How can I improve my situation with T-Mobile?

Factual Questions
1

I think this is a general question… Moderators - If it’s not, please feel free to move.

Here’s my situation… Back on December 6th I got a Blackberry Pearl with T-Mobile service. Right away, I was disappointed with the call quality. People on the other end would occasionally sound packetized, people always told me I was breaking up, they sounded broken up to me, and I constantly had to repeat myself or ask them to repeat themselves. It was frankly embarrasing.

I had 10 days to cancel my account without paying a penalty, and I called T-Mobile, and it basically took 10 days to troubleshoot. They had me reset the phone lots of times, re-install handset software, reinstall desktop software, go to a T-Mobile store and swap the SIM card, go to a T-mobile store and swap the phone, etc. I got a new phone on the 11th day, but the sound was still bad. In hindsight, I should have just cancelled when I had the chance, but I was hopeful the troubleshooting would lead to positive results. The call quality is poor regardless of whether I’m 5 miles from my house or 50 miles. Even when I call T-Mobile customer service from the phone and ask them how I sound, they’ll say “worse than you should”

I’ve had cell phones for years through Nextel, Verizon, Cellular One, etc. so I know what the sound quality should be like. The T-Mobile coverage map shows I should have good signal, and indeed I can usually get 2-4 bars in my house, but on the other hand, sometimes I have 0 or 1 bars if I just lay the phone down on a table.

Technically, I could break the contract and pay $200, but part of me thinks that even though I had 10 days to cancel without penalty, the reality is that I’m getting sub-par sound quality because of my phone, T-Mobile service, or both, and the situation needs to be improved. But all the T-mobile customer service folks can do is walk me through resetting my phone.

I guess my general question is whether 1) There’s some way I can convince T-mobile how bad the quality is so that I can get out of my contract (they basically just say, “the coverage map shows your signal as being good” or 2) If there’s something that I’m missing or T-mobile is missing that will improve the situation.

2

If you don’t get a good response here, try this forum.

As far as your OP, I am not a T-Mobile rep, but…I think you are SOL.

3

I feel for you brother. I hate T-mobile. It’s my fifth phone and fifth cell provider. The coverage is about the worse I’ve ever had (except in the times of extremely limited coverage back in the stone age). The voicemail randomly delivers messages anywhere between 5 days and 2 weeks later (I’m probably imagining this). My other providers always delivered voicemail in a consistent and timely fashion. I’m praying that my for shit fragile RAZR lasts the duration of the two year contract.

Sorry, I can’t offer any advice, just commiseration.

4

You’re in contract and probably won’t be released. 2. Do you often just leave your phone on? Do you charge it every day? Many people do those things and it’s not necessarily a good thing, try powering your phone completely off then turning it back on periodically, especially when traveling. When you power your phone on it automatically searches for the strongest signal (usually the closest tower to you) and registers you there… sometimes if you leave your phone on it will get ‘stuck’ on a tower that is not the optimal signal strength for the area you are in… and you get bad reception, flakiness in the ‘handoff’ on the network side is usuallyr responsible. Also, blackberry handsets are sorta known for being really great text devices and with kinda crap voice capability.

5

How long have you had the service? T-mobile is raising the cost of there text-messaging rates, which would violate previously made contracts, IE you can get out of a 200 cancellation fee if you cite this reason. There are some provisions that apply, but you may be able to do this. If not now, probably in the near future since they change their prices, taxes, and provisions pretty regularly (that goes for all carriers). Link

6

The trick is with T-Mobile is that you have to go to the store itself. (A real T-Mobile store, not those dipshit dealers at the mall kiosk) Talk to the person in charge, and explain your situation. Tell them you want to cancel your service, etc. Do not give in. The key is to make yourself a huge pain in their ass in front of a bunch of potential customers. Make it clear that you have no intention of paying the $200 even if they insist that you owe it. Explain that you will dispute the charges and they will have to sue you to get it. (They won’t sue for $200) You should be getting louder and louder at this point. After 30 minutes or less, the manager should see that it is a good business decision to let you out of the contract. I’ve found people in the T-Mobile store to be pretty reasonable, and I would bet you will get your way without having to resort to a stocking cap full of billiard balls.

7

BTW, aaelghat, how many times did you have change your cell phone? Was it only once? If you only did it once & you can not get out of the contract, ask for change of phone again and again. Show them in person that is not working properly.

A different situation happened to me personally. I had LG phone through Verizon and was paying insurance on it. Due to brain fart, :smiley: , I had fudged up my phone. Went to Verizon & dealt with the proper insurance staff. They sent me a brand new one. Didn’t work. Nobody could hear me right and had to go back and exchange it. Luckily for me, Asurion, sent me an upgrade phone that worked properly.

If you only changed once, it may be you have a bad phone. It happens.

8

This might not be a good idea. I used to work for T-Mobile. We wouldn’t sue to get the $200 Early Termination Fee, but we would sell it to a company like Sun Horizons Debt Management for $75, you would have something from collections on your credit report and people calling you all the time for it. They never just wrote anything off.

Going into a real store is a good idea though. The phone should still be under warranty and you can show them that it doesn’t work. The people in the store don’t have a vested interest in f’ing with you at all, they generally want to help. Now little indirect dealers don’t make any money by helping you with phone problems, so they might just tell you to stick it where the son doesn’t shine. A real T-Mobile employee and their manager generally like to help and can call Customer Care on your behalf to get you fixed up.

As an aside, when the RIM Blackberry 7100t came out, it was a big piece of crap doing pretty much what you describe your Pearl doing. So was the HP iPaq 6315 and a host of other PDA type phones. As they go along, they tend to be better. They have been making the Pearl for a while now, but who is to say that you didn’t get one that was off the first production run.

Good luck!

9

Thanks for everyone’s response. ChicanoRojo and BrickBacon - thanks for the link to the other forum and the info about the EFT. That told me that I could get out of the contract without paying the early termination fee because of the increase in SMS charges, and indeed T-mobile confirmed that when I called.

I’ve only changed the phone once, so it could be a bad phone. I need to figure that out, because I’d hate to cancel, go to Cingular with the same phone and still have the problem.