TMo-TOGO - Mysterious charges

I have been a T-Mobile customer since Nov-05 and recently upgraded to a $100 card / Gold Rewards Status. For the last few days, I have been noticing my balance going down even when I do not use the phone. I have called customer service multiple times, and every time I am told that my account is showing ringtone downloads under it. The only thing I ever use on t-zones is checking the account balance and occasional CNN news. I have never downloaded a ringtone, and actually do not know how to do that, neither am I interested. Every time I called customer service they credited my account for the amount that was deducted, but this has been happening on a regular basis, and quite frankly, is turning out to be a big pain.

Has this ever happened to you ? and did you ever manage to get it resolved ?

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It hasn't happened to me. How much is disappearing at a time? and T-Mobile CS has no idea why?

Originally Posted by cseabourn

It hasn't happened to me. How much is disappearing at a time? and T-Mobile CS has no idea why?

In the last three days it has gone down in chunks of $5, $10 and $3 - give or take a few cents. I have called CS three times, and they have no clue what could be causing it. I have been transferred to 'Tech Support' a couple of times, and they have no clue either

It just happened again few minutes back.

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.

Thats the first. And they can't even give you an estimate on how long it'll take. Man, thats crazy and the best they can do is credit your account back? Well I like T-Mobile, but that doesn't sound very promising.

Originally Posted by cseabourn

Thats the first. And they can't even give you an estimate on how long it'll take. Man, thats crazy and the best they can do is credit your account back? Well I like T-Mobile, but that doesn't sound very promising.

Well, I guess I am a patient person, and their CSRs have been prompt in refunding me, so I am not too mad at them.

However, what does concern me is that, in the present times of Patriot Act and evesdropping by the government, if a phone company can misrepresent the activities of their consumers in this fashion, then how reliable is that for national security, and how reassuring is that for innocent citizens ?

stl1859, have you been receiving any kind of txt messages from numbers you do not recognize? Specifically do you see any kind of txt messages from the number 35555? Or any other kind of 4-5 digit number?

If so, then you want to reply to the wierd txt messages with any of the following words STOP, QUIT, END, or CANCEL.

You may be receiving messages from outside services such as Jamster, or JokeoftheDay, or other similar services. These outside services charge you wether you read your txt message or not. The most common way to avoid these services is by the following (also a good rule of thumb for any T-Mobile customer).
1. Never send a TXT MESSAGE to anything you see on T.V.
2. Never send a TXT MESSAGE to anything you hear on the radio
3. Never send a TXT MESSAGE to an offer you see on the internet

Remember that no matter how big the word FREE is written, there is always a fine print when dealing with outside services.

Thanks for the useful tip. I have so far not received any SMS from ANY number - leave alone unrecognized ones. The only SMS I receive are alerts from Yahoo! and Hotmail, and I have had that set up for a very long time.

I thought all incoming SMS was free - but thanks for the tip. I will have to be extra careful giving out my cellphone number in future. So far I have not done so anywhere except Yahoo and Hotmail.

I do not usually send TXT messages to ANY number - definitely not to those 'premium' ones.

I have had service with T-Mobile since 2003. Had no problems with them until I had problems with reception in certain areas. They told me to switch to a plan that would give me the ability to manualy switch networks in that area, and I would have nation wide long distance. Well that was a joke, so I changed back to my original plan, 3000 anytime min. Well when I sign up from the get go I had nation wide long distance, but when I switched back I had regional long distance. When I looked it up on the map and a map of the U.S. came up. What would you think? Me too. After making a few calls out of Texas I was charged. Coudn't get no one in CS to tell me what regional meant and why I was charged. That was the first problem. The next was I signed up for ring tones thru The Q, well I read the terms of aggreement and it said that if I downloaded the free ring tones that I would be billed a monthly charge, so I never downloaded any. Well T-Mobile was charging me for four downloads a month at 2.99 a pop. Well this went on for 6 months or so. I would pay it a lot of times before I would get the bill, and when the bill came put in the paid pile. Well my bill became outragously high and I looked and I was being charged long distance and ring tone that were never downloaded. CS told me that the chrges were justified. I ask why the ring tone they said I should cancel them and gave me the number. I did and was still charged for them. T-Mobile says it's my fault that they charged me for all these extra charges and that they were only doing thier job. Needless to say T-Mobile is no longer my anything. SO BEWARE OF THE LOWER PRICES BECAUSE THEY MAKE UP FOR IT THROUGH THEFT.

stl1859, incoming SMS are definately free. However, you may want to check to see if you have a "browser" messages or MMS. Not sending a TXT message to any number.

I would also recommend cancelling your alerts for a little while, maybe 3-4 days to see if the problem with your balance persists.

Originally Posted by RRODRIG30

stl1859, incoming SMS are definately free. However, you may want to check to see if you have a "browser" messages or MMS. Not sending a TXT message to any number.

I would also recommend cancelling your alerts for a little while, maybe 3-4 days to see if the problem with your balance persists.

I checked my MMS inbox, and it is empty. By "browser messages" if you mean the "Service Inbox" under the Services menu, that is empty as well.

Well, all incoming SMS is not 'free' anymore, is it ? not the "premium ones" - right ?

I am cancelling all my email alerts indefinitely. I can certainly live without them.

I want to thank you for educating me on the "jamster scam" - It is much appreciated. Isn't there any way to tell the Cellphone company to disallow any such 'subscriptions' without explicit written permission, like they ended up doing for switching LD carriers on landlines ?

stl1859, I hope I have helped. More so, I hope the mysterious charges stop. Please do post and let us know if cancelling your email alerts helped.

Sweetbecool,

I've only been a T-Mobile employee since 2005. What I can tell you though is that I first signed up as a T-Mobile customer in the summer of '02, with the 3000 minute regional plan. Even then, it only had regional long distance. Looking at a map and assuming is not any kind of excuse to say you were incorrectly charged. If I am not mistaken, the 3000 minute regional plan in Texas covers only 2 states: TX and LA. In Chicago, the 3000 minute plan covers IL, IN, and WI.

Switching your rate plan from a regional plan to a national plan does not mean you will get RECEPTION where you once did not have it. It only means you will NOT BE BILLED for calls outside of your old regional area.

To my knowledge, T-Mobile does not get any revenue for outside "Premium" services. The only revenue I can think of would be the $.05 for the incoming text message that the other companies send to you. If you have a txt messaging plan, then TMO gets absolutely nothing. As for the actual ringtone or wallpaper, NONE of it goes to TMO. I have had to call Jamster many times for customers that walk into my store angry about premium services charges. If a customer has $35 on their T-Mobile bill for Jamster tones they never downloaded, guess who gives them back the money? JAMSTER, not T-Mobile. What really makes me mad is that the people at Jamster ask questions that the average customer would not know the answer to. Such as phone make, model, and IMEI number - I have no idea why they ask for make, model, and IMEI since it is not a necessary piece of information when signing up Jamster.

I am very sorry that you had a bad experience with T-Mobile.

Well It really doesn't matter anymore anyway, for the simple fact I will never do business with them again. I'm the type of person that wants to know what I'm paying for up front. They are a bunch of liers. I have talked to so many people in CS they said they would take care of it and didn't. Was told they would creidt my account and didn't. They email me telling me they are to busy to deal with it. You name it I've heard it. If you are happy with them then this isn't for your reading, don't waste your time deffending them. This is for the ones that know where I'm coming from

Originally Posted by RRODRIG30

stl1859, I hope I have helped. More so, I hope the mysterious charges stop. Please do post and let us know if cancelling your email alerts helped.

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?