Lost my Mom and Dads T-mobile minutes

[Randalls]

Forgot to set up a reminder on the Golden 1 year expiration. I had been adding $10 cards every year so they could keep the minutes valid. I guess 3 years for $120 isn't too bad. They so rarely used their phones (upper end seniors). I called customer service and appealed and they gave me 24 hours to buy a minimum of a $10 card and said they would reinstate 50% of the minutes left if I called them back within 24 hrs. I guess that is fair since it was me that screwed up. Next year I will send an alert.

[NewtonMP2100]

.....if you can...call back and appeal....with a manager....they might give you more back , never hurts to ask....

...just a note but you don't have to buy a refill card.....they can charge $10 directly over the phone to a credit card......I did it once when I forgot the expiration day on the day it was to expire and didn't have time to shop for a card since it was late in the evening......

[Randalls]

Yes, thanks for the reminder. I bought the last $10 on line and within 2 days my cc company picked up a charge for some electronic equipment I didn't make. Could be a coincidence but always remembered that one.

[Winston]

If you register the phones with your email address I think T-Mobile will automatically send you reminders.

This happened to me last year with my daughter's phone. I actually tried to buy more minutes online, but T-Mobile stupidly had cancelled the online account very soon after the year was up. I went around in circles with them trying to get the online account reinstated and ultimately the whole thing got away from me and we lost the minutes. T-Mobile was not as helpful as I'd expected them to be.

She now has another T-Mobile account which we got with a cheap phone and $25 prepaid card. When the phone arrived later than T-Mobile said it would they sent us another $25 prepaid card, so they've partly made up for being difficult last year.

I won't buy a $100 credit all at once again, I'm going to do it with $25 cards until we hit the $100 that gives you a year to expiration. She rarely uses the phone, but at least now she is using it. (Lack of use was part of the reason for the expiry last year - I'd put her in charge of keeping track of it.)


Good luck.

- Winston

[space-time]

1) buy refills on eBay: $100 cards go for $88, and you get 8% cash back from Bill Gates (Bing cash back)

if you buy retail, you pay $107 (100 +tax), or even more, depending on your sales tax

2) Buy $100 refill rather than 4x $25, you get way more minutes that way. With $25 refills every 3 months you get 130 minutes each time, total 130x4=520 minutes. With a 1-time $100 refill, you get 1000 minutes. The expiration date is 1 year in each case (with the $25 cars you can go for 3 months I think)

[NewtonMP2100]

....just an FYI, not sure if this is normal but my account just expired a few weeks ago and I tried to refill through my online account but it wouldn't work....kept saying the # from the card was invalid....

....tried all day...finally, I just did it by phone and it worked....the online never did work.....

[Randalls]

Yes, it was worse than I thought. My wife's phone had lapsed also. She used it so rarely that I found I had wasted $90. So long story short I appealed and they gave me a 24 hour grace period to add at least $10 to each phone. Then I had to call back so they could give me back 50% of the original time remaining. I did take Newtons advice and asked for a manager but they said no go on anything over 50%.

What I DID find unusual was that on 2 of the 3 phones the new expiration was 1 year from the time I bought the $10 cards (yesterday) due to the "gold" rating on the initial $100 card years ago. On the 3rd phone (also a "gold" plan) I was told the new expiration date would be in July 2011 (??????). I did not question this as it was in my favor but I later called in to confirm and it IS listed as July 2011. Weird. I should have asked them to explain that one but by that time my ear was numb from jumping through t-mobile csr hoops.

Now, I know this is a different topic. How do you stop spam calls and text messages? Thanks for all the input everyone.

[Winston]

NewtonMP2100 wrote:
....just an FYI, not sure if this is normal but my account just expired a few weeks ago and I tried to refill through my online account but it wouldn't work....kept saying the # from the card was invalid....

....tried all day...finally, I just did it by phone and it worked....the online never did work.....

Something like that is what messed us up on my daughter's phone last year. I wasted too much time trying to get them to fix the online account. Should have just done a refill by phone.


Good luck.

- Winston