Disputing International Charges

I got a lovely surprise last week when T-Mobile called me to inform me that I owed them over $700.00 because of international calls. Long story short is that my wife is Russian and she was calling home using a phone card. I learned that if you hit the wrong key when entering the international phone number then the phone will open up a second phone line and dial the number from via T-Mobile.

I had been a member of T-Mobile before I moved to Russia (about two years ago, we moved back last November.) and I had thought about using T-Mobile overseas during my visits until I found out the rates they charged. They were more than I wanted to pay so I opted not to have the service turned on. When I returned and signed up for the T-Mobile again I did not know you could dial internationally and there is nothing on my Service Agreement or in the Terms and Conditions that says Nationwide includes International dialing.

I have searched the forum and found a few others have had similar problems but no one has said how the arbitration process worked. Was it fair? Where did it take place? How long did it take to have your case heard?

I just want to say that the T-Mobile representitives have been very polite and I have no problem getting through to them. They have politely lied to me, they have politely told me that $1.64/minute is a great rate, and they have politely shuffled me around to no avail. I did try calling 800-318-9270 but that person said they could do nothing for me and pushed me off to the high balance dept. It is like dealing with the really polite mafia. You have our money? No. Then we don't want to talk to you. They, of course, have very little sympathy for the argument that a mistake was made in dialing. And that mistake is really easy to make. I am just ahppy that the charges did not get up to $5000.00 like some other people. One T-Mobile CSR did point that out to me. Yup, I am grateful.

So any help would be appreciated and if you work for T-Mobile and don't have anything helpful to say please refrain from commenting.

Don't hit the wrong key when using a phone card?

Just kidding...I really don't know what to say. I'd just keep calling, and calling, and calling...until someone listens. Maybe it depends on what CSR you get.

yeah...the same situation has ahppened here at cingular, we wouldn't be able to credit all, but i have applied credit in that situation for the misunderstanding. just ask the reps to see what they can do for you.

I got a call from T-Mobile corporate headquarters on February 21st, 2006 offering to cut the international dialing charges in half. Of course, it is never good to take the first offer so I said cut it in half again and we will talk. The young lady first said that would be impossible then had to check with superiors and then said ok.

What happened was my wife would dial the 800 number to make an international call. When she entered the international number she would hit send and a second phone line would open and dial the international number directly. So they were right, we did dial internationally using T-Mobile.

I will leave it up to you to decide if it wasn't just a slightly unfair to make it possible to dial internationally when you are trying to use an 800 number. Apparently T-Mobile thought about it and decided I was right.

I think the key to getting T-Mobiles attention is to file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. The aparatchik who called me said that she was calling in response to the BBB complaint. I also filed a complaint with the FCC.

I just want to say that T-Mobiles CRC representatives were always polite when they were demanding I pay for a service I did not want and for which they are charging 13 times more than I was paying on my calling card. Yes, they politely told me that lots of people run up hundreds of dollars a month at $1.64/minute and are happy to have that service.

Hahahaha.

Good luck fighting the man. Remember, negative publicity is your friend.

"What happened was my wife would dial the 800 number to make an international call. When she entered the international number she would hit send and a second phone line would open and dial the international number directly. So they were right, we did dial internationally using T-Mobile."

I do that sometimes, but it never dialed an international number for me!! It says call could not be completed. The number you dial before hitting send is not just the international phone number. It's the whole thing.. the card authentication key, 011 and all those stuffs... so I don't think your wife is guilty!!

Asys,

When I set up the calling card on this : https://www.tel3.com/, website they had me enter the phone numbers from which we would be calling. My wife's T-Mobile cell # was one of those. When she called the 800 number the would recognize that we were calling from that number and automatically prompt for the number we were calling. IOW, there system knew it was our account because the call originated from my wife's phone. So when she was asked to enter the international number and then accidentally hit send, the phone opened another line and dialed directly.

T-mobile confirmed this from me but insisted that we must have taken the number from the phone's memory. But that did not happen. Either way, it was a sneaky way to get people to use their international dialing feature when they clearly did not want it.

i think what may be helpful to you is customer relations; i doubt that they would, but they might actually split the cost of the calls with you. i doubt they would if it is already noted in the account that your wife hit the wrong button, but you never know.maybe if you keep calling in youll get a really nice agent with a really big courtesy credit limit? personally i wouldnt credit it; not out of coldness of heart, but out of the fact that tmobile is being charged for the mistake that your wife made, and they in turn must charge you. the charges are therefore valid. this may not be helpful in the sense that it wont help you get your money back, but it will be helpful in the sense that when you find out that you arent going to get it back, you will be braced for it. im only giving you a heads up. but like i said maybe if you keep calling in youll get something you know?

it is not sneaky if you hit send it becomes a 3 way call thats just how cell phones work

Disputing International Charges

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