Sherry E at T-Mobile wants more of your money after your phone is stolen (don’t worry, it’s for your protection)

by Christopher Elliott on June 10, 2010

Ah, red tape! There’s no worse time to run into it — bunches and bunches of it, in this case — than when your property is stolen and you’re just trying to do the right thing.

Such is Bruce Scotton’s dilemma. After his T-Mobile cell phone was swiped from his checked luggage on a flight from Panama City to Los Angeles, he immediately reported it to the company — but not before the thief ran up $103 in charges. T-Mobile agreed to spilt the difference with him, but Scotton believes he shouldn’t be liable for any of it, since he reported the theft as soon as it happened.

Who’s right? Scotton’s obligations are outlined in paragraph 13 of T-Mobile’s terms and conditions.

Your Right to Dispute Charges. If you have a dispute regarding your bill or charges to your account, you agree to notify us of the dispute within 60 days (20 days for Puerto Rico customers) after the date you first receive the disputed bill or charge (“Dispute Period”), unless otherwise provided by law. If you do not notify us of your dispute in writing within this time period, you may not pursue a claim in arbitration or in court.

My advice was to try to recover the balance by sending a brief, polite email to T-Mobile. Problem is, T-Mobile doesn’t want your emails. It does, however, offer a chat option with customer service.

So Scotton struck one up with a T-Mobile employee named Sherry E.

Here’s an edited version of the conversation:

Sherry E: We can definitely submit a request to have the full amount credited to your account.

Bruce Scotton: How abut crediting it now? I have been requesting long enough.

Sherry E: While the investigation is going on, we will need to adjust the credit of $50.60 that you have been credited already.

Bruce Scotton: What does that mean?

Sherry E: If you want to continue with this it has to be forwarded to another department for investigation. If they investigate and determine that the credit is due, they will credit you for the full amount including the taxes.

Bruce Scotton: What is there to investigate? And what do you mean “While the investigation is going on, we will need to adjust the credit of $50.60 that you have been credited already.”

Sherry E: We have a process that we have to do when a California customer claims that their phone has been lost or stolen. It has to be forwarded to our Risk Assessment Department.

Bruce Scotton: Please answer my second question above about the meaning of what you wrote. I do not understand it.

Sherry E: We have to remove the credit that was already applied to the account. The reason for this is because we will need to file a claim for the whole amount to the other department.

Bruce Scotton: That is no help! You want to make the situation worse? Make the claim for the remaining part.

Sherry E: I am sorry, I can not do that.

Bruce Scotton: You certainly do not have my authorization to remove any credits or funds in my account.

Sherry E: I am sorry then we can not file a request for the rest of the refund then. You will have to be satisfied with the agreement that you already accepted, or we can follow the proper channels and hopefully get the full refund.

Bruce Scotton: I am sorry that your service has been so poor. It has now been 50 minutes since I started this process. You have not helped me but taken quite a bit of my time and contributed nothing. The misuse of my time piled atop the poor service is not acceptable service.

Sherry E: I am sorry, I am following our policies and procedures that are set in place for your protection.

Bruce Scotton: These policies are clearly to benefit the company and not the customer.

Sherry E: Sorry you feel that way. Is there anything else we can assist you with today?

Bruce Scotton: No thank you.

Sherry E: Thank you for contacting T-Mobile Chat, and thanks for being part of our family since 2002. Have a great weekend.

I contacted T-Mobile on Scotton’s behalf and forwarded the correspondence. It didn’t respond.

I don’t really see how policies that would remove money from your account would be there “for your protection” and I’m troubled that T-Mobile would simply throw the book in a customer’s face.

Scotton deserves a straight answer from the company.

(Photo: Pack matt/Flickr Creative Commons)

Tagged as: Cellular, Phone, Stolen, T-Mobile

  • TPierson

    Bruce needs to sue them in small claims court and then dump them as a service!

  • Michelle

    I’ve had exactly the same thing happen with AT&T (phone being stolen while traveling). I reported it immediately, but not before purchases were made for ring tones, plus an overseas call. They refunded all the charges and got me a new phone immediately. That’s what T-Mobile should have done.

    In the future, however, put your phone in your carry-on, purse, or pocket so you can keep an eye on it.

  • Chicky

    Thank goodness, I’ve never had a cell phone lost or stolen. But I’ve always had excellent customer service with AT&T. I’ve also heard some horror stories about T-Mobile, although some people swear by them, too.
    Glad I’m with AT&T, though. I think I’ll keep it that way.

  • Les

    I’m getting a very similar robotic “split the difference” response from T-Mobile regarding a failure of service problem they’re billing me for. Must be a corporate-speak buzzword they’re training their customer- disservice people to use.

    It appears to be an effort to reduce credits they actually owe to customers by threatening them with a take-it-or-leave-it approach.

  • Meg

    I wouldn’t ever use T-Mobile again after they sent their collection lawyers after my husband for a bill he had paid all but $200 of. Not only had they changed his contract and then lost the one on file, but then they claimed that he didn’t pay his bill (our bank however tells a very different story from all of the canceled checks). Needless to say I wasn’t budging on what we owed and they contacted him to “settle” after three years of waiting. Magically, it was the $200 he owed. T-Mobile is nothing but a bunch of thieves with horrid service.

  • KennyG

    I am not sure I understand what Bruce’s and all the other commenters here are so upset with T-Mobile about. Bruce lost his cell phone. SOmeone used it and charges accrued on it. Bruce says he reported the theft “as soon as it happened”. This is clearly impossible since charges were racked up on it before it was reported. Perhaps he meant to say he reported it as soon as he realized it jhappend. Big Difference! This is not a credit card where there is protection built into it by Federal law. Personally I think T-Mobile was reasonable and almost generous in offering to credit him back halk of the charges. Who do you think ultimately pays for all of the consumers that think that the “big” companies should just hand back money all the time when the company itself has done nothing wrong? The rest of us do in increased fees and charges. Personally I am getting a bit tired of subsidizing all of those people that don’t seem to want to take personal responsibility for their own actions or lack of actions and expect the rest of us to foot the bill for them in increased fees and charges to make up for their own lack of foresight, planning, or stupidity.

  • Kevin M

    KennyG – You’re quick to defend the company as having done “nothing wrong” but it seems to me the consumer did “nothing wrong” as well. His phone was stolen and was used to steal from T-Mobile, and now T-Mobile is expecting him to pay for part of their losses.

    Mind you, T-Mobile is actually “out” very little of the charges they levied. If it’s for ringtones, etc. they’re out nothing – literally – because their cost on digital copies of a sound file is zero. If these are per-minute charges, then they’re likely at some astronomical rate that resulted in a huge profit for them – on the order of 80-85%. So at most, if they had to pay some other carrier a tiny fraction of that airtime in network fees, they’re probably out a grand total of $10.

    This guy’s been a customer since 2002, according to T-Mobile’s own rep. Are they willing to piss off and throw away a long-term customer over what boils down to $10 in profit?

  • KennyG

    @KevinM – I am not defending the company at all. I am defending myself and all the other people that wind up paying for others lack of planning, lack of forsight, failure to read the rules etc etc. In addition, my comments had nothing to do with T-Mobile’s actions as it relates to customer service or keeping a “long-term” customer happy. YOu may very well be correct that it would have been a better customer service decision to refund him totally, even though in the end he was only out the same $50 (approximately) that he would have been out if this was a credit card and he was protected by Federal law. Your decision that T-Mobile is out very little (maybe $10?) comes from your analysis of what? Its based on the very problem I describe, YOU think it costs them nothing to maintain infrastructure, employees, networks, pay government fees for use of bandwith, replace equipment etc. So YOU decide this big company should just reimburse anyone whose phone was used without permission. There was a 100% definite way for this guy to avoid ever being faced with these kinds of charges; DON”T BUY A CELL PHONE. I dont recall reading that having a cell phone is a right granted by our constitution. If you have one, you risk losing it, having it stolen, or worse, making phone calls yourself to some phone number on a caribbean island that racks up charges of $600 per phone call. Oh, you wouldn’t pay for that bill anyway, you would expect T-Mobile to let you off the hook because you were stupid enough to do it, and it really doesn’t cost the BIG company much at all. If you don’t like the rules, don’t play in the game. As I said, personal responsibility is an idea whose time has come..

  • jonbad

    Um… this guy put a valuable in his checked baggage? Who doesn’t know that you’re not supposed to put valuables in bags you are checking? He should’ve had the cell phone with him at all times. This guy’s a bonehead and he should pay the full price for his boneheadedness. Not T-Mobile’s fault.

  • PauletteB

    Yes, the pax was stupid for putting his cell phone in his checked luggage, but T Mobile is wrong for trying to split the difference. And the whole “taking back the partial refund for your protection” is BS.

    Hey KennyG: It must be nice to be so perfect!

  • KennyG

    @PauletteB. Not sure where I said I was perfect. If you read what I wrote, you would see I actually agreed with some of the comments about T-Mobiles possibly poor customer service decision.

    So you say the PAX was stupid, but T-Mobile (and the rest of us) should pay for his stupidity. I rest my case.

  • Richard J.

    I might be tilting at windmills here BUT- we seem to be forgetting that a persons property was stolen, it is not like he left it laying on the counter and walked away, someone opened his luggage and stole it, if a problem is ignored it only gets worse.
    Maybe start with theft reports If enough noise is made over a long enough period of time something could be done. This is another reason I do everything I can not to fly.

  • Bill

    Let’s get something straight here. Bruce lost control of his phone and his account..and entrusted it to the airline. The phone was stolen from “Bruce”. “Bruce” made the decision to put the phone in the checked baggage. “Bruce” should know that people steal things from checked bags. How is this T-Mobile’s fault and why should T-Mobile pay for it? What decision did T-Mobile make in error here?

    The mistake was Bruce’s. Maybe the airline should pay his cell calls.
    Bruce should take the SIM card out of his phone if he has to put it in checked luggage.

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