Forum Discussion
T-Mobile prepaid not accepting new RBFCU Mastercard 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, 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, this started on Monday 02/27/2023 and here we are on Friday 03/03/2023 and it's still not resolved. Whatever credit card service T-Mobile is using for their prepaid billing website and also their customer support staff obviously doesn't work properly. My guess is the web site and all of T-Mobile prepaid is run out of the country. Certainly the support staff is in Asia (I think the Philipines). This means that if you are signing up for autopay, then you are probably leaving your CC info on a questionable foreign server. Why do I think this? My credit card works with 611 and that service is run in the USA using authentication based in the USA. Think twice before signing up for autopay. I have 3 accounts I pay for on T-Mobile prepaid and using 611 to pay the bill is a hassle, but I'm starting to think that the risk of identity theft is too great when signing up for autopay with T-Mobile prepaid.
Also since T-Mobile have not bothered to even try and reach out to me to fix this, I'm going to consider other providers. Had considered their 55+ Unlimited postpaid account, but this has left a bad taste in my mouth and I really don't want to pay even more money each month to a provider that basically doesn't give a crap about it's customers. I also don't need an unlimited account - I barely use any data each month. I'll have to think about this.
Bottom line is, if you are using their prepaid plans - don't expect any help from customer service, they are useless. It's a joke - they can't even get their billing to work properly!Yeah, that's a totally different situation and applies to post paid accounts. This is a prepaid account and this post deals with their web site and it's cc billing. I talked to tech support again and finally got someone who saw there was a problem on their end. It's still not fixed yet though. He filed a ticket with their engineering dept. For now I'll be using 611 to pay the bill because that works. If this ever gets solved I'll post the resolution here.
You can go to a big box store and buy Tmobile gift cards to make a payment. If you have a Kroger or Safeway you can also earn fuel points purchasing them there.
That's not really a solution is it. How about T-Mobile just fix their broken website so that people can properly pay their bill with valid credit cards. It's a joke! You can't even pay your bill when you need to!
