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Image courtesy of MobilityDigest.com

Customers beware: even if you think you are in a “no annual contract” price plan with Tmobile- you will STILL be charged a $200 cancellation fee.

That’s right folks- they get you on both ends. Make you pay FULL RETAIL price for expensive phones promising “no annual contract” as part of their Even More Plus price plan, but if you cancel your service and move to a different carrier- BAM $200 cancellation fee PER PHONE. PLUS as an added bonus, they will also charge you an ENTIRE months service fee if you happen to cancel on the first day of a new billing cycle—Say WHAT? YUP—no prorated monthly service for us traitors—they stick it to us nice and right.

How can that be Jessie, isn’t avoiding hefty cancellation fees the whole point of buying an expensive phone outright in the first place?

That’s what we thought as well-turns out we were wrong and screwed and now because our account was cancelled and we had bought into the whole “green” “paperless billing” scam that is promoted– the only way we can even get any copies or view documentation of our account is to RE-INSTATE SERVICE with them….

Here’s the story:

We had been T-Mobile customers for nearly 9 years when we began researching “smart phones” back in December of 2009. Of course iphone ruled the market and android was giving it a run for its money- Tmobile offered very few android based phones and even today in April 2011 is still not in with apple to offer iphones- so our options were limited. Even so, we still wanted to try out a basic beginner smart phone since we weren’t’ even sure if the whole smart phone thing was gonna be for us and t-mobile did offer a pretty neat google based option through motorola called the Cliq- Knowing that we tend to have pretty quick learning curves when it comes to technology we went ahead and signed up for the Family Talk Even More Plus Unlimted Talk, Text Weekend (FTEvenMorePlus UnlTTW) plan. T-mobile was heavily marketing their Even More Plus plans as the “no annual contract” plans at the time. Catch was you had to pay full retail price for the phones- See the retail video produced for use IN their stores at the time we were making this upgrade:

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/10564909 w=400&h=225]

Even More Plus from Panders.tv on Vimeo.

At several hundred dollars a pop each that was a big bite for us to take, but we truly did not want to be tied to a contract of any length in case we got apple fever and decided to stand in line like the other sheep for whatever iphone Steve Jobs pooped out next.

At first the Cliq phones were like pure heaven in the palm of our hands. Sadly, the shine wore off quickly and it wasn’t long before I had to endure tech support for several hours before it was determined that they needed to just send me a new phone. So not even 6 months old and I was already getting handed a refurbed phone replacement after having shelled out nearly $300 for a BRAND NEW one in February of 2010. OUCH that completely SUCKED. A few months later, Jas had to send his in as well. Nice product. Que the search for something that could withstand our usage, something with more power and ability to handle having more then 3 apps installed on it. So come Christmas time we began researching phones again, just like we had the year before- only this time, since we were not in a contract we broadened the search to include anything from any carrier.

By January 2011 my refurb phone had seen its max 6 months of use and started acting up. Frustrated but still unsure of what phone we wanted to transition to, I once again endured tech support and wiping my entire phone back to basic zero, which fixed the problem for a few days and then had to do it all over again before Tmobile decided to just send me yet another “new to me” refurb. When it finally arrived almost 2 weeks later, it was actually worse then the one I had sent in to them. It turned on, but that was about it– it just flashed and flashed and flashed. I shot a brief clip of the phone with our flip camera and posted it on youtube so I could share my maddness with facebook and get sympathy

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEfIK4tabVI&w=640&h=510]

So, Jas and I took our phone research and decided to take our now 10 years of loyal customer service over to Sprint and get ourselves those pretty little HTC Evo Shift phones. We truly got a smokin’ deal at Sprint with some killer rebates and even sold them our piece of junk Cliqs–yeah they even bought the possessed Cliq shown above. In the end of all the negotiating it was going to end up that Sprint was in fact paying US to switch to them and get newer BETTER phones…even with the upfront out of pocket costs we opted to pay once again to insure a “no contract” price plan. To port our numbers to Sprint that day we had to call tmobile to get our account number (since we didn’t know it off the top of our heads) The customer service person kept insisting on knowing why we needed our account number, asking if there was “anything they could help us with” and Jas just said, nope I just need my account number please- finally she relented and gave him the number.

A month later we get a tmobile bill in the mail. A bill in which they are charging us $200 per phone in cancellation fees as well as an entire months worth of service for the billing period that began on February 17th. What day was it that we switched over to Sprint and ported our number you ask? February 17th. So TMobile charges us for ALL of the days from February 17th-March 16th, for service we only had for half of the day on February 17th.

SIGH-

To make matters worse because we no longer have a Tmobile account and had done everything online paperless –so we have virtually NO documentation to pour over with a fine tooth comb to see exactly where the fine print screwed us. When we talk to Tmobile their reply is that if we want copies of anything we must “re-instate our services with them” first.

Tmobile acknowledges that our Cliq phones were under no contract, HOWEVER the phones we had with them prior to UPGRADING to the Cliq were still in a contract that is up in August of 2011 and therefore we were in breach of contract and liable for cancellation fees for THOSE phones…phones we had not used or had service on in over a year. I cry FOUL on that because any time you ever make ANY changes especially UPGRADES to your account they always make it clear to you that those changes will in fact reflect a new “contract date”—so when upgrading to a new “no contract” price plan..it makes sense that any old contract is now null and void. I want this nightmare over with- I have screamed and fought with Jason about this for the past several weeks, begging him to recontact them and at the very least get them to remove the ridiculous months worth of service fees for which we did not have any service and then to just pay the stupid cancellation fees and chop it up to a lesson learned. We want badly to have 3 On Your Side or Call 12 for Action help us with this, but like we said, we have hardly any documentation and TMobile is standing strong and stubborn on providing us with any ammunition against them.

As I write this Jas called to inform me that he called them back and offered to pay the $400 in cancellation fees right over the phone if they take off the other— They did (while also tacking on nearly $70 more in misc taxes and fees *SCREAM*)–He coughed up the debit card number and supposedly its over with- Problem is, Jas failed to get a receipt of any kind, we now have NOTHING in writing saying that the payment he just made satisfies the bill IN FULL and I have a feeling that is gonna come back to bite us even harder in the end.

MORAL of this Story?

Screw the Earth, make your cell carrier print and mail you EVERY last shred of documentation…and keep EVERY paper—so you can pull out a magnifying glass and vindicate yourself when you KNOW you have just been screwed.