Let me start by saying that I've had service with T-mobile for over 10 years, whether under my Dad's name or my Mom's I always told people they have the greatest deals, for the best prices, and they've always been helpful whenever we had a problem. Until recently.... Here's my story:
A little over a year ago (6/26/2011) my Mother and Father went into T-mobile store 327 because my fathers phone was acting up. The representative was able to fix the issue but while they were there he advised them that they would be able to save a lot of money on our family plan if they simply added another line. My mother's response was "absoultely not! I don't want to start over" The contract was over with our 4 phone lines and although we were happy with T-mobile we didn't want to enter into another 2 year agreement. The representative Anthony Sulley told her that it wouldn't be a problem, that the 2 year agreement starts for the additional line but that the other 4 would be available for upgrades/ terminations on the same schedule that they were already on. When we were priviously with cingular before T-mobile we were charged with termination fees because we had upgraded one phone so she specifically asked again this time to make sure that would not happen.
The cancelation and return policy section of the contract states: For contracts of one year or more... If my rate plan is cancelled after the RETURN PERIOD, I will be required to pay an EARLY TERMINATION FEE OF UP TO $200 PER LINE OF SERVICE on contracts of 1-year or more.
Anthony Sulley assured my mother that this only applied to the contract we were creating right then for that one line and did not affect the other 4 lines that were already at the end of their contract. She added the additional line (that we never even used) and we did not upgrade any phones or benifit from this service in any other way than the price reduction Mr. Sulley spoke of.
We did end up transferring service at the begining of this month. While the 4 lines we do use transferred with the change of service my mom had to call T-mobile to cancel the 5th line. When she did this she was told that there was going to be a $200 early termination fee for all 5 lines. When she explained that it should only be the one line the representative said that all 5 lines were under contract and that if the representative had told her something different then she could either speak to the store or contract review.
I called the store over 5 times, I asked for the managers name which I was told was Gus. The first couple of times they said the manager wasn't in, or was with a customer, I even left my name and phone number for him to call me back at his convience. When I finally did get ahold of someone yesterday (10/12/2012) the manager told me his name was Will Smith. When I explained the situation to him he said "that sucks but there's nothing he can do, we already cancelled the service so T-mobile is going to screw us now" I told him it was his store's T-mobile representative that gave us incorrect information so shouldn't they take some responsibility for the situation that they put my family in when my mother specifically stated that she did not want to start the contracts over again. He did admit that that is bad practice and maybe the employee had learned the technique from Verizion or another carrier but he didn't know who Anthony Sulley was and "it's not his problem" because they go through employees all the time and this person was never his employee. I again emhasized that I felt the store should have some accountabilty for the things that it's T-mobile represatives guarantee, because they are supposed to represent T-mobile. I work in the service industry. If a guest asks me if there are peanuts in a sauce and I say no, there are going to be serious consquences for myself and the company if there are and my answer in some way affects the guest negatively. In the same way T-mobile should be responsible for the answers given when asked when signing a new contract. The manager simply told me that the contract is what's going to hold up in court and my word about what the representative told my mother means nothing. I feel like what Anthony Sulley said means everything, the contract is vauge, so my mother asked, and Anthony Sulley ( a TMOBILE REPRESENTATIVE) said that the contract would only apply to the one line we were adding then.
Anyways, I reported the store for mistreatment to T-mobile and the representative I spoke to on the phone Jen D. was very kind and apologetic. Still there are 5 $200 Early termination fees that my family is being charged and while I feel 4 are unwarranted, it's left up to contract review where I feel T-mobile, whether store 327 or the company in general should be taking a lot more accountability for the guarantees that it's employees make. What kind of business is it where you can not trust anything the representative says and they'll say or do anything to get you to sign on the dotted line and then its "not their problem". I never had such an awful experience with T-mobile before. I am writing on here in hopes of seeing this resolved. Hopefully that will happen.