To whom it may concern,
With this letter, I would like to inform you about a very unpleasant experience I had while activating my purchased T-Mobile $30 plan online via Walmart. Before the Monthly plan, I had a Pay As You Go plan from T-Mobile. I wanted to have 4G internet to be able to setup a wifi hotspot for my laptop. The following bullet points describe what I did and what went wrong:
-Once I received the SIM Starter Kit for a $30/mo unlimited web&text + 100 min Monthly plan, I tried to activate the sim card online at Starbucks via www.tmobile.com/prepaidactivation. This website told me that the sim card could not be activated.
-I cycled to the nearest T-Mobile store in Mountain View to ask for help, as I expected that the T-Mobile employees could help me with this problem. The told me to call customer service as apparently the Walmart kit could only be activated online or via phone.
-When I called (first I needed to add money to my account as it was not possible to call without money, even if the number is toll free...), I was reconnected several times. After a while the employee gave the definite answer that the sim card could not be activated and the bar code on the sim kit should be scanned in a T-Mobile store to become part of the T-Mobile system.
-I cycled to the T-Mobile store in Sunnyvale. One of the employees indeed recognized that the sim card was not working and gave me a replacement sim card. She already activated the card and advised me to go home and 'wait a bit' before the plan was activated as it could take up to two hours. Once I arrived home and waited for at least two hours, the plan was not changed (still my old Pay As You Go was present).
-I tried to activate the plan on the new sim card online via www.tmobile.com/prepaidactivation. The website showed the message that 'the inserted sim card is already activated'.
-I cycled again to the T-Mobile store in Sunnyvale. Another employee helped me to get the plan working, but unfortunately because his colleague activated the new sim card to work for the wrong plan (the Pay As You Go plan), I had to purchase another sim card. This was $10.88. In other words: I had to pay for the mistakes T-Mobile had made!
This is not the service I expect from a professional company like T-Mobile. The Pay As You Go plan was very satisfactory to me, so I decided to go for T-Mobile again as I expected no problems at all. In my opinion, the activation of my Monthly plan could not have been worse. I don't want to spend not only money, but also I don't want to waste hours and hours to get a plan working for which I will pay for the coming Months.
Depending on the way T-Mobile's service handles my complaint to restore my confidence in T-Mobile, I will decide to stay with T-Mobile or to look for a different operator. I expect a decent refund to compensate for the time I lost, the irritation I got and for the money I spent on this new sim card.
I'm looking forward to hear from you.