SMS Scam Part II

I dug up all my T-mobile bills for the past few months and found that this Pure Crush Flirt scam (yes, I'm 100% sure it's a scam) has billed me since June and the next bill still has this $9.99. I called T-mobile back again to check on these other charges and a different CSR told me they couldn't do anything about it since I already got a credit, but they could put a block on this 3rd party charge. Strage... the other CSR told me that they removed 2 $9.99 charges and a block has been already put in place. All she was willing to do for me was to give me the phone number of the scammer (1-800-416-6129) so I can waste more time calling them myself.

I then asked how much it would cost me to terminate my agreement and got forwarded to a "specialist" who deals with angry customers. I gave him my story and told him I was pissed off because: a) T-mobile allows scammers to bill their customers and take a cut of the fees; b) T-mobile was unwilling to reverse these fraudulent charges; and c) the first CSR misled me into thinking all was taken care off when she didn't even put a block on future scam charges. He obviously did not want to answer how or if they vet their outside partners and gave me some attitude when I pressed him on this issue. Anyway, after going back-and-forth for 5 minutes, he went away for 60 seconds and came back to tell me that all 4 $9.99 charges have been credited back to my account. I asked why the first 2 CSRs were unable/unwilling to help me and I had to threaten to cancel my account before getting results. He gave me some story that I was a good customer, blah, blah, blah... but I guess the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

So hopefully I'll get a $40 credit on my next bill but I'm not optimistic. I'm guessing I have to call T-mobile again before this is fully resolved. I'm also pretty sure they won't credit all the individual scam text messages (I have no text plan so they cost me $0.20 each) but I'll probably let that go. I ended up stopping EasyPay (auto-payment) so I'll be forced to open each bill and check for fraudulent phone charges since it's obvious T-mobile has no interest in protecting their customers.

If I have to call them again on this case, I'll definitely change phone vendors when my contract is up, unless T-mobile merges with AT&T but their customer service experience is probably not any better.