When I got the man for the job on the line, it was very hard to hear him in the noisy shop, and I had to make him shout. What added to my requests for him to repeat himself, was that I couldn’t believe what he was now telling me: reverting back to PAYG would take a month! I asked him why this was and he told me that it was because it was a 1-month contract. I explained that I had mistakenly been put onto the contract, and that it was mis-sold to me, but that made no difference. I told him that I would be happy to still pay for the full month, if he could just change me over to PAYG now, so I could make international calls again, but he said that it had nothing to do with the payments, which I found hard to believe as I could be transferred _onto_ the contract in less than a day, so why would it take a month to transfer me back.

All in all, the experience has left me with a bad taste in my mouth, and while I had previously been marginally satisfied with T-Mobile (mostly because I had never had to deal with them before), I’ve decided that I’m going to leave them as a provider now.

I’ve been looking around for alternatives, and so far I’ve looked at GiffGaff and TalkTalk, but if anyone else would recommend anyone, either PAYG or contract, then please post in the comments. My only requirement is that I get internet in some sort of allowance-based system (not pay-per-mb) and can make international calls from the UK at a decent price. Other features that I would appreciate would be good minute rates in the UK, decent international roaming prices and maybe the ability to buy limited international internet allocations (one of the best features T-Mobile were offering).

Calling T-Mobile customer support is free. Or at least, they won’t charge you for the call. However, it does cost a lot of time, and they say time is money, so it’s not completely free. Especially as you have to go through about four or five levels of button-pressing, choosing between tons of almost similar topics (God forbid they’d have to ask you any questions once you get through to their outsourced, probably under-paid, telephone support person).

It took me a long time, and several tries before I managed to get through to an option that sounded vaguely correct, allowing me to talk to a support person. She was a bit slow, spoke with an accent I struggled to understand, didn’t seem to understand what I was saying and after a couple of minutes she (accidentally?) hung up. I had already spent too much time making the call, so I wasn’t going through the many steps again.

I couldn’t even remember how I got to the right line, so I went back to my desk hoping they would call me back. A few minutes later I received a text saying they had tried to call me but couldn’t get through, but asked if I could call them back. I tried replying to the text saying that it was an obvious lie and asked them to actually call me, but of course you can’t reply to those texts.

At this point I was very close to giving up and throwing my SIM in the Thames, but then I remembered what all the EE adverts had promised when T-Mobile and Orange had fused: “You can now get help in twice as many places”. And working near Oxford Street I didn’t have far to go to find an EE shop. I went to the nearest one, and was very surprised at what the shop assistant told me. Because this was actually a former Orange shop, they couldn’t help me, as I’m a T-Mobile customer! So this actually leaves me with fewer places to get help, as they closed some of the T-Mobile shops, and I can’t tell which ones they are without entering and asking… Helpful indeed!

The shop assistant told me to continue down Oxford Street to the next EE shop, where he said they could help me. And this is how they did that: the assistant picked up the store phone, dialled up support, went through the unbelievably many key-press stages and gave the phone to me… Remind me how going to the shop helped me again?

It might be my imagination, but I think I talked to the same person as when I called the support line myself. I slowly and carefully explained my situation to her, and it seemed like she understood it this time, or at least she didn’t hang up on me. However, she explained that the reason I couldn’t make calls abroad is that I was a “new customer” and they therefore couldn’t trust me with that privilege.

I complained about this, saying that I wasn’t a new customer, that in fact I had been with them for years, and I had managed perfectly fine with the international calls service before. However, she replied that I was now on a contract that was completely separate from pay-as-you-go, and therefore I was a new, unknown and untrusted customer.

It almost seemed that I was punished for committing to pay them a fixed amount every month, even one that was more than what I was paying on average on PAYG. After some time arguing with her, we agreed that the best option for me (that they would allow) was to be reverted back to PAYG. Of course, she couldn’t do this for me and had to transfer me to someone else, so back on hold I went…

I’ve been a T-Mobile customer for several years now. Until recently I was on Pay-As-You-Go, which seemed to fit my usage quite well. I would top up about £10 each month, which would give me free texts for the following month and enough credit for all the phone calls I would normally make. If I used more during one month, I would simply perform an extra top up, and if I used less, the credit might stretch even further than a month. For internet I would buy “unlimited” (500MB/month) usage for £20 every six months. It seemed like a good system.

However, I was recently contacted by a T-Mobile sales person, who was questioning why I had been on PAYG for such a long time, and had never switched to a contract. I thought I would listen to what they had to say, so I did and they ended up offering me a contract for just over £8 per month that included unlimited “internet browsing” and 256MB/month “downloads” (I’m not sure how T-Mobile differentiates between the two), free UK texts and what seemed like plenty of UK minutes. If I used extra minutes or made phone calls abroad that would just be added to my monthly direct debit. Making phone calls abroad was something I discussed with the sales person for a while, as I need to be able to call my family in Denmark, and she also enabled the free “international switch” which means you don’t pay some arbitrary ridiculous price for calls abroad. This sounded good so I agreed and there was just one remaining step: the credit check.

I’ve had a credit card for 6 years, spend thousands of pounds on it every year, and never miss a payment (I pay the full amount off every month). I’ve never had any informal overdrafts, and I’ve never had problems paying rent. I’ve never had any loans (apart from student loans in Denmark) and I’ve been fully employed since I moved to the UK over six years ago. So, all in all, I couldn’t imagine that I would fail a credit check for a mobile phone contract worth less than £9 per month. However, none of those things seem to matter to T-Mobile. Neither did it matter that I had been a customer with them for several years, already paying them more than the contract amount every month (on average at least).

The only thing that mattered was that I hadn’t already been on a T-Mobile contract, so they just couldn’t trust me. Because of this they would only be able to offer me a different contract at £15 per month which would offer me pretty much the same things, plus “unlimited” internet (aka. internet with a hidden, undisclosed limit) and some more minutes (that I probably wouldn’t use). The idea was that I would get on this contract (which was a rolling monthly contract) for 2-4 months, and then I should call them and change over to the mythical, less-than-£8 contract.

I couldn’t believe that this was the way they would “welcome” new customers, and thought it was even more disgraceful that they would treat someone who had already been a customer for as long as I had this way, but since I really liked the sound of the too-good-to-be-true contract that might be waiting just a little bit further down the ripping-off-lane, I reluctantly accepted this new contract.

That was it, they hung up and I thought all was well. Everything seemed normal, until I wanted to call my parents to hear how they were doing. I dialled the number as usual, and got this message by a stern recorded woman:

“Calls to this number have been barred from your phone. Sorry. Good bye”.

Great, they’ve messed up activating the “yes-I-want-to-be-able-to-phone-abroad” switch, so I went online and had a look at the confusing, broken website that T-Mobile has been offering to their users for years now. I wonder if there are other users out there who have noticed how the “My plan details” button has been showing the message “Sorry, the system is currently unavailable. Please try again later.” consistently for several years? I guess it’s more difficult for customers to complain about their plan, or realise they’re being ripped off if they can’t even see their plan details. I couldn’t find any information anywhere else, so I thought I’d give their customer support a call.…