News Former Employee: T-Mobile Misleads Home Internet Customers

[Bonnie915]

T-Mobile customer service and stores have gone downhill since the merger. T-Mobile is allowing people that used to work for the other company implement their bad customer service. I switched service because of how the customer service over the phone and stores changed. It made me feel like they never wanted to help. Lots of new faces that didn't want to be bothered with my phone issues and would try to sell me a new phone and not listen to what I really needed.

 

[mrv_co]

The reality is that T-Mobile Home Internet is a 'best effort' service. T-Mobile is not rolling trucks to trouble-shoot and fix on-prem customer issues.

 

[Top level looser]

My parents are in the process of canceling their new T-Mobile 5G home plan. Salesgirl did a good job selling them on it, but the speeds for them in rural VA are terrible. They're getting ~2mbps down which is slower than the awful and expensive satellite internet which has been their only other option. Mom said she's going to try AT&T next but apparently fiber is supposed to be coming to their area in the next year or so...

I totally understand how they feel. Its not just rural VA. If your not in a major city, close to a major city, a state capital, or near a major point of interest such as a large airport, theme park, sports complex etc, or in a area that has one of these spots under construction, slow unreliable inconsistent service is the normal. The FCC app is suppose to regularly test, record, and map service quality so the FCC can map out areas of bad service and I swear Tmobile knows when this app starts running and is recording current connection speeds. Ive successfully used it many times to temporarily boost my speeds from 1.5-2mbps up to 6-7mbps by simply manually running the test back to back 2 or 3 times. Its strange how my connection speed on my phone is always extremely slow (new 5g phone) even sending picture msgs take 30s to 1 min+ to send, yet the FCC map shows my reported speeds at street level at 20+mbps with some automatic test results over 30mbps.

 

[Top level looser]

Like ive said before, cellular based "home broadband" is not and will never be true home broadband internet service. It may be faster than cable in some places, and "available" in places that the cable providers simply just will not ever offer service to, even if that service is available 1 mile or less away. But hard line cable service will always be the most reliable constant stable and dependable service in general throughout the entire network. The speeds are almost always consistent regardless of weather or time of day and service is almost always running as it should. Id love to be a big cheese a cable provider, I would be actively hunting areas to expand, running service lines, and taking customers from AT&T and satellite tv providers by the handfuls weekly.

 

[Dave TC]

My guess would be that they oversold their network and it is forcing people off to prevent degradation in quality. It could also be a new building that is now blocking the signal between you and the tower. Trees growing can be a problem as well.

That is probably what is going on, or they didn't get their engineering right. I signed up for T-Mobile Home Internet early this year and from day one it was a problem. Could not get it to connect and spent probably 10 hours on the phone with T-Mobile reps overseas. They were all friendly but they did use the "Tower is being upgraded" line many times. The service cut out 3 to 5 times a day and during peak times was 5 mbs, about fast enough to check email. I really wanted something to replace Comcast and this was the first opportunity. I finally got tired of the lack of performance and inaction by customer service to I cancelled and went with Verizon. It's fantastic and never a problem. Worked from day one. I like T-Mobile but this experience tainted their reputation.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Doesn’t seem worth it

 

[alhoover45]

I had T-mobile for an agonizing couple of months. First, it took T-mobile a MONTH to figure out how to port my phone number into my new t-mobile phone. So for that month, I was forced to pay two phone bills. Once they were finally able to port my number over, two days later, they canceled my service. Once they got my service back up and running, they then took off the promotion I received whenever I purchased my new phone and watch as I traded in an old phone and was starting a new service. I also want to note that through this whole process, no one in store could help me. They told me I had to call. Every representative I spoke with on the phone was rude and condescending. One older gentleman even asked me how old I was, which I found wildly inappropriate as a younger female. He was actually the one I was speaking with about the promotion. I asked him if I could pay off my devices to ensure the promotion doesn’t get taken away again. He said yes and I ended up paying him. At the same time, I received my first bill. It was a whopping $240. For one phone line! They assured me it was for two months of service, since the first month, my number was still not ported. I was annoyed by this answer, but paid my bill anyway. The next month, my bill was MORE. About $250 for a single phone line and the devices paid off. I called again and the woman I spoke with told me that I still owed her $600 for the devices which I already paid. I told her I didn’t care, I just wanted my service canceled and this nightmare over. She did. THEN I received another bill in the mail from a debt collector saying I owed T-mobile $630. Turns out, they had been charging me for two home internet devices which I did not have. They are still telling me I owe them for my devices, even though I have receipts of my transactions. I paid T-mobile a couple thousand of dollars in the span of about 3-4 months of service. T- mobile is a terrible company and I discourage everyone from starting a service with them.

 

[tiffsfam]

I am a victim as well to T-Mobile! Not only with their home internet but their cell service too. Before we switched from AT&T, I spoke too several different representatives everywhere from customer service on the phone, via chat and the store. All team members said that we had wonderful 5G service and the coverage map even showed it and still does! We suffer from lack of coverage and texts come in even 2 hours late! I informed everyone from the company and no one cared or was willing to refund my money so I could go back to AT&T. Now we are stuck with them until I can pay for our cancelation fee! Believe me when I say this I have told EVERYONE I know to STAY AWAY from T-Mobile! Luckily I didn't cancel my home internet with AT&T or my job in Healthcare would have been horribly jeopardized!

 

[teresa81]

Says company’s support reps incentivized to give customers false excuses to get them off the phone faster.

Former Employee: T-Mobile Misleads Home Internet Customers : Read more

I too fell for the sale of the T-Mobile Internet last month 7/2022 and we did get a connection but it was so weak we couldn't even surf the internet with it. We tried & tried to get a stronger signal but never could. Plus the weak internet signal kept disconnecting over & over. So I had to go through all the hassle of cancelling our T-Mobile internet and mailing back to them the worthless Wifi Modem because our local TMobile store wouldn't take the modem back even though they were the ones who handed it to me less than 30 days prior.

 

[mihen]

This may sound obvious, but have you tried rotating your modem 90 degrees. The antennas face in different directions and can interfere with one another. I was facing my modem one way and had a terrible connection, turning it 180 degrees gave me a fairly reliable connection for mobile internet.

 

[CypherDragon]

Most every large company has metrics to hit for their phone calls to "customer care" . It's not just a T-mobile thing. Shorter calls = more customers helped per rep. Plus side is T-Mobile does still use US based Call Centers & Employees for most of their care calls.. I'm sure they'll get their internet issues worked out. Guessing this article will help elevate it to a NEED TO FIX NOW priority

They may still have US-based call centers for mobile, but every single person I spoke to about the issues with the home internet while I had it was Filipino. This isn't a dig against PH techs though, since I've worked for several companies that used PH-based call centers for consumer and/or initial calls, and they're usually good people. Underpaid and overworked like most of us in tech, but good techs, and good people in general...I personally have no problem calling for support and hearing the (to me) very recognizable Filipino accent.

I had a similar problem with their home internet after I got it - it worked fine for about 2 months or so, and then suddenly one day it just...stopped. No amount of troubleshooting would fix it, and I was fed the same lines about a "tower being upgraded." The only difference with the problems I had is that it also affected my mobile phone, which was also through T-Mobile. I had 0 stable internet connectivity for 5 days straight before I dumped the service and had to go crawling back to Spectrum. My connection was so sporadic and inconsistent, I would even have calls dropped while I was on the phone with T-Mobile support.

The worst part was trying to return the equipment, since I had at that point 2 gateways that I needed to return. Customer Care directed me to either ship it back UPS (on T-Mobile's dime, of course), or drop it off at the nearest corporate store. I just happen to have a corporate store around the corner, much closer than the nearest UPS, so I take the equipment up there...and promptly get shut down and basically told to go f--- myself by the manager that was working there because "you have to call Customer Care to do returns, we don't do it in the store," and he wouldn't even believe me when I called CC while in the store and played it on speakerphone the CC rep telling me I could drop things off in store. I've literally never been closer to an assault charge in my life.

I also filed an FCC complaint, since the 5 day complete outage almost cost me my current gig...I work remotely, and if I don't have internet, I'm not able to work. I don't have a laptop, so I can't just pack up and move to a different location either...the joys of independent contract work. Sadly the only thing I got out of the FCC complaint was a $50 bill credit from T-Mobile, which really isn't sufficient to make up for the literal hours I spent on the phone troubleshooting with their Care reps, and escalating to the highest level I could. I don't know what the actual problem is, but I doubt I'll be trying T-Mobile or any other 5G home internet any time soon.

 

[GhstMnOn3rd806]

I have been with T-mobile 5G Home Internet since the beta. Had to plead with them to get service because the webpage wouldn’t approve me but I have 2 towers, each within 1mi of my house and our cellphones got great speeds. Our only other option was slow an unreliable ATT 2-wire over aging direct burial wire. The whole neighborhood has constant outages and not a single week goes by without an ATT service truck out struggling to restore even the crappy service.

I’ve been through 6 gateways in under 2 years. All but 1 were the Nokia trashcans and 1 Arcadian black box. 3 have died out right. One wouldnt power on at all. One seemed to lose it’s customized OS. And atleast 3, including the new Arcadian, offered great speeds over wifi (300-600mbps), but capped ethernet speeds to about 80-100. My phone in the same spot managed a new personal record of 700mbps in the same location as the gateway which pulled 540megs at the time. And my phone doesn’t even have the external directional antennas the gateway has.

I have spent many hours on the phone with support over the past couple years and have frequently got the canned tower upgrade excuse after they can’t explain my issues (especially the firmware issues cause slow ethernet comms). I tell them my phone has no issue and they claim because of the other towers… but the other tower doesnt have the ultra capacity band and thus tops out at about 110mbps.

I love T-mobile’s anti carrier attitude, low prices, no capping or throttling, no contracts, ect… but the unreliability is killing me. I’d even trade some speed for reliability . Now that we have the option for Verizon’s 5G home internet, I may be forced to give them a try. I’ve also pleaded with them to let me plunk down the money to use my own hardware and they said they can’t. Why can you use a Nighthawk hotspot on their normal per GB plans, but not the home internet service?

So yea, another frustrated customer for an otherwise amazing service.

 

[Manxe Kitairn]

Yes, it is true. There is NO effective Support at TM Home Internet. I was an early customer and have experienced the litany of problems above and more. At first blush, TMHI worked perfectly. But the service was 4G, apparent from the tools I had downloaded from Google Play Store. The speed was not spectacular, nonetheless, it gave me what I wanted. I only had one problem, a hiccup, in the first 6 months, but that gave me a surprise: Support did not answer the phone. There was no Support. The published number did not connect to anybody. Then came 5G conversion and a 4 month trial of my patience. Outages every two or three days for hours and nobody to call. I made frequent trips to my local TM store and got no help there either. They grew to know me and being youngsters, dumped on me at every visit. After that calmed down, there was a period of good service for a few months, followed by a period of dropped connections that was typically fixed by a reboot. I started a habit of frequent speed tests. The results were revealing. It finally dawned on me that TM was dropping connection when I used my VPN. Any VPN. I was upset and went to my TM store to complain. They denied it. I know my FCC regs, so I filed an FCC Complaint. TM was forced to respond, and how they did so was telling. They gave me a copy of the letter they had sent to the FCC detailing the problems they were having that could have affected my connection to the three local towers I am able to connect to. It was all BS and bafflegab, of course, as they listed a series of problem tickets they had worked on without telling anyone what the problem was or the fix they had implemented to solve it. So their excuse was that maintenance is the problem. [I noted that in the article.] Bull!! But ... the dropped connections stopped just after I received the letter. So all was well. I continued my speed tests and found that the slowed speeds while using VPN had ended. Those were the most serious problems I have had, and since then, I get a dropped connections about once a month. Radio communications are notoriously unstable, and I would expect that. The problems have been easily fixed by climbing up to the window where the modem gateway is receiving and rebooting it. But the bad taste in my mouth from my TM experiences has not diminished, and I anxiously await the fiber connection that has not quite reached my house ... yet. The fiber future is looking good with speeds up to 1Gig ... next year ... in Israel. [My Bona Fides: CDP, CISA, CIA, MBA-IT, 40 years IT including IBM 360 JCL and Assembler, and a litany of languages]

 

[jkendzi]

I formerly worked for a local phone co in the Eugene OR area. As to whether a cell signal is good or not is entirely based on line of sight. That said, yes radio waves can penetrate objects like walls, trees etc. The denser the object the less signal.
Go into the basement of a highrise and maybe no signal at all, 1st floor ok and top floor great.
Here in my area T-Mobile has towers scattered around town, mostly along the I-5 corridor. Move away from their towers and well, you get less signal. If you see a tower it doesn't mean "your" signal is coming from it. Each antenna on a given tower belongs to 1 company. Count the different antennas on a tower by horizontal plane. Some have 1? Some 4 or 5. To know whose antenna are on a tower you would have to go there and look at the placards to be sure, also you may be able to check your signal level near any tower. 5 bars? Likely your tower. Use this info to "best guess" the likelyhood of good service from any cell provider. Around here, T-Mobile pushed to get fiber to their towers to deploy 5G, but they don't pay for more bandwidth than they expect to sell, ie. 1Gb pipe with 200Mb service as the backbone to that tower. I won't try to defend any companies choices regarding their service, but I will criticize the poor choices made by management when it comes to customer service. Caveat Emptor (Buyer Beware)

 

[SOlidwire]

Everybody is so spoiled by tech working well and instantaneous fixes as it was only 30 yrs ago that most of what existed didn't work as well as advertised and no one who knew what they were really doing in IT expected the company to know the answer while very often as the customer & IT service provider (network consultant @ the time) we solved the problems together. Those days are long gone of dealing with a "real" engineer and now you're lucky if your highest level trouble shooter has completed their degree in gender studies.

 

[elforeign]

Thank you for reporting on your experiences and for continually updating the article with communication between you and TM, the former and/or current employees and other users affected. I am not a Tmobile Home Internet user, but was stuck with Comcast for many years. These companies treat internet like some lavish lifestyle luxury when in today's day and age it is such an important part of the large majority of people's lives.

On a broader scale, it's objectively wrong and immoral for these companies, but in this specific case, Tmobile to condone or by extension enable or elicit their employees to outright lie to customers to appear better in rankings. Internet companies do this across the board and the culture needs to be changed and they need to be sued. Greater oversight has to come from the government so that these companies cannot get away with this crap.

 

[ikernelpro4]

Says company’s support reps incentivized to give customers false excuses to get them off the phone faster.

Former Employee: T-Mobile Misleads Home Internet Customers : Read more

European here, after being away for a few weeks, they told me they shut off my home internet because they wanted to upgrade my connection to a faster one (not free of course).

When in the end, the cable wasn't fully plugged in.

They provide the best stable & fastest internet connection no doubt but they have become really scumy for some reason.

 

[Trechie]

Says company’s support reps incentivized to give customers false excuses to get them off the phone faster.

Former Employee: T-Mobile Misleads Home Internet Customers : Read more

They've been using that excuse for a year for the reason my family's phones get extremely spotty service on the T-Mobile network in our house after the merger. It's just "they're upgrading the tower on your block." For a year now. (We live in a busy part of a major city where the Sprint network was fine until now).

 

[OriginFree]

Telus in canada isnt any better i have shaw 1.5gbps internet with shaw communications in lethbridge...i thought i was sold on telus they said they had faster speeds so i was ready to switch hoping to get a new tv with em ...so i call back to double check and they say oh in ur city we only have like 25mbps internet im like pfff what a joke i have 5 people in the house with tablets computers and phones ....that wouldnt even come close to shaw.....so thats how these places get u....get a free tv when u sign up for trash service lol....if ur in canada u want SHAW

Your Shaw is good, wonderful for you. I've used both Shaw & Telus for over 35 years and they both suck. I've had both promise stuff and then the tech shows and says not possible, I've had billing issues, speed issues, TV channels coming in one day but not the next, etc. Depending on where you are in Canada you have the choice of any one of two, three or four provides who all suck to some degree and are overpriced vs the US and massively overpriced vs Europe. But congrats on getting that discontinued TV that liquidation stores (or Salvation Army) stock for only signing up for a 2+ year contract.

 

[CParsons]

The 'problem solving' described in this article is basically the same problem solving used at any carrier / call center. This is quite far from a T-Mobile thing. Anyone who has ever worked in a call center is certainly familiar with these tactics and policies.