RedSpark

They obviously didn't survey me on my experience.

We all knocked Sprint's pre-historic website and billing system for years, but this DIGITs thing and onboarding process for T-Mobile post-merger is a steaming pile of junk. Sprint's Apple Watch onboarding process for cellular was so much better than this it's truly hard to believe. On T-Mobile, the Watch is given a separate phone number for billing/tracking purposes (and shown on the DIGITs page) but the actual number that's used for calls/caller ID made from the Watch is the number for your iPhone line.

If I’m not mistaken, I think I was able to add the cellular plan to the watch directly in the Watch App on Sprint without going through a s—-show like this. It’s truly hard to believe how bad this was.

Just went through a ridiculous “carrier hell” process with post-Merger T-Mobile trying to add a new Apple Watch to another line on our T-Mobile account. Purchased a new Apple Watch Series 9 Stainless at the Apple Store today for a family member for all the new health and safety features. Went through the set-up/pairing process on their iPhone for them. Got to the Cellular activation step and the phone said to contact T-Mobile, so I called on the phone to add the watch. Waited 30 mins on hold to speak to someone. Finally got someone in an overseas call center who said she’d activate the Watch on the line. Asked me for the IMEI which I gave. She confirmed the device was activated so I didn’t think anything of it and continued to set up the rest of the watch settings. Get to the end of that and go to the Cellular page in the Watch App to confirm the E911 address… and it says to call T-Mobile again. The Watch itself says “No SIM”. Great. Call T-Mobile, was on hold for 30 mins and got another overseas call center person who can’t figure out why it isn’t provisioning. However, she did tell me that it was important to stay hydrated before being transferred up, which I found flat out bizarre. Get escalated to a Stateside Senior Tech Person who knew what they were doing. He saw that the device was added as an Android Watch instead of an Apple Watch. He fixed it. Why can’t this process be Self-Service online or at least available by chat? I hate reading numbers over the phone and not being able to confirm things right in front of me. Everything about this was “carrier hell”. Ridiculous. IIRC, the process was better under Sprint. Heck, I’d rather deal with AI. T-Mobile has gone full circle back to its carrier roots.

Anybody know what happened to the T-Mobile Subreddit? https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/ Is it completely gone? I get a "Community Not Found" error.

T-Mobile's DC folks were definitely able to get the system moving on this. Good work.

But it's the "Uncarrier"!

https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/dish-hopes-score-big-iphone-15 https://www.boostinfinite.com Release: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-iphone-15-lineup-is-available-to-pre-order-at-boost-infinite-starting-on-friday-september-15-301925380.html iPhone Forever lives! We'll see how this goes.

When I spoke on the phone with the Office of the CEO person, she told me that a T-Mobile credit determination was run when my account was migrated in June and that this was the result of that. The way she explained it, it was done for all migrated Sprint accounts. What really upset me is that this was done without any customer disclosure at all, and I calmly explained that on the call. Also see this for how things apply to existing T-Mobile customers: https://tmo.report/2023/06/t-mobile-is-making-big-changes-to-how-customer-credit-limits-are-calculated/ Perhaps things will light up now that we're in the Fall upgrade cycle for iPhones... People might be in for a very rude surprise.

Appreciate the suggestions and background here. I never thought I'd have to do this, but unless T-Mobile corrects this account restriction, it looks like I'll have to.

What really gets me is how these credit limits were applied with absolutely no disclosure to the customer(s) at all. That should be blatantly illegal. Their motives seem to be that they want instant revenue from full price purchases instead of from installment plans over time and any associated risk of failure to pay. I'm not a damn credit risk as a 20 year customer with excellent credit. So given their current terms, the Account Credit Limit will be "re-evaluated" 6 months from imposition, which means this December. I hope T-Mobile makes this right for all of us. I made the best case I could to the Office of the CEO on this being a bad policy and a customer pain point. I guess we'll see what happens.

I imagine it does and that's exactly what I told the CEO staffer person - that I couldn't be the only one affected by it. What really infuriated me is that it was done with no customer notice at all. As it is right now, we have multiple lines being financed and we're currently over the $1,500 limit that they applied. Heck, my account size should have at least your credit limit, but really it shouldn't have any limit at all. We've been customers of Sprint for 20 years and now we're suddenly being treated like customers with bad/no credit on Prepaid. Unless T-Mobile fixes this, we'll consider doing our iPhone upgrades through Apple's iPhone Upgrade Program instead: https://www.apple.com/shop/iphone/iphone-upgrade-program Apple will happily do installment billing and allow for annual upgrades with no BS. Of course, I'll have to pay for AppleCare+ coverage included as part of it (which I don't really want), but whatever I guess. This is so dumb I can't believe it. T-Mobile is riding high now, but it will eventually put itself into a death spiral and they'll be clueless how it happened.

Has anyone else here had an Account Credit Limit applied after being migrated to T-Mobile's billing system? Our family plan (7 phones + 1 watch) was migrated over to T-Mobile in June of this year. I recently checked on my account to upgrade some of my lines with devices on EIP, only to receive an error message on the page to contact customer service. Oddly enough, full price purchase was available for those lines. When contacting Customer Care, I was informed that a $1,500 Account Credit Limit had been applied to my account by T-Mobile. I couldn't understand why, as I have excellent credit and always paid on-time via AutoPay. We never had an Account Spending Limit with Sprint and we've been customers for nearly 20 years. I asked Customer Care to escalate the issue internally and I received a callback that nothing could be done. In fact, I was told that nothing could be done for 6 months, when the credit amount would be "re-evaluated". When I said that I wanted this escalated to the Office of the CEO, I was told to send a letter to the P.O. Box on the webpage. Great. Ultimately, I sent an email to Jon Freier which explained the situation. I then received a call from someone in the Office of the CEO who said she'd escalate my issue. So hopefully it's in front of someone who can do the right thing for us and fix this, because as it stands $1,500 is little more than enough to finance one iPhone 15 Pro. The person said not to get my hopes up because it would require a policy change by T-Mobile.... and I responded "I hope so". Furthermore, as I explained to them, we're on Sprint Max. It would cost $35/Month more to switch to Go5G Plus that would give us upgrades every two years, but what's the point since we're already going to have to pay full price for nearly all the device upgrades on our account given the $1,500 credit limit. It would cost $105/Month more to switch to Go5G Next that would give us annual upgrades, but as above what's the point given that we'll have to pay full price for our devices anyway given the $1,500 credit limit. The "Post-Merger" T-Mobile customer experience really sucks.

Wow. That's pretty big news.

https://www.fiercewireless.com/5g/verizon-touts-5g-network-seattle-t-mobiles-home-turf Interesting rivalry here....

Thanks for the explanation on this. Found more background on it: https://www.lightreading.com/5g-and-beyond/the-complex-story-behind-t-mobiles-spectrum-struggles/d/d-id/786383

https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/senators-cruz-thune-weigh-fccs-refusal-grant-25-ghz-licenses-t-mobile

Same as it ever was…. JFC.

Thanks. So basically it depends on the graciousness of T-Mobile for what the deals will be. Do I need to have 24 months of payments to get these deals or can I just pay off the device(s) early to be eligible?

My voice/data service on T-Mobile has been really great. I didn’t even know this “5G Standalone” toggle switch was added there or even enabled. It wasn’t even there last time I checked these settings. I’ve been thinking about the Go5G Plans some more… Maybe it makes sense to do the middle ground to accommodate the Android people on our plan who only upgrade every two years: Go5G Plus for the $35/Month bump? What’s an example of an existing customer getting a new customer deal? I don’t really understand what that means.

My iPhone 14 Pro on iOS 16.6 has a toggle switch that was auto-enabled for "5G Standalone" when I looked under Settings --> Cellular --> Cellular Data Options --> Voice & Data It says: 5G Standalone uses 5G for all cellular activity, including cellular network connections. I have things set to "5G Auto" and "Allow More Data on 5G". I'm taking that Sprint MAX plan for all I can now...

I don't expect any of this to improve when Dish gets its act together.... whenever that is. It's never going to make a competitive difference in the marketplace. This is just the way it's going to be going forward. It's really sad.

Whoops! I should have been more clear too. Why do you think Apple stopped doing 0% interest no-SIM/eSIM free phones?

The Carriers must have used some leverage on Apple to get them to stop selling no-SIM/eSIM free phones. I wonder what was involved with that. It's just sad to see how T-Mobile is degenerating into the "Carrier" many of us feared after the merger, and there's really nowhere else to go.

Damn. It's sad to see things going this way now.... I miss the simplicity and value of "iPhone Forever" on Sprint. At some point, I should just consider doing the "iPhone Annual Upgrade Program" through Apple if this is how it's going to be. Of course, you'll wind up paying through the nose for upgrade benefits you won't use if you want the top tier Go5G Next plan for hotspot/international roaming, etc. on T-Mobile. What a mess. So it'll be an extra $35/Month for Go5G Plus if I want the ability to upgrade our devices every two years and have the same deals as new customers, etc..... or it'll be an extra $105/Month for Go5G Next if I want the ability to upgrade our devices each year and have the same deals as new customers. Heck, it seems to make more sense to pay off the devices completely and do a trade-in with T-Mobile or Apple, and stay on Sprint Max.... Failing that, I should just buyout the devices each year on T-Mobile and then trade them back in. I doubt my account credit limit is high enough to support financing 7 devices on it. JFC....