Please Hold for the Next Available Representative. . . .

By changing to a better phone plan, my payments changed from billing to prepay. Then an unknown charge showed up on my debit card. Given other family member had had $800 of gas charged at a WAWA station in Orlando and a hotel in London, I assumed this was a fraudulent charge so canceled the debit card, which meant my autopay accounts had to be changed.


After nearly three weeks, my TMobile account (on autopay) kept texting me that I didn’t have sufficient funds to make a call. Customer service folks could not identify the source of problem, but they said, “Thank you for choosing TMobile” and transferred me to another department with a message, “Please hold for the next available representative.”





It was difficult to get a response that applied to my situation so I returned to the store. After two visits, the in-store personnel was on the verge of despair because they too had called customer service on my behalf and only received “scripted” responses.
“This plan seems to be tainted. I think you may have to cancel it and get a new TMobile plan,” they admitted.

Or go with another provider, I thought.

I was given one more phone number to call. The dispute verification department identified the problem. The charge I assumed was fraudulent was actually a valid charge. VESTA TMobile? How hard would it be for TMobile to inform me my charges would show up like this on my bank statement? I already get countless useless text messages from the company.


With all the running around, I learned about a problem that lurks within TMobile. Its in-store representatives have very little authority—in fact, they cannot resolve many of the account issues. And yet, when we customers have problems, we’d rather get things resolved in-person then via phone, where we get put on hold for the next available representative.

What are your experiences with cell phone customer service?