidentally subtract minutes or double-charge pre-paid customers, and we have absolutely NO way to investigate or prove the error/theft. The only reason they have to institute this policy is to cut down on refunds and reduce customer service calls. Even if minutes were overcharged and calls are justified, they'd rather increase profits than give good service and address a possible problem.
As soon as my current minutes run out, I will be canceling my account with them. If you know of any other ways to get word out about this outrageous policy, feel free to e-mail me.
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