I had a run around with T-Mobile last night on the phone with their customer service department. On the advice of someone at the pinstack forums I sent this letter to T-Mobile's CEO. I also forwarded a copy to consumerist, and I'm now blogging it so I can have documented timestamps of the rest of my communication with T-Mobile over the issue.

Below is the letter I sent to R.Dotson from T-Mobile:

Dear Sir,

In December of last year I upgraded my T-mobile phone to a blackberry pearl. I had a run of bad luck with the phone and it was broken beyond repair only 2 weeks after I bought it.

I didn't have insurance on the phone so I was stuck paying full price for another one.

My T-Mobile account is set up like this:

Line A = My phone

Line B = My Sons phone

Line C = My Brothers phone

The customer service rep at the T-Mobile store (A real T-Mobile store, not an "authorized dealer") told me if I extended the contract on another one of the phone lines, I could get a discount on the replacement phone. Spending less money sounded great to me so I told him to extend the contract on Line B, and add insurance to it so I wouldn't be in this predicament again.

Today I lost my phone.

To file a claim with the 3rd party company that insures the phone you have to have the purchase date for the phone, so I called up T-mobile to suspend my service and get the purchase date. The T-Mobile rep on the phone told me my blackberry wasn't insured. Positive that i did add insurance to the phone and that I had been paying for it (because it's been on my bill every month), I told her to re-check it.

Apparently the T-Mobile rep in the store added the insurance to Line C. I told her it was a huge error on their part and that she needed to fix it. After placing me on hold for 5 minutes she came back and told me she could not change it, but she could offer me a discount on a new phone if I extended the contract for Line C.

I really had to bite my tongue because she was acting like she was doing me some kind of favor, while offering me a deal that is available to anyone who extends their service contract.

I asked to speak to her supervisor, but she just passed me off to another customer service rep, and since I didn't want to go through the loop (having a friend who worked at Verizon in the past I know how this game goes), I hung up with him because my phone was dying, and I felt there was nothing more I could do.

Through no fault of my own, I cannot get my phone replaced, and you seem uninterested in helping me. I'm not asking for a free phone, I'm just asking that you correct the error you made. I think it fair for you to at least give me a new or refurbished phone at the price I would have paid for the insurance deductible without forcing me to extend my contract. I've been a tmobile customer for a long time now. This account has 3 lines on it. We also have a business account with you that holds 6 blackberry lines. I pay my bills on time every month, and would assume that would count for at least something when dealing with a problem that comes up.

Instead I was treated by your employee as if I'm just an insignificant number in the big scheme of things. I've always been happy with T-Mobile customer service. Today I felt as if T-mobile doesn't care about the little guy anymore, and it was disappointing.

I'm going to attempt to get this resolved again tomorrow. If it doesn't happen I'm going to file a complaint with the BBB Headquarters in Washington State. As one of the "little guys" its really the only thing I can do.

Thanks,

Kristin Pishdadi