T-Mobile allowed others to make bad payments on my bill St Paul Minnesota

In January of 2006 I recieved a text message on my cell phone telling me to contact T-Mobile about a payment made through my handset. This was odd since I had had their online easy-pay system up for the past 6 months or so.

When I called them I spoke with a very nice and helpful customer service rep who informed me that there were 3 bad checks paid over the phone for 3 amounts one being the $50 some dollars I actually owed, a random $4 and another payment of $100.

The customer rep put me on hold and spoke with the payment department. She discovered that the bank that the payments came from was not my bank and told me she would remove the fees I was being charged for the payments being rejected. I was told it was $15. She also gave me an extra 50 minutes airtime that wouldn't expire for 3 months.

Well, a week or so later my phone would not pick up a signal. I tried logging onto my T-Mobile online and my account did not exist. When I called the customer service the man was extremely rude and told me he couldn't do anything for me and I'd have to fax a letter to the payment department. The man didn't seem to care that I had no access to a fax machine and told me I could try emailing them.

I played email tag with the customer service reps back and forth 3 times each being forced to communicate with a new rep! Nobody knew what was going on! They kept telling me to fax my story to the payment department.

I finally spoke with a manager on the phone and he told that there was nothing he could do. I couldn't speak with the payment department on the phone, I had to fax them. The manager told me that I'd been told "multiple times" that I needed to fax over my bank statement! I was never told that!

I also asked the manager how someone was able to make a payment on my account without my consent. He told me that it had to be me because they must have had my ssn and birthday.

I finally got ahold of a fax machine at my mothers work and went to the bank and had them fax my bank statement to prove which bank I banked at. The letter I sent from my mothers work asked them to give me the name of the bank and the person who made these payments in addition to a revised statement.

Being a busy, working, college student I didn't get a chance to contact them for about 4 weeks and they never contacted me. When I did get ahold of them I was told that my account was already being sent to a payment department to collect December and January's payments (which I am happy to pay) in addition to the extra $30 that I don't owe for bad payments and a $30 late fee!

For the next 2 months I was harassed by Bay Area Credit, receiving up to 3 phone calls a day demanding my money.

This evening I finally decided it wasn't worth it to keep fighting and called T-Mobile to get the phone number to the credit company. Interestingly enough, when the automated voice message asked me for my SSN and I entered it it told me that it was incorrect! However the customer service rep accepted it and moved on with giving me the information.

So today I paid $94.60 to T-Mobile and I don't owe much of it. I'm extremely upset because they didn't respond to my letter asking for a revised statement, they didn't give me any information about my case even when I called and asked, there appears to be NO communication between departments, and overall they just do not care about their customers!!!!

T-Mobile has lost a loyal customer of 2 years thanks to their unsecure system!

Caroline
White Bear Lake, Minnesota
U.S.A.