September 2021 by Justin H.
I was paying a fortune for Verizon, so I stopped in the T-Mobile store in Heber City, UT, to see what a bill would look like with T-Mobile. The store manager told me that he would wave all my activation fees, add a 3rd line for free (we were giving my daughter a phone), give us an iPhone for half price, and get all 5 Apple Watches over, and keep my bill under $200. I was like, "Deal." I don't know if I seemed comfortable with them, but the manager at the store told me that there's a sensor above the door that is able to count the adults that come to the store. For every adult that comes in, they have to do an average of $50 of business. So if you really want to mess with them, just keep walking in and out of the store but not buy anything. The first problem was when I went home, I discovered that none of the watches were connected properly. I then called support. The first people you talk to are tier 1 support people in India, but their support capabilities seem to be limited to a certain scope. After quite a while, I finally got to their highest level of support. He was very helpful and also apologetic that the store didn't do anything properly. I had to reset each watch, and he manually brought the watch on their network and tied it to the proper phone. The second problem was when I looked at my account. I noticed that it was far higher than $200. It turns out that they added a $15/mo. charge on each phone for accident/theft. I already have AppleCare on each of my phones, so this was redundant, and it was shady considering they didn't mention anything about it. I called the store, and one of the sales reps said that it was a required monthly charge for the first month. I complained on Twitter (something I often do when I seem to get nowhere with a company), and the T-Mobile social media support team was very apologetic. When I called support they took it off my bill right away. I suppose maybe the store was short on their quota and that was one of the sly tricks on how they make up for it. The third problem was that the service was incredibly slow. It said 5G, but it was more like 3G. A lot of times I have to start a Zoom meeting at home, and then continue it in the car when I'm taking kids to school. I've never had a Zoom meeting drop on AT&T and Verizon, but my Zooms and calls were constantly cutting in and out. It was insane. I'm not a mobile technology expert, but T-Mobile's "5G" seems like a lot of smoke and mirrors. It's far slower and less reliable than Verizon. I went to the store and complained to the manager. He was like, "Oh it could be because the tower closest to you has been down." He also wanted to reset my carrier settings and try a new sim card. I also noticed that he slyly put my cell phone on their wifi. So of course if I'm on wifi then it'll work lightning fast. I could tell he really didn't know what he was talking about. After all, he never properly set up my devices when I was in there a week prior. Unfortunately, I continued having the same problems, and I determined that T-Mobile is not for me, so I switched back to Verizon and got a better deal in the process. When I went to take my phone back to another store, they said they had to charge me $50 for a restocking fee. I told them that was never mentioned to me, and she said it was listed on my receipt. I also never got a receipt. T-Mobile may or may not be for you... I don't know. But in my experience using AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, there's a big difference between the corporate stores and the certified retail/resellers (like this store is). The lack of transparency and some of the shady sales tactics show that these arbitrary sales quotas result in bad customer service practices.
