Yesterday morning Mr. A called me to find out which account he should use to take out $250 cash for a great deal he'd found on 4′ x 8′ plywood that was 5/8″ thick.

I'll tell you more about this deal, but first let me tell you why T-Mobile has me annoyed.

Mr. A would have used his business account, but they don't open until 10am and we haven't gotten him a pin number on his debit card yet. So I told him it should be okay to take the money from our personal checking account.

I logged on just to make sure there was enough money in the account… and  discovered that our checking account was down to $12.42 because T-Mobile had taken $285.66!

That is way, way, way too much for my monthly payment with T-Mobile. In fact, that's more like the entire amount, and I knew for a fact that $140.74 had already been paid in the first week of April.  I was expecting the balance of $144.92 to be taken.

My first thought was that someone's phone had been stolen and some fool was downloading dozens of ring tones and games (that has happened to us before).  I was also alarmed that my account was down so close to being overdrawn!

As soon as I could I logged on to T-Mobile to try to see what had happened, and got them on the phone to give them an earful.

The first guy I talked to tried to help me feel better. I know there was nothing they could do for me, but I was just really annoyed. We looked through the online records together and this is what happened.

On March 24th, the $285.66 charge is seen.  In the first week of April, there are two payments totaling $140.74.  In previous months, on April 18th, T-Mobile takes the remainder of what is due for the bill from my personal checking account, this month it would have been $144.92.

The guy told me he sees a note that they tried to take payment, but were declined.  I had Wells Fargo open on another browser tab, and quickly verified that my account had not gone below $500 on the 18th or the 19th (this is the third time in the last few months that an auto-payment has been declined, maybe I need to put in a call to Wells Fargo and find out why this keeps happening). T-Mobile was supposed to try again in five days, which would have been on the 24th.

They didn't try to bill my account again.

Instead they took my balance due and the new phone bill adding it together and show a charge for $431.89.

They decide to try and take payment again, but they take the entire March 24 bill which was $285.66 even though the balance due was only $146.23.

After the payment of $285.66 was taken, there is a balance due remaining which is due on May 18th.  During the first week of May there will be two payments made for $144.20.

So essentially, T-Mobile has taken payment now, for the bill which is not due until May 18th. If I don't pay that myself, they will withdraw $2.03 from my account.

T-Mobile has taken money from me before they were supposed to. I am going to have to watch this closely to make sure it sorts out as it should.

I just really wasn't getting any satisfaction from the guy and finally asked if I could speak with a supervisor.

I told her straight out when she got on the phone that I knew she couldn't do anything for me.  We talked for a while, and she was trying really hard to help me to feel better.  She kept offering to remove the Easy Pay and then I could make the payment myself. Well, I told her there was this bizarre glitch that T-Mobile has.  During the first week, I go online and I pay for Mr. A's phone using his debit card.  Now I would like to make ANOTHER payment, let's say I want to pay AJ's phone using his debit card.  T-Mobile will not allow me to make a second payment.  The error message says I can't make duplicate payments. So I told the supervisor about this and she said she was aware of that and it is a safety feature to prevent duplicate payments.

I told her I was NOT trying to make a duplicate payment. I was using a DIFFERENT card, and a completely different amount. So for the time being since I can't make two payments in one day, I would keep Easy Pay set up.

We were getting nowhere, me complaining, her trying to fix things that she couldn't, and finally I told her exactly what I would like from her, in order to make me feel better about the situation:

1. I would like her to bring to someone's attention that my account was not billed five days later, as they said they were going to do.
2. I would like her to tell someone how T-Mobile took the payment in full for March 24, when a partial payment had already been paid.  They should have taken only the $144.92!
3. I suggested that T-Mobile consider doing something like sending a text message if a customer's Easy Pay payment could not be taken. How hard could that be to implement?

She assured me that she would pass on the information. Whether she does or not, there's no way for me to know.  Hopefully she will, and maybe they can prevent what happened in my situation.

I'm just thankful that I happened to have enough money in my account to cover the entire payment!  I get paid on the 30th, and I usually do not have that much money in my account three days before payday.  The reason  that much was in the account is because I took the grocery money last week from Mr. A's business account as an owner draw because it was just easier, since we were at the credit union depositing some checks.  It was easier to take a draw, than to find a Wells Fargo.  So under ordinary circumstances, this mistake that T-Mobile had would have been an overdraft. I do have my checking attached to my savings to overdraft, but Wells Fargo still charges $12.00.

I'm staying with T-Mobile, but I was not a happy camper yesterday.

I haven't forgotten about the plywood post. I'll get to that in a day or two.

For now, I hope something I've shared here will help someone.

Yours Truly,