The Problem With T-Mobile and ZFold5 Refurbished

Disfrutar de My T-Mobile

In May of 2024 T-Mobile had an update and my phone started using my Hot Spot in the background. It used it so much that at the end of the month of May when I went to use it, it was incredibly slow.

I called T-Mobile. They said they could not do anything to increase the amount of Hot Spot Data that had been used.

Note: After you reach 40GB on my plan, Hotspot is squelched to 256kb or lower in speed. To reach 59.6 GB of hot spot data would be an incredible feat even for a month of internet at that speed.

Clearly something was wrong. So I checked and low and behold after my refresh time, 13GB of Hotspot had already been used, even though I had never turned Hotspot on.

For the Month it went up to 36GB of Hotspot this time. Never turning the phone on, and working with T-Mobile Technical Support.

They decided to replace my new phone with a refurbished phone to see if that would correct the issue... It did not.

Another update was done in June... strangely. It slowed the amount of Hotspot usage to 15GB. So obviously they knew there was an issue. But it still didn't fix it.

T-mobile sent me out another phone. Again , it did not work.

The issue resolved itself in October after that update. Okay, so at this point I was mad because they shouldn't have had me swap my phone for a refurbished, which after the update was having connectivity issues.

I had to get another phone. That one had overheating issues, then one with battery issue, one with touch screen front issues, they sent one that wouldn't turn on, they sent one to the wrong IMEI address, etc...

Finally Nov 24th, 2024 I received my current phone. When data transferring, it didn't over heat. I was ecstatic. It seemed to work perfectly fine.

Nov 28th 2024, I pressed on the screen and the phone made weird blue red and green hair like squiggly lines , created a solid thin stripe of white light out to the right of my phone and then the little squiggly lines turned into a dark circle.

I called tech support and they immediately took care of the warranty replacement with many apologies. Karen was great.

I'm in a cast, so couldn't make it to T-mobile until the following Sunday. When I got there the store manager let me know he couldn't take my replacement because it's screen burn in and is not a warranty defect issue but categorized as damage.

I called T-mobile to complain about the defective device then and there, and the Manager in the Philippines, " Glenn Murphy, ID 1102824", said he'd escalate it to get a one time exception. That he would call back Monday or Tuesday since I'd been with T-Mobile for 8 years.

It is now Wednesday. I called into T-mobile.

Customer Service got rid of me as quickly as possible to tech support. Tech support said I'd have to pay 250.00 at samsung to repair the screen  of my ZFold5 or $200.00 for my insurance to get a refurbished phone... which would set me back to step one again.

Calmly I walked over everything that happened, I said T-mobile is the place that setup the device for refurbish and that T-mobile should take responsibility for sending me a defective device. He insisted we only have 3 days for defects to be reported and that anything after that is an insurance claim for damage.

I asked them to wave the insurance fee since T-mobile was clearly at fault for sending me a defective device. He said they cannot make that promise as the insurance company is a separate entity from T-mobile, even though the phone will be sent through T-mobile Fulfillment.

I asked to speak with a manager. The manager spoke down to me for 10 minutes like I was a child, explaining about T-mobile policy and not even listening. So I said would she like to say that on a recorded line and she hung up. She was not the manager.

Moral of the story, warranty replacements at T-mobile are not new devices. Try everything you can to keep your device if its a warranty issue and wait for updates if something seems odd. T-mobile for 5 months was basically stealing Hot Spot by having a problem that was solved by an update in October. Had I waited I would have had my phone that was working fine still.

T-Mobile has terrible Technical Support and Customer Service when they can't seem to fix things like VOIP not working on their Network because they are blocking UDP 5060 and 5061, and can't help you fix that issue, but I found a way around it. Or can't figure out that its an update and not the phone that caused the Hot Spot Issue. Or can't man up to the fact that they sent a defective product and issue a warranty replacement without stating that there could be a 500.00+ charge to the account because the phone will show damage.

T-Mobile , Shame on you.