After about three years of using T-Mobile’s Hotspot service, I finally cancelled my account for good in April. I’ll be using the wonderful free service that’s available here in Austin for all of my local wireless needs. Finally, my favorite coffee shop has wireless, so I can stop supporting T-Mobile and Starbucks.
The cancellation of my T-Mobile account was not without frustration on my end and sneakiness on the part of T-Mobile, however. It started with the mention of a cancellation fee. The phone rep said, “You have completed your one year agreement, so there is no cancellation fee.” One year agreement? I never saw any agreement whatsoever. In fact, when T-Mobile bought out Mobilestar, I merely saw a different SSID at Starbucks and a different name on my credit card statement. Apparently T-Mobile had put me on a one year contract without my knowledge. Not good.
Since I had been using the unlimited T-Mobile service for 24 months, there was not really an issue with the contract. Had there been a fee charged, I would have been very angry. They got lucky with this one.
It was the billing, however, that was a problem. I was last billed for my monthly service on April 16. That was four days prior to my cancellation. When I asked the phone rep whether the account would be cancelled immediately, he said that it would. I then asked when I could expect to see the remaining part of my money refunded, and he responded with, “There is no proration. We have cancelled your account, and there is no money to refund.” So T-Mobile has decided that it wants to steal 26 days of service from me. That’s just not right.
If you’re thinking about signing up with T-Mobile’s monthly hotspot plan, think again. This is the most anti-customer organization I have dealt with in a long time.