Mobile muddle

I haven't told you about my recent problems with T-mobile, have I? It all started when I topped up my Pay-as-you-go phone with £15. I walked out of the shop with my receipt saying "payment successful" and waited for the text message to come telling me my account had been updated. But it never came. So I went into our local T-mobile shop and he rang "customer services". They said there had been a problem at that time and it would be credited within 72 hours.

Three days came and went, and nothing. So I rang them up on the said telephone. After a maze of options I finally managed to find someone to speak to. Although I needn't have bothered. You see, he wanted to know the name of the person who bought the phone. It was so long ago, at that point I had no idea, but he confirmed it wasn't me! He said without knowing who the account's name is, he couldn't talk to me about it. I said I didn't want him to tell me anything - just investigate why, in spite of my "payment successful" receipt, the amount hadn't been added. But he couldn't even initiate an investigation!

At one point he even suggested I returned to the shop I topped it up at, and asked them for my money back. As if our local newsagent would say, "Oh yes, it says payment successful, but if you say wasn't we will refund you your money." I don't somehow think so!

I later got a text asking that as I had recently spoken to one of their customer services staff, could I do a survey. This was by texting. So I did. Having gauged things like his helpfulness, whether I was satisfied, etc, I was able to add anything else I wanted. So I told them how useless I thought they were, especially as they had admitted to a problem that day and it should have been easy enough to look up their records and see what had happened.

These surveys are all clearly done by computer and I expect they get out a figure that tells them what percentage of people were satisfied. But if, as a result of it, they can't even be bothered for a human being to look at the results and give me a call when I'm clearly NOT satisfied, what IS the point of doing it?

But back to my missing £15. My wife then went back to the T-mobile shop and spoke to the manager. It transpired that my wife had bought the phone, and she guessed at her password and got it right. Now, she had the phone, the "payment successful" receipt and the Top-up card it was made on. But "customer services" (note the quotation marks!) were not happy with that. They needed it faxed to them and we would hear within 5 working days. They took my wife's mobile phone number so they could get in touch with her. Neither my wife nor the manager were happy about that. Especially as they had spent getting on for an hour trying to sort it out.

I realise now what must have happened. They didn't just have "some problems", but a pretty catastrophic systems failure that meant not only did they not update accounts with the money they had been topped up with, but also they didn't even know what accounts this had happened to. This, to me, can be the only explanation - but, of course, they wouldn't admit to it.

Well, five days later, no contact to my wife, but I got a text message to say, "Your faulty voucher has been received and the credit has now been added to your account." What a cheek! My faulty voucher? No! Their very faulty systems! Any word of apology? Of course not! After all, it's T-mobile.