T-flipping-Mobile

When I decided to keep my U.S. phone number for at least the first few months of my new life, I found that it would cost me $2.99 per minute to keep my 30-year cell phone relationship (I had a cell phone when they were permanently mounted in your vehicle—long before bag or brick phones) with AT&T. So I switched to T-Mobile who offers 20 cents per minute or free when using Wi-Fi calling; I went into the Olympia-Lacey T-Mobile store and the sales rep signed me up for a $40/month plan pre-paid plan that I later upgraded by $10 to get unlimited overseas text messaging.

Last Friday, a little more than a week after arriving in Viet Nam and a month after switching to T-Mobile I found that the plan I was on actually charged for Wi-Fi calls and non-Wi-Fi calls were $2.99! What?

I immediately called T-Mobile and talked with three different representatives before finding one who could "fix" me. She simply changed me to a post-paid plan for the same $50/month... one that gives me the free Wi-Fi calling and 20 cents/minute calls to the U.S. that I was originally promised. Problem solved, right? If it were, I wouldn't be boring you.

Sometime Friday afternoon U.S. time, T-Mobile shut off my phone and I only found out when I got "No Signal" on the phone. Fortunately, Skype hadn't shut me off for no flippin' reason, so I immediately called T-Mobile and asked, in slightly nicer words, WTF? They told me that the "Overseas Fraud Department" had shut down my line and that I would need to talk with them—on Monday.

When I called them on Monday, the "Overseas Fraud Department" told me that they didn't call me with their questions because their policy did not allow them due to the 14-hour time difference between them and me. What GREAT customer service!!! After answering three of the exact same questions that I answered when I switched to the post-paid plan only hours prior to them shutting down my phone number, they turned the number back on. Really? That's it??? Wow!

Now that they've turned my phone back on, the Wi-Fi calling that worked just fine before is no longer working. Numerous Skype calls to the so-called "Technical Support" people have done nothing to get it up again. So far, the best they can come up with is that there is something wrong with the unlocked iPhone 5S I'm using that wouldn't be wrong with an iPhone 5S that I could buy from T-Mobile—if I were in the U.S. This is their answer even though everything worked before they shut the line off and turned it on again AND it also doesn't work on any of the three all-but-identical 5S iPhones that I have with me. "Technical Support" claims they'll know more in a few days.

Why is it that when a company can't figure out where they screwed up, they blame it on the customer? That's great customer service!

Oh, yeah... I also had to call to get them to turn on my ability to get voicemail that somehow failed to re-activate when they restored my phone privileges.