Update: T-Mobile reports that the situation has been satisfactorily resolved. Motoko disagrees.

Reader Motoko was shocked to find $1,000 worth of charges from an unknown phone number on her latest T-Mobile bill. T-Mobile refused to vacate the charges, even after admitting that the number that somehow latched onto her account was already under investigation for suspicious activity. One thoughtless rep suggested that Motoko merely lost track of time while racking up the mysterious charges, and offered to bump her up to a more expensive plan. Motoko writes:

I checked my T-Mobile bill this month and saw that I was billed $1,169.84. A lot of the calls and text messages were made from 401 XXX-XXXX, a mysterious phone number attached to my account that I have never seen before.

I called T Mobile and spoke with Cindy, who said the number is under investigation but the charges are valid even though the vast majority of it was from a phone number that does not belong to me. Cindy then said she will call me back 2 days from now on Friday and that the new number will be suspended. Not happy with the outcome I called again and spoke with Gabriel (#0458150) who kept denying for 15 minutes that any phone calls were made from the 401 number and that I had made those calls to cities I’ve never heard of under my number, and maybe I “forgot” and “lost track of time” when making these calls. I finally showed her the online billing statement that clearly showed TEN pages of phone calls from the 401 number to numbers and cities I have never seen before. She promptly says “Oh…”, puts me on hold for 10 minutes, comes back and tells me that the charges are valid because they were made from the same phone! Then she asks if I want to change my plan to one with more minutes so I won’t have to pay $1,000 next month, thanks Gabby!

T-Mobile is basically insinuating that I purchased two numbers/SIM cards on the same account, then swapped them in and out of the phone at various times (often making calls from both numbers at the same time on the same phone!), racked up a bill of $1,169 after two months and am now trying to weasel my way out of this monstrous bill by lying.

Gabriel was kind enough to tell me that perhaps I should figure out who’s number it is and that I should call it. Realizing that T Mobile obviously doesn’t give a crap, I called the 401 number and got a message “By subscriber’s request this phone number does not accept incoming calls”. I asked Gabriel if she’ll forward me to her supervisor, she says yes but he’s busy so he’ll call me back tomorrow. After much cajoling she puts me on the line with the supervisor who promptly tells me the charges are valid and that he’ll have someone else call me back in 10 minutes. Take a wild guess if he called me back or not? Yup. This is why I’m not even going to bother anymore with their awful customer service.

I’m not going to pay $1,169.84 worth of phone calls that I did not make, T-Mobile will probably cancel my phone line next month for non payment and I’ll be without a phone for a while, this is going to suck majorly. They also billed me $466.12 last month and that was auto paid. I’m guessing they’re not going to just give that back unless I take them to court. I’ve been a customer of T-Mobile’s for many years, have always paid my bills on time, never disputed anything because I travel a lot and have set everything on auto pay, but this is just ridiculous. I can’t believe they’re ignoring me as if I’m some lying irresponsible 14 year old girl who just got her first cell phone. All the evidence points to someone hijacking my account. Why won’t T-Mobile take scams like this seriously?

After disabling autopay, go back and make sure your previous $466 bill is not also littered with fraudulent charges. If it is, call you credit card company and ask to file a chargeback.

T-Mobile should take the scam more seriously, but like a drunken frat boy, they are after only one thing: your money.

(Photo: 22n)

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