T-Mobile Misleads Home Internet Customers, Employees Say (Update)

T-Mobile Home Internet
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

After we published a story about my T-Mobile home Internet service dying with customer service unable to fix the problem, I got a lot of messages from readers with similar experiences. Three T-Mobile employees (two former and one current) who handled / handle home Internet support calls also reached out, claiming that the company uses canned excuses like “we’re upgrading the tower” in order to get customers off the phone and pad their stats. 

Update (9/2/2022): This article has been updated to reflect new, corroborating information from two new anonymous sources: one current and one additional former T-Mobile Home Internet employee. Both reached out to us after initial publication.

"We had a metric called IOCR/FCR - our bonus was heavily weighted around not having the customer call back for 3 days when I was there," our second former employee source said. "We were coached into a number of ways to confuse or lie to the customer to prevent them from calling back."

In my case, after spending several minutes on the phone with support doing everything from power cycling to removing and replacing the SIM card, I was put on hold while my rep said he would “do a few things” to fix the problem. He then returned and told me that my local cell tower was being upgraded and that I shouldn’t expect to have service for 48 hours, at which point I cancelled my service. Though I was on the phone for nearly 20 minutes, it still felt like the company was trying to give me an excuse, because they couldn’t actually help me.

"In regards to the particular error code you were getting [All PDN IP Connection Failure], and the lack of response from T-Mobile as to the specifics of that error, the answer is quite simple; they don't know," our first former employee source said . "I could tell you stories all day long about calls from customers with issues on their home internet service that never got solved, because no one in any of those departments, no matter how high up the chain we went, had any idea how to fix the problem."

According to our first former employee source, T-Mobile customer service reps hope that a hard reset of the 5G Gateway does the trick if a customer calls in with a problem. The company will often send replacement hardware to appease customers if that doesn't work. But as we've heard from customers on T-Mobile's forums and Reddit, even this isn't a surefire way to fix connectivity issues.

"If that doesn't fix it, they have no clue where to go from there, and you are typically out of luck at that point," he explained. "The 'tower is being upgraded' response is a canned response that is given when they have no other answer for what is happening."

According to our second former employee source, support reps would do what they could to find a plausible tower excuse that wasn't a complete lie. Instead, they'd zoom out on their computer maps until they found a tower that was having issues.

"If you report slow service or no service, I would query your address and zoom out on the coverage map until I could see a tower that had any work being done on it (Sometimes, we might zoom out 25-50, 100, or even 200+ miles to force another tower to populate)," our second former employee source said. "I would then tell you, 'It looks like work is being done in your area, please allow up to 72 hours for the issue to resolve' to effectively end the call, preventing you from calling back within 3 days. People who constantly called back dinged the rep's stats."

We reached out to T-Mobile for comment on our source’s accusation that the company’s support reps are under pressure to get customers off the phone (and therefore are incentivized to mislead them). The initial statement we got back didn’t really address the issue:

"The company simply did not take the time to become subject matter experts in the industry, and did not properly parse out the details of potential issues they would run into, before launching headfirst into the home internet world,” he said. “They just wanted to be part of the game, and have that extra perk to offer customers, and they wanted to be able to say they were the first to offer 'nationwide 5G Home Internet.'"

It's worth considering that the router connects with different parameters than would a cellphone. A cellphone crawls the network seamlessly changing from "cell" to "cell" that is covered by whichever tower. The internet service requests a connection in a bit of a different way, not expecting to be on the move but indeed expecting to use more bandwidth.

"So I got T-Mobile home internet back during the pilot days. I've ran into the same errors as you. I've been through 5 to 6 gateways of theirs. They have claimed tower upgrade for over 6 months. My area is nothing but 5g and 5guc towers. My iPhone as well doesn't have issues with connectivity in these areas.

"I, too, had complete failure of my silver CYLINDRICAL gateway. They offered me a newer version (square black gateway) and my problem went away. I am surprised they did not offer it to you. Yes, they went through the whole litany of possible causes... tower upgrade, reboots, move location of gateway, etc. When they offered to replace the gateway with a newer version, I jumped on it. It has been working fine now for three months."

Interestingly, Carl contacted me to say that he signed up for T-Mobile Home Internet only to have horrible reception at his location. The company’s explanation: The service was not actually available in his area and they never should have sold it to him.

"Reading your article about your T-Mobile Gateway experience brought up my own horrible experience as a first time T-Mobile cell and home internet experience. Long story short, it never worked very well at all from the beginning. Barely had two bars. Constantly getting tech support. Was shipped three additional units to 'try' by tech support over 90 days. Problem was, I wasn't supposed to have been sold home internet. She confirmed my address and informed me that the 'service was NOT available in my area.' I shouldn't have been sold the unit to begin with."

“In my experience with the service, it operated at roughly the same speed and reliability as my smartphone,” he said.

Sag said he spoke to his contacts at T-Mobile, who said that mine sounds like an isolated incident. 

Regardless, for those that have experienced extended outages, been fed untruths by T-Mobile employees, or have been sent multiple hardware replacements in vain in hopes of solving the issues, the positive potential doesn’t matter.

Brandon Hill

Brandon Hill is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware. He has written about PC and Mac tech since the late 1990s with bylines at AnandTech, DailyTech, and Hot Hardware. When he is not consuming copious amounts of tech news, he can be found enjoying the NC mountains or the beach with his wife and two sons.

  • Blatantruth
    My guess would be that they oversold their network and it is forcing people off to prevent degradation in quality. It could also be a new building that is now blocking the signal between you and the tower. Trees growing can be a problem as well.
    Reply
  • demonicus
    Telus in canada isnt any better i have shaw 1.5gbps internet with shaw communications in lethbridge...i thought i was sold on telus they said they had faster speeds so i was ready to switch hoping to get a new tv with em ...so i call back to double check and they say oh in ur city we only have like 25mbps internet im like pfff what a joke i have 5 people in the house with tablets computers and phones ....that wouldnt even come close to shaw.....so thats how these places get u....get a free tv when u sign up for trash service lol....if ur in canada u want SHAW
    Reply
  • peachpuff
    "he had been with the company for several years before leaving this past spring. In his most recent position, he worked in engineering"

    I think I can narrow it down to who it was if I worked there. So much for being anonymous.

    "He said that service reps are penalized if calls run longer than 600 seconds or customers call back about the same problem within a week."

    Someone should penalized T-Mobile for crappy service.
    Reply
  • JarredWaltonGPU
    peachpuff said:
    I think I can narrow it down to who it was if I worked there. So much for being anonymous.
    Sure, you can narrow it down, but I'm sure T-Mobile has had dozens of engineers leave in the past several months. It's a big company! Even if it were only a handful, it's still plausible deniability. The source can't be punished by his former employer since he's already gone, and T-Mobile has little to no power to prove without a doubt who the source is.
    Reply
  • amy.anikerina
    I was also sold the T-Mobile internet service, only to have constant problems with it. After I was on my third Gateway device (the round grey one), I was suddenly told that the service wasn't available at my address yet, and it should have never been offered to me.

    Now I am thinking that this is just another way that T-Mobile trys to excuse their poor internet service.
    Reply
  • jesslkrug
    I had and I’m still having the same issues with t-mobile. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it have more than two bars and my location reads like I’m in a totally different state than I’m in. I had my tower replaced, but I won’t try that again because I ended up being charged over $500 for not returning my old tower, but I had returned it and had tracking information to prove it. They never admitted that the charge was wrong because then said I had two towers to return even though the second tower was the one I was using. In the end, I’m out $500 and I still have such a weak signal that unless you are in the same room as the tower, you’ll never have a wife signal. They also quoted me $10 less than what I’ve been charged for over a year.
    Reply
  • USAFRet
    Newsflash:
    "Former Employee: Every Company Ever Misleads Customers"
    Reply
  • Kona45primo
    Admin said:
    Says company’s support reps incentivized to give customers false excuses to get them off the phone faster.

    Former Employee: T-Mobile Misleads Home Internet Customers : Read more

    Most every large company has metrics to hit for their phone calls to "customer care" . It's not just a T-mobile thing. Shorter calls = more customers helped per rep. Plus side is T-Mobile does still use US based Call Centers & Employees for most of their care calls.. I'm sure they'll get their internet issues worked out. Guessing this article will help elevate it to a NEED TO FIX NOW priority
    Reply
  • Inthrutheoutdoor
    And this is news how ?

    I've personally heard from over 50 former cell company employees in the past few years that have all told me similar, if not exactly the same, stories about their shady crap and horrible service when it comes to internet services....

    That's the primary reason I have and always will stay away from them..... personally I feel should be illegal for wireless providers to offer any kind of internet service & vice versa....

    The catch, at least where I live, is that in order to get home internet service from TMOz/Vorizem/ATwiT/Xflakinity, you have to also have your cell service with them, so they can gouge you on both ends.......

    I have my internet from 1 local company & my cell service from a nvmo, which together costs me way less than the cell companies are charging for just one of their services.......
    Reply
  • tamalero
    demonicus said:
    Telus in canada isnt any better i have shaw 1.5gbps internet with shaw communications in lethbridge...i thought i was sold on telus they said they had faster speeds so i was ready to switch hoping to get a new tv with em ...so i call back to double check and they say oh in ur city we only have like 25mbps internet im like pfff what a joke i have 5 people in the house with tablets computers and phones ....that wouldnt even come close to shaw.....so thats how these places get u....get a free tv when u sign up for trash service lol....if ur in canada u want SHAW
    Any recommendation for Vancouver area (like Port Moody)
    Reply