WIFI Calling Preferences Being Forced to Cellular Preferred

I am breaking my promise. I am making one more post as a T-Mobile customer.

I am leaving T-Mobile for CREDO Mobile. I do this with regret. When I joined T-Mobile it supplied voice reliability through Wi-Fi calling. As long as my Wi-Fi was working, my phone used Wi-Fi calling with no problems. If I had any problem, T-Mobile Customer Care came up with the solution.

This all changed with a software upgrade two years ago. Wi-Fi calling became unreliable, and my voice quality suffered. It kept getting worse. I started losing calls.

Over the past months I have put a lot of effort into trying to get T-Mobile to fix the problem. Calls to customer care did not provide a solution, and a promised callback from technical support never happened.

A letter to customer care at headquarters resulted in a call from a customer care rep, but my cell phone quality was so bad we had to switch to my land line, and then to emails. Still no solution, although I was offered a discount on a new iPhone.

I then searched for T-Mobile USA management and found Callie Feld, executive vice president and chief customer experience officer. I sent her a letter detailing my experiences and asked for help. I waited a week and a half, then sent her another letter yesterday saying the wait was over, I was switching to CREDO.

T-Mobile customer care is the main face of T-Mobile to its customers, and it is the face they see when they have problems. When customer care fails to provide the needed support, T-Mobile looks bad. With this issue T-Mobile looks incompetent.

T-Mobile should be able to query its problem database to determine how many customers have this issue, how long they have experienced this issue, and the models of the phone that are having this issue. Customer care should be sharing this data with product support. They should be saying ‘Albuquerque, we have a problem.’

So I will say it. Albuquerque, you have a problem.

This will be my last post on the Wi-Fi preferences changed issue. Once I switch carriers, I will have no reason to say anything else.

I have three issues

1. My Calling preference for Wi-Fi calling being changed to Cellular against my wishes. No, my preference didn't change, it was changed without my permission.
2. While using Wi-Fi calling, some incoming calls are missed. This has no relation to #1, since it happens when I am in Airplane mode with Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi calling turned on. My preference for Wi-Fi calling isn't changed.
3. T-Mobile customer support does not have the practices and procedures to support their customers with this issue. T-Mobile and Samsung seem to not have the competence or desire to fix this issue.

I switched to T-Mobile specifically to get Wi-Fi calling. We traveled to Sedona on vacation and stayed in a resort in the Oak Creek Canyon wilderness area. The resort offered Wi-Fi, but there is no cellular service in this area. To use my cell phone, I would need Wi-Fi calling. My T-Mobile phone worked without problems on this trip. In future trips we have stayed in remote accommodations not offing cellular service but with Wi-Fi. My Wi-Fi calling has worked flawlessly.

But with what I have heard called as the Pie update, Wi-Fi calling has been an issue. For a couple of years T-Mobile customers needing Wi-Fi calling due to no or inconsistent cellular service, Wi-Fi calling has been unreliable. No suggested settings, no workarounds, no updates fix or mitigate the problem.

More disappointing is the incompetence I have seen in customer support. T-Mobile practices and procedures, as well as the technology used to support contacting the customer have exacerbated the issue. Customer support does not get back to the customer when a response is promised. Customer support seems to not understand the serious of the issue to the customer.

I have used and worked in IBM customer support. Their system is oriented in getting solutions and keeping the customer informed of the progress of the solution. The support system keeps a knowledge base of known problems and solutions, and reminds customer support when a response is due to the customer. The T-Mobile system seems to offer none of these important features.

I was employed at IBM when Lou Gertsner was hired to do its turn-around. He told us anyone dealing directly with a customer was in sales. I was skeptical, but came to understand what he was saying. It is especially true today when most of our interaction with companies is through the internet. Unless we visit a T-Mobile store, our dealings are with customer support. They don't sell us things, but they can definitely make us ex-customers. Poor customer support and inability to fix or understand the customer's problem makes the customer to look for solutions elsewhere.

I was at such frustration with phone customer support I wrote a letter to corporate customer support and heard back from a corporate rep. I was in negotiations for a solution when the rep seems to have disappeared. No rep, no solution. Only silence.

Although my cellular service is still weak, and very weak or nonexistent in parts of my house, I have turned off Wi-Fi calling for now. I spend most of my time at home in my man cave, and the T-Mobile signal is strongest (usually 1-2 bars) in this room. I leave Wi-Fi on for other functions to work in weak signal areas. This works at home, but I will need reliable Wi-Fi calling on vacations, so I need to find a cellular service that supports reliable Wi-Fi calling.

I don't use 5G now, and probably won't need it for a while. I don't game or stream. But since it is available, I will get a 5G capable phone when I switch. What makes this decision sad is T-Mobile is poised to offer the best 5G C-Band service, as Sprint owned a good number of the C-Band frequencies.

I am looking at 3 Verizon network options

• CREDO - good but not lowest price for my usage, but among the best customer support. Online only.
• Spectrum Mobile - best pricing, but very new at the customer support business for cellular service. Does have a local office.
• Verizon - Owns and controls the network. Not best pricing. As a previous customer, the support was good.

I am working with T-Mobile corporate to try to resolve/mitigate my issues. Like most here, I have the Wi-Fi optimization issue, switching from Wi-Fi to cellular, even though I am just feet away from a very good ASUS router. My cellular signal strength varies from 2-3 in the best location to 1 or none in other areas. I want to be able to take my phone anywhere in my house and not lose a call. This originally worked great with Ethernet connected CellSpot routers, but died after a software update. Many updates later and still doesn’t work reliably. I since upgraded to ASUS RT-AC86U routers, hoping to have better connectivity and reducing the impact of leaving T-Mobile. Didn’t help my Wi-Fi optimization problem, but my kids notice the faster speed when they visit.

Call support was no help. Every suggestion failed.

I have an additional issue that I haven’t seen explicitly addressed. I frequently have incoming calls routed directly to voicemail after what seems to be a futile attempt by the T-Mobile network to locate my phone. It takes about 30 seconds for this to happen. The voicemail notification may be quick, or it may take a while to appear. This can happen when in cellular or Wi-Fi mode. It might be after a phone directed optimization takes place, but no way to know for certain.

Being old, I don’t game or watch videos (other than news or weather), so my phone is primarily for communication. Since it often fails to communicate, I consider it defective and subject to replacement under my T-Mobile warranty. The problem is getting a replacement phone that doesn’t have the problem.

To be certain to remedy this issue on T-Mobile, that means an iPhone.

Since this problem seems to be exclusive to T-Mobile, it is actually cheaper for me to switch to Spectrum Mobile using the $14 per Gig plan. 

If T-Mobile doesn’t have a solution soon, I may have to switch.  

AGREED!!! Not Tmobiles business weather we have that setting on or off. Why have the setting if we can't use it. Might as well be grayed out in the menu.

It seems to me that many are having this identical problem… those of us who depend on wi-fi connectivity because we live in a hi-rise building or in an area with poor cell coverage. These wi-fi connectivity issues began with a system update in mid-2020. If you select “wi-fi preferred” within a short period of time your phone will revert to “cellular preferred”. T-mobile has given me different phones and the same thing happens on all of them.  Worse yet, I have had multiple instances of an incoming call -- when on a wi-fi system -- going directly to voice mail and my cell phone never rings. I have observed this issue myself by calling my cell phone from a landline phone. I have tried temporarily deleting various apps from my phone -- but the same issue persists. This is not, I think, from my phone, my apps, or the wi-fi network I am on. It seems to be a software issue. Complaints are coming from Android and Apple users which are similar. Should not T-Mobile get this technically resolved? And would it not be honest to send out a blanket announcement to T-Mobile customers that “wi-fi is not working properly and we are working on it” or something like that? It seems to me that it is not fair or honest to advertise a service which is not properly working. Or openly solicit any problems we are having with T-Mobile wi-fi connectivity. I really love T-Mobile availability most places in the world -- buy the wi-fi connectivity is a big issue for me.

I have the same issue as reported by many other users: on Samsung A32 5G (SM-A326U) the WiFi calling preference is constantly being reset from WiFi-preferred to cellular preferred.

T-MOBILE needs to work with Samsung to address the issue!

IT looks like this has been fixed.  The latest update for My S21 leaves WiFi preferred, locked in. 

Bottom line primary trigger causing “Cellular Preferred” changes is limited consistent Wi-Fi internet data throughput or bandwidth, this by absolutely no means is wifi signal strength at the router but combination of all specifically between the modem itself and the wifi calling app itself on your device, home modem internet signals are rarely consistent although your wifi might be bad ass at hiding it for other types of devices; this can all drastically be affected also by excessive Google/games/apps limiting bandwidth to wifi calling app also multiplying the issue also having wifi scanning built into everything.  Wifi scanning basically momentarily pauses or severely limits your current wifi connection while the radio adjusts between wifi channels trying to locate other networks to meter yours against, causing the wifi calling app to disconnect unexpectedly and flip to cellular. 

Getting an E911 address set in the first place is the first essential part for Voice over LTE, video calling, and WiFi calling features to become active and usable at all in the first place, otherwise yours was functionally disabled without it, even though the toggle is there, with no E911 it causes IMS registration to fail, dis-allowing these functions entirely from the cell tower on device bootup. Testing with Airplane mode on then wifi, calls will drop regardless if E911 address is not in place, IMS Registration status is verified in SIM card status will tell you if Voice over LTE, video calling, and WiFi calling features are active and functioning Now that you have it, it WILL be a matter of time until you find this setting changing to cellular preferred constantly occurring throughout use as most ALL other carriers included Android 9+ Google software bundled phones go. Tracing through logs in App Ops I have identified this change over issue down to a combination of all softwares, implemented first by Google through most any Play Store apps eventually brought into standard Android OS development and also infused into vendor/carrier installed apps just the same is the ongoingly largest battery draining issue - randomly occurring wifi scanning also mixed in with Geo Location/NFC triggers which are all binded directly with GPS Location Services function. Bottom line primary trigger causing “Cellular Preferred” changes is limited consistent Wi-Fi internet data throughput or bandwidth, this by absolutely no means is wifi signal strength at the router but combination of all specifically between the modem itself and the wifi calling app itself on your device, home modem internet signals are rarely consistent although your wifi might be bad ass at hiding it for other types of devices; this can all drastically be affected also by excessive Google/games/apps limiting bandwidth to wifi calling app also multiplying the issue also having wifi scanning built into everything. 

Welcome to customer support and sales experience. Thats precisely why I am a technician now, I see no point in ignorantly lying aimlessly to people just to make more sales. Pretty disgracing of a customer service team though altogether, never in my life, let alone on multiple recent hour plus long calls to these “let play stupid and clueless” antic assholes, if you have noise cancellation off on your sound you can here the agent and the group of thieves surrounding them in a hopeless lonely cubicle literally laughing along while saying they have never heard of this in all their years in prepaid/postpaid support, it has to be your phone, come into our store and we’ll explain it all for you with a new $1800, all glass cased device with new 5G technology which is slower and less storage capacity than your outdated IP68 military grade rating that runs smoother and faster than new, only functioning thing accounting for this $1400 price difference is an updated over-rated high mega-pixel camera that actually takes the same 1080p picture edited with software rendering, also of which comes standard on $100 price range models today

Having an E911 address set in the first place is the first essential part for Voice over LTE, video calling, and WiFi calling features to become active and usable at all in the first place, otherwise yours was functionally disabled without it, even though the toggle is there, with no E911 it causes IMS registration to fail, dis-allowing these functions entirely from the cell tower on device bootup. Testing with Airplane mode on then wifi, calls will drop regardless if E911 address is not in place, IMS Registration status is verified in SIM card status will tell you if Voice over LTE, video calling, and WiFi calling features are active and functioning Now that you have it, it WILL be a matter of time until you find this setting changing to cellular preferred constantly occurring throughout use as most ALL other carriers included Android 9+ Google software bundled phones go. Tracing through logs in App Ops I have identified this change over issue down to a combination of all softwares, implemented first by Google through most any Play Store apps eventually brought into standard Android OS development and also infused into vendor/carrier installed apps just the same is the ongoingly largest battery draining issue - randomly occurring wifi scanning also mixed in with Geo Location/NFC triggers which are all binded directly with GPS Location Services function. Bottom line primary trigger causing “Cellular Preferred” changes is limited consistent Wi-Fi internet data throughput or bandwidth, this by absolutely no means is wifi signal strength at the router but combination of all specifically between the modem itself and the wifi calling app itself on your device, home modem internet signals are rarely consistent although your wifi might be bad ass at hiding it for other types of devices; this can all drastically be affected also by excessive Google/games/apps limiting bandwidth to wifi calling app also multiplying the issue also having wifi scanning built into everything.  Wifi scanning basically momentarily pauses or severely limits your current wifi connection while the radio adjusts between wifi channels trying to locate other networks to meter yours against, causing the wifi calling app to disconnect unexpectedly and flip to cellular. This in turn blows for us all because it is implemented into almost all newly developed/updated apps to be allowed in the Google Play Store, even the built in Android app that senses input from a simple touch of your touch screen and keyboard apps cause wifi scanning to momentarily take place, had mine changing it seemed 50% of the time swiping my screen to unlock. The standard Android settings menu allows you turn off wifi scanning so they make it seem but this toggle only disables wifi scanning features at user level installed apps, not wifi and GPS scanning for system based ones provided by Android/vendor/Google. Only time when wifi scanning ideally should be occuring is when you are in your list of connections making a choice to connect to. Appops is implemented into all versions of Android already at the command line level as DOS is to windows so it works as a one-time direct command adjusting permissions/settings directly and instantly, not like other apps which run receivers to trigger scripts continually draining battery/hindering function. Play Store App Ops gives you the graphical interface to utilize it easily(internally utilizing ADB at boot sequence to apply changes all at once or all can be disabled just the same if issue were to arise tweaking without research), allowing you to directly set system app and user app permissions to ignore these requests with blank data(rather than blocking and crashing app). The only select few apps I set to allow location access to is Google Maps cloned along with google play services, isolated in my cloned Island work profile for when needed , then two I set to “allow only while using the app which are both needed for IMS registration to successfully complete at boot: DiagMonAgent and IMS Service. Since IMS registration takes place only once on devices at bootup, if I have wifi left on before rebooting it may trip to Cellular Preferred only once just at this moment depending how fast wifi connects vs completion of IMS registation. So as long as I don’t restart with wifi on my issue is now 100% resolved and now completely entirely non-existent, “WiFi Preferred” calling mode is now holding persistently, only now accurately displaying unavailable currently when wifi diminishes before dropping or as changing WiFi to another connection, IMS re-establishes and maintains “WiFi Preferred” option through every transition. The other guy can above can run back to Verizon if so he chooses but either way we ALL live in this Google/Microsoft driven world whom both want to know every last detail of none other than you, good luck getting them to change their ways or to get your new carrier to sell you a device that has neither but works on their network, otherwise mod your own device you personally own how you like the way, we in the free/open-source Linux community, always have. Windows 95 does still function also if you so choose to use it for something or like demonstrating how things USED to work in days of ol, but if you want to use it with today’s world of software and hardware both, you won’t have much luck.  If you merely buy a device from any standard Cell Phone Carrier you are in fact buying into their whole entire knowledgeably ignorant scheme to hand them hundreds of dollars only because their service is somehow unexplainably “better” than their identical competition with identical devices and consolidated shared Cell towers, sales are not developers are not technicians, continue the endless loop. Open source already fixed the problem, Google and Microsoft never will because it is 100% strictly marketing based and profiting them, if a product doesn’t work well or no longer does after being updated to “latest improved software” you’ll come shovel out hundreds for another new one to replace a 6 month old new one….right??? There are other forums for those carriers too once you find yourself in the exact same current situation once your new device updates itself. Also good preventative to avoid vendor forced OS updates that some have found their devices booting up to regardless of disabling automatic system updates (vendor/carriers do have the ability to and do force system updates occasionally in waves to all devices reporting not being updated after a set time duration expires pushed through SMS/GMS code in the System Update app) if using Island then freeze (disabled until YOU open it)the update app and only update once you know updates are stable, most vendors wait months after security updates are released before they push them to available for your device to see in the first place so a little extra time on your end to actually verify stability between other actual users will keep this and any other unexpected downgraded updates from disrupting life

Wow, unbelievable! It’s hard to believe that this is a problem with all the carriers and there isn’t some kind of uprising. I am impressed that you’ve found a work around, but it is just too complicated for the average person (and maybe me too). Why can’t the carriers come up with a solution? Of course I suppose they like for you to use cellular using chargeable data….though using wifi would reduce congestion…..I just don’t get it. But, what used to be a reliable phone & service has become practically unusable! Is this progress? I would be very happy to go back to where my service was a year ago….it worked great then. Strange that they appear unmotivated to fix this. Surely they will have to come up with a fix…..and soon! …..or not!?!?

But, reading the Verizon community forum that you provided was quite interesting….what was most revealing was that apparently this isn’t a problem with iPhones. I’ve always been an android user, but now maybe it’s time to make a switch. It would be nice to see more confirmation on the iPhone not having this problem. Have you heard any more about that? I just spent $2500 on new phones (partly to correct this issue), but I need reliability! I might have to spend more (iPhones)….I just need to know my options and you seem to be the only source. Thanks for that!!!