One week without phone or phone service but T-Mobile saves the day!
Written: May 04 '04 (Updated May 12 '04)
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Like one other reviewer for 1800mobiles I'm always willing to try Internet companies and had until now great success. Unfortuntately this time I broke my golden rule and failed to look for merchant reviews before trying someone new. I wish I'd checked Epinions first.
I picked 1800mobiles because it was $30 cheaper than Amazon and they had the data CD and cable I wanted available for order. I figured I'd do everything at once and save $30 which pays the T-mobile activation fee.
I ordered my phone with T-Mobile service and porting to Sprint on a Tuesday. Their site said orders received after 3:30pm EST would be considered for shipment the next day. Even though they charged my card that same day, two days later on Thursday I've heard nothing from them other than the initial automated order confirmation from Yahoo shopping which they use to process orders. So I call them up to check on my order status.
They told me I'd ordered a plan that wasn't available any more. I'm somewhat that they hadn't tried to contact me by phone or email to say this was the case. So, I select a different plan and I think everything will be okay.
On Friday lunch time I go to make a call on my current Sprint phone and find its not working. "Great!" I think, that means I've been ported. So I call up later on Friday and they say my phone is in the activation department awaiting activation. "But" I say, "I've already had my Sprint service disconnected so it must have been ported already". They say, "Its awaiting activation sir". "No", I say, "you can't port a number to a non-activated phone", that's not the way it works - you activate the new account then port and my phone doesn't go dead until its ported or in the middle of porting. "No" they say, "its being activated and as soon as its activated we'll ship it". Hmmph.
Since its late and I know I wont get the phone shipped until Monday anyway I decide to give them until Monday. So its now Friday, the weekend and I've got no chance of seeing my phone until Wednesday at the earliest.
Monday arrives and I check their web site again at mid-day EST. It still says "awaiting activation". So I call again, and they say my number hasn't been ported yet, it takes 3 hours to 10 days. I write it off as bad luck, I'm the 1% that gets the really long porting time due to some screw up.
Tuesday arrives and I call first thing to their "WLNP porting department" who are a different option on their phone systems voice menu and I hadn't thought to contact before. The guy looks up my details and says within 10 seconds, "Oh yes your phone is activated, ported and ready to ship, you'll have it by Friday". "Great!", I think.
Tuesday evening arrives, no email saying its shipped, and their status still says "awaiting activation" so I make my fifth call to them to find out what's going on.
Stone me if they don't still insist its still awaiting activation and will be shipped out as soon as its ready and it could take three hours to ten days and yes, its a long time but its beyond their control. Three times I explain that I had spoken to someone first thing today who said it was ready to ship, and each time they come back and say "its not ported", "its not activated", blah-de-blah-de-blah.
Now the conclusion I've come to at this point is that their customer service department is outsourced overseas. This means they really have no ability to do anything except take orders and tell you what's on their website since the customer service people really have nothing to do with 1800Mobiles (who are actually using A1Wireless to fulfill the phone orders).
By now I'm feeling frustrated to say the least. Its Tuesday again and one week since I ordered, one week since my credit card was charged, five days with no cellphone service and my phone isn't even in the mail yet.
On Wednesday first thing I call 1800Mobiles, that's six calls now... I try to speak to the WLNP department to double check what they said before about my phone being ready. But for some reason I get bounced to regular customer support and when they pull up my order and I can tell they have read notes about all my calls so far. They person starts right in with "As we've told you before sir..." and I know its not going to be a useful conversation.
I get the standard "its in our activation department, yes it's taking a long time but please be patient". They even tell me that the person I spoke to the day before actually mistaken and shouldn't have told me my phone was activated. In fact they tell me he was new, didn't know what he was saying and they would make sure he doesn't make that mistake again. Eventually, after much protesting and getting to the point that its clear I'm very frustrated they tell me the porting delay is actually T-Mobile's fault and I should call T-Mobile to complain and see if I can hurry up the process. Brilliant idea. Why didn't I think of that last Friday? Or why didn't they suggest it on Monday... Oh well.
So I call T-Mobile and within 30 seconds their guy has confirmed that yes my T-Mobile account was activated last Friday, the same day my Sprint phone went dead, and yes the number was also ported at the same time that day. He told me that regardless of activation or porting issues they should have shipped me the phone anyway.
Then I ask if he can help me with A1Wireless aka. 1800Mobiles and he says "Absolutely, no problem". So I gave him their number and he offered to call back or put me on hold and I chose to stay on hold. He came back to me halfway through talking to them to tell me "a supervisor was looking into it" and apologizing for the delay and offering to call back again if I didn't want to hold.
Finally. I'll say that again. FINALLY. He comes back and tells me they said there was "a problem with the SIM card" and it was resolved now and my phone was being shipped TODAY so I would have it Friday, definitely. The T-Mobile guy then completely voluntarily told me that he'd refund my entire $35 activation fee by way of compensation for the unfortunate experience I'd just had switching to T-Mobile.
I'll say this - the guy from T-Mobile was INCREDIBLY HELPFUL, understanding and basically is the epitomy of wonderful customer support that completely negated my bad start to owning a T-Mobile phone.
In future I'd say don't go for the cheap deal unless the merchant has solid positive support. If its a new merchant without reviews be vigilant - every business has to start from scratch at some point and they are not all bad. And they all make mistakes at some point or other and they all need an opportunity to learn and improve from their mistakes. So follow your order status and call them the minute you think something is not moving along as it should. And don't hesitate to call the carrier for help or to check status of your serivce order because a carrier can pull an authorized dealers status if the need to, so they have clout to get things moving. Also don't buy a phone and request porting right away. Get the phone and then port, that way you'll never have to endure a week without service like I did.
To complete the story - my phone did actually get shipped on the Wednesday and did arrive in my grateful hands on Friday. That's 10 days after my order and after my card was charged and 7 full days without any phone service. I had actually given up on the data cable I ordered at the same time as the phone - I assumed it had been lost from the order at some stage. The notification of a split shipment came 12 days after the original order was confirmed. It eventually arrived two weeks after the original order.
There are three separate rebates for the phone that I have to take care of - two from A1Wireless worth $130 that have to be sent once I get my third bill from T-Mobile (to prove I still have service and haven't switched to a cheaper plan). The other $50 comes from T-Mobile direct and can be processed immediately.
So, yes, I got the phone, it works great (I'm SO happy it wasn't DOA or defective in anyway). I got the data cable and software eventually, and the price after rebates (when I get them) is cheap. In fact even without A1s rebates the price is still below T-Mobile store prices. However ultimately the frustration of six calls to customer service and one week without mobile service didn't really compensate and I'd be willing to pay a bit more for instant gratification next time.
Recommended:
No
What product did you purchase or try to purchase? Motorola V300 + T-mobile service and data cable
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Epinions.com ID:
moschops
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Reviews written: 12
Trusted by: 4 members
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