I have been a customer of T-Mobile for about 2 years now during which time I've seen their sub-standard service yo-yo back and forth from mediocre to worse and back. Over the past 6 months it has deteriorated so significantly and caused so many problems that I decided I would cut my losses and get out of my family plan contract. When I tried to disengage I was told that I would have to pay a hefty penalty of $400 for canceling the service prematurely.

I explained to them that the only reason I am canceling is because they failed to provide the service I diligently paid for every month... that I often cannot get a line out; that call waiting notification only works sporadically; that calls are automatically forwarded to voicemail for no apparent reason; voicemail notification comes through sometimes but never on a consistent basis if at all; text messages can come in anywhere from immediately to several hours or even days after being sent; coverage is absent in many areas of the Denver Tech Center even though they assured me when I was first thinking of signing up that I was in a strong signal area. Then, when they failed to persuade me to reconsider they pointed out to me that the T-Mobile contract small print stipulates that T-Mobile is not obligated to actually provide service. That's some contract! How can they get away with this?

I have patiently spent hours on the phone with a multitude of T-Mobile reps who were dismissive and condescending, in my attempt to get service repaired and minimize my financial losses. I went as far as to upgrade my phones last August because the store manager at Park Meadows Mall explained that the low-level phones they themselves sold me were the source of my problem, and that all would be rectified by upgrading to a better phone. In the meantime I still do not get my call waiting notices, text messages or voice mail notifications in a timely or consistent manner and in fact, frequently get an error message when I try to make a call out saying that my call has failed. Duh!

Unfortunately this translates directly into lost revenue for me. I use my cell phone predominantly for business and T-Mobile is making me look unprofessional as well as unreliable because of the numerous dropped calls, the inability to make a call at any given time of the day or night, and the inability to retrieve messages left for me by my clients.

I have done everything that the T-Mobile techies suggested: cycled the phones, swapped SIM cards, done master resets, etc. all to no avail. I spent countless hours on the phone with T-Mobile reps while they transferred me from rep to rep to rep, often disconnecting me in the process (even though they swear they have do not have a dropped call issue!). Because they are unwilling to provide a direct dial number to a level two technician for help, customers are forced to go through the entire process from scratch over and over again when they disconnect you until you are worn out and bloodied and finally give up in disgust - which is probably exactly what T-Mobile is counting on.

Today I was told by a T-Mobile rep that all cellphone services were lousy and transferring to another service provider would do me no good, but I could try negotiating with the store I purchased my service and phones from because they could leverage their commissions against the cancellation fee. So I went directly to the local T-Mobile store that sold me the service. No surprise there: nobody wanted to take responsibility for the shoddy service and broken promises. But they certainly made it clear to me that they would definitely penalize me for trying to unload a bogus service that doesn't do what its supposed to do. Where's the legality in that?

The assistant manager of the T-Mobile store in Park Meadows Mall got very angry when I asked him how many lost potential customers it would take for him to break even on the $400 penalty they were going to impose on me? Because I would be sure to tell everyone I came in contact with about my terrible experience with their service. He was so livid that he physically followed me out of the store to wait and see if I was talking to anyone and then called mall security to harass me when he saw me talking to someone. I do believe that was in direct violation of my first amendment rights, but I was not about to take on the two burly security guards that answered his “distress" call.

Since when is this type of bullying legal? Why isn't anyone standing up to this crooked, fraudulent company? I'd like to know what recourse I have. There are thousands of customers in our Denver Tech Center area alone who are being held hostage by this company, let alone all over the country. All you have to do is google “T-Mobile complaints" and you will read story after story from disgruntled customers who were outright swindled by these pirates. This is not right, and it certainly is not the American way.

Starting August 5th, tried to upgrade phones and programmes. Promises were made and not kept, phones not received, phone dicconnected when complaint was made. Tried to contact a menager, no success. No menager was free in 4 tries, left my contact info, was not contacted. Background: loyal customer in good standing since 2002. Worning for potential new customers: think twice before commiting!

My family has been using T-mobile for almost 2 years now. After the first year, we were able to add another line to our plan, but we had to place one of our daughters on a pre-paid flex plan with them under the promise that we'd be able to convert her sim/phone to our plan after 6 months. Initially, T-Mobile CS seemed to be fine, however the two new phones we purchased were denied for the $50.00 rebate.

We were told that we could switch the flex pay plan at any time, since it is a pre-pay, and so we decided to go with a cheaper plan and add unlimited text messaging. I called at almost the end of the billing cycle, I needed to pay the bill and I wanted to switch the plan...I was on the phone for hours being switched back and forth between departments and then finally given to a rep who said it was no problem, they could switch the plan and add the unlimited texting; but to call back the day after my daughter's billing month ended (5 days later) to add the texting.

So, I called on the fifth day, spoke to another rep who said that their system would not allow them to do it at that time, but they would personally call me back the next day because it should be ok to do it then. I waited and no one called the next day, so I called back and spoke to a third person who said that since the billing cycle had been started over, I would now have to wait another month to add the unlimited text messaging. I was furious, but the rep kept insisting that it was the system. So, a month later I called back to add the unlimited texting and was told no problem, but I would need to pay for two months upfront...this was not told to me when I had spoken to the person a month earlier. I paid for the two months, and added the unlimited texting after some of the most frustrating customer service dealings.

Fast forward to 5 months later. I called to have my daughter's prepaid phone switched over to be added to our plan and was told that it was not a problem, that they could get the info from the Sim card and it would be all set after 24 hours. We waited, and 48 hours later, still no service on her phone. I called back and spoke to someone else, and she said she didn't know why, but that she would set it up again and that it really shouldn't take more than 24 hours to get her phone switched over. Another 2 days go by, and still no service, so I called back and spoke to yet another rep and this time I was told that the "system" would not allow a change from the flex pay plan to our family plan. I was livid, because I had already been told that it wasn't an issue and here she is telling me that we had to buy another phone and Sim card because their "system" would not allow for this change, even though it's a T-mobile pre-paid plan that was costing almost half as much a month as our family plan, and we were promised when we initially signed up that it wouldn't be a problem! If it wasn't for the fact that they would charge us $200 per line to break the contract, (which we still have another year on) I would switch to another carrier. T-Mobile has the most horrible customer service I have ever had to deal with.

Please, please, please, always get the name/ number of whomever you speak with. Keep copies of all documents. BBB does not have a favorable rating for T-Mobile.

OK, today I have a rant - about T-Mobile. We had switched from AT&T to T-Mobile because everyone said that their customer service was fabulous, and to be quite frank, I have always found AT&T to be lacking in that area. So we switched. But then we discovered that T-Mobile has drop zones less than ten miles from our house, so we were losing calls. After one very important call that my husband was on was dropped we decided to stitch back to AT&T because it was just terrible. According to the contract, if you are dissatisfied with service then you can drop your contract.

We moved our numbers back to AT&T only to get a bill from T-Mobile telling us we owe them $200. We called them and spoke to Steve who basically let us know that because we are showing coverage at our house - which is where our phone is registered that we can't drop without a fee. He just keeps repeating this, even after confirming that where my husband actually works they don't have good service. He keeps trying to end the call saying that we have to pay it and that is that, as my husband keeps asking to speak to a supervisor. He finally gets some woman on the phone who says she is not going to take off the charges. Because we have coverage at our house we can't cancel for not having coverage.

We state that the reason you get a cell phone is so that you can leave your house, otherwise all we would need is a home phone! They could not have cared less. I am so sorry I ever switched to T-Mobile - very disappointing service - terrible customer relations. So, do me a favor and tell all your friends so that they don't get ripped off by them as well.

Bill for July - $466. I pretty much thought "Buh?" Checking the usage, I find nearly half a month of June is included. Calling T-Mobile I discover that when their satellites malfunction calls are routed through another carrier, those minutes (498 in my case, more than 50 of which still within my allotted June usage) being plopped onto the next month's bill. I was under my minutes in June, but they applied ALL of those minutes as overage for July. I called them. After I threatened ending my contract early they agreed to take out those that would have been free in June. The rest are still being applied. Look...those minutes weren't viewable under usage for June. Had I known I was that far over, I wouldn't have made that many calls? T-Mobile should eat those minutes, or at the LEAST give me time to pay them off SEPARATELY from July's bill. Grrr.