T-Mobile Blacklisted my phone by mistake - any advice to get them to be accountable?

Have you tried contacting Tmobile support using messenger on one of tmobile's social media platforms to see if they can help you they also are a higher tier of support.

Any chance you filled out a negative survey recently?

https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/s3fqdb/psa_gave_agent_a_bad_score_agent_chooses_to

same thing happened to me.  I’m not even a t-mobile customer but a customer of an MVNO that uses the T-Mobile network but a couple of weeks ago, my iphone 7 stopped working on the t-mobile network and a subsequent investigation on imei.net found that it was blacklisted by t-mobile.  I waited on hold for two hours to talk with a T-Mobile rep and they said they have resolved the issue but so far it still doesn’t work.  I’ll maybe give it a few days and see if it’ll come back to life.

no, I bought it directly from apple 4 years ago.  I called T Mobile again and they’ve escalated the case for investigation but it’s been two weeks without a working phone and potentially still another week of spending hours of listening to hold music and talking to their reps.  This is madness

After 17 days and many hours of troubleshooting with various parties and defending my own innocence, T-Mobile has unblocked my IMEI and I can use my phone again.

TL;DR T-Mobile erroneously blacklisted my IMEI even though I’m not their customer and eventually, after presenting proof of purchase to their fraud management team, they reversed their mistake.

Full story:

I purchased my phone directly from Apple Inc. on July, 2017 and have been continuously using it on MVNO’s indirectly using the T-Mobile Network but not with T-Mobile directly. On September 29, 2022, my phone stopped receiving signal and subsequent investigation by my carrier Mint Mobile and Apple support staff found that my iPhone7 had no technical faults but that the IMEI had been blacklisted by a carrier. I then bought a report on imei.net to prove that T-Mobile was the one who blocked it and the exact time that happened. 

After seven phone calls with T-Mobile’s representatives and a consultation at a T-Mobile store location it was confirmed that my phone’s IMEI had been flagged due to “fraudulent activity”. This was clearly a clerical or technical error on T-Mobile’s part for the following reasons:

* I have the original receipt from Apple and have proof that I have been using it since. Documentation is attached.
* T-Mobile was never involved in the sale of this phone
* It’s a five year old iPhone 7.  Even if it was financed, it’s obviously fully paid off by now and nobody has a lien on it.

Here’s what I did to resolve it over the course of two weeks:

All T-Mobile representatives who I’ve spoken with have confirmed that they see my IMEI is on the T-Mobile block list but all have said there is nothing they can do since I’m not a current T-Mobile Customer. One representative suggested that I bring ID and proof of device ownership to a physical T-Mobile Store location to resolve the issue but even when I did that on October 13, T-Mobile staff members were only able to confirm what I already knew and did not solve the issue or come up with a plan to resolve the issue.  They also say they were not able to open an official case number and follow up since I’m not a customer.  One store rep suggested that since my phone was so old, it’s probably not worth my time to solve this issue and that I may be better off buying a new phone, and that T-Mobile offers great deals on the latest devices!  My response was a hard no.

On three occasions, their representatives escalated my case to the Fraud Management Department but two times I got no response and once, I received a callback from the general TMobile rep saying that I must call Apple and have them call the T-Mobile Fraud Management Team to confirm that the device was not stolen or lost.  An apple rep did just that on a three-way call but ultimately, T-Mobile would not allow the Apple rep to reach their Fraud Management Department by phone because they said there was no publicly available phone number to reach them at despite their previous instructions to do so.  By this time I was stumped and ready to give up and buy a new phone, but also furious that an unrelated corporation was able to essentially turn my device that I fully own into a paperweight so I was ready to fight and file to the complaint to the FCC if necessary.

My breakthrough came when I was able to find the T-Mobile Fraud Management Department’s email from the depths of the internet and contact them directly.  (Their email is fmsupport@t-mobile.com)

After explaining the situation and submitting my five-year old receipt three times, with them rejecting the “proof” as invalid due to some technicality, like the serial number showing but the IMEI not being on the receipt or the receipt not saying that the device was paid off in full by credit card, I was able to get Apple to send me a full transaction invoice and receipt from Apple and to forward it to T-Mobile fraud management.

Yesterday they let me know they’ve unlocked me with a ten-word long email.  No explanation of why this all happened and no apologies for the whole ordeal that consumed literally 15+ hours of my time and the time of Apple, Mint Mobile, and their own customer service staff and leaving me with no working phone for 17 days.

If you are experiencing something similar, set your expectations low and if the regular customer service folks won’t help, contact fraud management directly despite how reluctant they are to let you do that.  Expect to be treated as a criminal with a guilty until proven innocent approach and expect to have to defend your own innocence even if it was a clerical or technical error on their part that blocked your phone in the first case.  With some luck, you might eventually get the problem resolved.