TMo-TOGO - Mysterious charges

stl1859,

The only thing I can think of is pending charges that finally posted to your account. It could have been for the last few minutes used or for the last few alerts you received prior to cancelling them.

On post-pay accounts, charges do not usually post to an account immediately. Even when a customer makes a payment at a T-Mobile corporate store, it can take up to 2 hours for the payment to post to the account. In very rare cases, it can take up to 6 hours for a payment to post.

I do not work on pre-pay accounts, so it's a little harder to help. Either way, please let us all know if they do ever stop and what you or TMO did to stop the mysterious charges.

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Originally Posted by RRODRIG30

stl1859,

The only thing I can think of is pending charges that finally posted to your account. It could have been for the last few minutes used or for the last few alerts you received prior to cancelling them.

I religiously track my minutes, and I am a very very low usage customer - I probably have consumed 20 minutes in last two months, and half of that went in setting up (and re-doing it) my voicemail. I also check my balance immediately after terminating a call, and so far I have noticed that the balance has promptly decremented, by the expected amount - 10c per min. in my case.

The alerts that I mentioned are email alerts coming from Yahoo and MSN via SMS. They have always been free. They have been like that with AT&T in the past (prepaid and postpaid) and same case with the T-Mobile prepaid with the starter card I had. I do not see why T-Mobile should suddently start charging me for incoming SMS.

Also, in my prior calls with CS, they have stated that they can see plenty downloads under my accounts, which I did not make, and did not receive on my phone. They also said that they saw a picture message which I never sent. So I am suspecting that there is a problem with the billing software where the usage is constantly guided to the wrong account.

I'll keep you updated - I am calling them again this evening.

Originally Posted by stl1859

Just spoke to Customer Service, and for the first time they are admitting that it is a known problem and they do not have a timeline on when it will be resolved. They also cannot guarantee that disabling t-zones from my account will make the problem go away. For now that are just recommending that I watch my balance and if it goes down un-expectedly, call them for a refund.

this hs happened to me as well i made a thread about it earlier. and it gos from 20 cents to upwards of 3 bucks. except mine isnt ringtones but text messages. they say there comming and reciveing within 5 seconds of each other. i also talked to customer tech support many times . they dont know anything about anything sussposedly. at least they told you its a known issue. on hofo there is a thread about this problem to.

Originally Posted by stl1859

Last night I cancelled all my email alerts, and went a step further and deleted all phone information from both Yahoo and MSN.

My balance went down by $1.69 overnight . All my Inboxes are still empty

Another thing. Two days back, I was told by a CSR that they saw a picture message go out of my phone. I do not know how to send a picture message, and I checked and all my outboxes are empty too. Is it possible that instead of being a SMS/GPRS scam, this could be an issue with T-Mobile's billing software itself ?

T-Mobile seems to be having another problem. Their balance information system on t-zones is not working. It gives out random data at times. The CSR I spoke to last evening admitted to this as well. Anyway thats not the case with me since the depleted balance is what I am seeing in T-Zones, when I do #999# and also by calling the 1-877 no.

Another thing that strikes me about these unauthorized downloads is, why are pre-paid account allowed to have them. I was reading through the FCC website and they say that phone companies are required to clearly state what charges they are putting on customers' accounts. With prepay, when there is no bill to start with, shouldn't these charges be not allowed on prepaid at all?

seems like we are having the exact same prolems i get up to 3 different people info on t zones and i even got the wap deck for a postpaid account once. i do belive i will give hem another call tonight.

I remember getting the postpaid WAP page on t-zones as well - I think it was 1st or 2nd Jan that it happened. I had my balance fluctuate as well at that time. But it all settled down after that. I was on my starter card at that time. Then I recharged with a $100 card and this started happening; and this time around it was not fluctuating , but just going down.

It has not happened to me for the last 36+ hours . I have also stopped using t-zones. Maybe that has something to do with it.

i threatened CS with the FCC and suddenly my charges stopped :P

It has not happened with me for two days now. The thing that I have done different is , I have stopped using t-zones altogether. I only use #999# to check my balance.

I have a theory on why this might be happening. I think the problem lies in T-Mobile's GPRS billing software. T-zones and ringtone downloads go through GPRS. With GPRS, your phone gets an IP address, and the billing software is probably mapping the IP address back to the phone no. based on a log that tracks who was using GPRS at what time. These IP addresses are reused. So when I connect, I get an IP, and when I disconnect, I give that up and it is reused for another connection. It could be possible that the software responsible for mapping the IP back to the phone no. is hitting the wrong phone no. in error, causing the usage to show up under the wrong account. Now since I stopped using GPRS altogether, even though the software makes an error, it cannot hit my no., since my number is not present in the logs it is looking at in the first place.

This is just a theory - I do not know much about GPRS and how T-Mobile bills - Anybody who does has any comments on this theory ?

Mattman123, this does not explain why it happened to you - except if your messages were multimedia messages being sent over GPRS.

i dont use MMS except to send them to myself.

ok get this i just topped up yeterday im 15 dollars away from gold rewards. i woke up this morning bam went from 9.13 to 7.64/ i called they said i had downloaded some wacked out girl wallpaper. she said i downloaded it and it WAS on my phone which it was NOT.at least you guys got credit,i guess they think that since im 16 im a flaming idiot. they said its company policy to notify me BUT they cant refund me.

i just typed a response and my computer kicked me off and i lost the entire thing!! =(
well heres what i wrote: is it possible that someone used your number in order to get ringtones? i know i use to be able to type in the number of the destination of the ringtones/wallpaper and a seperate number for the charge. weird, i know. the site actually is offline now, it says "account suspended" when u go to it. So i am not sure if something happend or if the owner just took it offline. Who knows? But, i do hope that gets cleared up! SOON! sorry that happend to u, i know how frustrating it can be, especially when you did NOT do it. =(