More than a year ago, Consumerist reader Freddy took advantage of a Best Buy/T-Mobile promotion and switched to the carrier’s family plan. But his family immediately disliked the phones that came with the deal, so Freddy canceled the switch within 30 days and everything seemed okay.

The sales associate at the store where he returned the phones and canceled his service said everything was good to go and Freddy never received another bill after the first and presumably final one.

So when he recently saw that there was another Best Buy/T-Mobile promotion that seemed more attractive than the previous one, he thought maybe it was time to give T-Mo another try.

“When I try to apply it denies me,” he tells Consumerist. “When I contact Best Buy and T-Mobile I find out the issue is that two lines were never closed properly, therefore their system thinks I’m still a customer.”

From everything Freddy has been able to figure out, the issue is now in Best Buy’s hands, as T-Mobile is ready to approve him for the new service without any sort of deposit needed.

But because Best Buy’s system still has those two lines listed as having active T-Mobile subscriptions — even though nothing is being billed to the account — he’s unable to switch to T-Mobile. Freddy says he’s even unable to make the switch even through non-Best Buy channels.

“Best Buy promotes the hassle-free cell phone purchase but, that is not what they deliver,” laments Freddy. “I have spent hour upon hour of my time trying to get this matter resolved and Best Buy just keeps placing the blame on T-Mobile.”

Among the excuses provided by Best Buy is that this must be T-Mobile’s policy of not allowing customers to reactivate for 90 days after canceling an account. But Freddy’s family hasn’t had any T-Mobile service in more than a year, so either T-Mobile has a very different definition of the word “day,” or that isn’t the issue.

“I have waited for over a month for this issue to be resolved and no one has fixed it and the person who was handling this issue stopped communicating with me during the holidays,” he writes, saying it’s been at least 10 days since he’s heard a peep from the retailer.

We’re going to try to put Freddy in touch with folks at both Best Buy and T-Mobile in the hope of ironing this mess out. Let’s just pray that the combined forces of these two companies doesn’t make matters worse.

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