Another thought would be to buy a 5G or even 4G LTE modem (Netgear has a range of them, including battery-powered portable ones that are much smaller, more modern and offer better network performance than the generic gateway T-Mobile provides) and get a data-only SIM card. T-Mobile’s prepaid arm offers 50 GB for $50/month, not a lot but adequate for someone who doesn’t play online games, doesn’t stream TV shows all day, and just has basic Internet needs. (There was apparently a limited-time 100 GB for $50/month promotion, and those who have it can keep that rate. Let’s hope it comes back, or that prices fall and data caps rise with the market.)If you go this route you are sure to get better speeds, not only due to the more capable hardware, but also because T-Mobile Home Internet has close to the lowest priority on the network.For people who like to tinker (and since we, as users of a service as immature as T-Mobile Home Internet, have to spend so much time checking frequency bands and
… You know something is going on when you must rent, in perpetuity, a piece of equipment that had a fixed price and that eventually becomes obsolete. ... But are we really renting our TMO gateways? Can’t the $50/mo. we pay be considered payment for the internet service we receive? And, with the the internet service we receive, we get a gateway that needs to be returned once we terminate our subscription to the service? A more honest way for T-Mobile to look at it would be to separate the portion of the $50 that pays for equipment form the portion that pays for service. When you’ve had the service for enough months/years that the money in the former bucket exceeds the fair price of the device, it should be yours, unlocked and ready for you to pop in a SIM card from the provider of your choice. And you should pay only for the service after that point, if you choose to stay with T-Mobile.I have no idea what portion of the monthly $50 charge T-Mobile allocates to customer premi
It’s becoming clear. They get you to sign up then in a couple of months they cut the speed and the service. There ought to be a law. I think the answer is to cancel, send that cheap off-brand gateway back, and sign up with a better Internet service provider.
I hate to say it, but what do you expect? 100% of T-Mobile’s customer service is offshored (and I don’t mean to single them out; the same is true of AT&T, Verizon, UPS, FedEx, your credit company, the “card services” department of your heretofore “local” credit union, etc., etc.).In defense of offshoring and understaffing, when we are paying, say, $50/month for T-Mobile home Internet, or about $125/month for typical postpaid cell phone service, the company loses money the minute a human -- even someone earning 60¢ an hour in the Philippine call center -- answers the phone. (If T-Mobile still had US customer service staff, their wages would be the main factor, but with offshoring, it’s the overhead -- the high-volume international telecommunications capacity, the ticketing system, the call distribution hardware, the management, the profit for the contractor, the cost of the stateside procurement department that writes contracts with offshore call center vendors, etc.)Now, a better c
You never own the device. It must be returned (if you bring it to a store, this must be a corporate store, as franchises don’t deal in the home Internet product) when you cancel the service, or you will be billed $370.You know something is going on when you must rent, in perpetuity, a piece of equipment that had a fixed price and that eventually becomes obsolete. An honest company would give you a SIM card and the option of purchasing their gateway, renting it (with lower payments not meant to cover the cost of fully purchasing the device), or using any compatible cellular modem (such as a Netgear M1, M5 or M6, all of which are much more modern and faster-performing than T-Mobile’s 2 generic gateways).
Yes, it’s not possible to manage home Internet using an online T-Mobile account. The gateway phone numbers cannot be linked.You might be able to pay as a guest, but that’s all you can do online.I’ve had 3 calls to the (now 100% offshore) customer service, who just don’t understand the issue.I’ve also tried the vaunted “T-Force” via Facebook Messenger. (It’s just more offshore agents, if not outright automatons.)Not being able to manage the service online is fine if your address qualified for the unlimited product (mine is only eligible for the capped “Home Internet Lite” variant, so it would be nice to be able to check my cumulative usage).You should have 15 days to return the gateway and cancel the service, at no cost. Only corporate stores deal in the Home Internet product and can accept gateway returns. (If you ship the gateway, use a tracked service.)Because linking the device number to an account is impossible, it’s also impossible to review the contract you signed. I would be sur
T-Mobile’s home Internet service sucks, as does its fake 5G service (really just relabeled 4G LTE).There’s really not much point in checking radio frequency bands, connection strength, and so on. The proof is in the pudding: on weekends and late at night, I get download speeds in the hundreds of Mbps. During business hours, 1-2 Mbps!My suggestion is to return your gateway and choose a different provider. It’s a shame that so many people are wasting time troubleshooting a service that is nothing more than a false promise. The network capacity just isn’t there.
Speed swings and useless offshore customer service aside, T-Mobile has the worst account management Web site in the industry (worse even than TracFone before Verizon acquired that company). You’ve all read about repeated data breaches, which are evidence that software development is not a priority for this company.In my case, it has proven impossible to link the phone number of the Internet gateway to the T-Mobile account I created at the T-mobile store when picking up the gateway. I was able to finish the account creation process, which involves creating a password, but every time I log in, I am immediately asked to link a phone number. When I enter the gateway’s phone number, I get the notorious F451 error.I tried the other way, by starting with the phone number and creating a new account. If I enter the e-mail address I provided at the store, the site recognizes it and won’t let me create a new account. If I provide a different e-mail address, the site says I have to use the same e-
I am having exactly the same problem.Two calls to customer support have been useless.We repeat the same steps and get the same results, and then I’m asked to hold for a technician. Each time I give up holding after 20 minutes.I have tried various desktop and mobile Web browsers, have disabled all ad blockers at all levels, and have even tried using three different Internet service providers (my old one, my new T-Mobile home Internet service, and cellular data on my phone).Note that we should, in theory (I haven’t tried) be able to pay our bill as a guest (an option below the option to log in), but this does not allow us to see the account details, plan, usage, etc., so it is not a solution (even if it actually works and accepts a payment).It’s clear that T-Mobile has lousy computer systems (the series of serious security incidents makes that painfully and publicly obvious), but my experience is that T-Mobile also has no effective customer service. Although we talk with real people in t
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