Smoo has been a loyal T-Mobile customer of more than a decade, but it’s time to go. She just moved to a town where T-Mo has next to no service, so obviously she needs to cancel. There was a catch: she had just signed a new contract to get a better deal. No problem, said T-Mobile! Just send proof of her new address along, and they would let her out of her contract. Oh, if only it were that easy.

She writes:

I had my T-Mobile account for 10 years, since I started college. It was set up for my by my father when Voice Stream was still in existence. I could say I had a really decent experience with them, never got charged late fees when I sketched on my due date, was able to adjust my billing issues with minimal fees and so on. Over the years, their quality of customer service went down and I could tell you how I witnessed a decade of change for a single company without ever having worked for them. I could let that go since these last few years, I haven’t had to deal with the customer service portion very often.

My contract with T-Mobile was up in August 2012, and in July, I decided to change my billing since I was being charged for unlimited EVERYTHING and I barely used my Android phone since I had bought a Verizon iPhone for my job. However, the deal I had with T-Mobile was excellent and they offered me something a little cheaper and I didn’t really have to give up anything, just re-sign up with a contract. However, a turn in my living situation had me moving across the country to Cambridge, Vermont – an area where I get about 1-2 bars with my Verizon phone and absolutely NO service with my T-Mobile phone.

After I got situated from moving, I called T-Mobile to try to resolve the issue with my phone. I spent over 30 minutes trying to salvage something resembling “working service” but, alas, nothing could be done. The kind tech support agent advised me that I would not be able to use my phone while living at my current location. I told him I would need to cancel my phone but I had just renewed my contract a month prior to my move. He explained that as long as I provided proof of my new address (a copy of my license) in conjunction with his notes in the case, they would wave the $250.00 ETF.

A few weeks later, I got my driver’s license and called T-Mobile to get their fax number so I could send a copy of my driver’s license to them. The agent I spoke with this time explained that under no circumstance do they waive an ETF. I asked her to check the notes and re-explained the situation with my move and she said she couldn’t do it. So I paid my final bill – everything except the $250.00 ETF. Every time they sent a notice, I gave them a call and, once again, explained the situation.

Finally, the bill was sold to a bill collector who started pestering my father. On top of that, they found the phone number (that doesn’t even belong to me) to my current address and started hounding people for the money. I called and told them I was disputing the free. Apparently, they went to T-Mobile about a month ago with the dispute and T-Mobile still insists they will not waive it.

I opened a complaint on the FCC page today and I’m waiting for a response – it won’t help out my father’s credit report, however. I’ve repeatedly checked your site and site’s history for an EECB for T-Mobile but could not find anything. I need to get this resolved.

After 10 years and a legitimate situation, you’d think they’d be willing to work with me more on this.

Because executives change their jobs and their e-mail addresses often, we post instructions for how to construct and launch your own executive e-mail carpet bomb, but not the specific addresses that you’ll need to do it. That is a bit of detective work that you’ll need to do on your own: here’s a post that will help.

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