For the last 4 years I have been a very content and satisfied T-Mobile customer, never had an issue with my bills, had good phones at decent prices, decent coverage...needless to say I have had no complaints.  That is until about 2 months ago.

With my tax refund I decided to upgrade my slow out of date iPhone and got a very cool Samsung Galaxy S, super fast and I have loved almost every minute of this phone.  I switched in the middle of a billing cycle and I upgraded to the post paid account from the Flex Pay that I had qualified for all that time ago, so of course the balance of my month rolled over to the new account.

Everything was super until the next month when the normal flex pay bill would have come out of my bank account.  The problem was that it came out of my account and it shouldn't have...all $114 of the flex pay bill.  So when I noticed a week or so later I called T-Mobile and was told by the flex pay department that they would process a refund for it, they don't normally process refunds until the account had been closed 30 days but she was going to go ahead and submit it and I should have the money in 8-10 business days.

14 business days came and I still didn't have the refund, so I called back and was told that the refund had been denied but it had been the 30 days that day so they would process the request again and I should have the money in 8-10 business days.

Again, 10 business days came and went with no money, so I called back and no one could explain why I had not gotten the money, why the refund department kept denying my refund but they processed it again as a rush and I should have the money in like 5 business days.

So you can only imagine my level of pissed off when in 5 days I still had no refund.  I call back and go around and around with this lady in flex pay (interestingly enough, I think there is only one person who works in the flex pay department because despite the different names that I was given every rep I spoke with was a female and they all sounded like the same girl with VERY broken English)  After she explained to me that there was no one in the refund department that I could speak with (they didn't have phones in that department it seems because they didn't have a number in which to call anyone in the department) I was told that my refund had been denied and they didn't have a good phone number to contact me at (how this is the case b/c I only switched to a post paid account with the same company with the SAME PHONE NUMBER that I have had ever since I have been with the company) I demanded to speak to a supervisor at which time I was placed on hold 2 times for at least 10 Min's each and then told that all the supervisors were with other customers but after looking further into my account she found where I had purchased a phone and was making payments on it that were attached to my bill and that the $114 that would normally have been my bill just so happened to cover the cost of the balance of the phone.  It seemed a little funny to me too, but I went with it and I asked and was told that I had a ZERO balance on the account and since then no money has come out of my account.

Last week I got a bill from T-Mobile for $85 that is due 5/10/2011, I had not even really looked at it until Monday of this week when I got a bill from a COLLECTION AGENCY saying that I owed $102 to T-Mobile!!!

I called T-Mobile and was told that it was on the flex pay account and since they had turned it over to collections they could not access the account until the agency told them it had been taken care of, but if I called the collection agency they could tell me what I owed the money for and why I had never gotten a bill for any of this until I got the letter from them.

So, I call the collection agency and a talked to "Peggy" (you know the Capital One Commercials where the guy in Siberia says his name is "Peggy" b/c his real name is some off the wall name with no vowels in it so no one can say it).  He doesn't even ask me how he can help me just goes right into his spill about being authorized to make me this discounted offer to settle and blah, blah, blah.  I was like hold up, I want to know what this bill is for and why I never even got a bill from T-Mobile.  The only information he could provide me with was the opening date of the account and the date of last payment, so "maybe I missed a payment" and this is why I got the letter that he could take care of for me if I would give him my credit card info.

Lets pause here for just a moment and explain for those of you who don't know.  I don't have the best of credit but I have been working on fixing that as of late but I don't just hand over my credit card info to just anyone and certainly not someone over the phone that I don't know and ESPECIALY when no one can tell me what the hell I owe the money for.  I am at this point trying to wrap my brain around how you can OWE MONEY ON A PRE PAID ACCOUNT!!!

Anyways, "Peggy" transfers me to his supervisor, which was literally just handing the cordless phone over to a different "Peggy" who proceeded to tell me the exact same thing that "Peggy" number 1 told me.  I told him that I would be contacting T-Mobile again and would be disputing this claim with the state and hung up.  I immediately call T-Mobile back and talked to a very nice girl named Allison who tried but couldn't access the records either but told me that if I went to a store location they could print up my last bill and go over any charges on there.

Yesterday afternoon, I went and spoke with a very nice guy at one of the store locations, he looked over my bill that I had and the letter from the agency and in his computer and could find nothing to help me.  The computer shows that I had a balance of like $56 for a "one time use it or lose it charge" and that was it and it wasn't due till 5/10/11.  He kept a copy of my letter and bill and talked to his boss this morning and neither one of them could come up with anything, he went at it with the flex pay people who told him the same thing they told me that I needed to talk to the collection agency.  The only solution that he and his boss could come up with was to keep this off my credit for me to pay the reduced amount of $55 or something and they would credit my current account the same amount.

Sounds like a good idea except that it seems that this could be a never ending string of bills that could keep popping up for an account that is closed.  I am at a loss, I like my service, I am under a 2 yr contract with T-Mobile and I don't really want to switch but at the rate this is going my kids could be dealing with this crap.  I have no problem paying the money if I do owe it I just want to know what it is for, how do you owe on a pre pay account.  By my calculations I should have only owed like $90 on that old phone and they took $114 out that should have more than covered it.

Has anyone else encountered this problem when switching phone service, even when staying with the same company?  Who can help me figure out what this debt is for?

Oh, as a side note, yesterday, I get home and there is an over from Citi Financial offering me $6000 personal loan because of my "excellent credit"  I may have to frame that letter for a good laugh later.