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05/11/2008: "My Journey With TMobile Support"

I have been having problems with my TMobile phone the last few months that I can remember. Since I live in the sticks, I am roaming 85% of the time my phone is turned on. (It is probably a lot more than that.) My trouble comes when I move into a TMobile area. My phone should automatically switch to the TMobile towers. However, mine is not. At the moment a TMobile tower is in range, my phone goes into search mode, where it tries to connect. It shows signal, however, it never connects. It might eventually, but I usually only wait about 5 minutes before I restart my phone. Once I restart the phone, it comes up on the Tmobile tower almost immediately and is fine. The other odd part of my problem, is that if I am on a phone call when I move into TMobile coverage, my call does not drop. It passes the call between towers just fine, but as soon as I hang up, I am searching again. During this time, of course, I cannot send or receive any calls.

I have been living with this for months. The TMobile coverage area that I am talking about is Danville, and I go to Danville 5 or 6 days a week, mostly for work. The exact area that my phone does this is always the area that I am trying to make a call, or someone is trying to call me.

I finally called TMobile support last week. It was a Sunday. I called and spoke with a female tech that we will call Sally. Let me start by saying I was calling from my house, which is nowhere near where I experience the problem. I explained what was going on as best I could, and she sounded like she knew how to help me. After putting me on hold a few times, she came back and said she would reset my phone on the tower, which required me to turn off and turn on my phone. I was a little concerned when she called back and asked me if the phone was working any better. Of course I didn't know, I was at home, and not about to drive back into town until work the next day. Did she really understand my problem? She said if the problem returned, call back.

The next day was Cinco de Mayo, and I was out celebrating the Mexican victory over the French in 1862. However, I did note as I was celebrating that the problem was not fixed.

So it was Tuesday night when I called TMobile support back. This time I spoke with a male tech that I will call Jim. Jim went straight to the coverage map, and decided that I was just moving from a covered area to a non-covered area, and that sometimes, phones can get stuck on a particular tower. The only fix is to restart the phone, which I would have to do every time I pass through this area. This did not make me happy, and I think I flat out said, "I don't like that answer." However, he mentioned (and was very non-specific) that there was an outage in my area, and while this may not be the full cause of my problem, may have affected what I saw my phone doing the last couple of days. I offerred to call back when the outage was resolved. At the end of this call, I did not feel that Jim understood what my problem was.

The next day I called TMobile support again. This time I spoke with a different female tech I will call, Susie. To be frank, Susie did not sound like she knew what a cell phone was, and I am certain that she did not understand my problem. She went through was sounded like the exact same thing that Sally did on Sunday. She said it looked like there was no outage in my area, and that she wanted to try resetting my phone on the tower. Again, she called me back (and I was calling from home) and asked if my problem was fixed. Again, can't tell until I go to work the next day. She said that if this doesn't work that they can fill out some sort of service request form, which sounds like some call-center way of saying, "the coverage in your area is terrible, and this form will add your area to the list of places all over the world that needs an additional tower." Yeah, ok. I'll let you know Susie.

Of course my phone did the same thing the next day, so I called again. I spoke with another male tech that I will call Jason. For the first time, I feel like I spoke with someone who truly understands my problem. He asked me very good follow up questions to make sure that he understood, and he really sounded like he sympathized. Without putting me on hold once, he checked into a few things, and came up with a plan to fix it. He explained the service request form a little better for me, which apparently they can use to find out if there is trouble on the network in a certain area. He would have liked to trade out my SIM card or phone to try things out, but the nearest TMobile store is very far away from me. He wanted to try to service request form first, and if that didn't fix it, to try a new phone. He asked if I knew anyone else on TMobile having the trouble, but I didn't have the chance to ask the one person I know yet. He took my email address, and said I should receive an email with the results from the request form, if they found anything, etc, within 2 - 3 days.

I felt a little better after my experience with Jason. I don't really expect anything in the 2 - 3 day time frame, but he sounded like he wanted to get my problem looked at quickly. I had a chance to check with my one friend on TMobile, and she said she does have this problem frequently.

So I am now 4 calls into this problem. The last of which I feel was the only one to make any progress. Is that normal for cell phone technical assistance?

My story was long, and it is not over. I will update when I can. Please note, the names I used in this story were changed.