Regularly charged for undelivered text messages from T-Mobile short code 2519
Hi there, I am losing money from my T-Mobile prepaid service because T-Mobile sends automated text messages from shortcode 2519 every month, sometimes even twice a month. I have an old $3 pay by the day plan, where I am charged only on days I use my phone. I understand that receiving a text message is considered as "using" my phone. But in my case, the phone is turned off most of the time and I even selected the option to block incomingtext messages for my line in blocking controls of my account to avoid being charged for unwanted text messages. Every day T-Mobile sends this automated message to my (switched off) phone (which I'll never receive), $3 are deducted from my prepaid balance. That drained at least $18 out of my balance so far. For a long time I was not sure whatcauses thismoney loss and suspected a fault in the prepaid billing system. Then i noticed in the activity log of line details on my account, that text messages from 12519 were sent to my number and obvisiously caused the misdetected useage of my phone (even though it was turned offduring that time and in the follwing days). That made me wonder how this can behappening, since I activated blocking all incoming text messages before. After some research I learned, that short codes cannot be blocked by this blocking control on the account. So I called customer service and it took me around 30 minutes to address this "ordeal"to the representative, until she finally understood my problem. What she suggested was explicitly blocking this short code (12519 as it appeared in my activity log), which she offered to set up for me. I agreed, so she set up the blocking filter and promised me I'll never receive any messages from this short code again. Problem solved, so I thought. Now I just lost another $3 for (never) receiving a text message from the same short code again which should be blocked. Further research about the origin of short code 12519 did not lead to anything. Then I finally found an old, archived text message on my phone from short code 2519, which I received last year wihle the phone was switched on at thetime the message was sent. Funny enough this is just a reminder message from T-Mobile saying"T-Mobile: For further information about blocking third-party charges and ways to prevent fraud you can visit t-mo.co/Blocking". Now I can see it all… 12519, as displayed in the lineactivity log on my account was wrong…it should be 2519 (the leading 1 in the activiy log is perhaps the country code for the U.S.). With research into 2519 I found out, that thisis a T-Mobile short code for T-Mobile campaigns. It is ridiculous, that an unwanted message from T-Mobile telling me ybout options to prevent charges from third parties costs me a lot of money, coming not from a third party but from T-Mobile itself. I think if they send those messages without signing up to it they should count as free messages and not count towards the useage of my phone and cost $3 each time. One could think they do that on purpose to push people out of the old prepaid day plans. So how can I get rid of those messages, that are sent regularly to my number by T-Mobile and cost me a lot of money. I doubt that customer service would block short code 2519 if I ask them to, because it is an internal T-Mobile code. Maybe sending STOP to that short code could help, but trying this will cost me abother $3 with no guarantee it'll work. There should be some way to get rid of all messages from any of the numerous T-Mobile campaign short codes. Any suggestions, anyone? Thanks to all the can help, Chris
Legacy Pay As You Go Mysterious Random Outgoing SMS Messaging Charges
I am one of those who still have the legacy Pay As You Go. It is not my primary number but I keep it since I like the number. So, I almost never use it. I keep about $10 in it. Today I was trying to make a phone call and it said I did not have enough money. I checked my account and it was at 0 balance. If I look under Line Details → View Your Usage, it says "No records found." I left the Billing Cycle filter out. However, at one point, I got to the Transaction History screen (can't find my way back now), it had a bunch of "DomesticUsage", Outgoing, Usage Type: Message charges. It seems they are on random days and most were 0.10. The online rep: said that this meant I sent texts on those days said they did not keep records on which numbers the texts were sent to would not believe me when I told her I did not tried to sell me a monthly plan 😂 It seems others might have this problem too: https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/158dw8l/my_mom_has_a_legacy_payasyougo_prepaid_plan_but/ and I have had an episode with them a few years ago that made me not trust their billing system. I ended up asking the Rep to disable incoming and outgoing texts and put more money in. Beware!