Billing Glitch at T-Mobile?

T-Mobile has a little billing glitch in their system which may throw you for a loop! While on vacation I realized that I had forgotten to pay my cell phone bill. I had just received a little reminder text from my service provider. I promptly called T-Mobile to discuss my options.

I spoke to a very nice young man who assured me that I could wait to pay my bill until Tuesday evening when I would be home. Because I would not be able to transfer funds at my Credit Union he also assured me that their system would be able to accept payments using my savings account number and bank routing/ABA number on the T-Mobile website.

We arrived home late Monday. I dashed over to my computer and signed into their website. Sure enough, it allowed me to enter my Credit Union Routing/ABA number and my account number.

Several days later, I received a text reminder from T-Mobile stating that my account payment had been returned and that my account was now past due! I looked through my account history at the Credit Union on-line and realized that my payment had never been deducted. In fact, it had never been presented against my account at all.

I called T-Mobile and spoke to another young man. He acknowledged that Credit Unions can sometimes be tricky in how account numbers were input. Having been a Credit Union employee for three years I was well aware of that fact. He suggested that he input the information again and insisted on using the account suffix.

Later in the week, the payment was returned. This time I contacted my Credit Union directly. They suggested that I use a 14 digit format, by putting zeros in front of my member number to complete the full 14 digits for the payment. The Credit Union did not believe that this was necessary; we also verified that my monthly insurance payment to State Farm was being paid in the same manner each month through this same account.

After several days, I realized that the payment had not cleared my account and just gave up. I went back into the system and paid the bill with my credit card so that I would not have to worry about it.

Again, the payment was returned as I expected and I received a text message from T-Mobile. At this point I was frustrated because both the website and the phone representatives say that payments can be made through a savings account using their website.

What happened next has made me consider other options for my cell phone service. Because my bill cycle had changed during this ordeal, my next bill of $155.48 was due on October 6. The account statement on the T-Mobile website also stated that $155.48 was due on that same date. Because the other payment had returned, it counted the payment as delinquent, even though I had made the additional credit card payment because I knew the payment had not reached my savings account.

Although I only owed the funds for my October 6th bill, I was required to pay the $155.48 on September 29th to restore my phone service. I spoke with the customer service representative in depth on the subject. She agreed that I did not owe the balance of $155.48 until October 6th. She also stated that this was a glitch in their system that when the payment returned it deducted it from the prior month's bill and they could not correct the billing issue or restore my phone service unless I paid my October bill in advance.

The service at T-Mobile was extremely poor. There were notes in the system verifying that I had spoken with two other representatives trying to resolve this issue. Each representative agreed that the payment had been returned because it was unable to reach an account. I even offered to provide a copy of my account statement so they could verify the routing number and account number.

As a soon to be former customer of T-Mobile, I would like to encourage others to consider the service that other service providers have to offer.

Cingular
Nextel
Sprint PCS
Verizon

A large company such as T-Mobile should have better accounting services in place. A correction on a customers account should not require the consumer to pay a bill before it is due.

There are a number of smaller companies that may be specific to your area, a great website to review and compare phones, plans and service providers is Cell Phone Prices.