01/28/2005

If anyone from T-Mobile is reading this, you guys blow.

When I set up my cell phone with them almost a year ago, I specifically said I needed text messaging because I’ve set up my web servers to automatically call my phone with a message if they’re in trouble. It’s a great arrangement, and lets me respond immediately to any problems. Of course, this doesn’t happen often (and when it does it’s almost always a false alarm), so I only need a half-dozen or so text messages per month.

The woman I spoke with last May said she’d set me up with 30 free messages per month. Great, that’s more than I need… I’m set. Today when I was reviewing my bill I noticed I’d been charged twenty cents for four messages last month. Apparently those 30 free ones weren’t per month; they were in total. Now, every time my server cries out for help, I’m billed a nickel for the e-mail to my phone.

I called T-Mobile and asked about this, seeing if they could either give me a handful of free messages each month, or perhaps slap another 30 on my account (which will last a while). The guy said that was just not possible. Yeah, right. Even though the woman last year did it, now he’s powerless. He pointed out that it’s only five cents per message, or I could sign up for 300 messages for three bucks a month. I insisted I only needed five or so messages, he continued to tell me he “wasn’t supposed to” throw me a handful of freebies.

So now I’m quite literally being nickeled-and-dimed by T-Mobile, because of a misunderstanding last year. Losers.