Teri is a T-Mobile customer, and she needed a micro-SIM for her new unlocked Nexus 4. This is supposedly a free item when you order it from T-Mobile’s website, but is not free when they send you the wrong SIM, and you call to complain and get them to rectify the situation. Then it costs $27.

Where did that seemingly random amount come from? It was from one of the people she spoke to during her two and a half hours on the phone trying to deal with the situation. What she does not know is whether they will ever refund her the money they charged her for the SIM that’s supposed to be free.

I got a new Nexus 4 and needed a micro sim, but the closest store is over 45 miles away, to I called T-mobile and ordered one and paid $13 for overnight service. This was Tuesday. The sim arrived today, Thursday, so not exactly overnight. It was also not a micro sim, but a regular sim. I called T-mobile again and asked them to send me a micro sim overnight and pay for the shipping to me and also refund shipping I had already paid. The first person said OK, no problem. But he couldn’t help. I then went through a series of people who couldn’t help.

I was transferred back and forth between customer support and orders, neither could help me. I was given prepaid customer support. Finally someone said they would send me a new one for but I’d have to pay the overnight shipping and for a new card, though I had already paid for both and received neither. Then they said that if I would just put it on my card they would refund my card right after that. It had been an hour and a half and I just wanted to get off the phone. I gave them my card number. She read me a T-Mobile info sheet and asked if I understood. I said yes. She said they were charging my card $27. I said, but it’s only $13 for shipping. She said she’d check into that. I asked for an order number. She said she didn’t have it yet.

She transferred me to technical support. They transferred me to customer support, another half hour goes by. Each person assures me they are the person who is going to sort this out, so sorry about the others. Then they give me to someone else.

I finally ended up in a queue for T-Mobile resellers. I hung up. It had been 2.5 hours. I still don’t have an order in for a micro sim, but I’ve so far been charged $40. I have no way to find out what happened to my money or my order, because the customer service is a bottomless queue. And, as I said, the nearest store is over 90 miles round trip.

Meanwhile, my phone is inoperable, and I have no way of making it function–I have no idea when it will work again, I’m paying for service I’m unable to use, and I’ve paid $40 for a free micro sim and have not received it and can’t even order a new one.

That overnighted replacement should be arriving any minute now. If they can’t refund her without another period of hours in the bottomless queue, other readers have found the executive e-mail carpet bomb to be an effective tool to make T-Mobile provide actual customer service.

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