Forum Discussion
T-Mobile Prepaid does not accept new Mastercards for payment - Card Number is Invalid
Hola Guys,
So my credit union - Randolph Brooks Federal Credit Union just issued everyone the new contactless Mastercard. They work the same as a regular card except these cards have an RFID chip in them so that they can be scanned by an RF device with no contact. I personally don't like the technology and don't believe it to be secure, but that's not the point of discussion. I went to go and update my payment information at prepaid.t-mobile.com, and as soon as I entered in the new card number , the "system" flags it as an invalid card number. Well obviously it is not, as it works quite well at other vendors like ebay, amazon, etc.
I called prepaid support and got the run around. Prepaid support are clueless. They have no ability to solve any issues that are out of their small sphere of influence and nobody to call when they can't solve the problem. They're not even in the USA. The answer I get is that the "System" flagged it as invalid and there is nothing that can be done about it.
Let's talk about this "System" for a minute. It seems that T-Mobile are totally reliant on some entity called the "System" and whenever something goes wrong it's always blamed on the "System". The "System" is the scapegoat for ignorance and inability to solve problems. What we're dealing with here is an poorly trained (if at all), ignorant, incompetent, unqualified staff of support people. They have a script and if your problem isn't part of the script, then you're out of luck. I kept asking the support lady "Who do we contact to solve this?" and she didn't have a clue how to solve it. Eventually we had a conference call with my credit union and that solved nothing, because the credit union shows and confirmed that the card IS valid and the t-mobile support person kept insisting that it wasn't. Eventually the t-mobile support person hung up on us (probably out of frustration for not being able to do anything about it). That was a waste of several hours and solved nothing.
So here we go again. Last year it was the porting numbers fiasco that took a month to solve and now we can't even pay our bill with a Mastercard from a very large US Credit Union. So, how do we solve this T-Mobile? How many days/months will this take to fix? I have a bill due in 3 days, and if you would like to get paid, then fix your billing "System" and stop making excuses for very poor customer service.
Wholeheartedly,
Trevor Jacobs
So, what did you do?
I have the exact same problem now. They clearly know about it but they refuse to give the full story on the customer service. Like they are absolutely 'clueless' on this error, which they should get tons of.
T-Mobile is clearly determined on not solving this problem and accepting valid credit cards. So I am really wondering what you did in this situation, since my payments are also going to be due and I don't know what to do.
Hola Sjoerd,
The credit cards don't work on the web sight, but they do work if you dial 611 and pay through that service. My guess is that the 3rd party method they are using to validate credit cards on the web sight may not be in the USA and is obviously flawed. They seem to handle prepaid through the Philippines - probably for cheap labor, and those folks don't seem to be up to par with technical things. I guess you get what you pay for. Regardless of that I've been paying through 611 since I posted that original message and that works for me. I imagine 611 IS in the USA and is using a mechanism to validate the purchase that is in this country and is up to date. T-Mobile prepaid is the red headed step child of that company and they really could care less about good service as long as it makes them a buck or two at the end of the day - pretty typical for most companies these days, especially telecom. Human greed, and selfishness will be the end of all of us.
Kind regards,
Trevor Jacobs
Pipe Creek Texas
