This happened to my husband (luckily caught after only $300 or so in damage was done) and he managed to get half the bill waived.

He got the employee to admit that he knew my husband didn't make the calls, and pointed out its illegal for a company to profit off of fraud. I'm not sure how sound his argument was, but it saved us $150.

Did you cancel the whole thing? When I was on TMo, my phone was also stolen so I called to cancel my account on that phone and to cancel the SIM card.

Both were cancelled and while I never saw my phone again, I never got billed for any additional charges.

In fact, I bought the exact same phone, faxed the receipt to TMo and got them to credit my account for that amount that I paid for the replacement phone.

:D

Took a while to get them to credit me (but the customer service rep said they would so I held them to it)

Bet I could never get that to happen again. (This was a $400 phone back when the color screens were the new big thing)

You never reported it stolen? I have to agree with T-Mobile on this one; past performance does not guarantee current usage levels.

Sounds to me like someone lent out their phone or SIM card and is now having second thoughts.

Pay the bill loser

It's SO obvious the charges aren't yours? How exactly is TMobile supposed to know that if you didn't TELL THEM THE PHONE WAS STOLEN?

so, omg! It's sooo obvious you should file a police report and report it stolen.

Given that there is a clear record of numbers dialed, and thus a lead for an investigation, I'm surprised that they don't bother to research reports of fraud.

we have color screens now?

seems that you have the phone numbers the thief called... report those to the police and see what they can do to find the criminal.

if they said to report it stolen, then duh, report it stolen. it takes 5 mins and you can do it over the phone. That little piece of paper can save you a ton of money. If you are unwilling to report it, then I side w/ Tmobile.

@CaptainObvious:

Cost effectiveness. Only the big fish get chased...

My TMO phone was stolen about 2 years ago (called it in and only one local call had been made) But TMO refused to check who was using it by way of the IMEI number (which doesn't change even if you swap SIM cards) without a court order - very consumer unfriendly IMHO

@snazz: I agree, the fact the theif racked up $1500 in charges, I believe will bring this into a felony theft of service level crime which actually might even be federal. So potentially you might wish to report this to the FBI also.

seems a bit late to report it stolen now..heh

So what is the problem in reporting it as stolen when, OMGOSH, it was stolen? :P

I have to side with TMobile on this one.
Once a customer has the Cell Phone, TMobile has absolutely *no* way of protecting that phone/SIM from theft or unauthorized usage (without hindering the customer, of course). It is 100% up to the customer to protect the equipment.

Why should TMobile foot the bill for network usage because *you* failed to do so?

Had the customer promptly reported the equipment stolen, then TMobile could have deactivated the Phone/SIM/Account (as needed) to protect both you and them. Because the customer did not, they expect TMobile (and thus, the rest of TMobile's customers) to eat $1,500?

Yeah, the customer should have notified T-Mobile that it was stolen immediately, and should have filed a police report as well.

If the customer is not willing to file a police report, that should raise a red flag in anyone's book.

I'm gonna offer some advice here that I hope will help in the future -- a bit of preventive maintenance.

Set your phone to require a code be typed in after a certain amount of inactivity or when you want to unlock the keypad, whatever your phone supports. Set it to a reasonably short interval if it's a time lock, like the iphone I use, but not so short that you are constantly having to unlock the phone to do things with it. My phone has choices of 1, 5, 15 min, 1 hour, and 4 hours. I have it on 15 minutes right now; you don't need to type in the code to change the currently-playing track in iTunes or answer an incoming call. This way if you've been walking down the street and someone snatches your phone, it's probably codelocked even if you were listening to music or something similar. This way if the thief tries to call out, they won't be able to guess the code, and if the thief hard resets the phone to try to get around the lock, the iPhone at least will request the code when it comes back up.

Also lock your SIM. This is different from the passcode lock in the phone itself and prevents the SIM from being used even if it's put in another device -- that device too will prompt for the code. You must enter this passcode when you start up the phone but at no other time. You also have to enter it to, say, take the SIM to a store to clone it to a new one if your SIM is out of date, so a thief can't just clone the contents to a new card. You'll get some kind of dialog -- I get "SIM locked. OK/Unlock" and if you hit OK there's no service and if you hit Unlock you're presented with the keypad to enter the code. You get three tries and if you miss all three the SIM hard-locks so that you have to get an unlock code, unique to your SIM, from your cell provider to unlock it. This is standard to all SIM cards, not just the iPhone.

CHANGE THE DEFAULT SIM PASSCODE. For AT&T it's 1111. It's different for T-Mobile.

@TheUncleBob: Thank you.
Personal responsibility anyone? I know, not his fault it was stolen (maybe). but it is his fault that he didn't report it stolen ASAP to protect himself really.

Not that a cell phone usually leads to a crime but pretend it could, you'd be in a lot worse shape if it had and the phone lead the cops or feds to your door...kinda like a gun could.

you: but it was stolen
them: why didn't you report it?
you: uh, I dunno.
them: thank you, book 'em.

I know that's blowing it out of proportion a bit. but it could happen if they called somebody that was being wathced and tapped with your, technically not stolen since it wasn't reported, phone.

If you didn't report it as stolen when it was stolen, then you're an idiot. How is T-Mobile to know that you're not trying to scam them?

@MDSasquatch: Guys, I think you're misreading her letter. She *has* reported it stolen now; T-Mobile is referring to the time *before* she reported it.

Seek first to understand before you beat people up.

@rjhiggins: T Mobile's contract is pretty ironclad, in that you are responsible for charges until the second you report it missing.

My question to the poster is: how long before you realized your phone was missing did you take to report it stolen?

Doesn't take much to report it stolen to the police. Just give your local non-emergency phone number a call.

@rjhiggins: Your missing the point, there shouldn't be anytime between stolen and reporting. Hey look my phone is gone, then you dial Tmobile. Thats it. 1500$ is a lot of money...that means there was a big time period between reporting and being stolen.

I reread the post, but I don't see where she said she reported it stolen at any time.

@rjhiggins:

That's how I read it too, but I'm still baffled by her behavior. How could she believe that T-Mobile would say "well, now that you've told us it was stolen, way after the fact, we'll take all these charges off the account?"

If T-Mobile actually did business that way, there would be a lot of people racking up huge bills and then calling in to say their phones were "stolen" a month ago.

Why didn't you report the phone stolen as soon as it happened? I don't think that any cell phone company will help you without evidence that you reported the theft and filed a police report.

too bad you didn't sign up for the unlimited plan

The Lost/Stolen Policy at T-Mobile is very very simple. SInce you have the ability to lock your handset and or SIM card you must report the missing handset to T-Mobile right away or we hold you responsible for any usage on the handset up until you do. This is because you failed to implement any of the security methods we provide you with.

I work in one of their call centers, and you don't know how many times I get some soccer mom call in a month after their kid's phone was stolen at school to contest a super high bill. But because she didn't call us right away all the charges are valid.

Now there is one exception to this rule. If you live in California you just have to tell us the approximate date and time the phone was lost/stolen and we will start a fraud investigation. The difference is due to some Wireless Bill of Rights there.

So remember, report your phone right away, even if you think it's in your car, and always always always enable the SIM PIN and change it from the default(1234).

Blame the consumer in 3... 2... 1...
Oh wait, it really is her fault, like everyone says "she should have reported it stolen (alot sooner)"

@JustAGuy2: Exactly!

How about all those situations where a preson realises their phone is missing, but really they may have just left it in the office, or at a friend's house, and not necessarily stolen.

It may take a day from the point to figuring out a phone is missing, versus stolen.

There should be a grace period, perhaps 48 hours, to report a stolen phone with minimal financial liability for the consumer for fradulent charges.

It's easy to notice a stolen phone if somebody's held up. In most other situations, it's rather tricky.

A reasonable person shouldn't be on the hook for several hundred dollars worth of fradulent charges for merely 'double-checking' the phone was actually lost/stolen.

my tmobile phone was stolen last year and luckily i reported it within a couple hours.

while i was on the line with tmobile reporting the stolen phone, i logged onto the website and printed the numbers the thief had called on my phone before i shut it off (there were only about 5)... then i proceeded to send out about 10 bulletins on myspace with these phone numbers, i announced them on the air on my radio show, and i even called them live on the air and told the stupid teenagers who answered i was calling from tmobile's loss department and that the phone had a GPS tracking device. the best part was when i called the kids on the air they all said "why do i keep getting all of these calls from people telling me my friend is going to jail?". they were really scared! ha!

i had my friends call and tell them that until they convinced their criminal buddy to turn the phone in to the police dept (i'd also filed a police report) they would be getting multiple calls each day.

all fun aside, i still had to pay the insurance deductible to get my phone replaced... and tmobile's policy states that you are responsible until you report it stolen. so this person is not getting any of those charges reversed. the only thing to do now is have fun with the numbers. i suggest posting them here - i'll call right now.

@MickeyMoo: They won't give you that information because they don't want to be responsible if you decide to enact some vigilante justice on the thief.

@TheUncleBob: "Why should TMobile foot the bill for network usage because *you* failed to do so?"

Because the service wasn't rendered to the phone's owner, it was rendered to the thief. T-Mobile just wants to stick it to the phone's owner because they already have her billing information.

You can't bill a person for goods purchased and services rendered to somebody else. Credit card companies recognize this -- I don't see why phones should be any different.

@COELACANTH: If you call up Tmo and say "Hey, I think I lost/had my phone stolen, but I'm not sure.." then they can put a lock on your account. If you find the phone that you're calling about, they can unlock it.

Pay the $1500. You should have called it in the SECOND you realized "Hey, maybe it's missing.."

You can log onto my.t-mobile.com anytime and see what numbers have been dialed. If you think you've misplaced it, watch that page, and if new calls show up.. Call.

Sorry, ZERO sympathy here. Idiot..

@SuperJdynamite: According to their contract, you're still on the hook. If you can find the thief, you can sue them and get the money back. It isn't TMobile's fault your phone was stolen, why should they suffer?

@eelmonger: uhh... like what i did? if i'd had the address of the shit head who stole the phone i would have given that out on the radio, too. and actually, the tmobile rep who helped me turn the phone off suggested i print those numbers before the account records were frozen...

knowing some idiot has access to all of your numbers, pictures, text messages, music... it's really an awful feeling. i am getting angry all over again just thinking about this.

@yesteryear: nicely done!

As far as general cellphone liability protection goes, I cannot imagine any scenario other than the one that exists now, that would not get abused to no end by scammers & cheapskates.

@COELACANTH:

If i ever felt that i am missing my phone and i dont know where it is, i would check the minutes and text messages on the providers website. verizon's my accounts does states when the phone was last used. If you didnt use it at that time then its probably being used by an unauthorized folk and may be stolen.

Im always on top of my account, but the post does not seem clear if the person's sim card got cloned or if his sim card got stolen. If his sim got cloned then that would be a tough situation.

This is a bad policy, and I'll tell you why: Unless you're held up at gunpoint, you never know exactly when you lost your phone.

You could have left it at your friend's house, or it could have fallen behind something somewhere, or any number of scenarios. It takes a while to retrace your steps and you're never sure it's actually gone for a couple days. No one's going to report their phone stolen the instant they can't find it, and to do so would be filing a false report in the majority of cases. Most people take a certain amount of time, usually a couple days, hoping it'll turn up.

You should have at least 96 hours to report it stolen, and should not be responsible for any usage in that time. If you let it go for a week or more, then yeah, you're being stupid.

This policy works for credit cards, and it'll work for phones. They're apparently just waiting to be forced to do so.

@Bladefist: how can he call them to report his phone stolen if his phone has been stolen?

@viqas: Yeah, people should check this sort of thing, but no one should be expected to monitor their account daily.

The bottom line is that T-mobile didn't incur $1500 worth of expenses for the usage, so they shouldn't be trying to recoup that whole amount. Recoup your costs, sure, but trying to profit from this is just lame, and will probably cost them more in loss of goodwill than they'd make from this one incident.

Then again, I don't know how much goodwill they've got left to lose.

@SuperJdynamite: So, your belief is that TMobile and responsible TMobile customers should have to eat the cost for customers who fail to report their phone/SIM stolen in a timely manner, fail to be responsible with their phone/SIM, or fail to even put a password lock on the SIM and keep it to themselves?

I'm sorry, but I *cannot* agree with that.

If you go to the bank, cash a check, put the money in your wallet and leave it out on the table, and someone steals your wallet, should you be allowed to go *back* to the bank and re-cash your check?

I'm tired of this "Blame everyone else but me and make the big, bad companies eat my mistakes" consumerism.

When a customer signs a legal contract that they agree to pay for charges to an account up until the time they report the phone/SIM stolen, then that customer has a responsibility to make sure their equipment isn't stolen and, if it is, to report it ASAP.

@Mr. Gunn:

Then call and say "hi, I may have lost my phone, what do I do?"

They'll put a lock on your account, so the phone can't make calls, and you can then search for it at your leisure.

What is preventing you from filing as they asked? Its a small thing that takes a few minutes.

Snitches get Stitches.