One Year with T-Mobile: Bad Service, No Internet, Dropped Calls, Dead Zone
Last September I was sold a lie by T-Mobile, and since then it has been one false promise after another combined with egregiously bad service.
A Phone Promotion & False Promises
A promotion for a free phone drew me to check out T-Mobile. I made a phone call and a decision based upon false promises that I have regretted for over a year.
I explained to the young sales rep that I was on a tight budget and wondered what their lowest rate was and if it would cover my usage. The young man I spoke with said he could see my data usage and promised that their cheapest plan—around $25.00–would accommodate all my needs. And T-Mobile’s map assured me my home was within its coverage range. I would later learn the map was wrong, and it has since been updated.
Extremely Poor Internet Connection on Lowest Price
The internet hardly worked at all on T-Mobile’s cheapest rate. I called their customer service line and began a long relationship with T-Mobil’s outsourced customer service agents that has probably contributed greatly to my grey hairs and high blood pressure. One rep after another made promises in garbled, sing-song English that never came true. They all assured me that they, too, were T-Mobile customers and they, too, would hate to not have Internet.
Paying More & Still Not Getting Service from T-Mobile
I was convinced by multiple agents that moving to their middle tier pricing would take away the restrictions on my data usage and get me what I needed, so I rearranged my bills and expectations and opted to pay the higher price just to get basic phone and internet usage. Within a few days I faced the very same issues again. Limited access to the internet. Slow connections. Lack of connections. Wheels spun on my pages and various error messages popped up as websites refused to load.
In addition, my messages often wouldn’t send. I would frequently get error messages informing me that my latest message hadn’t been sent, and I would have to try multiple times before messages would send. Friends began to tell me they had tried to call me but their calls went straight to voice mail. However, their calls wouldn’t show up on my phone at all.
I work from my phone at home. Tasks that used to take an hour or less were suddenly taking three or four hours as I waited for pages to load and reload again and again. For time sensitive work, I had to drive into town to get connected.
Weekly/Daily Calls to T-Mobile with No Results
On a weekly, sometimes daily basis I made calls to T-Mobile about these issues. One rep after another assured me that they wouldn’t want to deal with this and each one assured me that I shouldn’t worry—he or she would take care of it. Some I could barely understand, but the promises were the same. They all lied. No one in over a year has been able to get me the service I am paying for.
Rude Manager at Local T-Mobile Store
I was repeatedly sent to the local office where a rude man named Frank is the manager. Frank knows his stuff, but Frank doesn’t really want to deal with customer issues. Frank told me repeatedly that he could not help me and that T-mobile had no business sending me to him. Yet, when I would call T-mobile, they would send me back to Frank. They would even tell me what to say to Frank, but Frank would assure me that what they were telling me was wrong and that he was unable to help.
Supervisor Promises Not Kept
Eventually I began to request supervisors. If nothing else, they speak better English. And the supervisors would always connect me with technical support. I would reset my network settings. I would turn my phone off and then back on while they checked the connection. They began to give me a bunch of excuses: they were doing work in the area; a tower was down for about three months and for some reason I couldn’t be connected to a different tower; sometimes they showed a slow signal but assured me it would be addressed; other times they showed no issues at all.
T-Mobile Technical Department Loop
The technical department would have me jump through the same hoops every time. We checked the speed. They checked the lines. They checked the towers. They would then tell me it was a problem with my phone. They would make me drive across town to the Apple Store to have the phone checked. Three different times I made the trip and eventually got a new phone but Apple always told me it was a T-Mobile problem.
T-Mobile on X
In June 2026, I finally took it to X (Twitter), and while I participated in several exchanges with different people back-and-forth across whatever department handles their ex account, of course nothing was done. Everybody was going to look into it, and everybody was sorry that I was having problems, but nobody did anything about it.
T-Mobile Finally Admits I live in a Dead Zone
Months into this, I thought to describe the terrain around me to the T-Mobile technical department. They had never asked me about terrain as the seem to believe that 5G covers everything. It does not. In Nashville we have hills and trees. After almost a year of problems, in August of 2026 T-Mobile finally admitted I live in a dead zone, and the 5g they kept telling me meant I had a great connection doesn’t necessarily work if there are hills and trees between you and the tower. On October 8, 2926, a 2nd level supervisor name DeVon informed me that according to their current map, I live in a low coverage area. They updated their map, but that didn’t help me any. I was already locked in to a two year contract.
T-Mobile Phone Service Suddenly Goes Bad
Then in August of 2026 I began to experience a greater difficulty with my phone. Suddenly I had no signal many times through the day and night. Calls dropped frequently. The little satellite icon began to appear. People who tried to call me were sent to a voice mail, but the calls didn’t show up on my phone Even my calls to T-Mobile dropped. So far this has been going on for two months. Their solution is to send me back to the local office to have Frank look put in a new SIM card. So far I’ve been putting that off because Frank is not pleasant to deal with and will often send me right back to the T-mobile Customer service line.
T-Mobile Left Me with Poor Service & No Options
So where does that leave me now? T-mobile has me held hostage for two years because of the phone. If I leave T-mobile now, I will owe hundreds of dollars on the phone. So what T-mobile plans to do is hold me hostage and continue to deliver poor service to an area that they now recognize as a virtual dead zone where I don’t even get phone calls frequently anymore. T-Mobile is going to hold me to the contract, even though they have not kept their part of the bargain, except for the phone that I got and had to drive across town to Apple on three different occasions because T-mobile told me my phone was defective.
The T-Mobile Maps Lie
Be aware that the T-mobile phone maps lie. They have areas clearly marked as receiving good coverage that are dead zones and they won’t admit it until you absolutely prove it yourself. Then they’ll mark the map that you have low coverage, but don’t expect any refunds. They’ll just continue giving you very poor service in your low coverage area while you’re held hostage to a contract they are not honoring with good service.
T-Mobile Customer Service Is Outsourced & Poorly Trained
Don’t expect much help if you call customer service. It’s manned by outsourced idiots who for the most part don’t speak English well, are not knowledgeable, and they really do not know what’s going on with your phone or with their service. If you get a supervisor you will fare a little bit better and if you get technical support, they will have you jump through the same hoops over and over until you absolutely proved to them after many months that you really are having the problems you claim you have and then they might mark that your area gets low coverage. But they won’t do anything else for you.
T-Mobile Does Not Stand Behind Its Promises
T-mobile absolutely does not stand behind its product and it does not keep its promises. I was promised by different supervisors That they were going to move me to a better plan at a higher rate but keep me at my current payment. Two different supervisors promised me this including one named Vanessa and one foreign outsource supervisor whose name I never could understand, something like BJ. But every month I’ve had to call T-mobile and fight to get that huge bill reduced because of course nobody actually put it in the paperwork that they were giving me the better service for the lower rate. They just made promises they didn’t stand behind. I finally dropped back down to the lower service because I just could not bear to call them every single month to argue over the amount of the bill. T-mobile did not keep their promises about that and I had to go back down to a lower service.
Supervisors Promise to Release Me from Contract
Then after a year of constant calling and problems, I had another couple of supervisors tell me that they were going to help me get released from the contract and still keep my phone, because I’ve paid for it for a year, and I’ve paid for a service I only got off and on for a year. One of those supervisors name was Andy. The other one was a woman whose name I cannot recall. They both assured me that they were working on it. The woman was going to call me back, but of course she couldn’t get through because my phone doesn’t ring a lot of the time anymore and phone calls go to a voicemail that doesn’t show up on my phone.
Then the last supervisor I spoke with, DeVon, told me that it was not their policy to credit the phone when the phone was still under contract, and I explained what it happened and he again said it simply wasn’t their policy. Then I insisted that he listen to the phone calls with supervisors from back in September because I was promised by two different supervisors that’s exactly what they would do. He said he would call me at 3:00 pm on Oct. 12.
10-12 Update: DeVon didn’t call at 3 as promised, but he did finally check in at 5:30. He told me that since all the calls were not saved, he couldn’t find the calls where they promised me they would release me from the contract without charging me the final payments on the phone. So I am stuck here at T-Mobile for another year. The best DeVon can do is drop me down to their lowest payment plan where I get unlimited calls and text and no Internet. That actually may work, because since haven’t gotten Internet from T-mobile for a year (although I’ve paid for it,) a month ago I signed up with Xfinity so I would finally get reliable Internet, which T-mobile never provided.
I also made the trip across town to see Frank, who was actually nicer than usual, and he told me there was no reason for T-mobile to have sent me back to his store, because my phone doesn’t even have a SIM card. If any of the poorly trained monkeys at T-mobile call center had bothered to check, they would’ve seen right away that my phone doesn’t have a SIM card and saved me the trip. But that’s how T-mobile operates. Inefficiency is what they are good at.
I have no faith in T-mobile or any of its representatives anymore. So for all practical purposes, it looks like T-mobile fully intends to hold me hostage to a contract. I signed up because the young man lied to me about being able to see my data usage and he promised me that the $25 plan would cover me. Once I signed that contract, nobody at T-mobile cared for the past year that I simply haven’t gotten good coverage. I don’t get Internet and now I don’t get phone calls. Nobody at T-mobile cares.
But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what Google AI has to say.
T-Mobile Review
Original sales rep made promises that were not kept.
Outsourced phone, representatives who always assure you they are going to take care of your issue, but are not well trained, don’t speak English well and don’t deliver on their promises.
Supervisors who also make promises to actually help get you the service you were promised when you signed up, but who don’t log the promises that they make so there is no follow up.
A company that is happy to rope you into a two-year contract with false promises and assurances, but after hundreds of calls over the course of a year, don’t stand behind their product, but intend to hold you to the final letter of the contract. I would never recommend T-Mobile to anyone
T-Mobile Rating :
-0- out of 5 stars
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