How T-Mobile gave me the run around

Black Friday

T-Mobile was offering no money down on the iPhone 5s.  No activation fee as well.  My bank was offering $50 cash back if I open an account with T-Mobile.  Win-win, right?  I was long out of contract with at&t, so I decided to take up the offer.

I went to www.tmobile.com and tried to place an order.  I qualified to get a Nokia Lumia 925 and iPhone 5s for no money down.  I almost finished check out when I got to an error screen saying something like "oops your cart is empty".  I tried again and again and kept getting the same error.  By the end of the day, I finally finished an order, except this time it said I would have to pay $500 down.

WHAT

I just realized all those attempts to order phones were credit inquiries.  My credit was fucked now.  I called back on Sunday around 7:30PM.  They told me they would fix those orders and open a new account for me.  I got far enough for them to take my credit card number and read off all the terms and conditions.  I was put on hold.  At 8PM, I was hung up on.  WTF.  I called back and got a message to call back during business hours.

I called back on Monday afternoon.  After 45 minutes on hold, I get an operator.  She says all those orders are still there and she would close them.  An hour passes because it's Black Friday weekend and their system is under a lot of stress and acting slow.  I still got the offer for $0 down, but I would have to pay sales tax.  Sounded good to me.  Finally after 3 hours on the phone my order is placed.  I printed out the confirmation and waited for my phones to arrive.

They're not done fucking with me

It's Wednesday and I get a call saying my order didn't go through.  They told me I have to go to a T-Mobile store to clear things up.  I get to the store and they tell me my order was cancelled 8 hours later after I had placed it on Monday.  The store representative says all those orders are still there.  He says he cancels them and tries to set me up with a new account.  However, he can't give me the Black Friday pricing.  That was the last straw.  I had enough and told him to cancel the order.  After all this bullshit, I walked out empty handed.  I'm not even sure those credit inquiries are gone.

Epilogue

I got back to my car and saw the meter expired.  Luckily I got no ticket.

Quick impressions with the Nokia C7 Astound for T-Mobile with PR2.0

N8 | The Nokia C7 Astound for T-Mobile

Last Friday I got play with the Nokia C7 Astound.

The C7 feels a lot like the Nokia E71. It is very slim in the hand. The silver chrome and white plastic make combine for a great design. I really like the feel of the call, end and menu buttons. The AMOLED screen is the same as my N8. I couldn't really tell a difference in the haptic feedback. I liked how the micro-USB port was at the top instead of the side.


N8 | Video of the C7 homescreens with PR2.0

The software of the C7 Astound was very impressive. It is the first Symbian^3 device with PR2.0. Above is a video I made of the homescreens. Changing homescreens is very smooth.

PR2.0 brings some long awaited changes to Symbian^3. The portrait keyboard was a little hard to use due to how small the buttons are. It worked in split screen in most apps I tried. It didn't work in split screen in the Ovi Store. Swype was preinstalled and only worked in landscape mode.


N8 | Software version on the C7 Astound

I didn't spend much time in the web browser. The interface seems to have changed for the better, but the rendering hasn't changed much.

Considering the C7 has call buttons, the right selection key should be customizable like it was on the N97.

The NFC widget is not enabled by default. Once added to the homescreen, you can easily turn it on and off like a switch. There's also a visual voicemail widget, but I didn't get a chance to see how it works.

One weird thing is that the C7 Astound only shows 3G. It never shows 3.5G. If you dig into the settings, you won't find a way to switch to 2G. Joikuspot won't work. No idea if bluetooth tethering still works or not.

I really, really liked the C7. I think I'll get one for my dad.